Post #1702620
2026-04-26 19:48 UTC
Replies (32)
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@mattly@hachyderm.io 2026-04-26 21:05
One might argue that Hanlon’s Razor itself is an incompetent/malicious thought-terminating cliché for dealing with rhetoric
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@mattly@hachyderm.io 2026-04-27 19:03
If you’re coming here to reply, know that I’m not going to read it
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@tclark@mstdn.social 2026-04-26 19:54
@mattly The way I put it is "sufficiently advanced incompetence/stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
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@daesorin@hachyderm.io 2026-04-26 20:04
@mattly I used that phrase a-lot in 2023. I used it to justify my continued friendship with people who supported the most vile of persons to become the president of our country. Said person then proceeded to destroy every half infrastructure and turned this thing that used to pretend that it was a country -- into a dead country. Now, I have come to realise that they supported him because they were told that they would be fixed into positions where the failings of his government would not touch them. I thought them fools (which they remain, as the promises they were made stayed promises), but they were just monsters.
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@bmaxv@noc.social 2026-04-26 20:36
@mattly I think it's easier to say that Hanlon's razor is simply wrong, because the world has bad actors in it that do things maliciously. I don't think they're functionally similar either.
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@lisamelton@mastodon.social 2026-04-26 21:17
@mattly This. 💯
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@rainhead@flipping.rocks 2026-04-26 21:46
@mattly see also: The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does.
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@mtor@mastodon.social 2026-04-26 22:15
@mattly well said
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@licho@kolektiva.social 2026-04-26 22:18
@mattly while I agree about the case of age verification, there's also the theory of stupidity by Bonhoeffer. When you're trying to predict the next move of an actor, it's crucial to get it right - are they malicious or stupid. When they are malicious, they will do something that will benefit them. When stupid they will do something that is random, likely that also includes shooting themselves in the foot. It's super important to get those sorted out. Stupid is worse than evil. Evil is predictable. Stupid is just stupid.
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@DanielEriksson@mstdn.science 2026-04-26 22:32
@mattly I put Competence and Intent on orthogonal axes. Hanlon's vector allows for any combination and magnitude of Malice and Incompetence _and their opposites_.
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@gethemudo@ecoevo.social 2026-04-26 22:33
@mattly It is usually better to focus on consequences rather than intentions, easier to infer.
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@knutson_brain@sfba.social 2026-04-26 22:48
@mattly Pivoting to “guilty until proven innocent” for some …
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@RyeNCode@mstdn.ca 2026-04-26 23:09
@mattly The purpose of a system is what it does. — Stafford Beer The age verification systems (regardless of any specific implementation) can, and will be used beyond the stated reasons. We need only to look at "Justice" systems that continue to exist despite their not contributing to actual justice, merely commercial incarceration. Often at the expense of justice.
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@logosity@discuss.systems 2026-04-26 23:12
@mattly cf Rao's Hanlon's Dodge: https://ribbonfarm.com/2011/10/14/the-gervais-principle-v-heads-i-win-tails-you-lose/
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@Guillotine_Jones@beige.party 2026-04-26 23:32
@mattly Never attribute to malice or a conspiracy what can easily be explained by incompetence or the profit motive. #Capitalism #Conspiracies
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@Loungagna@mastodon.social 2026-04-27 00:43
@mattly do not ignore that the most invested in technology of human history is easily copied by using anonymous accounts to query LLM and use the responses to train your own copy. Those mandatory identification should be evaluated as another attempt by the billionaires to control and restrict the access to wealth.
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@MokhtarStork@zirk.us 2026-04-27 01:46
@mattly Can you please explain all this in simpler terms in different categories because it has substance but at 82 hard to absorb. Thanks.
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@clew@ecoevo.social 2026-04-27 03:07
Also, if they start claiming they just didn’t know, mention — negligence, laziness, indifference. @mattly
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@freemancrouch@mastodon.social 2026-04-27 03:10
@mattly @Homoevolutis0 I have had this exact thought about the real potential harms of the "never attribute to malice etc" trope many times, but never fleshed it out this well. Kudos!
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@nyc@discuss.systems 2026-04-27 03:16
@mattly It's always been frustrating to have the implacable enemy hellbent on my immiseration, destruction, imprisonment & death be praised as saintly good actors with the best of intentions who have to have their backsides kissed more reverently than the pope by Hanlon's razor and its likely themselves ill-intentioned proponents. Then, of course, the same malefactors-in-the-middle use their dishonest smokescreens as pretexts to militate against recognition of the threats while still pending and harms once realised, and, of course, any and all efforts to flee the countries taken over and to blame the victims as usual.
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@Beatpoet13@mastodon.social 2026-04-27 03:22
@mattly solves itself by dropping the whole concept of foreseeable outcome, along with the fake certainty display required by "normality", overall, lack of intelligent gathering of perspectives in favour of facile single focus linear trajectory leaves plenty room for loud conviction, yet anyone daring to admit to doubt doesn't get near any boredroom full of conformist suits, I 'm seeing too many paralels with Asbestos Implementation & subsequent toxic legacy to pick evry flea out of da dead dog
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@zhadu@hachyderm.io 2026-04-27 03:55
@mattly Grey’s Law: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”
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@txtx@mastodon.social 2026-04-27 05:04
@mattly Another way to frame this is that you actually talk about the issue/problem instead of jumping to insults and accusations. I receive a lot of those insults because I have non-conforming opinions on verification (within the tech community anyway). But I appreciate when someone engages with me on the actual topic.
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@ingo_wichmann@digitalcourage.social 2026-04-27 05:46
@mattly https://www.mafaalani.de/misstrauensgemeinschaften
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@slotos@toot.community 2026-04-27 07:08
@mattly So, can we now have a discussion of legal systems that are hellbent on figuring out intent unless they deal with poor people? Because I’m really tired of rich and powerful getting a pass because “they didn’t intend to ruing y’all’s livelihood”.
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@zeri@chaos.social 2026-04-27 07:21
@mattly a valid and dare I say important corollary for a time when the world is ruled by incompetent fascists.
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@jetlagjen@gts.phillipsuk.org 2026-04-27 08:15
@mattly you've got the wording slightly wrong, but in a way that matters. "... which is *adequately* explained by stupidity." In many scenarios where Hanlon's Razor is used to let people off the hook it's misapplied because stupidity is not an *adequate* explanation.
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@jwcph@helvede.net 2026-04-27 13:21
@mattly I approve 👍 so we have Occam's, Hanlon's & now Lyon's Razor.
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@Brendan@zenarca.de 2026-04-27 15:00
@mattly I'm always like
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@screwturn@mastodon.social 2026-04-27 15:04
@mattly I think Hanlon's Razor is a reasonable rule of thumb for one-off events with no frequency history. Because the razor is meant for informal and a posteriori use, we can also use tools like control charts to ask whether there is a trend, a run, or upper/lower control limit being exceeded, etc. If there is a progression or history of events, I think you can safely put aside Hanlon's Razor, and say, wait a minute, we've been here before
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@eribosot@mastodon.social 2026-04-27 15:08
@mattly I don't think Hanlon's Razor was intended to let anyone off the hook. Just because incompetence on its own can sufficiently explain a problem doesn't mean it's no longer a problem, nor does it mean that you accept the frame that allows the incompetence to go unchecked. Rather, Hanlon's Razor helps you prevent conflating the problem with its perpetrator, because doing so makes the problem harder to solve: The minds of people you approach in bad faith are harder to change.
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@syllusg@climatejustice.social 2026-04-27 23:14
@mattly I'm going to argue that malice is a special type of incompetence.