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Comment by genkimind | Hacker News Reader

It has nothing to do with corruption. See my other comment.

Hanlon's razor at work...

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

But never forget that malice does exist, and the clever malicious will often conceal their malice behind a veil of plausible stupidity.

For instance, "Oops I accidentally forgot my briefcase full of classified documents on the bus" is as old as spycraft itself.

Even calling it "clever" or attributing it to spycraft is a stretch. Kids learn to "play dumb" before they learn to form complete sentences.

That's right. Even very dumb criminals will often plead that they were dumb, not malicious, even when the circumstances of their capture make such an explanation ludicrous.

"I'm sorry sir, I kicked in your front door and started looking for cash and valuables because I was drunk and thought it was my house! I made a huge mistake!"

I like to remind people that Hanlons razor is a logical fallacy, and really shouldn't be used nearly as much as it is, especially the way it is (in an isolated context)

>Hanlons razor is a logical fallacy

I'm not see'ing it, and a quick google search isn't finding any support for that idea; it seems to me quite reasonable: Given 2 common possible explanations, prefer one. Perhaps the "Never" is at issue, but I doubt anyone ever actually interprets never as never.

Logical fallacies are not a finite set. Those you find listed on places like wikipedia are merely the most popular.

That’s fine and well, but irrelevant to what I said. I failed to deduce the fallacy myself or find anyone else doing it for me, thus I’m asking.

The fact that it includes the word "never" was the clue for me...

Which I responded to. Reading never as never is more of a misinterpretation than anything else.

Even if we accept that (even though a maxim that starts out "we should hesitate to" rather than "never" will be much less rhetorically potent), HR claims to observe a fact about the world: that malice is far less common than stupidity, or at least that it's profitable to behave as if that were the case. I've never seen that observation supported, in any discussion about HR. My own experience of the world contradicts that observation much of the time. Probably not most of the time, but enough to make it a mistake to stop thinking, as HR advises us to do.

In fact it's often wise to act as if one sees stupidity, even when one suspects malice. In that way one may tempt the malicious into overstepping. But HR doesn't say anything about actions, only about attributions.

I would disagree. Seeing corruption everywhere is your brain trying to assign order to chaos.

The reality is that big military bureaucracy is among the dumbest of organizations and is capable of feats of illogic almost impossible to appreciate.

Maybe if you have never spent any time in the military.

Would it be ok for me to say that Theranos failed because of stupidity because halons razor? All i know is the company failed and i don't have time to read any articles so aren't i justified in saying it was stupidity not malice?

I’ve never been in the military, but I have lots of time in massive bureaucracy.

So many people are involved in the decision making process it’s nearly impossible to make a decision about anything. When I hear speculation about a conspiracy involving printer toner in Iraq, that sounds like nonsense without evidence.

Theranos is the opposite. A naive young founder pretending to be the reincarnation of Steve Jobs with a manipulative guru/mentor/lover pulling the strings is like a Petri dish for corruption.

But humans aren't logical entities.

Hanlon's razor should not be employed with situations where money vanishes.

You say an overextension of resources is one of the factors, which corruption would play a role in.

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