Hanlon's Razor

A corollary of Finagle's law, Hanlon's Razor reads:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

The derivation of the common title "Hanlon's Razor" is unknown; a similar epigram has been attributed to William James, amongst others. One possible derivation is from the similarity to Occam's Razor. The website Status-Q attributes it to one Robert J. Hanlon who seemingly contributed it to a book about Murphy's law.

A similar quote appears in Robert Heinlein's 1941 short story Logic of Empire: "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity." It is often asserted that the term "Hanlon's Razor" is a bastardization of "Heinlein's Razor."

This maxim is also widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.

General observations on the predominance of human error over malice occur in various works of literature; Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) mentions: "[...] misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent."

Hanlon's Razor is a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in sig blocks, fortune cookie files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks.

A common (and much more laconic) British English version of this law is "Cock-up before conspiracy".

Howard Tayler points out, however, that this only applies when there is no actual malice.

See also

• Murphy's law
• Finagle's law
• Sturgeon's law
• Adages named after people

External links

• AssumeStupidityNotMalice - from MeatballWiki
• Jargon File entry for "Hanlon's Razor"