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A corollary to
Finagle's Law which seems to have almost infinite applications in writing comedy:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
For a bit more information, see
this entry
in the Hacker's Jargon File.
Ignorance of
Hanlon's Razor is one of the more common forms of
Genre Blindness.
Disregarding
Hanlons Razor is a prerequisite for plots involving an
Ancient Conspiracy,
Government Conspiracy or similar antagonist. The existence of a powerful, secretive and malicious cabal makes for juicier storytelling than the idea that bad things just happen when people don't do their jobs properly.
Most aversions involve someone saying that the noise you heard was
just the wind.
Granted, it does have a corollary of sorts, Grey's Law:
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
And, of course, it relies on the assumption that ignorance, in and of itself, isn't malicious.
See also
No Delays For The Wicked.
Examples:
Literature
- Robert A Heinlein's novella "The Logic of Empire" brings this up as two characters discuss how slavery and its equivalents are allowed to exist even though it's both immoral and economically self-defeating. One character says that it's a product of deliberate malice, and the other replies, "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity."
- See the Jargon entry, "Hanlon" may well have come from Heinlein.
- Touched on in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by HP Lovecraft. When the narrator's motel room door is rattled in the middle of the night by someone trying the lock, the narrator first suspects that the locals think he knows too much. He convinces himself to get into bed on the thought that someone just tried the wrong door by accident. It turns out the locals think he knows too much. They come back later well-armed.
- The fandom of A Series Of Unfortunate Events has frequently suspected that many of the useless adults in the books are working for the villains or otherwise involved in the Ancient Conspiracy of V.F.D. More likely, if they have any involvement in the conspiracies, they are clueless pawns whose selfishness and stupidity is exploited through Xanatos Gambits.
- If it's based on exploiting their various individual character flaws, wouldn't that make it more of a Batman Gambit, rather than a Xanatos Gambit?
- This is possibly a deconstruction, as many of the orphans' guardians (at least early in the series) are confirmed or strongly implied to be members of the V.F.D. on one side of the schism or the other. Even with this background knowledge, though, they still manage to be woefully ignorant of and/or inept at dealing with Olaf's schemes.
Live Action TV
- Invoked on That '70s Show when Charlie sees Kitty naked. Kelso advises him to walk in on Red naked: that way, Red will think he's an idiot rather than a pervert. It backfires when he accidentally walks in on Kitty naked again.
Tabletop Games
- Inverted in Warhammer 40000: never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice. A puree of Crapsack World, Everything Trying To Kill You, and Black And Grey Morality at its finest.
- Although there is a lot of stupidity — see the Imperial Bureaucracy, and the Emperor's treatment of some of his sons (although Inverse Hanlon's Razor still applies to the latter, thanks to Horus).
Theater
Video Games
- The Umbrella Corporation in the Resident Evil series appears to be a generic Evil Corporation, what with its using the T-Virus to experiment and attempt to create biological weapons. More often than not, the constant outbreaks of Zombie plagues are the result of massive stupidity and recklessness, rather than a deliberate desire to kill everybody.
- In Star Control II, the Slylandro Probes seem hellbent on deconstructing everything in the galaxy to create more probes. Why was this plague of Von Neumann probes unleashed upon creation? Answer: a programming bug. The Slylandro purchased the self-replicating probes for peaceful exploration. They set the priorities wrong: they set the target priorities to seek out ships and evidence of civilization over raw (non-living) materials for replication. The problem was that they set the action priorities wrong; they set the action "Break target into component compounds" to maximum. So it did exactly that: seek out ships and evidence of civilization and destroy them. Hilarity Ensues.
Web Comics
Western Animation
Real Life
- Just about everything surrounding World War I can be explained by the leaders of Europe acting like a bunch of gibbering morons. The fact that four years of horribly bloody conflict were kicked off because of a student with a pistol boggles the mind.
- Austria had WANTED to go to war and so initially made demands of Serbia that they figured no one would accept. Serbia acquiesced to all but one demand, upon which Austria was not willing to compromise. Only after the declaration of war was sent did the Austrians learn that Serbia had sent a post saying they'd submit to the final demand.
- In contrast to the South Park entry below, conspiracy theories about 9/11 refuse to accept the possibility that any element, any tiny, inconsequential detail, is anything but the single thread that, if unraveled, will bring the whole conspiracy down into bite-sized chunks of truth. The simplest solution is that Bush is, in fact, a well-meaning guy who, during the 9/11 crisis and during the whole of his presidency made difficult decisions that he thought were right.
- The facts of 9/11 boil down to two possibilities: dozens, if not hundreds, of American politicians, servicemen, and agents deliberately and maliciously abandoned their oaths of protection and conspired to murder (by action or inaction) their fellow countrymen, or those in charge made a mistake and thought that the 9/11 plan wasn't a threat. I call Finagle's Law.
- Hell, conspiracy theories in general depend on the assumption that a lack of evidence is in turn proof of a coverup. Plain ol' incompetence with a dose of coincidence just doesn't seem like a cool enough explanation, apparently.
- You'd like us to think that, wouldn't you?!?
