Malice or Ignorance?

Here's a possibly false dichotomy. So you see say a government doing something terrible, perhaps it is damaging the economy or perhaps it is causing many deaths.

Do you feel it is better it did something wrong out of malice or out of ignorance?

Why not both?

Hanlon's Razor may apply, though I'd often be inclined to suspect both.

As for which is better? Ignorance, easily. At least you have a remote chance of teaching someone who doesn't know something. If you have a genuine asshole in office you're just screwed.

edited 31st Jan '11 11:43:03 PM by Pykrete

I'd prefer ignorance

There's also apathy.

edited 1st Feb '11 2:43:32 PM by HughMan

Hope.

That aside, I'd see malice as the worst, as it involves the person(s) behid it having a cause to fight for, however one thing that the world has tuaght us is that stupidity can be limitless, and if it mixes with ignorance, well... there's an entire new world left to be desired, if I'm inverting the idiom right.

As for Hanlon's Razor, it is a good and interesting saying, but it fails to take the human mindset correctly into account. Never attribute malice where stupidity would suffice, yeah, but never attribute stupidity where malice would bring a monetary benefit.

edited 1st Feb '11 7:58:23 AM by SilentReverence

I'd generally say when this happens it's usually due to some ideology or tribalism. The question is if the ideology has in it's basis ignorance or malice. Because sometimes it's one and sometimes it's the other. Generally I'd say that in terms of social issues, it's usually more malicious, and in terms of economics it's generally more ignorant, but there are exceptions.

never attribute stupidity where malice would bring a monetary benefit

This. My general rule is that if it doesn't benefit the person involved, they're an idiot, and if it does, they're a bastard.

As for which is better... ignorance. People can be taught.

Either way it's wrong. The guilty should be punished. Unfortunately, where governments are involved, they too often escape justice.

I would prefer malice. An immoral government will sometimes do what is right for the people in general, when it's to its own advantage, but a stupid government will invariably do what is stupid.

It depends on what exactly they're doing. If it's something unimaginably horrible, then it makes little difference, honestly. People are dying/being tortured, it doesn't matter if the people orchestrating this are truly evil or just stupid, the acts themselves are evil and should be stopped as quickly and efficiently as possible.

If it's something kinda-sorta bad, then I'd prefer stupidity over malice, because it's unlikely then to be only Phase One of some grand evil scheme - things will probably stay kinda-sorta bad instead of descend into horribleness. Plus, it might be possible to educate them, as someone said before.

However, if there's a stupid leader in place, it's pretty easy to have them become a figurehead and have someone with malice take over, so maybe someone with malice but not too much malice would be preferable, since they'd be smart enough not to let really malicious people take over.

As far as what governments do goes, I'd say that a lot of people tend to attribute malice when in reality, it usually is ignorance.

But then again, you could also argue, malice is just a certain type/subset of ignorance...

edited 1st Feb '11 7:47:57 PM by Herbarius