Hanlon's Razor: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''Don't assume malice when stupidity is an adequate explanation. At least, not the first time.''}}

 

 

Disregarding [[Hanlon's 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 happen because people are lazy, short-sighted, impulsive or just plain stupid. [[Conspiracy Theorist|Of course, ''they'' would definitely prefer you believe ''them'' to be stupid than evil]]. Most aversions involve someone saying that the noise you heard was [[It's Probably Nothing|just the wind]].

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== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[Code Geass]]'', this trope explains: 1) Why Clovis ends up fearing that the Emperor will consider him to be disloyal if he finds out about C.C., despite Bartley's indication later on that they had no traitorous intentions against the crown. 2) Lelouch and his role in what happens with {{spoiler|Euphemia}} around episode {{spoiler|22}}. Even if he's a [[The Chessmaster|mastermind]], he was still dumb in this case. 3) Suzaku and his role in what happens when Lelouch {{spoiler|gets captured by Schneizel and Kanon after his allegedly "private" meeting with Suzaku}}.

* Used in ''[[Angel Beats!]]'', where the Battlefront assumes "Angel" is an emotionless tool of eradication {{spoiler|when really she's just like the rest of them. People around her vanish because she tries to make them happy, which usually results in them attaining that which they missed in life.}} Also inverted later on when they {{spoiler|succeed in getting a new student council president}}. They start off thinking he is a mindless "NPC", but he {{spoiler|turns out to be a sadist intent on ruling that world with an iron fist.}}

 

* This is central to the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]'' [[Fanfic]] ''[[Frigid Winds and Burning Hearts]]'', where Princess Luna fears that her sister Celestia is secretly a manipulative tyrant. This [[Alternative Character Interpretation]] leads her to leap to conclusions and assume the worst. Similarly, other ponies tend to presume the worst about ''Luna'', leaping to the conclusion that she's reverting to her old, Nightmarish ways... when those ways are mostly the result of history being [[Written by the Winners]].

* [[Played for Laughs]] in another ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]'' [[Fanfic]] ''[[Moonbeam]]'' where one of Luna's friends thinks Celestia is also a manipulative tyrant, only {{spoiler|she's really just bored and likes pulling harmless pranks.}} Even funnier as Luna figures this out in about 2 seconds, and said friend is the local [[Grumpy Bear]].

** Later we find out Celestia's real reason {{spoiler|so she can spend some time with the mane six, who are the closest things Celestia has to friends.}}

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[Cube]]'', the left-wing doctor's assumption that the Cube is part of some maniacal government plot is immediately shot down by the revelation that it's just a senseless project that no bureaucrat had the cojones to pull the plug on. Which, once the truth sinks in, she admits is actually worse.

* Both versions of ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)|The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'' have Klaatu admonish humans for being irresponsible, not outright malicious.

* [[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 calls it "the devil theory fallacy" and explains:

{{quote|You have attributed conditions of villainy that simply result from stupidity. }}

* Touched on in ''The Shadow Over Innsmouth''

* ''[[Black Beauty]]'' discusses this; after the teenage Joe Green's ignorant handling of a delicate situation nearly kills the eponymous horse, one character tries to defend him on the basis that he didn't mean any harm, but another responds harshly that ignorance has caused more far more evil in the world than actual malice.

* Mentioned in the ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' book ''Crown of Slaves''.

{{quote|'''Haicheng Ringstorff''': "[[This Is Reality|That kind of fancy maneuver doesn't exist outside the holovids]]. Security Rule Number One: Don't ascribe to clever conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity."}}

* In James Herbert's ''Domain'', this trope and [[Government Conspiracy]] team up to backfire on the authorities, when a nuclear attack on London sends the government's elite scrambling for underground bunkers kept secret from the British public... only to find these bunkers are incompetently designed: easily cut off by rubble, flooded, and invaded by [[Rodents of Unusual Size|giant killer rats]] whose existence the bureaucrats had been covering up for years. {{spoiler|Incompetence ultimately trumps malice, as the nuclear attack itself was a snafu: it ought to have been directed at China, not Britain}}.

* This trope is mentioned in the ''[[Animorphs]]'' side story ''Visser''. While recounting her past during a trial, Edriss notes that she had potentially discovered an ideal host species for the Yeerks, but was reassigned to a dead end position. She implies to her inquisitors that her rival Visser Three was responsible, but then notes to herself that it was more likely incompetence than conspiracy that led to her discovery being ignored.

{{quote|'''Petey''': You've heard the old adage, "never ascribe to malice that which can be attributed to common stupidity." Well, it's only good advice when there is no malice afoot.}}

* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' in general could be considered a big example of Hanlon's Razor. Half the story arcs in the series wouldn't exist if it weren't for people making incredibly stupid decisions.

{{quote|"Never underestimate the ability of stupidity to catch you off guard and mess up humanity."}}

{{quote|Sluggy Character: Why did you do ABCDGFQRS [[Xanatos Roulette]]?

Seemingly Malicious Character: Because I wanted Y outcome.

 

* A [http://www.cracked.com/article_15740_was-911-inside-job.html Cracked article on 9/11 conspiracy theories] claims "There are basically two views on the subject, and I intend to provide both equally." Neither view supported in the article is that the conspiracy theorists are actually correct, so that leaves, "They're liars," or "They're stupid." At the end, the writer subverts it by suggesting that "Truthers" are ''both'' liars and mentally deficient.

{{quote|...to paraphrase Ian Fleming--"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action and over 600 is clearly the work of an ancient Sumerian demon or some shit."}}

* [http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/65827/conquests-laws-john-derbyshire Robert Conquest’s] Third Law of politics is a specific case of Grey's Law:

{{quote|3. The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. }}

 

== 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 on a fortuitous lunch run boggles the mind. Europe in 1914 was a tangled web of treaties, ethnic tensions and monarchical rivalries. A mutual defense treaty seems like a good idea, unless you don't tell anybody about it. (Deterrence? What's that?)

** 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.

** The facts of 9/11 boil down to two possibilities: dozens, if not hundreds, of American politicians, servicemen, and agents (With full cooperation from the airlines and airport authorities) deliberately and maliciously abandoned their oaths of protection and conspired to murder (by action or inaction) their fellow countrymen... or, the government did not successfully make the mental leap between 'Osama bin Laden may want to hijack a plane sometime in the following year' (which is the only warning they had) and 'On September 11th, 2001, four planes will be hijacked with the intent of crashing them into highly important buildings...'. I call [[Finagle's Law]].

*** Here in Germany, people have been [[World War II|even more stupid once]]. It actually happens very easily once a country is in the right mental state.

*** You can make the same analysis of the whole "FDR knew about Pearl Harbor" idea.

**** Well, ''technically'' they didn't have any direct knowledge that the attack on Pearl Harbor would commence (the fleet stationed there would have been way too precious to lose), but they did take a (hopefully) calculated risk when they started pushing Japan to the brink of combat by embargoing against them and challenge their influence over the pacific theatre.

**** In addition to the attempts on Seward and Johnson, there were two attempts on General Grant's life as he and his wife were on their way out of town. One man attempted to catch their carriage on horseback, but was apprehended by the armed escorts, and another attempted to force his way into the Grants' private cabin aboard their train.

**** The circumstances of Booth's death didn't help. Everton Conger (1834 - 1918) was the one leading the search for the assassin. He did manage to track him down and was trying to capture him alive, for obvious interrogation purposes. Sergeant Boston Corbett (1832 - 1894?) suddenly shot at Booth, fatally wounding him. Booth was never interrogated. Conger reported Corbett's actions to be "without order, pretext or excuse". There are suggestions that Corbett was acting to silence the assassin. Far more likely though that it was another of Corbett's insane moments. The guy had a long history of strange behavior, arguably starting with his self-castration in 1858. Supposedly to avoid sexual temptation. He ended up in an insane asylum by 1887. His biographers have noted that Corbett had spend years working as a hatter; his exposure to mercury may have much to do with his strange behavior.<ref>At the time, mercury was used in the production of felt, so hat makers tended to suffer from mercury poisoning due to the daily exposure. Thus the phrase "mad as a hatter".</ref>

** It's not going to go away anytime soon, as [[Michael Crichton]]'s ''[[State of Fear]]'' made sure there was [[Harsher in Hindsight|a fanbase waiting for it]]!

** Ironically, this may in itself be due to ignorance of what is expected in the way of standard knowledge within the scientific community. The sloppy editing is particularly atrocious as both the editor and the author of the paper involved should have known that the original source was '''not''' one to cite as anything more than anecdotal, and only inside a grant application at that. (The grant in question could be summed up as "Please give me money to measure glaciers for a while and see if these rumors are true.")

** When the sloppy editing somehow ends up supporting one side repeatedly, people assume corruption. Just like when a cashier constantly makes errors and those errors are overwhelmingly in the cashier's favor, people assume this cashier is a crook, and everyone who claims cashier did nothing wrong diligently ignoring the "errors" being so one-sided is also a crook - or serves one. Which usually is the case, obviously. What most people miss is that the second crook often ''does not need to'' explicitly collude with the first, but may do it out of crooked self-interest, because making a slap on the wrist the common outcome will help if and when the second crook is caught too - and it discourages people from exposing such crooks in the first place. Hence if you see someone going after e.g. an obviously corrupt journalist, [[Gamergate|you'll probably see "solidarity" tags soon]].

* There's still some debate as to whether the Holodomor, the famine cause by Stalin's agricultural collectivization policies in the Ukraine, was the result of simple mismanagement or a deliberate genocide against a nation that had a (not undeserved) reputation as a breeding ground for counter-revolutionary sentiment. [[Inverted Trope|Of course, this is]] ''Stalin'' we're talking about here...

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[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]

[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]

[[Category:Logical Fallacies]]