HANLON'S RAZOR

Domain	Definition
Computing	Hanlon's Razor prov. A corollary of Finagle's Law, similar to Occam's Razor, that reads "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." The derivation of the Hanlon eponym is not definitely known, but a very similar remark ("You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.") appears in "Logic of Empire", a classic 1941 SF story by Robert A. Heinlein, who calls it the `devil theory' of sociology. Heinlein's popularity in the hacker culture makes plausible the supposition that `Hanlon' is derived from `Heinlein' by phonetic corruption. A similar epigram has been attributed to William James, but Heinlein more probably got the idea from Alfred Korzybski and other practitioners of General Semantics. Quoted here because it seems to be a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in sig blocks, fortune cookie files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This probably reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments created by well-intentioned but short-sighted people. Compare Sturgeon's Law, Ninety-Ninety Rule. Source: Jargon File.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Specialty Definition: 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. 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 possible that the term 'Hanlon's Razor' is a bastardisation of 'Heinlein's Razor'.

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."

Quoted here because it seems to be a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in sig blocks, fortune cookie files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This probably reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments created by well-intentioned but short-sighted people. Compare Sturgeon's law.

See also:

Murphy's law
Finagle's law
Sturgeon's law

External links

AssumeStupidityNotMalice - from MeatballWiki

Jargon File entry for "Hanlon's Razor"

Anagrams: HANLON'S RAZOR

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "'-a-a-h-l-n-n-o-o-r-r-s-z"
	-5 letters: nonsolar.
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