Hanlon’s Razor advises us, “Do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.” Or incompetence, which serves as a fine substitute for stupidity. There are several ways to phrase Hanlon’s Razor, but the basic idea is that a given snafu is more likely to be explained by idiocy than by evil intent. It’s a corollary of Occam’s Razor. Wikipedia speculates on the saying’s origin.
The point is not that malice is never ever the explanation. The point is that malice is so infrequently the explanation that a heuristic ruling it out will be more accurate. Based on anecdotal evidence, I think this is true. The average person is a moron who means well, and even above-average people can easily fuck things up. Especially when it comes to complex systems, and almost everything the government does involves complex system.
Designing incentives is a process fraught with hard-to-foresee errors. But hey, maybe the artificial intelligence that’s able to trounce poker champions will also be able to easily evaluate all the perverse responses humans might have to a given regulatory scheme. Ha — I know. That’ll be the day!
(Allow me a political moment: Trump and his administration’s actions so far are probably better explained by stupidity than malice. They think they’re in the right, and they expect to do well. But actualizing that hope is quite difficult. Yes, Steve Bannon may throw a wrench in this theory — he has shown signs of being biased toward chaos.)
So. Allow me to propose another corollary to Occam and Hanlon’s Razors:
Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by incentives.
People do what benefits them. Gentiles sell out Jews when it benefits them. Reduced competition boosts wages. Native sons — of all sorts — sell out immigrants — of all sorts — because it benefits them. For the same reasons! Economics runs in the blood of every one of us, but it expresses itself via competing egregores. My ideology trumps yours due to reason, not because I want your crops and your blood! That has nothing to do with anything.
Right? Yes, of course. The ones who are right will devour what’s left.
Tweet by @ClarkHat.
Header photo by dad1_.
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