“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” This aphorism is attributed to one Robert Hanlon, who submitted it to Arthur Bloch for his book Murphy's Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! published in 1980. This idea, of course, dates back even further than that; for instance, Robert Heinlein put something similar into the mouth of a character in the novella Logic of Empire (1941). There are variations on this idea, including “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice,” called Grey’s Law, which is a variation of Hanlon’s Razor restated as a snowclone of Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law. The currently popular form of Hanlon’s Razor has since morphed into replacing “stupidity” with “incompetence” although this is effectively a misquotation.
There are “exceptions” which have attempted to mitigate the obvious issues with such an appeal to simplicity. One such is called “Woozle's Rule of Conspiracy #1,” which states “Never assume incompetence when someone stands to gain from an action.” This has very little reach, considering that the only reference to it I can find is from the Wikipedia entry on Hanlon’s Razor, and I had never heard of it prior to researching my p’s and q’s for this essay. Nevertheless, it is obvious that in some of the more intellectually honest corners of the internet, people recognize the downfalls of simplicity for the sake of simplicity. This strikes to the heart of what ails the public discourse.
Which leads us to giants, at least in the realm of intellectual honesty.
The Wikipedia entry for Hanlon’s Razor notes that “the name is inspired by Occam’s Razor” but it is much more than that. It is correctly referential to Occam’s Razor because they are both an appeal to simplicity, and any justification for Hanlon’s will rely on stepping back to Occam’s; thus Hanlon’s Razor is more appropriately a corollary of Occam’s Razor, and the problems start there.
I cannot but stand on the shoulders of a giant when it comes to debunking the popular use of Occam’s Razor. The Ethical Skeptic has already done the heavy lifting on this topic, with his post “The Real Ockham’s Razor” and I suggest you go over there and read it carefully and in its entirety. I will wait here for you, it is worth your time.
The actual quote is “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate” or “Plurality should not be posited without necessity” (Summa Totius Logicae, William of Ockham). To understand this correctly, one must understand what plurality and parsimony are, in the terms of philosophy and the scientific method. What they most decidedly are NOT are decision making heuristics, as is pointed out by The Ethical Skeptic. What they ARE are qualifying heuristics, used to qualify theorems before applying the scientific method. Anyone attempting to use parsimony to justify a conclusion on the basis of simplicity is attempting to be Advantageously Obtuse.
This brings us to the concept of facile. The Merriam-Webster primary definition is “easily accomplished or attained” but in speaking in terms of logic and rhetoric facile is more appropriately defined as “appearing neat and comprehensive only by ignoring the true complexities of an issue.” Again, from the source material linked above:
“A simple explanation is more difficult to reduce, probe for soundness and evaluate – often promoting the facile misconception that it is therefore ‘robust under examination’. This is the same technique which a magician uses – exploiting an audience’s proclivity to seek the simplest or fewest-assumptions explanation.”
Our society currently exists in an epidemic of facileness. What some have termed the “modern Panopticon,” the “debt plantation” or “the Matrix” rests on a foundation of simplistic answers to complex problems that nobody questions. Like the magician mentioned above, the elites controlling our society prefer that people not dig too deeply into the stories and explanations used to justify the current world order. Doing so risks exposing their invisible hand, otherwise known as “the man behind the curtain.” Currently, there are too many people asking too many questions and teaching others to do the same on the internet, which is serving as an antidote to the constant propaganda. This is the reason for the calls for things like getting rid of the First Amendment protections in the United States, and for banning the AfD party in Germany, just to name two of the most recent and obvious examples.
That our society exists in this state is no accident.
I’m not at all sure that Ian Fleming actually invented this aphorism widely used by the military, but this may be the first time it found its way into print. It is attempting to convey an important principle about the probability theory of events: when what is purported to be chaotic has too much consistency, then it is likely there are influences that are not being taken into account.
Everyone knows that flipping a coin is a 50/50 probability, and for any given coin flip you have a 50% chance of getting either one side or the other. The mathematically ignorant, however, do not understand that there is a whole field of math behind calculating multiple coin flips (Dunning-Kruger absolutely applies).
Probability P is always expressed as a number between 1 and 0. This is because it is the numerical expression of the “percent” term where you move the decimal, i.e. 50% chance is a Probability of .50.
If you want to calculate the odds of three coin flips all being heads, then it looks something like this: Coin flip #1 is heads AND Coin flip #2 is heads AND Coin flip #3 is heads.
The AND statement is key, because for probability AND denotes multiplication.
The equation looks thus: (Probability of heads) x (Probability of heads) x (Probability of heads).
Or: (.5)*(.5)*(.5).
The chance of all three coin flips being heads is .125 or 12.5 percent. Moreover, we can see this is an exponential progression where the chance of getting the same result is cut in half for each successive attempt. 50% for the first one, 25% for two in a row, 12.5% for three in a row, 6.25% for four in a row, 3.125% for five… the probability is going to be vanishingly small very quickly. In fact, by the time we have reached five identical coin flips, much less ten, it is fair to want to examine the coin to make sure the two sides are indeed different - in other words, that there aren’t other forces at play negating true randomness or falsifying the result.
The old military saw about the “third time is enemy action” is the real world application of understanding probability theory.
So riddle me this, Batman: what’s the probability that over the past 125 years or so, the ratchet has only moved in one direction, sometimes pausing but never back, in setting up the managerial elites to grab more wealth and power? That for them, the coin has come up heads almost every single time?
Why is it that the education system no longer teaches the classics, logic, rhetoric, or critical thinking? It is because the Matrix is not going to give you the glasses you need to see the Matrix.
Incompetence or ignorance doesn’t come anywhere close to explaining the “order out of chaos” necessary to circumvent the laws of probability on this scale. To do so is to make an argument for 10,000 monkeys pounding 10,000 typewriters and producing a great work of literature. The probability is not zero, but it is so vanishingly small that the most obvious course of action is to question the data.
And that would be a correct application of logic and scientific method.
So please, let’s get rid of Appeals to Simplicity. They are the crutch of the charlatan at best and a tool of misdirection in service to oppression at worst, and with all of the forces arrayed against us we should be thinking as clearly as possible. Simplistic reductions of complex problems ignore externalities, especially the negative ones.
The externalities of leftist and even libertarian societal mores will be the topic of a future essay.