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Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity ;) There's been a shockingly high amount of young inexperienced devs involved in building for cryp
by highace 9y ago
Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity ;)
There's been a shockingly high amount of young inexperienced devs involved in building for crypto. I remember making similar mistakes when I was starting out as a dev... except I wasn't solely responsible for systems handling millions of dollars.
- ukulele 9y agoTherein lies my skepticism. It's an industry that seems to be full of "oops we lost your money, trust me" problems. Malice becomes a lot more likely when life changing sums of money are involved.
- jpatokal 9y agoRemember, a lot of these cryptocoins started out as toys, experiments or get-rich-quick schemes that were never seriously designed to handle millions of dollars. MtGox is perhaps the classic example here: the biggest Bitcoin exchange of its time started out life as a Magic the Gathering trading cards exchange, and just kept on hacking on that shitty codebase until it inevitably got pwned.
- IntronExon 9y agoCounterpoint, Heinlein’s Razor. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.”
- beaconstudios 9y agobut then, any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
- IntronExon 9y agoVery true, but the “means, motive, opportunity” test can help there. The motive here would be $170 million usd.
- mnm1 9y agoDon't attribute to stupidity what can be explained by malice. Why? Especially in the crypto space with its history. I think you got the sentence backwards. It should be "Don't attribute to stupidity what can be explained by malice." In my experience, that's almost always the case.
- y4mi 9y agoThe saying is true in the context it was initially meant for. Most people you encounter throughout the day/week that somehow "wronged" you didn't do it out of malice, but stupidity, carelessness or plain disinterest.
- stevenh 9y agoHanlon's Razor often only applies to the very same people using it. I only ever see it used to maliciously shut down a discussion prematurely.