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never attribute to malice what can be blamed on incompetence.
by 0des 5y ago
never attribute to malice what can be blamed on incompetence.
- cryptoz 5y agoWhy not? I've found this advice to be harmful. Lots of extreme malice happens under the cover of incompetence.
- inpdx 5y agoI would argue because incompetence is statistically more likely.
- DonHopkins 5y agoYet malice is statistically more profitable, and pretending to be incompetent is statistically more easy that taking the blame for malice.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoNot from hostile state actors. We're talking about a country that has spent the past fifteen years rearming, has interfered in elections and referendums, has held nearby countries hostage over energy supplies, has been involved in ransomware and hack attacks, has imprisoned political opposition leaders, is currently massing an army on its borders, and is run by a short insecure and vain man with mafia connections who likes to posture topless in staged PR photos. It's really quite surreal to dismiss all of that as "incompetence."
- mandmandam 5y ago:Eyes-looking-sideways emoji:
- freeflight 5y agoHalf of that applies just as much to the US, even more half of that applied to it not too long ago. Which makes all this reheated cold war rhetoric really surreal to most third parties.
- panick21_ 5y agoAre we talking about the US? They have not murdered a million Arabs in the last 2 decades, so we can say that in their favor.
- DonHopkins 5y agoThat's what malicious people say.
- inetknght 5y agoWhen incompetence becomes a pattern then is it truly different from malice?
- JoshCole 5y agoTautologically, yes, they are different. Also, in terms of game theory, yes. The expected outcomes of cooperative games versus competitive games are very different.
- inetknght 5y agoDo explain more then. Malice that hides under the guise of incompetence is definitely something a malicious actor would want.
- JoshCole 5y agoIf a pattern of incompetence is malice then it follows we should be treating people who are physically or mentally disabled, in a hostile manner as if they are malicious adversaries. Depending on the length of time you use you might also need to treat all babies as enemies as well. It takes many years for them to stop displaying the pattern of incompetence. This isn't really that theoretical. There are people who are disabled who are killed or locked up by police. There are also people who abuse their children on account of them not meeting expectations. According to the implications of your logic this would be justice, because they should be treated adversarially, since you've ascribed intent to their failures. In a world in which sustained incompetence is malice, people shouldn't take on hard tasks. Failure is not a lesson; it is an opportunity for judgement to be leveled against the one who failed. This decreases learning, because it reduces risk taking by penalizing it. In a cooperative setting someone failing in a sustained way is extremely valuable. Rather than being an example of someone to be punished their failures are lessons that others can learn from. Things done to help them, help all. It implies different programs. Instead of beating the children for being stupid, you set up schools. Instead of attacking the infirm, you develop technologies to enable them to overcome their physical limitations.
- pdonis 5y agoSufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
- loceng 5y agoChess can look like checkers if the move looks simple; Russia would have had plenty of time to plan this out and respond to the acceleration towards exponential rate that the U.S./SpaceX's trajectory is currently on, as a little wave, a reminder of "hey, we're here too."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mmmpop 5y agoReminds me of my favorite quote: “C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute” - Some guy that is not Talleyrand
- 0des 5y agoBonjour mon ami! Ceci est attribué à Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe
- osrec 5y agoIn my experience, you should only apply Hanlon's razor in the first instance, but not thereafter!
- JoshCole 5y agoDepends on the derivative, I think.