6 ms·

Sounds like Hanlon's razor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

capableweb 4y ago
Imagine being a malicious actor in this world of ours, where as long as you could make it look like a potential mistake, you can get away with whatever, and people on the internet will simply say "Sounds like Hanlon's Razor" and you're basically in the clear :shrug:
- l_theanine 4y ago
  Imagine being someone who made a simple mistake, and people on some weird internet forum with no identity verification said "Oh, that guy must be malicious!" and you lose your job. How would you feel? It's justified, if I understand the point you're trying to make, right? Which is worse? Edit: Not that I expect much from here, but since there are a number of child(ish) replies, I might as well clarify this for the replies that I'm not going to individually address: I'm not saying it's not cool to say "Microsoft sucks" or anything like that. If that's how you feel, then feel free to just say that. It's the internet. What's NOT cool is making up an imaginary situation where someone's simple error is part of this conspiracy that Microsoft is this terrible evil corporation, when there's thousands of decent, community-loving people that work there, one of whom made this error, more than likely by simple carelessness. It's not that big of a deal, it's not a showstopper by any means, and will be a simple fix in due time, almost undoubtedly. There are people behind software, but a lot of commenters seem to think it's professionally appropriate to just shit on things because they're from Microsoft or because they're from Apple, or wherever. Just say you don't like Microsoft, or that you don't like Apple. It's so antisocial to take the stance I keep seeing. I think the young people call this "parasocial" these days. Back in my day, we called it "fanatics", where there's this unhealthy obsession and seemingly anthromorphized view of corporations and institutions where hundreds or thousands of different, varied, diverse groups of people are all cohesively accomplishing or building things. It dismisses nuance, it rejects common sense understanding of how teams of people work, and is reductive and hostile to actually intelligent conversations about products and ideas.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I don't think anyone is assigning blame to a specific individual here, but to the corporation as a whole. A corporation that has time and time again been proven and acknowledged themselves to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
    - l_theanine 4y ago
      I think it's deliberately obtuse to claim to represent such an opinion. The people on "git blame" for this will end up being reprimanded in some way, in serious cases. If we're chalking it up to "Microsoft sucks" then that's fine, but it'd be better imo to just say THAT, rather than sneak up to the point via this auxiliary issue of this user agent string. Someone has to answer for these individual fuck-ups, it's intentionally shitty behavior to be insinuating that someone did this maliciously under the guise of end users assuming innocence, thereby obscuring the responsibility for it.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        > The people on "git blame" for this will end up being reprimanded in some way, in serious cases. Ok, sucks to work at Microsoft then, it is not the fault at people outside Microsoft that they have terrible management, if that's how things go there. > Someone has to answer for these individual fuck-ups, it's intentionally shitty behavior to be insinuating that someone did this maliciously under the guise of end users assuming innocence, thereby obscuring the responsibility for it. Yes, management who are the decision makers should obviously answer for this, and if the culture is to blame some random engineer who happened to program it, the engineer is probably better off getting fired from such a toxic environment where they have to be some scapegoat for managements fuckups.
      - mynameisvlad 4y ago
        Most organizations, Microsoft included, employ a blameless policy. It’s almost never an individual person’s fault, but rather that the process failed in stopping a regression from going through. If anything should be blamed, it’s that the process didn’t catch this; at the PR, testing, or release phases. If individuals were reprimanded nearly as much as it’s implied, there wouldn’t be a lot of people employed at Microsoft or any other big company.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  There should be consultants who specialize in Hanlon's Razor, coming up with ways to make future plans look like stupid mistakes. Or maybe more usefully, they could discover profitable mistakes based on current conditions and events e.g. "Those two labels could be confused with each other; is there any way to make money from claiming that we confused them?"
  - oblio 4y ago
    Those consultants are called lawyers and the idea is called plausible deniability.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    We’ve been doing that at least since World War II in military intelligence, and they probably stole the idea from organized crime.
- laserlight 4y ago
  I'll never understand Hanlon's razor. I've never seen any malice which cannot be explained by stupidity.
hinkley 4y ago
Never attribute to incompetence that which can be attributed to laziness.
croes 4y ago
Only ince or twice maybe. BTW how can we trust Hanlon? Maybe he tried to cover up is own malice.
Forbo 4y ago
When it comes to megacorporations with a history of anticompetitive behavior, I much prefer "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by greed."

capableweb 4y ago

Imagine being a malicious actor in this world of ours, where as long as you could make it look like a potential mistake, you can get away with whatever, and people on the internet will simply say "Sounds like Hanlon's Razor" and you're basically in the clear :shrug:

l_theanine 4y ago
Imagine being someone who made a simple mistake, and people on some weird internet forum with no identity verification said "Oh, that guy must be malicious!" and you lose your job. How would you feel? It's justified, if I understand the point you're trying to make, right? Which is worse? Edit: Not that I expect much from here, but since there are a number of child(ish) replies, I might as well clarify this for the replies that I'm not going to individually address: I'm not saying it's not cool to say "Microsoft sucks" or anything like that. If that's how you feel, then feel free to just say that. It's the internet. What's NOT cool is making up an imaginary situation where someone's simple error is part of this conspiracy that Microsoft is this terrible evil corporation, when there's thousands of decent, community-loving people that work there, one of whom made this error, more than likely by simple carelessness. It's not that big of a deal, it's not a showstopper by any means, and will be a simple fix in due time, almost undoubtedly. There are people behind software, but a lot of commenters seem to think it's professionally appropriate to just shit on things because they're from Microsoft or because they're from Apple, or wherever. Just say you don't like Microsoft, or that you don't like Apple. It's so antisocial to take the stance I keep seeing. I think the young people call this "parasocial" these days. Back in my day, we called it "fanatics", where there's this unhealthy obsession and seemingly anthromorphized view of corporations and institutions where hundreds or thousands of different, varied, diverse groups of people are all cohesively accomplishing or building things. It dismisses nuance, it rejects common sense understanding of how teams of people work, and is reductive and hostile to actually intelligent conversations about products and ideas.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I don't think anyone is assigning blame to a specific individual here, but to the corporation as a whole. A corporation that has time and time again been proven and acknowledged themselves to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
  - l_theanine 4y ago
    I think it's deliberately obtuse to claim to represent such an opinion. The people on "git blame" for this will end up being reprimanded in some way, in serious cases. If we're chalking it up to "Microsoft sucks" then that's fine, but it'd be better imo to just say THAT, rather than sneak up to the point via this auxiliary issue of this user agent string. Someone has to answer for these individual fuck-ups, it's intentionally shitty behavior to be insinuating that someone did this maliciously under the guise of end users assuming innocence, thereby obscuring the responsibility for it.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      > The people on "git blame" for this will end up being reprimanded in some way, in serious cases. Ok, sucks to work at Microsoft then, it is not the fault at people outside Microsoft that they have terrible management, if that's how things go there. > Someone has to answer for these individual fuck-ups, it's intentionally shitty behavior to be insinuating that someone did this maliciously under the guise of end users assuming innocence, thereby obscuring the responsibility for it. Yes, management who are the decision makers should obviously answer for this, and if the culture is to blame some random engineer who happened to program it, the engineer is probably better off getting fired from such a toxic environment where they have to be some scapegoat for managements fuckups.
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      Most organizations, Microsoft included, employ a blameless policy. It’s almost never an individual person’s fault, but rather that the process failed in stopping a regression from going through. If anything should be blamed, it’s that the process didn’t catch this; at the PR, testing, or release phases. If individuals were reprimanded nearly as much as it’s implied, there wouldn’t be a lot of people employed at Microsoft or any other big company.
pessimizer 4y ago
There should be consultants who specialize in Hanlon's Razor, coming up with ways to make future plans look like stupid mistakes. Or maybe more usefully, they could discover profitable mistakes based on current conditions and events e.g. "Those two labels could be confused with each other; is there any way to make money from claiming that we confused them?"
- oblio 4y ago
  Those consultants are called lawyers and the idea is called plausible deniability.
- hinkley 4y ago
  We’ve been doing that at least since World War II in military intelligence, and they probably stole the idea from organized crime.
laserlight 4y ago
I'll never understand Hanlon's razor. I've never seen any malice which cannot be explained by stupidity.

hinkley 4y ago

Never attribute to incompetence that which can be attributed to laziness.

croes 4y ago

Only ince or twice maybe. BTW how can we trust Hanlon? Maybe he tried to cover up is own malice.

Forbo 4y ago

When it comes to megacorporations with a history of anticompetitive behavior, I much prefer "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by greed."