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1. Embed this notice
   Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Apr-2026 04:48:51 JST Matthew Lyon

   the thing about “never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by incompetence” is that it’s rat-fuckable

   when there is functionally no difference between the two, engaging with someone as if they’re incompetent means accepting their frame, that what they’re ultimately trying to accomplish isn’t *bad*, they’re just going about it in a way with bad side-effects, and people use in bad-faith our good-faith willingness to treat them as incompetent to push their agendas

   engaging with someone as if they’re malicious, on the other hand, means rejecting the harmful frame, recasting the argument in terms of “why are you trying to do this bad thing?”, and not quibbling about the details of why the thing is bad

   these age-verification laws whose implementations are a form of category error is a good example; if you engage with a proponent of them with “well here’s why your implementation is bad” you’re tacitly approving the larger idea that surveliance is good, and you just disagree with the techniques; bad-faith actors use this

   If instead you come back with “why are you trying to surveil everyone’s computer use? Why are you laying the groundwork to prevent people from using their own computers?”, you re-cast the frame. Sure, there are probably incompetent people who don’t realize the results of what they’re going to do, but casting the larger idea into question AND KEEPING IT IN QUESTION is the only effective path I’ve found to debating people on things like this

   so, instead:

   don’t ascribe to incompetence something that is functionally malicious

   • Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Apr-2026 05:37:59 JST Matthew Lyon

     in reply to

     • bmaxv

     @bmaxv so many people have accepted it as gospel truth that it’s become a thought-terminating cliché

   • Embed this notice
     bmaxv (bmaxv@noc.social)'s status on Monday, 27-Apr-2026 05:38:00 JST bmaxv

     in reply to

     @mattly

     I think it's easier to say that Hanlon's razor is simply wrong, because the world has bad actors in it that do things maliciously.

     I don't think they're functionally similar either.

   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Apr-2026 06:05:08 JST Matthew Lyon

     in reply to

     One might argue that Hanlon’s Razor itself is an incompetent/malicious thought-terminating cliché for dealing with rhetoric

   • Embed this notice
     Jenniferplusplus (jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Apr-2026 04:32:37 JST Jenniferplusplus

     @mattly evergreen