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Social Studies skills: Difference between revisions
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→Heinlein's Razor
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=== Heinlein's Razor === | === Heinlein's Razor === | ||
* “Never assume malice when incompetence will do” | * “Never assume malice when incompetence will do” | ||
**from | ** similar to Occam's Razor, which posits that the most direct explanation is likely the most accurate | ||
** in that many human endeavors are the result of "incompetence" as much as good or bad intention | |||
** makes for a good test for "conspiracy theories" | |||
*from wikipedia: | |||
A similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein's 1941 short story "Logic of Empire" ("You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity"); this was noticed in 1996 (five years before Bigler identified the Robert J. Hanlon citation) and first referenced in version 4.0.0 of the Jargon File,[3] with speculation that Hanlon's Razor might be a corruption of "Heinlein's Razor". "Heinlein's Razor" has since been defined as variations on Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.[4] Yet another similar epigram ("Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence") has been widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.[5] Another similar quote appears in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774): "...misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent." | |||
=== Law of averages === | === Law of averages === | ||