English Explanatory Dictionary

Hanlon's razor

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. The adage stating "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Word forms

Hanlon's razor

Etymology

Named by analogy with Occam's razor after Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who was credited for the adage he submitted to a compilation of various jokes related to Murphy’s law published in Arthur Bloch’s Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980); however, a similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein’s “Logic of Empire” (1941), “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity”, wherein it is described as the “devil theory” of sociology.

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