Everytime I see this sentence my brain just refuses to understand it. What does this mean?
It gets clearer if you flip it around to sound less poetic:
Do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
That which can be explained by stupidity, do not attribute to malice.
Or perhaps in more direct words someone might actually say:
If you can explain it with stupidity, it’s probably not malice.
You are walking on the street and a big fat guy bumps into you. Assume they are just clumsy don’t assume they were trying to run you down.
This doesn’t mean be unaware, this doesn’t mean ignore red flags, this doesn’t mean to not have a healthy level of caution. It means assume good faith from deeply imperfect people until evidence no longer supports it.
It means if you don’t know if someone did something because they had evil plans or were fking stulud, its safe to assume they were fking stupid at the point of the incident.
Especially if the evil plan would have been convoluted and required things to align just perfect for the plan to be successful.
But it is not safe to make that assumption. It’s wildly dangerous to label evil as stupid. Giving evil people an in is how we get to where we are.
I was just explaining to the commenter above what was meant by the saying. I never said it was correct in all situations.
If you have an issue with the saying, you’re free to give Robert j. Halon your feedback.
It’s called Hanlon’s razor, a take on Occam’s razor, the unstated part is “all else being equal”.
If you want to look for more information: