You're viewing a single thread.
The right wing is always stupid. Everyone else is sometimes stupid. But the right? Always completely pants on head stupid, if not cartoonishly evil.
Do not attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity... But never fully discount it.
Everytime I see this sentence my brain just refuses to understand it. What does this mean?
It means to not assume a person is evil if their actions could be explained by them being stupid instead.
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.
Unfortunately you are also responsible for what you say and do.
It's called Hanlon's razor, a take on Occam's razor, the unstated part is "all else being equal".
Yeah and its wildly misused and dangerous.
If you want to look for more information:
I quit believing in Hanlon’s razor years ago when I realized that it’s clearly both. Both stupid malice and malicious stupidity.
In this case it's definitely both.
Both far left and far right are always stupid. At least here in my country Far left: Burns and destroy local business and destroy public transport used by all citizens just to protest and then for some reason blame the police for that. Far right: Constantly having hallucinations about the United Nations being controlled by far left and vaccines = poison.
Both are in a competence to show who has less neurons.
Far left: Burns and destroy local business and destroy public transport used by all citizens just to protest and then for some reason blame the police for that.
Go and protest by the sidewalks on Sundays, they are not gonna give a shit, if they even notice, break a few windows(from banks if possible) disrupt traffic and you are gonna be on the news, they will call you a terrorist but they at least will know you are there and ready to do shit.
The french know what's up.
What I mention is what happened in October of 2019 in Chile.
Yeah, I know that they need to attract attention to a protest to be listened. BUT by no means it justifies destroying and robbing small businesses, burning churches and destroy schools (while asking for better education)
They literally went and made a mess of things. They could have just made a crowd, block the road, go to the government institutions but they choosed violence to other citizens. After that they left things even worse than they were, that's a sign of lack of common sense and responsibility.
Many people lost their jobs, schools ended with heavy damag, the Metro stations where I live ended up in a mess, and for some reason they burned churches. Yeah.
3 years later and you are still talking about it, so my point stands, people in power need a reminder that people can also choose violence.
They could have just made a crowd, block the road
Send the dogs, use gas and violence, disperse the crowd, a lot of policemen infiltrate the protests to exacerbate the violence, people soon follow.
Your are sheltered btw, no right has been won by the people asking nicely to those in power.
You fell for the psyops. Your neighbor country, Brazil, already tried the route you're proposing – people got beat up by police, the same police that infiltrated the protests and (proven, in court) destroyed public infrastructure.
I'm reminded of a quote: "a riot is the language of the unheard." When the opposition will vilify ANY attempt to stand together and demand change as a "riot" and respond with state violence, what reason do you have to protest peacefully? If they're just going to gas protestors, use dogs and pepper spray and bullets (both rubber and regular) and armored vehicles, then why bother trying to act like "the bigger man"?
Then in that case the rational violence would have been totally against the government, instead they damaged things used by low/middle class citizens and not things that actually would piss off politicians, they also damaged small businesses (literally run by families)
If they are going to use violence against citizens then they have no justification.