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Hanlon's RazorA corollary of Finagle's law, Hanlon's Razor reads: - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
The derivation of the common title "Hanlon's Razor" is unknown; a similar epigram has been attributed to William James, amongst others. One possible derivation is from the similarity to Occam's Razor. The website Status-Q attributes it to one Robert J. Hanlon who seemingly contributed it to a book about Murphy's law. A similar quote appears in Robert Heinlein's 1941 short story Logic of Empire: "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity." It is often asserted that the term "Hanlon's Razor" is a bastardization of "Heinlein's Razor." This maxim is also widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. General observations on the predominance of human error over malice occur in various works of literature; Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) mentions: "... misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent." Hanlon's Razor is a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in sig blocks, fortune cookie files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. A common (and much more laconic) British English version of this law is "Cock-up before conspiracy". See also External links
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