Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

This heuristic encourages individuals to favor explanations rooted in incompetence, oversight, or inadvertence over deliberate malevolence when interpreting others' actions. It serves as a counterbalance to the tendency toward paranoia or over interpretation of intent, fostering more measured and empathetic judgments.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's observation from 1774 bears a striking resemblance to the modern phrasing of Hanlon's Razor, and it is frequently cited as a philosophical precursor to the principle. His 1774 observation in Sorrows of Young Werther that "misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in the world than trickery and malice do" may have inspired Hanlon's 1980 formulation which popularized the concept as a concise "razor" for mental efficiency.

Hanlon's version refines the concept into a more concise tool for attribution, explicitly favoring "stupidity" (or incompetence) as the default explanation over malice, which echoes but does not replicate Goethe's emphasis on "misunderstanding and neglect."