Hanlon's Razor

Logical fallacy around the mantra “Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice”. In reality, acting like “Whoops, sorry! Stoopid me!”, so the victim is willing to forgive you for longer, is the oldest trick in the book of evil. Mostly used by anxious sheltered people when overwhelmed by reality . Not necessarily wrong. But not necessarily right *either*. There simply is no rational basis for it. It is useless. Its false sense of security can itself be harmful again. Purely exists as a coping fantasy. Same thing as conspiracy theorists (−1) , but with an opposite polarity (+1). Risen in popularity in late 2010s, due to an anxiety epidemic in young people caused by over-sheltering parents, for-profit fear media, over-prescription abuse, and several bad events (pandemic, wars, …). The real way to tell evil from stupid is: *Evil has a goal*. Its actions *converge* towards that. Stupid is incompetent. Its actions *diverge* (into chaos). Catch 1: Stupid people can *still* be useful pawns for evil people, and follow them. (See example.) Catch 2: There doesn’t *have* to be an evil person. It may be emergent behavior in a group. (Proof: Your body’s cells aren’t smart. Yet together they can act smart.) Usually it’s more complex, but that’s the gist. In the end, stupid is already harmful. It wastes resources and slows advancement down. That is evil. While evil is already stupid. As teamwork (being nice) is clearly an evolutionary advantage.