TFN#82: 🪜Trimming evil people out using Hanlon's Razor

I love using razors once in a while. However, due to my beard obsession for the past several years, I don’t get to use them as much as I would like to.
Shaving makes my skin feel alive and gives me the feeling of rebirth. (If you know me, you’d know what I mean)

But I don’t get to use the Gillette razor as much as I like to.
Instead, I use a philosophical razor and trim out evil people at work and in my life.

If you start using this razor, you’ll immediately know it is quite sharp. And the more you use it, the sharper it gets.
Take a look at it:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

That’s it. Now you’re holding the razor.
In our work and life, tagging people as evil or malicious is natural. And that’s how we create EVIL. But if you’re equipped with a razor such as this, you’ll know that if someone’s actions can be sufficiently explained by stupidity, we don’t need to tag them as evil or malicious. And we cut out the evil in people automatically.

Incentives and systems

Since we are talking about people at work, as a manager, a CEO or a knowledge worker, this version of Hanlon’s razor by Douglas Hubbard would resonate:

Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.

There goes malice and stupidity out of the window!
Sometimes, it is about incentives and the system’s invisible hand.
But let’s get back to evil people.

There are no evil people

There is evil in people, but there are no evil people.
So, this razor removes people by helping us not mis-categorizing them as such.
If someone’s actions don’t pass the “sufficiently explained by stupidity”, then by all means, we can go ahead and call them and treat them accordingly.

And sometimes we can’t tell the difference

As this humorous variant of Arthur C. Clarke’s third law states:

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

I can’t tell you how many times this razor has saved so many of my friendships and work relationships. I hope you find this helpful too.

Are there any similar razors that you use in your work and life?
Hit Reply and tell me about them!

Reads of the week:

I resonated with Jason’s take on company culture.
But what resonated the most was his statement about company culture being an “emergent property”. It is not something that you can formulate. I have seen so many consultants acting as culture-scientists. As if there was some element-X that you could add to the broth of the company to get property Y. That’s not how things work.