Hanlon’s razor is the adage that you should “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Essentially, this means that when someone does something that affects you in a negative way, you should avoid assuming that they acted out of an intentional desire to cause harm, as long as there is a different plausible explanation for their behavior.

Hanlon’s razor is a philosophical razor, meaning that it’s a simple guiding principle, that helps you select the most likely explanation for a phenomenon. Specifically, Hanlon’s razor encourages you to not start out by assuming that a certain action occurred due to someone’s ill intentions, if it’s possible that it occurred due to stupidity instead.

Hanlon’s razor is a valuable tool, that can help you deal with various everyday problems, such as having someone miss an appointment with you or not respond to an email. This is because Hanlon’s razor can help you figure out why people do the negative things that they do, while also helping you avoid the unnecessary anger and stress which are associated with immediately assuming that people had bad intentions.

Note that there are two important caveats that must be mentioned with regards to Hanlon’s razor:

  • Hanlon’s razor doesn’t have to do with whether a certain action was justified or not. That is, the use of Hanlon’s razor doesn’t imply that a certain action is acceptable just because it happened as a result of stupidity instead of malice. Rather, Hanlon’s razor is simply used in order to help you find the most likely explanation for an action, after which you can decide how to judge that action and how to respond accordingly.
  • Hanlon’s razor doesn’t imply that actions never occur due to malice.Rather, it states that in general, negative outcomes are more likely to occur as a result of stupidity rather than malice, and that it’s more beneficial for you to assume that stupidity was the cause of such outcomes, at least initially.

Overall, Hanlon’s razor is meant to serve as a simple rule of thumb, that gives you a good starting point when you’re trying to figure out the cause of something bad that happened.