Hanlon's Razor

Jono Hey:
It's really easy secretly and privately to get really angry at the other person.

What on earth are you doing?

I'm swimming here, why are you swimming right in front of me?

Tom Pellereau:
And as a parent, I struggle with what to do in that situation.

Like, the natural instinct is just to try and calm them down.

And occasionally I wonder, I wonder what would happen if I just leave this.

And the occasions I've left it a bit longer than normal, it doesn't usually get better.

Rob Bell:
We could go into some seriously petty domestic annoyances that we've got if you want.

Jono Hey:
Sounds dangerous.

Rob Bell:
I think that's what we're talking about.

Jono Hey:
Can people ever be stupid?

I wish I know it might sound a bit extreme.

Tom Pellereau:
The reason that as we get older, it feels like we chill out a little bit more is we've had these experiences where we've assumed something and then we've gone, oh, actually it wasn't malice at all, it was an accident, it was incompetence.

Rob Bell:
Hello and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

At a recent Endurance Swimming event, we were told at the briefing before the start that it wasn't a race, and the winner was the one who enjoyed themselves the most.

Now, I can't be sure, but I'm fairly confident at least one of the participants who enjoyed themselves the most was a chap called James, who swam the distance in the shortest time.

There is many a saying on the subject of winning.

American sportswriter, Grantland Rice, once wrote, It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

And celebrated motivational speaker, Les Brown, was quoted as saying, The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory.

Personally, I like to live by the old school playground mantra that, first the worst, second the best, third the one with the hairy chest.

Firstly, I'm Rob Bell.

Secondly, joining me on the podcast is Sketchplanations creator, Jono Hey.

And thirdly, slave to his body-waxing regime, it's Tom Pellereau.

Tom Pellereau:
Hello, Rob.

Very clever intro.

Jono Hey:
Haven't said that little rhyme for a long time.

I like it.

Rob Bell:
This time, we're discussing an adage entitled, Hanlon's Razor, that states, Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I.e., don't assume malice or evil in someone's actions until you've ruled out incompetence first.

As ever, the brilliant sketch for this heuristic should be displaying on your screens now, but if you'd like to see it in higher resolution, or maybe even print it off as a sticker or a t-shirt, I'll include the link to Jono's full description of it at sketchplanations.com in the podcast description down below.

And if you'd like to send us a message about your stories and experiences of Hanlon's Razor or any of the topics that we've covered in the podcast, you can email us.

Tommy, where do they send the emails?

Tom Pellereau:
Hello at sketchplanations.com Lovely, thank you.

Rob Bell:
Or you can head to the podcast website sketchplanations.com/podcast and leave us a message or a voice note on there.

Jono, please, can we bring some format back to this podcast?

And can you explain the sketch briefly and tell us what Hanlon's Razor is and how you came across it?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I sketched something a while ago called the Fundamental Attribution Error, which is where you assume that some issue or flaw is a problem with the person and not just the situation and the context.

And several people after I did that one said, told me, said, Oh, have you heard of this thing called Hanlon's Razor, which I hadn't heard of, which was never a tribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity, or sometimes never attribute to malice, what can be attributed to incompetent?

Rob Bell:
Lovely.

Jono Hey:
And so I think the relationship there was instead, instead of saying the fundamental attribution error, saying this is a bad person, it might have just been they were in a bad situation.

So it wasn't a malice, they weren't trying to do something, but they're not a horrible person.

Maybe it was just what was around him.

And so that was, that was the connection.

Several people mentioned it to me.

I looked at where it came from.

And, you know, you know, Hanlon, as far as I know, is not like a career philosopher.

It comes from this little book and I ordered this little book.

Which is Murphy's Law, Book Two.

And I don't know if you've heard of Murphy's Law, which probably has more well known Murphy's Law is, if anything can go wrong, it will.

And so the book, the first one was like lots of little, little kind of fake laws like that one, which explain a bit of our life and our experience, but often in a humorous way.

In the second book, people submitted loads of their own ones, including one by somebody called Hanlon.

Which was never attributed to Malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

And I have a bunch of other ones from the book because there were some quite funny ones in there.

And so I quite like it.

So I think the fundamental attribution error is quite important.

But I like Hanlon's Razor because it's very easy.

And I think I've seen it in many times in my life to think that people are deliberately being careless or mean or wish you ill well when actually the cause is something quite perhaps innocent.

And they didn't even know that there was an issue or they were just doing something wrong.

It was a mistake.

Somebody actually wrote to me after putting this one out and said, I in my place where I worked, we sometimes called it cock up over conspiracy.

Which is what went wrong here.

It wasn't a conspiracy.

It was just a cock up.

And so maybe Hanlon's Razor is a bit more PC way of phrasing that.

Anyway, so that's where it is.

And in the sketch, I thought about examples for a long time.

But I tried to go with this idea that somebody's seen loads of rubbish on the floor.

And you assume like, why has somebody left this rubbish here?

Can't they put it in a bin?

And there's somebody around the corner of this block.

Who's happily going about their lives, and they don't realize that they have a small hole in the bottom of this bin bag that they're putting the bin out.

And that's what's leaving the rubbish.

But obviously somebody else thinks that people are terrible, and why would they do this?

But it's all just an innocent mistake.

So that was the idea of this sketch.

Tom Pellereau:
I do have quite a classic example going on at the moment.

In fact, this is the first time we recorded the podcast for two or three months.

And there's a heck of a lot of background noise going on.

I don't know if you can hear it in the background.

My wife is going up and down through the attic and I can hear these bangs at the door.

And I'm putting it on mute to try and minimise that.

And I know she's not doing that out of malice, just to, you know.

She's doing it by accident.

And also, I'm in a different room tonight than I normally am.

So I'm a bit closer to that part.

But it is quite amusing to me that every time I have to like mute it, I'm in quite a good mood.

I'm not going to mute it again.

But, you know, catch me in a few weeks and I probably would be thinking.

Jono Hey:
It comes muted now, by the way.

Quite interesting that you're sort of experiencing it as we're discussing it.

Rob Bell:
I'd like to give an example, if I may, from this weekend that I referred to earlier on in the show.

Swimming in open water amongst lots of people.

You've got your head down, you're not looking around you.

It's very difficult to be fully aware of your surroundings and your surroundings not only include water, but lots of other people trying to swim close to you in the same direction towards the same point.

And nobody really means to, but you do sometimes whack into people or swim over the top of them or kind of catch your elbow in their face, that kind of thing.

It happens, it happens.

It is almost impossible if it happens to you not to get annoyed by that and presume that the person has done that on purpose, especially if they do it twice in a row, particularly in open water, it feels like I'm being assaulted and I automatically go there and I have to tell myself every time, it's all right, they don't mean to, just as when you do it to others, you haven't meant to do it either.

So chill out.

This is not malice.

Tom Pellereau:
They can say sorry.

Rob Bell:
It's not incompetence.

Exactly.

What is it?

What did we say it was?

Carelessness.

Maybe that's right.

Tom Pellereau:
But if you're stupid enough to be going out open water swimming, I think that's just part of the game.

It's not like you're the first rodeo, right?

Part of me thinks you actually enjoy that part.

That's why you keep doing it.

Rob Bell:
A little bit, right?

Jono Hey:
I think that's a great example because, yeah, it's easy.

It's really easy in the water secretly and privately to get really angry at the other person.

Like, what on earth are you doing?

I'm swimming here.

Why are you swimming right in front of me?

And, you know, they may be having a really hard swim or maybe they just didn't notice you.

They just didn't notice you, you know.

Rob Bell:
Or maybe you just cut them up.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, or maybe you did it to them and you didn't even notice.

Yeah, it's very easy to assume malice in those occasions.

Rob Bell:
It really is.

So let me ask you boys, have you got any personal examples you can recall that you're happy to share?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, I've got an absolutely horrific one.

But I don't think it can go out on air.

Rob Bell:
Oh, you can't tease us like that, Tommy.

Tom Pellereau:
Well, you were both there.

Do you even know the story?

Rob Bell:
Nope.

Tom Pellereau:
So Rob, you genuinely might have to cut this.

I actually don't know a way of saying it without it being absolutely disgusting.

The scenario is that you need a special card.

He very subtly, and it's really quite impressive, managed to get an empty, just immediately, like, oh, water, water.

The guy who had done it saw this happens, like, oh, my good God.

Actually took it pretty well.

But, you know, at first, it doesn't, it doesn't look good, right?

Headline, that feels like the most malicious, horrific thing you could possibly do to someone.

But it was, well, it was stupidity or an accent, or however you want to say it, but a pretty horrific combination of scenarios.

And I obviously won't mention any names.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

I was quite worried there for a second, because I didn't know about this.

And I don't really remember what the story you're talking about.

I was definitely there thinking that could have made it.

Yeah, exactly.

Hmm.

That's a conundrum.

Don't know whether to keep that in or not.

Jono Hey:
That's an example.

Tom Pellereau:
I'm not sure how you can keep that in really.

It's horrific.

But yeah, what goes on tour should stay on tour, but also it wasn't in malice at all.

But it's a hilarious example of this.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Can I share a kind of dumb example?

Rob Bell:
Yeah, of course.

Jono Hey:
It was quite a memorable one for me, which made Hanlon's Razor connect, which was this thing about towels in the sink, which is really stupid, where it was in the bathroom at university, and this big bathroom and you're washing your hands, and they had paper towels to dry them.

And randomly, as far as I was concerned, I would keep seeing these wet towels in the sinks, like blocking the plugs.

Rob Bell:
Wet paper towels, like screwed up in the sink, yeah.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, just sat in the sink, and obviously nobody wants to pick up, well, people don't want to pick up a wet paper towel and sort and tidy it up.

And so people just use the tap anyway.

And then it's like, what is going on?

Rob Bell:
What is wrong with people?

Jono Hey:
We're at university, like these are supposed to be adults, but can we not put paper towels in the bin?

And so that was why I was like, what are these people thinking to do this?

And then I say, one day, just somebody washed their hands, dried it in a paper towel, walked to the door, used the paper towel on their hand to open the door handle.

And then they threw the paper towel back across the room to try and hit the bin.

And the bin was right next to the sinks.

And of course, they missed the bin and they went in the sinks.

And it was just like a light bulb thing.

I was like, oh, people don't want the germs on their hand for the door handle.

And they're just missing the bin.

And it's not intentional at all.

They're not trying to make a mess.

They probably do know how to look after their houses.

That stuck with me as one where I'd assumed that people would just care less and didn't care about the bathroom.

But actually, no, they cared about something else, I guess, which was keeping their hands clean, and it was a poor design of a bathroom with a bit and way away from the door.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
And so, yeah, that one stuck with me as one where like I'd assumed like...

Rob Bell:
And in consideration of others.

Jono Hey:
Exactly.

And it clearly wasn't what it was, but it was a mystery to me for a long time.

Rob Bell:
That's a good one.

Tommy?

Tom Pellereau:
I can't think.

I feel like kids, when they are tired, my kids when they're tired, there's quite a lot of this sort of thing.

Someone would do, one of them will do something slightly by accident to the other, or maybe not even knowing it.

And then the other one will come back really aggressively towards that one.

And then the one who originally did the crime, so to speak, will be then already defensive.

So we'll kind of then fight back.

And then suddenly you've got a war going on over the fact that the spoon just fell off the table and it was an accident or something like that.

And as a parent, I struggle with what to do in that situation.

Like the natural instinct is just to try and calm them down.

And occasionally I wonder, I wonder what would happen if I just leave this, you know, maybe they need to just learn to sort these things out.

And the occasions I've left it a bit longer than normal, it doesn't usually get better.

So I've not risked leaving it to go too far.

But yeah, I think there's a lot of malice in tension between siblings often.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, sometimes.

Maybe that's a conditioning thing then.

If sometimes there is deliberate malice between siblings on the times that it's not, and it is just an accident or, well, I won't call it incompetence, but you know, an accident, then it's just, well, normally they're doing that on purpose.

So this time it's definitely done on purpose again.

Jono Hey:
You idiot.

Rob Bell:
Do you feel, both of you, it is in human nature to automatically assume evil or malice in things that you've observed that are frustrating or annoying to you?

Tom Pellereau:
Personally, I'm fortunate enough, I think it's probably because I've had a really good upbringing.

I've had lovely family.

I've had loads of support and love in my life.

And people in places of authority have always been pretty fair to me, luckily, that I never assumed that it was out of malice if something happened.

Rob Bell:
That's a really good point, Tommy, I think.

The context of the individual and their conditioning.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

And how sometimes it's luck.

Sometimes there has been situations where some people have experienced really bad things and it's not to their poor and it may have been malice.

And I personally have not.

So I'm fortunate that if something happens, I don't presume it was malice.

I was like, oh, that's a shame or that must be an accident.

But I think for some people it is almost impossible not to assume it's malice from the incident.

Jono Hey:
Put it out there.

It's interesting.

I've never thought about whether or not it's like a human nature.

But I did a sketch a long time ago on something called narrative bias, which is that we don't like seemingly random unconnected events and we feel much more at home if there's a story that explains it all.

I think quite often stuff just happens and we're not very good at just accepting like, oh, this happened and then that happened and then that happened and now we've got this.

Rob Bell:
There's got to be a reason why, a concerted reason why.

Jono Hey:
Exactly.

I think nature is often very indifferent to things and stuff just happens.

That's the way it is, but we don't tend to assume that stuff just happened.

It often has to happen for a reason.

Maybe there is something where we're a bit more inclined to go, what's the reason for this being here as opposed to it just happened to be there.

There wasn't any big plan behind it.

Tom Pellereau:
But sometimes it does feel like the world is out to get you, doesn't it?

Rob Bell:
Yeah, it does.

Tom Pellereau:
Three bad things happen in a day.

And also I'm talking like this because just at the end of summer, had a lovely summer.

You talked to me in January and February when it's cold and wet and horrible.

And I'm like, yeah, the whole world.

Rob Bell:
Oh, mate, you're a miserable get through the winter.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I rub in the wits playing golf.

Tom Pellereau:
I certainly struggle a bit more.

So I'm not sure it's human nature.

I don't buy that.

Yeah, I think that it can depend a lot on your conditioning.

And also, like things like if you're really hungry or if you're really tired, I think it has a big effect as well.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, absolutely.

Which is not necessarily long term conditioning.

It's kind of short term situation that you might find yourself in.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I usually think like somebody older and more experienced is less likely to get worked up about something happening.

Just have a bit more, bit more measured approach.

Be like, oh, train's late.

Nobody made it late for me.

It's just nobody's conspiring against me to have a rubbish journey and it raining.

It just happens that it's raining and the train was late for some other reason.

I happen to be here and I think maybe there's some maturity in it as we get older.

Rob Bell:
This is slightly different but along the same lines of the more chilled out and maybe considered attitude, the older we get in life, it's not judging a book by its cover, particularly with individuals that I might meet, which I've definitely been guilty of in the past and I've called myself up on it a couple of times.

Most notably because I've been surprised.

I've judged a book by its cover.

I ended up chatting to that person and coming away going, you're such an idiot, Robert.

You went in having built this image of who you presumed that person was, and it turns out they were completely different.

There was one time in particular which I won't go into because it's embarrassing for me and shameful, I should say.

Jono Hey:
You could go into it.

Rob Bell:
No, I'm not going to.

I'm not going to.

It's shameful for me, but it was a real lesson and from that, I really try not to do that anymore and I feel this is a similar attitude.

Just trying to be a bit more considered, a bit more measured, and a bit more thoughtful and compassionate towards others maybe.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Yeah.

But like what taught you to maybe not do it quite so much actually, like where you've really personally slipped up and it's quite embarrassing.

I was thinking of, I can't think of a specific time, but there's been times where I've lost stuff and I've, I thought I put it somewhere and it's not there.

Rob Bell:
Someone's moved it.

Jono Hey:
And you're like, who's moved it again?

I like, I knew, I knew I needed it.

I told you I needed it.

What have you done with it?

And then you realize, you know, you've left it in your pocket or it's in your bag, or you never put it there in the first place.

And it is, it's, it's embarrassing because you're like, oh, I can't believe I, I thought that horrible thought about this person.

And that, that sort of thing resets you a little bit, I think.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

The Who Moved My Keys is the absolute classic.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Oh, here they are.

Sorry, everyone.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
We could go into some seriously petty domestic annoyances that we've got, if you want, and examples.

Jono Hey:
Sounds dangerous.

Rob Bell:
I think that's what we're talking about.

Tom Pellereau:
Now, Jono, I've got a question about this in the fact that it's framed as what you could put down to stupidity, which I'm not sure.

I love it.

Is it also, could it also be like accident?

Jono Hey:
Do you know what?

It could be all sorts of things.

I actually did it without stupidity in the first place.

And I've been thinking over the days since, I was like, I'm not sure I really believe in stupidity.

And do I believe in stupidity?

Like, can people ever be stupid?

I wish I know might sound a bit extreme, but I wrote incompetence first.

But then I think incompetence is a judgment as well.

And there were some related sayings which I think were more balanced.

I put Hanlon's Razor as it is from the book because it's not my Razor, it's his.

And this is what that guy wrote.

Tom Pellereau:
You wouldn't want to use his Razor anyway.

Jono Hey:
No, exactly.

You shouldn't share Razors.

But there was one I put in the comments about it by Goethe, who's a philosopher and writer, and he wrote, I've observed again that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.

In any case, malice and wickedness are much less common.

But misunderstandings and neglect is maybe a better way.

Sometimes I think, oh, well, maybe they just care about different things than me.

They're not stupid.

That's not right.

They're not incompetent.

They just don't care whether it's messy or clean, and I do.

Rob Bell:
But I think all of these words, it's the same kind of ballpark, right?

But I'm with you, Tommy, and Jono on that, the kind of incompetence and stupidity.

Is there a lighter, less judgmental?

Tom Pellereau:
Like I feel sometimes these things happen, and it was the cat who did it, as it were.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Who knocked over the glass or the tea or whatever.

Oh, look at all this mess.

No one ever clears up after them.

And it's like it was the cat that knocked it over, or the wind, or the door, or...

Rob Bell:
Yeah, the stupid wind.

Now, before we move on, can I make what might be a really stupid point?

I had to look up what a razor had to do with any of this.

And it turns out the term razor, in this philosophical context, refers to a rule of thumb or a heuristic, as I said earlier, that helps to cut away unlikely explanations.

So razor, in this sense, is just a word that means adage or rule.

So I mean, it could be known as Hanlon's rule, really.

No one's shaving anyone, right?

I just wanted to clear that up.

Tom Pellereau:
What on earth?

That's ridiculous.

Why is it not Hanlon's rule?

Rob Bell:
Because razor is just another word for that, Tommy.

I didn't know that either.

Jono Hey:
So it's not exactly.

Rob Bell:
Oh, okay.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

So it didn't have to be called a razor.

It could be called the Hanlon's idea.

Who knows?

Yeah, or Hanlon's thought principle, whatever.

But I think it's called a razor because it's playing off something called Ockham's Razor, which is a genuine philosophy principle, which is very old, like 700 years old and so on.

They're about Hanlon's Razor, by contrast, is kind of a fun thought, but not serious philosophy in that sense.

Rob Bell:
But Ockham's Razor, is that anything to do with actually shaving?

Jono Hey:
So Ockham's Razor is, I think, I believe it's called a razor because the idea with Ockham's Razor, and it was William of Ockham 700 years ago.

Rob Bell:
Look it up, folks.

Jono Hey:
It said something in Latin, which essentially came down to the idea of the simplest explanation is usually the best one.

Or if you're presented with different hypotheses about why something happened, or what prediction it will be, usually you should prefer the hypothesis that has the fewest assumptions.

So the idea with the razor was like you're, like trim away the complexity and get to the simplest thing.

Rob Bell:
Okay.

Jono Hey:
The simplest reason that explains everything.

Rob Bell:
So there is something to do with a blade, cutting away the complexity.

Yes, metaphorically, yeah.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Shaving away unnecessary assumptions.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

Jono Hey:
And so in Hanlon's Razor, you're saying, why did somebody do this bad thing?

And I'm shaving away the complex reasons and starting with the simple one.

So that's why they call it a razor.

Rob Bell:
Okay.

Jono Hey:
I didn't call it a razor.

That's why I think they did.

Rob Bell:
But I was just confused by the word razor.

Jono Hey:
And yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Bell:
Okay.

That that has helped make so let nobody.

Jono Hey:
Actually, I didn't explain that in the text and nobody has commented on it going, why the heck is it called a razor?

They just sort of go with it.

Hamlin's Razor is kind of a catchy name.

But that is why it was metaphorically going towards the simplest.

Rob Bell:
Well, Tommy, what was your understanding with the thing razor in there?

Did you expect some shaving at some point?

Tom Pellereau:
Well, I think is it not ironic that Ockham's razor, which the principle is that it's probably the simplest solution.

He's used the word razor rather than Ockham's idea.

Do you think he did that deliberately?

Rob Bell:
Was Ockham a philosopher?

Jono Hey:
You know, I'm not an expert on Ockham's razor, but I believe William Ockham in the 1300s said something much later on.

Somebody called it Ockham's razor when they were referring to his idea.

Tom Pellereau:
It's a brilliant sense of art.

Rob Bell:
Should we talk about Hanlon's razor?

Tom Pellereau:
I thought that maybe it was on a razor edge in the fact that you presume something, but actually it flips to the other side.

Jono Hey:
I like that.

Rob Bell:
Nice wicked lesson.

Tom Pellereau:
It's on a knife edge or a razor.

Rob Bell:
The point I wanted to make was almost just ignore razor.

Replace it with rule and don't worry about shaving.

I mean, mainly for me.

Jono Hey:
Tom Do you think it's much more catchy?

Tom Pellereau:
Jono You haven't shaved in a long time.

Rob Bell:
Tom True.

Your mum was actually, your mum was talking about the fact that none of us have shaved.

I was talking about my gray hair and she said, Oh yes, I just wish some of you, I just, she was talking about you.

I wish, just wish he'd shave, but look at you, you all do it.

It's all fashionable, don't you?

Jono Hey:
Jono Maybe you should try Hanlon's Razor.

Rob Bell:
Anyway, we digress violently, actually.

Let's bring it back to Hanlon's Razor.

I'll give you another one from earlier this week, actually.

I was doing some filming down on a Cornish beach with a chap who does regular beach cleans of all the plastic and stuff you find on the beach.

So I was down there filming with him.

And on the way back up from the beach where the road kind of ended as you were coming down to the beach or where the road began as you're going away from the beach, there were three bin bags just left out.

And this is miles away from any residential property.

There are three bin bags left out.

And you're like, ah, idiots.

People have been fly-tipping.

They just leave their rubbish down here.

That is so inconsiderate.

We were out here trying to clean up the beach.

People are leaving their bin bags here, which will probably get attacked by the birds.

And then it'll all end up on the beach.

What the hell is wrong with people?

On closer inspection, it was people who had done their own beach cleans because it was all like plastic, tonneau plastic, the kind of stuff we'd just been finding on the beach.

But instead of taking it somewhere to be collected, they just tied it up in bin bags and left it, assuming that it would be picked up by waste collection services.

But it turns out waste collection services don't go down there to pick up bin bags.

And so if I thought it was fly-tipping, it turns out it was people doing a good gig, but just hadn't thought about what the final stage of that was and where it needs to go in order to clean up the beach properly.

I thought that was quite a good example.

My assumption at first was idiots.

Tom Pellereau:
That's a really good example.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, really good because they were helping clean the beach.

Rob Bell:
Exactly.

Tom Pellereau:
How long until you're able to kind of digitally label stuff so people can tell?

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Do you know what the other one of this is?

It's very similar.

And I'm sure people will get annoyed about this.

You know, dog poo bags.

Some people might leave them in a strategic place whilst they continue their walk, knowing that they're going to come back past it to pick it up.

Perhaps sometimes on occasions they forget, perhaps on other occasions, maybe they haven't just got back to it yet and other people have found it and thought, idiots, who are these people who leave poo bags?

They've gone to the trouble of picking it up and then they just leave the bag there.

Jono Hey:
I think you can also have, if the dog ran off somewhere or the person was distracted for a little bit and the dog does his business somewhere, but they didn't notice.

And then if you were to the one who ends up stepping in that, you might be like, what the...

But they just didn't notice.

It was an accident, but it's easy to assume that somebody's not doing their duty.

I had one I was thinking about.

It was like mess in meeting rooms, like leaving mugs and stuff in meeting rooms at work, or plates or something like that.

Why don't people tidy up the meeting rooms?

It's so easy.

Obviously, if you're meeting, you just take your stuff out and clean up.

So the next person has a nice clean meeting room.

And then I noticed that sometimes, for example, we would have an interview going on and the person's very engaged with the person who's visiting, and then they'll like walk them out of the office.

And their full attention is on the person there.

And they forget, I made them, or even another way around, somebody else made that person a mug of tea or something at the beginning.

You didn't really pay any attention to it.

You came in, did the interview, but you're the last one.

You walked them out and you forgot that there was a mug there.

And gradually stuff accumulates that way.

But it's easy to walk into a meeting room going, who's left that there?

What's the matter with people?

When it was completely innocent and unintentional.

Yeah, and yeah, we can all do better.

But yeah, I definitely wondered that.

Tom Pellereau:
So I am guilty of doing this a lot.

Jono Hey:
It was Tom.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, it is usually me.

And quite often I go back into a space to go, oh, I smelt and I go, oh, damn, that was my mug.

Oh, that was, oh, did I not clean that up?

So I do now try to sort of go back to places quite regularly, just check, have I tidied everything up?

Because I know it annoys other members of my team.

And I actually have spotted it today.

I went into this warehouse part and I saw this knife out, and the ruler and some paper and the glitter.

I was like, I went, oh, no, that was me.

Yeah, I was here.

I was here on Sunday.

Did I not?

I'm sure I tied it up.

Oh, drat.

I was like, oh, phew.

It's still like Tuesday morning.

I don't think anyone has seen that.

I can tie it up before anyone else notices.

So yeah, I'm sorry to all my team and anybody who's been anywhere near me.

I leave a lot of stuff around.

It's definitely not malice.

Jono Hey:
Can I share?

It's only because it reminded me of that.

I'm not suggesting this is you, Tom.

Several people quoted something called Clarke's Corollary of Hanlon's Razor, which is what is a corollary.

Corollary is like and therefore this follows on.

Rob Bell:
OK, yeah.

Jono Hey:
And here's an additional additional thing that happens as a result of this one.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Arthur C.

Clarke has one, which is any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Yeah, which is a nice one.

Really cool.

But Clarke's Corollary for Hanlon's Razor is any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Maybe takes a little bit of thinking about it.

Rob Bell:
It did.

Jono Hey:
Which is like, it looks like malice if you're sufficiently incompetent about it, which was a few people were pointed that out to me.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, that's good.

I looked them up just to see if there were any famous examples of Hanlon's Razor.

And three popped up because I asked for three.

Tom Pellereau:
I'm sure there's been like World Wars have been started by this sort of stuff.

Rob Bell:
The first one that came up was NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter.

So it was a vessel sent up into space and it was lost in space due to a simple unit conversion error.

One team was using metric units, the other team was using imperial units.

So there were speculation about, you know, is this sabotage?

Is, you know, what happened here?

Conspiracy theories about what happened.

In fact, it was a bit of miscommunication and a mathematical mistake.

Another one was the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, you know, with all the personal data that was harvested from Facebook users and used in political campaigning, targeting adverts at people.

What this chucked up was that it wasn't particularly malice or it wasn't a political strategizing to do this.

It was more poor data management processes, that they were allowed to do that in the first place.

And then nobody, I don't know if I agree with this one, actually.

I might skip around it because I do feel like they did know what they were doing to commercial and political advantage.

So I don't, I'm disagreeing with Chad GPT on this.

Tom Pellereau:
But it wouldn't have surprised me if some techie worked out there was a whole, you know, back door and was like, oh, look at this.

Rob Bell:
Oh, that's quite cool and was harvesting it and then, and then it got hijacked.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, potentially.

Or then its power was utilised unbeknownst.

I feel like in technology that quite regularly happens that a technologist will do something because it's kind of cool and then doesn't really realise the implications that might have on the line.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, I see where you're going with that.

Yeah.

And the third one was Chernobyl disaster, 1986.

Again, conspiracy theories that, you know, this is sabotage, where in fact it was incompetence, miscommunication, poor training, poor Soviet attitude towards safety, secrecy, all this kind of stuff.

So I don't know if they're as good as other examples, actually.

Jono Hey:
Still like your swimming one and the bin bag one is good.

Rob Bell:
Let me ask this question.

Do you think acknowledging this phenomenon might help teachers to be a bit more patient and understanding if we didn't know about it before?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, I suspect that actually the only real way you learn this is by the examples of Jono's one with the paper towel in the basin and then having that aha moment or your bins.

Yeah, maybe as we the reason that as we get older it feels like we chill out a little bit more is we've had these experiences where we've assumed something and then we've gone, oh, actually it's a, it wasn't malice at all.

It was an accident.

It was incompetence.

And that's probably possibly why we get more chilled out as we age.

Jono Hey:
One of the examples that struck me, and I've definitely seen this, where you can see that a driver is really annoyed with another driver.

I think maybe they're beeping the horn, maybe they're shouting at them.

But the other driver who's caused this problem doesn't have any idea that this person is shouting them or that the horn is for them.

And so they're like driving along blissfully unaware.

It's not affecting their day at all.

And the only person who's having a worst day as a result is the person who's getting really angry and assuming that this other person did something horrible to them on purpose.

And so when I see that kind of thing, I think, well, what's the point?

Like there's no point in ruining your own day.

And somebody put a really smart comment on LinkedIn around this.

He said, it can remind us that if we assume that those around us are on the offensive, our minds will be on defense and we're going to be unnecessarily stressed.

Yes.

And you're better off to laugh at the absurdity and save your stress for actual threats.

And I think that's quite a nice attitude.

Like you can assume that everybody's out to get you.

And they designed this site so it was too confusing and made the login complicated on purpose.

It doesn't make anything better, it just makes you annoyed.

Rob Bell:
I think there's probably two pieces of takeaway for me around this.

One is I've learned another meaning of the word razor or another context for it.

But more importantly, perhaps giving others the benefit of the doubt before getting angry or frustrated at the things people do.

Unless they're really, really stupid, then you can get as angry at them as you like.

But I will say this sketch, along with a number of others, there's probably a good handful of others now, including considering compliments as gifts that we did earlier on in the series.

They do make me think about things differently.

I do think about them in situations in life.

I think about the sketch and I go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yep, chill out.

Or, oh yeah, compliments as gift.

I need to compliment that person.

But in this scenario, I feel this is one that sticks with me now and I hope that I do act on it because I am now conscious of it and I picture your sketch, Jono.

Jono Hey:
That would be good.

Rob Bell:
And hopefully that works for others as well.

Jono Hey:
It's just try and do that when you're swimming and somebody's just swung right in front of you and kicked your goggles off.

Tom Pellereau:
That one is really difficult.

Jono Hey:
Then you know you're the master level of Hanlon's Razor.

Can I mention, just because I think some people have quite strong opinions about something like this.

I don't mean to say we talked about like stupidity is not a great word, but also some people quite firmly believe that there is malice and greed and selfishness and things which are driving people's actions in certain circumstances.

Rob Bell:
And they might be right in a lot of cases, yeah.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

And I just want to say, like, Hanlon's Razor is a little comment which was submitted to a book of fun rules.

And by sharing it, I definitely, I don't mean to, I'm not trying to give people an excuse to be careless or inconsiderate or suggesting that malice doesn't exist.

Yeah.

But I do think it's nice to go, just have a little, have a little, like you said, Rob, like a little check and make sure that, okay, your first assumption doesn't need to be that somebody's wishing you ill will or there's bad intent here, because that might not be the case.

But it's not the case that, you know, everything's an accident, you know, there are criminals and bad stuff happens in the world, and so I'm not saying that that's not the case.

But maybe it can make us all a little bit nicer to each other, who knows.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, it's a really, really good point.

Rob Bell:
Anything else anyone would like to add before we round out?

Jono Hey:
Can I share a few others from the book?

Rob Bell:
Please do.

Jono Hey:
They're very short, and I picked out a few.

So the book that I'm holding up is just...

Rob Bell:
Oh, the book, not your book, the book of Murphy's Law.

Jono Hey:
Exactly, from the book.

Tom Pellereau:
I was like, we've been going an hour, we're going to start a new one.

Rob Bell:
I thought we've been going an hour and Jono hasn't mentioned his book yet.

Jono Hey:
It's almost like a little joke book, but each one's a little bit like...

If you remember a few other ones, we did like The Peter Principle.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Which is that everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

It's a bit like that kind of thing.

And you can see that Hanlon's Razor is sort of in that spirit.

Yes.

I actually wrote The Law of Lockers once.

I wish you had a sketch about it.

Rob Bell:
The Law of Lockers?

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Which is, if there are only two people in the changing room, your lockers will be next to each other.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, good.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

So it's the sort of thing that's in this book.

So I picked out a few of them.

They've all got silly names.

We have Warren's Rule, to spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.

Rob Bell:
Nice.

Jono Hey:
We have…

Tom Pellereau:
He has the most negative view on everything.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, exactly.

Catusse's Extension of Murphy's Law, which is if anything can go wrong, it will go will go wrong.

Nothing is ever so bad that it can't get worse.

Tom Pellereau:
Yes.

So true.

Jono Hey:
We have Evans and Bjorn's Law, which is no matter what goes wrong, there is always somebody who knew it would.

Good.

Rob Bell:
Brilliant.

Yes, I definitely recognise that in myself.

Jono Hey:
Maybe this one I thought was actually genuinely quite interesting, which was Alinsky's rule, which is those who are most moral are furthest from the problem.

Yeah.

Makes you think a little bit.

Actually, last one, Hutchison's Law.

If a situation requires undivided attention, it will occur simultaneously with a compelling distraction.

It's brilliant.

They're all like little crazy things.

So don't take Hanlon's Razor too seriously, because it's in a book with all of those things, but they're quite funny.

There's a little bit behind it.

Rob Bell:
It's basically observational comedy, right?

But in really beautifully worded, pithy little razors.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
It's a pack of disposable razors.

Don't get me down there again.

Well, then that's it then for another episode.

Please do get in touch with your stories and experiences of Hanlon's Razor in action.

But for now, I'm just going to leave this rake here on the ground in case anyone else wants to use it.

I'll leave it prom side up because I don't want it to get stuck in the ground.

I'll just leave it out immediately on the other side of this door so it's out of the way and it won't get wet if it rains.

There, that will be helpful for someone.

See you next time.

Go well and stay well.

Goodbye.

All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.