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Comment by bmmayer1 | Hacker News Reader

Shouldn't Hanlon's razor apply here instead? "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

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The past few years have convinced me quite strongly that malice is sometimes, even often, the correct explanation.

I think we're too slow to call it malice sometimes, aren't we? If it doesn't look cartoonishly evil we ascribe it to other intentions, I mean. While it would be more bold to just call it evil, such as: evil by neglience, evil by greed, etc.

>While it would be more bold to just call it evil, such as: evil by neglience, evil by greed, etc.

It might be more bold right now, but the net effect of expanding words to mean stuff it didn't mean before is that words get even more watered down. If "evil" includes people acting negligently, what do you call people who were actually intentionally out to cause harm? Super-evil?

That's not what I wanted to say. It depends on the situation. Not all neglience is evil, of course not. Not all greed is evil, either.

I think there logic is the "but what about the children?" razor. "Save _one_ hytpothetical child, and it's all worth it" is one lemma derived from this principle.

Yeah, but even then usually someone has to benefit. I don't see who benefits. Drug investigators? Picking an arbitrary cutoff looks like plausible stupidity to me... Which is not to say the hospital shouldn't be punished harshly, just that probably no one should go to jail either.

No idea who really benefits but there's been scandals like this before: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/2... https://projects.thestar.com/motherisk/

Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice… and vice versa.

Sometimes stupid people are malicious, muddying attempts to distinguish.

Stupidity is the perfect alibi of malice.

von Hammerstein-Equord, commander of the Reichswehr in the early 1930s was more focussed on outcomes: "One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."

Both can be true. The hospitals are doing it intentionally because some misguided stupid people think they're saving the world.

At some point, one must stop playing perpetually naïve Pollyanna and start making realistic guesses.

Interestingly, both could apply here.

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