Hanlon's razor

Today, I saw an article in Mr. Wan Weigang's elite day class, which mentioned a word called "Hanlong razor". Hanlong razor was put forward by an unknown American named Hanlong in about 1990. Simply put, it means "If it can be interpreted as stupid, don't interpret it as malicious". Stupidity in Hanlong's razor refers to ignorance, accident and unintentional reasons, and the possibility of these situations is far greater than malice.

Reading this article is very enlightening, especially for people like me who are always suspicious. My sister sometimes comments that ten people listen to the same sentence, nine people are not angry, and you are sulking. It's really easy for me to guess what others say and do as malicious. The article says, needless to say, "malice", even "intention" rarely happens in real life. For example, when you are driving on the road, suddenly a car overtakes you. If you hadn't braked suddenly, you might have an accident. In general, most people are angry. But calm down and think about it, others can't deliberately target you. He doesn't know you at all, he doesn't even know what you look like, and he's not malicious. On the other hand, if you know him well and have a good relationship at ordinary times, how likely is it that he will suddenly be hostile to you?

The reason why we regard others' casual actions as malicious is because we can't put ourselves in others' shoes. We are all narcissistic and tend to think that the world revolves around us. When you go out in new clothes, you imagine the reaction of your colleagues, but the reality is that most people don't notice. You think others are in a bad mood because of you, but you don't know it's because of other reasons. From another angle, if you don't put yourself in the center, many things won't happen.

In real life, my partner is writing a weekly report, and my son comes over to play with my father, leaving him alone. Is that intentional? Definitely not. It was an accident. He meant no harm. Knowing this, you won't be furious and adjust yourself faster. For example, you have gone to bed and your neighbor is still playing loud music. Then he knew it would disturb others but just didn't care, or he didn't know. We'd better pretend that he doesn't know and remind him calmly, which often leads to better results. If you confess impulsively, you may turn people who are not enemies into enemies. Of course, there are conspiracies and malice in the world, but they are rare.

When we do things in life, we just need to deal with the facts and don't guess the motives. Because a person may have many motives for doing something, or he may have no motives at all. Instead of guessing those illusory motives, it is better to find out the law of his work and establish a mutual trust mechanism with him.

I suddenly feel much better after reading the article. I think all the ideas that are useful to me have been sorted here. If you want to read the original text, you can go to the fourth season column of "Elite Day Class" by teacher Wan Weigang of app.