Hanlon's Razor Has Two Edges

February 3, 2026

Hanlon's Razor is defined as "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It is a razor in a philosophical sense, in that it "cuts" through inaccurate explanations. Stupidity in this case means incompetence or lack of care, rather than anything to do with intelligence.

The meaning of Hanlon's Razor is straightforward enough: if something can be explained by stupidity or incompetence, then don't think of the person doing that thing as malicious. Give them some grace.

But I actually think Hanlon's Razor has two edges, the second of which is implied by its definition. Here it is:

Bad enough stupidity is functionally identical to malice.

To understand what I mean by this second edge, we need to first talk about what it means to do good.

Active Effort

Here's a relevant quote by Kaveh Akbar from his excellent book Martyr!

Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands.

Here's another quote, from an NPR article from 2005 titled "Always Go To The Funeral", which I found from an Instagram reel someone posted about it. I really recommend you read the whole article, it's extremely short but extremely impactful.

In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.

The main idea behind these two quotes is that you can't really be good without active effort. We talk about this a lot as kids when it comes to things like bullying, and how being a passive bystander is a bad thing. Being neutral in those situations is negative, not truly neutral, because you are enabling the bully's actions.

Back to Hanlon's Razor

This idea of active effort applies in many more contexts than just bullying. The one me and my roommates discussed as I workshopped the razor's second edge is someone not doing their dishes.

Let's say your roommate left a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink. More often than not, your roommate did not do so with malicious intent. Maybe they forgot, or are too busy, or just don't feel like it. This is a great use case for Hanlon's Razor: your roommate isn't evil, they're just stupid (this is where thinking of stupidity as incompetence or an absence of care is important, so I'll be using those words from now on). When bringing up the subject, you shouldn't immediately think of your roommate as adversarial, you should think of them as simply misguided or needing a push in the right direction.

The goal of Hanlon's Razor is to see others as capable of changing their behaviors. Malicious people often don't want to change, but "stupid" people do. (I'd also like to take a moment to acknowledge that I am just as stupid as anyone else at times, this essay isn't meant to be me taking a moral highground, I am equally subject to Hanlon's razor)

Despite this, regardless of what your roommate's intent was, the impact is the same. Someone who is actively malicious might have taken the same actions, so regardless of what the intent was, the harm caused by the actions remains the same. This is what I mean by bad enough stupidity being functionally the same as malice.

To elucidate this idea even further, here are some other examples

I do not believe in the notion that we don't have any responsibilities to other people. I do not think active effort is too much to ask for. It might mean your life is a little harder, it might mean you'll be inconvenienced, but you will probably live a better life.

The goal of the second edge is not to start thinking of the people around you who don't put in effort as malicious; that idea directly conflicts with the first edge. The second edge is supposed to work in conjunction with the first edge. The first edge is to guide our understanding of other people, the second edge is meant to guide our own actions. It is meant to guide us toward actions that cause less harm by empathizing with the people those actions affect and seeing if we are negatively impacting them through our own ignorance and incompetence.

Hanlon's Razor might explain other people's actions, but it should not be used to excuse them. If we want to be good, we have to make an active effort to be better and do better for the people around us. Doing nothing is not good enough, even if we don't realize we're doing nothing. Growth starts with looking for the opportunity to do more.

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