Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition
by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler
088 Hanlon’s Razor
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Hanlon’s razor asserts that when bad things happen that are human caused, it is far more likely to be the result of ignorance or bureaucracy than conspiracy or malice. For example, when Apple’s Siri search was unable to find abortion clinics, many claimed Apple purposefully excluded them from the search results. It is possible that Apple was covertly promoting a political agenda, but it is more likely that Siri was incomplete or buggy.1
People are especially quick to accuse groups, organizations, and governments of mischief, personifying them and treating the monolithically as one. But as the number of people involved gets larger, the probability ...
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