Hanlon's Razor states:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
That's cute, but aren't we all just a little quick to assume either explanation? Nobody trusts anybody else's judgment any more. I propose Scott's Razor:
Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which might be explained by a perfectly good reason that you aren't aware of.


Six Replies to Scott's Razor

Jackie Mason | October 6, 2009
[hidden by author request]

Tony Peters | October 6, 2009
I've seen way too much stupidity (even my own) not to assume stupidity most of the time

Steve West | October 6, 2009
My personal hero, Shakespeare, sums it up so well with the oft-quoted, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Things are rarely just black or white and mutually exclusive.

Steve Dunn | October 7, 2009
OK wow, I thought TC had been slow for a long time and now I see everyone's hanging out in this green part of the site.

Scott Hardie | October 7, 2009
TC is for talking about things other than Rock Block and the goo game?

Aaron Shurtleff | October 7, 2009
Wait, there's things other than Rock Block and Goo Game??


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Sinners and Losers

Last week, Katherine Harris publicly denounced the first amendment, calling it "a lie" and said that we were supposed to be a nation of religious law. She also said that not to vote for a Christian is to vote for sin. (link) Apparently in Florida that gets you elected: Yesterday she enjoyed a landslide 50% victory over her competitors in the Senate Republican primary despite a bumbling campaign. Go »

Ketchup Packets

I was verbally mugged by a former coworker today, a guy I used to think of as a friend some time ago. I had the displeasure of laying him off last year, and after months of struggling to get by with nothing but condiments in his fridge, he started a blog to vent his frustration at me and a few other coworkers he disliked. The comments are very mean-spirited, from professional criticisms about my managerial competence and decision-making, to personal and apparently very nasty jokes about my weight and appearance. Go »

Members of an Elite Squad

When I started watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit a year ago (!!), I predicted that I would never write about its good episodes because it was a mediocre series. Along the way, it turned out to have plenty of mediocre hours and some lousy ones, but it had a lot more good or even great hours than I expected. Go »

Breaking Monopoly

My latest pastime has been seeing if I can rig a video game of Monopoly to give me infinite money. It turns out that I can, but it's incredibly tedious, far more so than I thought. I like to play with the NES version, because it's just colorful and fun enough without being too sophisticated in its AI. Go »

Pandora

[This post wound up being very long-winded and self-absorbed, but that's what blogs are for, I guess.] For years, I've gotten increasingly picky about how I listen to music. Sometimes I just want to listen to everything I have on shuffle, but sometimes I want to get more specific like only music from one genre on shuffle or all songs by one artist in chronological order, and sometimes I want to get really specific, like songs about dreams or artists from Michigan or recordings featuring violins. Go »

Thorough Performance Reviews

I'm not around much this week because it's time for the annual performance reviews at work. I'm staying up till the wee hours each night writing the reviews so that the two-day marathon of face-to-face chats at the end of the week will go well. It's a win-win: For the employees doing a great job, it's my chance to offer serious praise without it sounding phony or arbitrary. Go »