Hanlon’s Razor and Other Fake Aphorisms

The petty war to define the enemy

Well, the popcorn machine overfloweth in the truth/freedom movement, and no one really looks good with all that oil on their face.

Over the past few weeks, a full-blown feud has broken out over The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet. All parties seem prepared to mass up, and defend their point of view to the very last breath.

Against our better judgment, we will weigh in on this uncomfortable infighting. At the core of the controversy is a series of reviews which attack the book and author on multiple grounds.

We also reviewed the book here, at the request of the publisher, and found ourselves with a dilemma. After making a number of relevant observations about the state of science, the way social structures produce mob mentalities, and other useful musings that did not strike us as particularly new, we found ourselves greeted with a passage that rubbed us all the way wrong. It can be seen here, in Desmet’s article defending the book and addressing this issue.

Our comment on this article is here. It covers some ground we do not mention in this article.

Now, we’d like to quickly say that all parties involved in this kerfuffle are talking past each other from our point of view, and we aren’t taking sides in the dispute. We don’t fully agree with either party. The review in question is quite harsh, and there appears to be some sort of vendetta at work. However, the criticism itself is very similar to the unfavorable impression we had when reviewing the book, albeit phrased in a more aggressive fashion.

The problem we have is the way, for reasons which don’t appear perfectly clear, Desmet appears to invoke a form of Hanlon’s razor in order to explain the top-level decisions which have so badly damaged the world.

What is Hanlon’s Razor? Is it some kind of high-falutin’ scientific principle? No, it’s a homely folk aphorism, stating without any support, that one should never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

As a rule of thumb, Hanlon’s Razor is pretty baseless. It catches wind and spills a great deal of ink, but there is no justification offered, except the implicit suggestion that incompetence is far more common than nefariousness. Indeed, incompetence is abundant, but for what reason should such an assumption be made?

How would this work as a courtroom principle? “Your honor, it sure does look like premeditated murder, but the plain fact is that my client simply fumbled the gun. Firing six rounds directly into the victim’s head. By the law of Hanlon’s Razor, the charge should be reduced to negligent homicide.” We are not generally afforded this benefit of the doubt when facing severe penalties, but we’re only peasants.

In the court of public opinion, however, too many prominent voices are all too eager to offer this defense to the Pharma mafia that recently destroyed the world as we knew it. Psychologically, Hanlon’s Razor is comforting, allowing the coincidence theorist to relax, since no one’s in control. It’s sort of inverse to the strange claim that conspiracy theorists are somehow “comforted” by believing that powerful institutions are serving the aims of a homicidal plutocrat class.

There is no doubt that incompetence played a role. But it’s not really Peter Principles all the way up. There are very good reasons to believe that the catastrophic events of the past two and a half years were entirely the result of nefarious action, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that Desmet is helping provide an alibi, whether he realizes it or not.

He, and by extension Dr. Malone, have been accused of being “controlled opposition”. In fact, Desmet, in a tone-deaf moment, complained about this in his book. We feel he would do better to see why some might get that idea.

Now, that’s a very serious charge, and it must feel awful to be working so hard to fight for freedom and be greeted with this kind of accusation. If we take Desmet at his word, and this is not at all true, this smear must be quite difficult to bear. We hope that he is able to come to terms with the criticism and critics, and understand why he has attracted this suspicion.

The phrase itself is always an invitation to blistering controversy, and, lacking a proper definition, is difficult to defend against. What does it mean, to be “controlled opposition”? Does it mean you take a paycheck from the other side to lie to the resistance movement? Or does it simply mean that a decision was made to promote your relatively milder position, by the powers-that-be, in order to choke out more damning narratives?

Would a target even be aware that such a relationship occurred? If, for example, the Gates media cartel was given a green light to let certain individuals broadcast a limited contrarian narrative, and these people are sincere and in earnest with no idea whatsoever, would this be “controlled opposition”?

Our impression is that Malone and Desmet are sincere, but we are aware that we’ve all been inundated with military-grade mind control and are in the middle of a bio-war-crime of unprecedented proportions. So it’s not really unreasonable to wonder why our resistance narrative is being framed by an academic who is soft on the “elites” and has not lost his job over his public stance, for some odd reason. Could it be that he holds a relatively inoffensive viewpoint that tends to downplay intentional malice?

What’s at stake here, fundamentally, is control of the “truth” narrative. There are many potential versions of truth. If, as we VERY strongly suspect, the truth would reveal deliberate malevolent intent, than it’s hard to beat Hanlon’s Razor for an alibi.

Hanlon’s Razor is a conceptual portmanteau of Occam’s Razor, the Peter Principle, and Murphy’s Law. It is widely attributed to Robert J. Hanlon, but this appears to be a thinly veiled pseudonym employed by Robert Heinlein, who expressed a similar sentiment in print. Regardless of provenance, it’s a bit of a joke which has lost the humor and led to serial enabling of chronic criminal behavior under the color of authority.

For example, Desmet suggests that the flip-flopping and inconsistent messaging we saw from public health officials proves that there was no well-organized conspiracy. At best, this shows a lack of imagination from a professor of psychology. Changing regulations arbitrarily is a popular mind control technique. They do it in all the best prisons.

Moreover, the frequently laughable inconsistency could simply be a measure of poor communication throughout the cabal, which surely operates on a need-to-know basis. Incompetence and conspiracy aren’t mutually exclusive. A bumbling conspiracy which nonetheless achieves its aims is a success.

Now, of course, Desmet tendered these comments with plenty of caveats, and we firmly believe everyone should form their own opinion. We don’t have any animus whatsoever against him, and consider the construct of mass formation to be valid and useful. This controversy is highly toxic, and we’d rather steer clear of this increasingly hostile battlefield.

But, just as we decided to be frank in our initial review, we feel that it’s important to talk about this. The stakes are high. There is a war for our minds, and history is being etched as we speak. It’s impossible to miss the air of infiltration and suspicion. Very powerful people, who have done such a number on the general population, have every self-evident reason to sow dissent, confusion, and apologetic narratives which let them off the hook.

We are alert to this. If this has led to unfair accusations against an innocent author, this is lamentable. But putting motives aside, it’s really important that we have this discussion about what’s been going down on the Animal Farm. Hurt feelings are a bummer. But we can’t let that next truck leave for the slaughterhouse, and there’s no way the farmer didn’t deliberately arrange for some of us to be headed that way.