Otto’s razor

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Herculio: ’Tis neither malice, spite, nor virtue
Whose ledger swells, or plucks, the seedy fruits of progress —
But mainly accident.
Lest thee with surety know aught else —
Withhold thy assignations.

Triago: Pish upon thee, Nuncle. Pish!
Dost thou mean to say
Things peel this way
Through doughty misadventure?

Herculio: Peradventure —

Triago: Pish abeam!
Has thou no more to say than that?
Wouldst thou on this shaky surmise
Withhold rebuke?

Herculio: Perchance, per case, mayhap dear Triago
’Twas but a fluke?

Triago: O! This nuisant planet weighs upon my soul!

Herculio: If ’tis this and nought beside
That flies you to a vernal rage
Our fickle globe in its manifold confound’ry
Lies prettily indeed
For thy alignment.

A rule of thumb, attributed to 19th century Austrian plowright Büchstein, that recommends when there are plausible alternative explanations for behaviour, one should choose the simplest-minded, preferring cloth-headedness or coincidence over the artful application of intelligence, inspiration, “malice, spite, or virtue”.

Until the contrary is proven, we should treat both the pinnacles of cultural achievement and the chasms of mortal calumny the product of accident and not design. Give people the benefit of the doubt, in other words, that their hurtful deeds were careless, unless you have positive grounds to believe they are devious. On the other hand, the spontaneous thoughtful gesture, that stroke of sudden genius, was just as likely ill-thought out.

Die Schweizer Heulsuse was a light-hearted comic farce, but (until the dengue fever got him) Büchstein took his own aphorism seriously, and would point out to disbelieving dinner guests apparent monuments to human triumph and stains of monstrous wickedness that in fact came about by more or less fortunate adjacency, and not intelligent design. By the time the “razor” caught on, Büchstein was deep in a Papaya-juice inflected hallucinations from which he did not recover. This is just as well as assuming the pithiness of Büchstein’s text to be accidental, Robert J Hanlon rebadged (and, frankly, improved) it to read “do not attribute to malice things that can just as well be explained by stupidity” and that is how it has remained, as “Hanlon’s razor”, to this day.

See also

• Occam’s razor
• Büchstein