What is Grebnesi's Razor?

Hanlon's Razor

“Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.”

“Hanlon” may be a corruption of the name of Robert Heinlein, the twentieth century science fiction writer. In his short story, “Logic of Empire”, Heinlein wrote “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity”. Hanlon’s razor is generally employed to trim away conspiracy theories. Like Occam, Hanlon proposed that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is the one most likely to be true.

An example of the application of Hanlon's razor is the evaluation of the claim "Bush lied, kids died". In 2003, President George W. Bush and members of his administration persuaded the American Congress and public to support the invasion of Sadaam Hussein's Iraq, in part by sharing the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate that the Hussein government possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and were developing nuclear ones. Although American forces found small quantities of chemical weapons in Iraq¹, along with some equipment for the enrichment of uranium², Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities turned out to be significantly smaller than the administration claimed before the war. Members of the political left believe that Bush and his advisors deliberately conspired to falsify intelligence and lie to the public concerning Iraqi WMDs. This claim comprises the first of the charges that Michael Moore posted on his website in draft articles of impeachment³ for President Bush. In contrast, the bipartisan Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, led by former Democratic Senator Chuck Robb, investigated the pre-war intelligence failure and came to a very different conclusion. In its final report, the commission found "no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence" but that the community failed "to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence"⁴. In choosing between the conclusions of the Robb Commission and those of Michael Moore, Hanlon's Razor favors the Robb Commission.

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¹Letter from John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence to Peter Hoekstra, Chairman of the House Select Committe on Intelligence, Jun. 21, 2006.

²"White House, U.N. Nuke Agency Differ on Iraq Centrifuge Find", FOXNews.com, Jun. 26, 2003.

³ "Be it Resolved: You Can Impeach the President", www.michaelmoore.com, Apr. 4, 2006.

⁴"Report to the President of the United States", Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Mar. 31, 2005.