Hard to trace in its origin, Hanlon’s Razor states that we should not attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity.

I need to listen well so that I hear what is not said. Thuli Madonsela1

It seemed a logical enough demand—wouldn’t a technology company that had fallen behind need a grand vision of brilliant technological leadership to regain its place among the leaders of American innovation? As Gerstner put it, “The IBM organization, so full of brilliant, insightful people, would have loved to receive a bold recipe for success—the

Then a DWP biologist suggested using “bird balls,” the floating balls that airports use to keep birds from congregating near runways. They require no construction, no parts, no labor, no maintenance, and cost US$0.40 each. Three million UV-deflecting black balls were then deployed in Ivanhoe and other LA reservoirs, a simple solution to a

Sagan wrote that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”10

Fritz Zwicky, who coined the phrase “dark matter” to describe a mass we couldn’t see, but

Rubin had been observing the behavior of the Andromeda Galaxy, and had noticed something very strange. As explained in an article on Astronomy.com, “the vast spiral seemed to be rotating all wrong. The stuff at the edges was moving just as fast as the stuff near the center, apparently violating Newton’s Laws of Motion (which also govern how the

Occam’s Razor is not an iron law but a tendency and a mind-frame you can choose to use: If all else is equal, that is if two competing models both have equal explanatory power, it’s more likely that the simple solution suffices.

You can always say yes to insuring, but the trick is to come up with the right price. And for that we need probability.