Named for Robert J. Hanlon (a submission to Murphy's Law Book Two, 1980), with an earlier form in Robert A. Heinlein (Logic of Empire, 1941).
Sets a default of reading harmful behavior as error, overload, or circumstance until evidence shows intent, which matches the response to the likely cause.
When to reach for it
When a colleague, customer, or counterpart does something that feels like a deliberate slight and the next move depends on why they did it.
How it runs
- Pause when behavior feels like deliberate harm.
- List innocent explanations: overload, miscommunication, ignorance, or constraints.
- Estimate how likely each is compared with malice.
- Respond to the most probable cause.
- Reserve the charge of malice for evidence that survives.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- Murphy's Law Book Two, ed. Arthur Bloch, 1980
- Logic of Empire, 1941