People do not know what they are doing.

Hanlon's Razor and the Empty Boat Effect.

There was a time, mercifully brief, when I was a very angry child. Those who know me now would find this difficult to believe. Believe me, I was truly incandescent. I myself cannot remember the last time I was furious to the point where everyone around me could feel the heat radiating from my being. I still get irritated, uncomfortable, disappointed, sad, and provoked. But the word "angry?” that would be reaching. Anyway, I have not been pacified by life or sanctified by some philosophical discipline, I am still perfectly capable of getting angry. The ember still glows beneath the ash. I am only less flammable. And now, you may ask: why don't you get angry anymore?

Imagine you are crossing a river in a little boat. It is a misty morning, and the fog hangs like a veil between you and the other side. As you row, you notice another vessel heading directly toward you. You shout warnings, several times, asking them to move aside, but there is no response. You grow furious, begin yelling and cursing. But once the boat draws close enough, you realize it is completely empty. There is no one on board. Suddenly your anger has nowhere to go, and it naturally fades away. This is what psychology refers to as the Empty Boat Effect.

When I made the tweet that birthed my previous essay, I received mostly curious comments and a few others, less flattering in tone. A certain individual for example, called me a bigot and accused me of ableism for not explicitly carving out a clause for ADHD in my 280-character reflection. My tweet, which was clearly a loosely based proposition—I even admitted it was unverified, because it was, in fact. It did not claim to consider every area of causation and consequence. I also did not term myself a certified psychologist or anything of that sort. But this individual assumed my tweet came from a place of malice. This person does not know me; we have never interacted. Not once. And yet, they were absolutely convinced I was out to insult people with ADHD and hadn't considered them. And now, they likely went about their day agitated, convinced they had encountered cruelty and fought it. But unfortunately, they hadn’t. The boat was empty.

I have this reserved opinion, and I am sorry if this may come out disrespectful, but I think people who knowingly engage in physical fights—if not for sports or a life/death situation—are stupid. It is really difficult for me to respect them. The ones who want to assert dominance or to prove an inconsequential point by what? Throwing arms? Even more stupid are the ones who resort to dangerous materials: knives, sticks, bottles. Whatever. The first thing that comes to my mind is "What if something happens?" "What if someone gets seriously injured?" It reeks of imaginative poverty. I have seen this happen multiple times. One time, the perpetrator ran off; another time, the one who injured the other immediately grew remorseful and had to be the one to assist his own victim to the clinic.

And yes, perhaps they really wanted to hurt the other person. Perhaps they really wanted to show some power, teach the other fellow an unforgettable lesson. But alas! This individual is not a psychopath. A psychopath could have considered consequences, and it still wouldn't matter to him. He'd laugh at your pain and hurt you even more. He enjoys it. He does not have to be angry to perpetrate evil. It's his sport. You play football, CODM, and hike on Saturdays. You are not a villain. You are a vector who is reacting more than reasoning.

Robert Hanlon once said, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." This has come to be known as Hanlon's Razor. It is similar to Occam's Razor, a rule of thumb that states that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

The idea of Hanlon's Razor is that it takes talent or sheer force of will than people realize to be truly evil. To orchestrate a devious plan and keep Ethan Hunt on his toes require wits. Which means that when things go wrong or if some harm is being done to you, it is far more likely that it is done from incompetence, neglect, and idiocy than any cruel intentions.

Say someone cuts you off on the road. They slide into your lane barely an inch away from a crash. And so you hit your steering wheel and you honk your horn, and you swear, "How could they do this to me?" It is far more likely that they actually made a mistake and they are just as anxious as you at the near crash. And well, people are self-serving; truth is only appealing when it serves them. They get defensive.

Hanlon's Razor echoes a certain philosophical tradition. St. Augustine, for example, argued that ignorance, and not intentions, were the root of most sin. The Stoics counselled us not to be so quick to assign motives. It is misunderstanding that moves the world, far more than malevolence. And though it stings our sense of importance, most people are simply not thinking about us.

Understanding the Empty Boat Effect can instantly solve the majority of your emotional reactions to problems. Basically, I just assume most people do not know what they are talking about or what they are doing. This does not mean excusing them or their actions. It just means calling them stupid and moving on with your day. Reality is complex, and humanity perhaps exhibits infinite levels of depth, but ironically, people are not that deep. And this, strangely, brings peace.

Often we are not angry because of what actually happened but because we assumed someone intended to hurt us. In reality, only a minority percentage of our emotional responses come from actual events. The majority comes from how we interpret things in our mindset.

The empty boat drifts toward you not out of malice but out of the simple absence of intention. The person who cuts you off in traffic may not be plotting your demise; they could be distracted, tired, or just incompetent.

The trick is telling myself that most of the world's offenses against me are empty boats, vessels without conscious or learned enough pilots. And even when they seem to steer toward my destruction, my anger loses its target. You cannot fight the wind for blowing, or curse the rain for falling. Stupid people will do stupid things. You can only adjust your sails or seek shelter. You can either curse the rain, or you can open an umbrella. You can fight the current, or you can learn to swim. Choice is what defines you.

This is not to say that genuine malice does not exist. There are people who wake up and choose violence. There are those who derive pleasure from the pain of others. But these are the minority. Most of the time, when someone disappoints you, frustrates you, or seems to actively work against your interests, they are simply navigating their own chaos with whatever tools they have at hand. They are either tired, distracted, possessed by unexamined assumptions, or burdened by past wounds.

The Empty Boat Effect teaches us something profound about the nature of human conflict. That most of it is collision and not combat. Two vessels meeting in the fog, neither seeing the other clearly, both assuming intention where there is only accident.

Hanlon's Razor as a good rule of thumb emphasizes this as well. If somebody gets your drink order wrong, it's probably not about you. If somebody forgets to copy you into an email, it's probably forgetfulness and not out of spite. Most people, most of the time, are not out to get you—but that doesn't mean their foolishness will not.