More Useful Maxims
This is my second group of the many short principles that help clarify reasoning, decision-making, or analysis. I am featuring some of them in a series of posts, expositing a few of them each time.
4. Morton’s Fork poses a false dilemma in which contradictory alternatives both lead to an unfavourable conclusion.
It is named after Cardinal John Morton, who used it to justify taxes for Henry VII. He claimed that those who lived modestly must thereby be saving money and could thus afford to pay his tax. On the other hand, those who lived extravagantly proved they were rich enough to pay it.
Morton’s Fork is a version of the “heads I win, tails you lose” alternative. All courses lead to unpleasantness. In chess, the term Zugzwang is used to describe a position in which every possible move a player can make leads to their downfall. Since they must make a move, their disadvantage must follow. This is a version of a Morton’s Fork.
In politics it describes a situation in which all the choices seemingly available to a party or government are shown to produce disadvantageous outcomes. If they announce a potentially harmful policy, they are described as thoughtless. If they U-turn and withdraw it, they are described as weak. Either way they are caught on Morton’s Fork.
5. Hanlon’s Razor suggests that you should never attribute malice behind an action if it can be explained by simple stupidity.
There are doubts about who Hanlon was, and it might even be a corruption of Robert Heinlein, one of whose characters uttered the sentiment, but the term has passed into computer jargon.
People sometimes do things that harm or upset others, and it is easy to attribute their behaviour to willful intent. But Hanlon’s Razor suggests it might arise from a lack of awareness on their part, or simple incompetence. Not everyone is clever enough to work out the likely consequences of their actions so, rather than assume that an evil genius is systematically out to do you down, consider instead that it might be a mindless idiot thoughtlessly blundering about.
Paranoid behaviour assumes that people are out to get you, and that their actions denote hostility. But it might just be ordinary people doing thoughtless things without regard to their consequences. Hanlon’s Razor tells us never to assume wicked intent if stupidity could also explain their action.
6. Hobson’s Choice presents apparent alternatives where in reality only one option is available.
Thomas Hobson, operating a livery stable from Cambridge, wanted his best horses rested, so he devised a rotation system in which the customer had to choose the next horse in line, usually the one nearest the door. The choice was between that one or none at all. This came to be called Hobson’s Choice.
In modern parlance it describes a take-it-or-leave-it offering in which only one choice is offered as an alternative to nothing at all. It says that beggars can’t be choosers; they must take what is offered or go without. Henry Ford famously told car-buyers that they could have any colour they liked, so long as it was black.
The term ‘choice’ implies that the recipient can select an option between alternatives, but this is illusory. Only one choice is offered, and nothing else is on offer.
Madsen Pirie