Knapp's Addendum to Hanlon's Razor

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Knapp's Addendum: "Never automatically attribute to malice or stupidity that which is adequately explained by 'shit happens.'"

Case in point:

Recently, the Libertarian National Committee's Twitter account was hijacked by something called "Tyler Hobbs," which appears to have been a spambot flogging NFTs.

Some supporters of the Mises PAC (a Republican "infiltrate and neuter" operation which recently gained control of the LNC) jumped to the "malice" conclusion, assuming that some member or supporter of the previous LNC regime must have kept, or procured, login credentials for the Twitter account and used them to seize control of that account at an opportune moment.

Some opponents of the Mises PAC jumped to the "stupidity" conclusion, assuming that the Mises PAC dominated LNC/LPHQ are a bunch of idiots who didn't change, or somehow got phished for, the Twitter password.

Are either of those two possibilities ... possible? Sure.

But it's also possible that neither malice nor stupidity (on the part of the Mises PAC or its opponents, at least) were involved. Sometimes shit just happens. Maybe someone from outside LNC/LPHQ cloned a staffer's phone number and used it to get the two-factor authentication login code, then hijacked the account, or whatever.

I'm not a fan of the Mises PAC. But there's plenty of real, provable stuff to blame them for without leaping to unsupported conclusions. And while the Mises PAC's opponents are not all above this kind of thing, I haven't seen any evidence that they're behind it either.