Understanding and Applying Hanlon’s Razor

You ever feel like you are getting taken advantage of? You ever feel like you’re getting screwed over, or that you’re just about to get screwed over, that something really bad is going to happen to you, that the universe is conspiring against you, or your co worker is conspiring against you, that mofo, that sob, that person they’re out to get me. It’s a conspiracy. Of course, of course, you felt that way. Maybe you feel that way right now. It is a perfectly human thing to do, but how often are they actually to get you? How often is the world, the universe, everybody in your company, conspiring against you, trying to oust you, trying to screw you over. How often does that really happen? Or are these just stories that we make up in our own minds, in our own heads. It’s a tricky thing. It is a tricky thing. I my core values, the rules that I live by are friendship, justice and learning. Those are the three, three big ones. And so I try and enter every interaction that I have with the best of intention, to make a new friend, to be friendly, to be cordial to people, to develop relationship. And I know full well that I can’t develop relationships or friendships with everybody that I come into contact with, but I certainly can be kind. I can be friendly justice that comes down for me to individual justice. A hard time finding justice for myself or individuals around me, but I have a strong sense of that. So when I see somebody getting screwed over really bothers me, particularly when I see people who are not quite as capable as I am. So kids, older people, see them getting taken advantage of it drives me freaking crazy. Just drives me batty, and then learning it’s something that I try to constantly get better at try to evolve my thinking, as I’m sure that you do as well. And so when we go through different circumstances and scenarios in life where we feel like we’re getting taken advantage of, when we get through it, and we’re able to conduct some kind of a post mortem and say, okay, was I right about this, or did I just create some kind of a story in my mind, and the world wasn’t actually out to get me? Or maybe it was, maybe I just got a bad break or bad timing, or who knows, who knows. So when in those times that our mind starts racing, you start to wonder, why is this happening? Why is this person doing this to me? What things that you know not necessarily happening to me? Let me take a step back, certainly in our interpersonal lives, in our family lives, our love lives, or business lives, personal lives, whatever this happens. And I think that even if we’re not experiencing it directly, if we’re not involved directly in different circumstances that we see on the news all the time now, because we’re aware of all the bad things are happening instantaneously, and that’s just a lot for us to process. I know it’s a lot for me to be processing when I had no idea, if I just didn’t look at my phone, I wouldn’t know about the 50 trillion awful things that were taking place in the world right now. But because I do, and because I look at it, I am and so that has the effect of sort of rattling that same part of my brain that has a strong sense of justice and wants to help people. That triggers that it’s frustrating, makes me mad, as I’m sure that it does for you as well. So all these things, culture, politics, you’re watching the news and you’re scratching your head thinking, what, WTF? What is going on here? Why is this happening? How could anybody be this stupid? How could anybody be this freaking stupid? But maybe that’s not it. Maybe it’s malicious. Maybe there is a cabal of Super Villains, super evil, super geniuses who are pulling all the strings. Conspiracy theories are very seductive. Uh, certainly some of them are true, so that’s why they’re a thing. But it’s opaque. I mean, we’ve gone through so much in the last several years, as we always have, but again, I mentioned how now we just know about so much more. So we can take that, we can take that lens through which we look at situations and look at and view all of the world’s circumstances through that same lens, we can all be Monday morning quarterback on not just the big game, but on on the presidential debate, or on this that the other thing can all be back seat drivers and be looking at everything going on, trying to suss out what the heck is going on here. Have you heard of hanlon’s Razor handling? Razor is an adage that says never, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. So instead of thinking that the world is out to get, you just realize that, Nope, it’s just a dummy who’s doing dummy stuff, and I’m getting the blow back because of the dummy doing the dumb things. Not as sexy, not as satisfying to think, ah, you know what? Here, I thought it was the entire world ganging up on me to knock me down a couple of pegs. Turns out it was just Randy. It was just Randy rusty. No offense to Randy’s and Rusty’s out there. It was just Sally being a dummy. That’s what happened. There was no malice. She’s just dumb. Could that be it? Helen’s research suggests that people should avoid assuming harmful intentions when a simple mistake or misunders misunderstanding is a more likely explanation. So hand lens, razor, I think that it’s a useful tool in thinking through everything that we are going through right now. I’m a huge fan of frameworks. I like to understand it’s like, when somebody says, Just do it like, that’s not helpful. I don’t know how to do it, so I can’t just do it. But if you give me some steps to take through sort of a decision tree, thought process, a framework like, instead of assuming malicious intent. Let’s shift that and assume that it’s just incompetence, that it’s just dummies doing dummy stuff, dummies doing dumb things. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Okay, so that’s the idea, and it could be helpful, maybe not at all. You can take it or leave it, but we are I want to talk about some historical examples, and then I want to talk about some things that have just recently happened or are currently happening, or whatever there are. But there are countless examples throughout history, and what we might perceive to be deliberate harmful action. Could simply be the result of a mistake and miscommunication or total incompetence, but not necessarily malevolent, malevolent action. So in 1854 there was something called the Charge of the Light for great, I’m having a hard time speaking the Charge of the Light Brigade, and this happened during the Crimean War. British forces mistakenly charged directly into a heavily defended Russian artillery position, which led to awful and heavy casualties. Now the explanation was that it was most likely caused by a miscommunication and poor military planning rather than any intentional malice by the commanders involved. Okay, in 1915 there was something called the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, and in this example or event, the British ocean liner Lusitania was sunk by a German U boat, leading to the death of almost 1200 people. So while the sinking was an act of war, many controversies arose over whether or not the British government intentionally put the spellings at risk to draw the United States into World War One. However, it’s thought to be more plausible the incident was a tragic result of maritime miscalculations and lack of clear misc, lack of clear comment communication. Okay, I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. 1999 the Mars Climate Orbiter. Uh,

our climate arbiter was lost during our due to navigational error where one team used metric units and the other used imperial units. So not necessarily due to sabotage or malice, but rather a simple but critical mistake in unit conversions. Stupid metric system, or the wonderful metric system, and that led to the craft destruction. Remember why 2k this massive concern that computer systems all over the world were going to fail when the clock rolled over to 2000 from 1999 Hmm. So the problem arose not from any malicious intent, but from a simple, albeit widespread oversight in programming, where early coders had used two digits to represent the year instead of four. And obviously nothing happened, but it was very, very exciting. 1961 we saw the Bay of Pigs, and it’s a failed invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles backed by the US government aimed to overthrow Castro. The invasion was poorly planned and resulted in quick defeat. So this is a really tricky one, but it’s more likely due to miscalculations poor planning and overestimate overestimation of the support the exiles would receive rather than any intentional sabotage or malice within the US government. I know that that’s a very controversial one, so but you get the idea each one of these, you can look at so many different ways. Chernobyl, the power plant and Soviet Union, experienced a catastrophic meltdown, leading to widespread radioactive contamination, and the explanation is simply that it was a result of a combination of design flaws in the reactor and operator error during a safety test, rather than any deliberate act of sabotage a malevolence. Who knows, in 1799 the Rosetta Stone was discovered, and it was obviously a crucial artifact that helped us read hieroglyphic, hieroglyphics. And it was actually discovered by French soldiers during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, and was actually found on accident. It wasn’t part of a grand plan or due to superior intellect, its significance was only realized later, showing that sometimes major discoveries come from a single chance or oversight rather than intentional brilliance, so that one is sort of sort of an obvious or rather a reverse hanlons Law, instead of attributing, attributing an event to brilliance can just simply be just chance and interesting. And finally, the Titanic 1912 we all know what happened to hit an iceberg. Maiden voyage resulted in the death of over 1500 people. Now, like all of these, you can look at it a bunch of different ways, but this disaster was largely due to a combination of human air, poor design, insufficient lifeboats and unfortunate circumstances, rather than a deliberate act of negligence or sabotage. So what do you think innocent mistakes by dumb people, dummies doing dumb things, or malevolent actions perpetrated by super villains, uh, like a good conspiracy as much as the next guy. In fact, I, like many people, probably love them. Think it’s fascinating to try to play backseat driver, Monday morning quarterback, all of these kinds of things to look through to suss out. But the reality is that I don’t know. I just don’t know. What about these more contemporary examples? What about covid 19? That was certainly a big one that’s in a pretty recent memory. I know I haven’t forgotten about covid, and I’d certainly like to know more about what is actually happening, but unfortunate reality is that there are outbreaks all the time, and not necessarily outbreaks, but there are laboratory leaks and mistakes that happen quite a bit, if you actually go through and research Everything that happened or that has happened, and different diseases and horrible things that have escaped laboratories. More often than not, it’s probably just from stupidity and incompetence, everything that happened subsequently, that’s a story for another day also, and how everything was handled and the fallout and the policies and everything else, I think we could certainly all agree that it was terrible, but part of me that wants justice is still demanding that we have some more transparency with that one. The Afghanistan withdrawal was also a terrible one. Anytime there’s a loss of life and. The catastrophic circumstances that have taken place to the poor Afghan Afghani people, the Afghans, and how that culture has changed and shifted. We’re fortunate to have on the the show within the last year, two young ladies, one young lady who was actually in Afghanistan and who taught herself how to read and do math just using the internet because she was no longer allowed to go to school, and now she’s she wrote a wonderful book about it, so so many terrible things. What were the circumstances? Why was so much stuff left behind? Was it? Was it because of some grand plan, or was it just pure incompetence? Was it dummies doing dumb things? Hard to say, everything going on in the Middle East right now, everything going on in the Ukraine and Russia and Taiwan and my goodness, so many different events going on in the world. But we don’t have to go that far, do we? We can look to our southern border and try to suss out what’s going on there. Is this a matter of incompetence, or is it some grand plan? What about our major cities and homelessness? My goodness, my goodness, so much of this wasn’t happening all that long ago, and now there’s so much, really awful situations, some real head scratchers going on. So what do you think? Is it hamlin’s razor? Is it incompetence? Is it stupidity, or is or is it malicious intent, something else at play? And the problem is, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s in someone else’s heart. I don’t know what’s in somebody else’s head. I don’t even know what’s in my own heart. Part of the time, I don’t know it’s in my own head a lot of the time. Certainly, I changed my mind about things. I changed my opinions my preferences. But that doesn’t mean that when I change my mind or my heart or my opinions or preferences, that what I did in the past doesn’t necessarily influence that. It just influences how I think and potentially talk about these different circumstances, so makes it pretty tricky, but I do think that there’s immense value in hanlon’s razor. I think that there’s immense value in asking these questions instead of immediately defaulting to the world is out to get me. Why am I always getting screwed? Why are these people ruining everything there is? Why are there small group or a massive group of people, or why do half the country think such stupid things compared to what I think? And is it malicious? I think that all these things are really important. It’s it’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to change our mind. But what’s not okay? But I know for sure, definitively, I know it’s not okay to lie, it’s not okay to cover things up. It’s not okay to gaslight people. There’s also an awful lot of that going on, for sure. So it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s not okay to lie about them. It’s not okay to try to change and rewrite history, to serve you cover up for those mistakes. I think a lot of that is what’s leading to a lot of the problems that we’re having. It’s not okay to mislead people based on your agenda and to try and again, reshape history. So talked about some big events that have happened over the course of time, and talk about events that have just happened, and you certainly have your laundry list of of things that have happened in your life to you or to loved ones, people that you know, that make you scratch your head. Make you wonder about this stuff. We experience, injustice, negative and bad things in our lives all the time, from conflicts at work to fights with our neighbors and even within our family and our loved ones. I’m a person who I invest myself in everything that I do. You know, try to go all in on all the things that are of the greatest importance to me, because me and I succeed all the time, not perfect at any of this stuff. I’m just trying to when I put my name on something, I put my heart into it as well. I.

So it’s hard for me to embrace and accept hanlon’s law just because of how I’m wired and how I do invest myself. But I’m super fallible, and more often than not, I recognize that my perceived enemies slash adversaries. They’re also not the brightest folks, and that’s probably true for you also the people that you’re in conflict with, the people that you feel like are screwing you over. I bet that they’re not the brightest folks either. I bet that we’re giving them way too much credit. We’re giving them too much competence, and they’ve also got a lot going on, same as you and I, and they may not even be aware of the affront that they’ve caused you, the affront that they’ve made against me. But what if? What if Judy at work, Joey at work, is an evil, super genius, hell bent on your destruction? I just hope that doesn’t happen. I hope that doesn’t happen, and I hope that they’re just a dummy, and that this too shall pass. What I know for sure is this is that we are a lot more alike than we are different, even if people are dumb, still probably pretty similar. We’re all flawed, and that’s a feature of humanity more so than it is a bug, and I work hard to give out of those grace, even though it goes against my nature. But I work hard at it. I try, I try so hard, and other times I don’t. Other times I just say, f it, F that guy, F that gal. I move on. Sometimes you just gotta let it go, take the loss, take the win, whatever. Keep things moving along. Think that we’re all well served doing that every once in a while also. But It would sure be great if people weren’t such dummies, and it’d be great if all of us did our part by doing our best to.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.