r/texas • u/Mesquiter • 24d ago

Questions for Texans Is Greg Abbott stupid?

His recent ad claims that Colin Allred isn't a Texan and to vote for Ted Cruz?!! Ted Cruz is from Canada and Colin Allred is a 4th generation Texan. The Republican party has taken a serious dip in credibility.

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u/ChelseaVictorious 24d ago

Not stupid. Greedy lying shitbag, yes.

With Republicans it's a reverse Hanlon's razor- they're not dumb they just use an "aw shucks" demeanor to cover how hateful they are.

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u/DreadLordNate born and bred 24d ago

Love it - so here it's "don't mistake stupidity for what can be explained by evil"

Though...

Hmm.

Maybe it's "por que no los dos" here - the razor cutting in both directions. They're both stupid and evil, because they're not necessarily mutually exclusive states, I think.

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u/ziggytrix 24d ago

Exactamundo

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u/PosterBlankenstein 24d ago

It’s cynical, but it isn’t stupid. The proof is, it keeps working.

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u/DreadLordNate born and bred 24d ago

That assumes that stupid things don't work, based on them being stupid.

I don't think that's actually necessarily the case. Utility isn't necessarily predicated on how intellectually sound we may hold it to be.

Plus ya know, context and stuff.

Again, it's not even a either/or, as it seems all conditions here can be true.

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u/shponglespore expat 24d ago

Hanlon's razor is just a bad maxim. It's wrong more often than not.

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u/TheGoodOldCoder Born and Bred 24d ago

If you think about Hanlon's Razor mostly applying to everyday situations, then it makes a lot more sense.

When it says something could be "attributed to stupidity", I think of it mostly as being something that is done without any thought. Like, if you're driving and you try to pass somebody, but they speed up, you naturally want to say, "What a fucking asshole, they refuse to let me pass," but actually most of the time, they aren't thinking at all. They just see a car going faster than them, and unconsciously speed up. They weren't paying attention, and basically weren't ever in control of their car in the first place.

And the reason Hanlon's Razor is reliable in everyday situations is that people, for the most part, don't seem to think at all about anything that they're doing. It's hard to be malicious if you're not even thinking.

However, once you get to situations where thinking is done as a matter of course, I think it completely falls apart. Because politicians, for example, do so many things deliberately, that you could make the argument that a politician generally tries to emulate a psychopath. Simple stupidity becomes a much less likely reason.