I think so. If you really try to understand how people become evil you will often find that they do it with good intentions. There's the extremely old adage that I'm sure has earlier origin than the following well known one (anyone know an earlier example?). "The path to Hell is paved with good intentions."
I think we'd agree that there are a large amount of people that do not do great things, momentarily or as a way of being. But how many people see themselves as bad? Very few. You can find tons of psych studies on this. Where people doing evil things justify it for many different reasons. "Just this one time", "for the greater good", "I have no other choice", "because _they_ are cheating", "the system is rigged against me", "fight fire with fire", etc. We all know these things. We've done them ourselves (to some extent or another).
I think a good example is politics. I think a lot of westerners like democracy (vague term). But how many imagine that if we were dictator for a day how we could just fix everything? Besides being naive and overestimating our intellectual prowess, it goes against the fundamental idea of a democracy. I'd argue that a lot of authoritarians see themselves in this way (there's good evidence to support this). That it is for the greater good. I'm sure you can think of at least two examples today that think that they have to control their countries because the people they rule over are not smart/civilized enough to know what is best for themselves.
Is this malice? I think that depends on the perspective. And that's really what Hanlon's Razor is about, perspective. Understanding the mind of the actor.
I think we'd agree that there are a large amount of people that do not do great things, momentarily or as a way of being. But how many people see themselves as bad? Very few. You can find tons of psych studies on this. Where people doing evil things justify it for many different reasons. "Just this one time", "for the greater good", "I have no other choice", "because _they_ are cheating", "the system is rigged against me", "fight fire with fire", etc. We all know these things. We've done them ourselves (to some extent or another).
I think a good example is politics. I think a lot of westerners like democracy (vague term). But how many imagine that if we were dictator for a day how we could just fix everything? Besides being naive and overestimating our intellectual prowess, it goes against the fundamental idea of a democracy. I'd argue that a lot of authoritarians see themselves in this way (there's good evidence to support this). That it is for the greater good. I'm sure you can think of at least two examples today that think that they have to control their countries because the people they rule over are not smart/civilized enough to know what is best for themselves.
Is this malice? I think that depends on the perspective. And that's really what Hanlon's Razor is about, perspective. Understanding the mind of the actor.