The Sentinel Philosophy: Weaponized Incompetence

Growing up, my friend had a tactic when it came to washing the dishes after Christmas lunch. He would do so in such a pathetic and half-arsed way that everyone would say, "Oh, just sit down." And he knew exactly what he was doing. He went to Cambridge, he could fix a car, and put up some shelves. He knew how to wash the dishes, and yet he had weaponized his incompetence in such a way that he could get out of a job.

Hanlon's law says that we should "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence," because nine times out of ten, if somebody leaves you off a group chat list or they bump into you in the street, it was an accident, not intentional. And yet, it's rarely this simple because there is another law called Grey's Law, which says that "any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Grey's Law says that if somebody is incompetent for so long, or doesn't take steps to resolve that, then their actions become malicious. Because if you know you're incompetent, you should train or learn to become better. At the very least, you should avoid a situation where you can do harm to other people. If you know you are not cut out to be a surgeon, you should stop doing surgery.

I'm sure we all know people in our lives who have weaponized their incompetence to get out of a job or to place the burden on someone else. But what Grey's Law is saying is that they are no longer just incompetent. They are also immoral.