Conflict vs mistake is definitely related, but I think it’s not exactly the same thing; the “villain-shaped hole” perspective is what it feels like to not have a model, but see things that look suspicious; this would lead you towards a conflict-theoretic explanation, but it’s a step earlier.
(Also, the Conflict vs Mistake ontology is not really capturing the whole bad-coordination-equilibrium part of explanation space, which is pretty important.)
Seems to me like an unspoken assumption that there are no hard problems / complexity / emergence, therefore if anything happened, it’s because someone quite straightforwardly made that happen.
Conflict vs mistake is not exactly the same thing; you could assume that the person who made it happen did it either by mistake, or did it on purpose to hurt someone else. It’s just when we are talking about things that obviously hurt some people, that seems to refute the innocent mistake… so the villain hypothesis is all that is left (within the model that all consequences are straightforward).
The villain hypothesis is also difficult to falsify. If you say “hey, drop the pitchforks, things are complicated...”, that sounds just like what the hypothetical villain would say in the same situation (trying to stop the momentum and introduce uncertainty).
Yep. Seems you have broadly rediscovered conflict vs mistake.
Conflict vs mistake is definitely related, but I think it’s not exactly the same thing; the “villain-shaped hole” perspective is what it feels like to not have a model, but see things that look suspicious; this would lead you towards a conflict-theoretic explanation, but it’s a step earlier.
(Also, the Conflict vs Mistake ontology is not really capturing the whole bad-coordination-equilibrium part of explanation space, which is pretty important.)
Seems to me like an unspoken assumption that there are no hard problems / complexity / emergence, therefore if anything happened, it’s because someone quite straightforwardly made that happen.
Conflict vs mistake is not exactly the same thing; you could assume that the person who made it happen did it either by mistake, or did it on purpose to hurt someone else. It’s just when we are talking about things that obviously hurt some people, that seems to refute the innocent mistake… so the villain hypothesis is all that is left (within the model that all consequences are straightforward).
The villain hypothesis is also difficult to falsify. If you say “hey, drop the pitchforks, things are complicated...”, that sounds just like what the hypothetical villain would say in the same situation (trying to stop the momentum and introduce uncertainty).