Clark's Law

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Clark's Law is an adage which reads:

“ Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice. ”

Variant:

“ Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. ”

Called "Clark's Law" because:

  • The oldest extant record of the "cluelessness" phrasing is from a 1994 Usenet post by NASA employee J. Porter Clark.[1][2]
  • It is structured very much like the third of Clarke's Three Laws, which is sometimes simply referred to as "Clarke's Law" : "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

[edit] Application of Clark's Law

  • Reference to the Law is made frequently among people with an interest in email "spam," its senders, and the people who make it lucrative.[3]
  • The "incompetence" variant has been widely applied to government action, particularly the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.[4]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ For those with archival news servers - news:3aeh29$6g4@hammer.msfc.nasa.gov
  2. ^ Google's archival copy - http://groups.google.com/group/alt.config/msg/595eee6098155967
  3. ^ Google search of news.admin.net-abuse.email for the law: http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=&num=100&scoring=d&as_epq=sufficiently+advanced+cluelessness+is+indistinguishable+from+malice&as_ugroup=news.admin.net-abuse.email
  4. ^ The Sideshow September 2005 Archive