When person A appears to have directed malice toward you, you may have actually directed malice toward him or you may have acted in a way that could be taken as malice when in fact you did not have malice toward him.

If you return ill will to A in the latter case, A perceives that you directed ill will at him first. This would be unproductive communication because both parties recognize that the other party directed malice at them first.

So unless you are very confident in your judgment of the presence or absence of malice, do not return malice to what appears to be malice. src

Here, “you should not do ~” does not mean that it is unethical, but rather that it is foreseeable to a sufficiently competent person that it will not have beneficial consequences. If you want to do the deed, you may.

relevance - Hanlon’s razor - Don’t find malice in what can be explained by incompetence. - Not defensive in online discussions - It can be foreseen that there will be no beneficial outcome.


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