Razors & rhetorical traps

Some of the hardest moments in inclusion work aren’t about facts at all — they’re about thinking. Someone says something that lands badly, and you have a split second to decide what it means. Someone makes a sweeping claim, and you have to choose whether to push back or let it pass. The conversation slides sideways, and you can feel it going nowhere. This is where a handful of old “razors” — rules of thumb that cut away weak reasoning — earn their keep, alongside a sharp eye for one common rhetorical trap. None of this is a logic lecture. It’s about staying humane and honest when a conversation gets difficult.

Hanlon’s Razor: assume good faith first

Start with the one that does the most work in this field. Hanlon’s Razor says: never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by thoughtlessness or lack of awareness. When a colleague mangles someone’s name, makes an assumption about who does what job, or repeats a phrase that’s quietly dated, the overwhelmingly likely explanation isn’t cruelty — it’s habit, hurry or simply not knowing. This is the reasoning behind calling people in, not out. Most exclusion and most microaggressions aren’t weapons; they’re blind spots. Treat them as malice and you raise the drawbridge; treat them as unawareness and you open a door.

I work from a simple belief: people are inherently good. Most harm in this space isn’t deliberate — it’s unaware. That doesn’t make it hurt less, but it does change how you respond to it.

Here is the caveat that matters most, and it’s easy to get wrong. Hanlon explains intent — it never excuses impact. “I didn’t mean it” is the start of the conversation, not the end of it. Good faith tells you how to respond — kindly, curiously, without contempt — but it doesn’t erase the harm that landed. That’s the whole point of Encounter + Reaction = Outcome: the impact on the person is real regardless of what was intended, and a good leader holds both at once — warm about the intent, clear about the impact.

Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation that fits

Occam’s Razor says: prefer the simplest explanation that fits all the evidence. It’s a brilliant antidote to conspiratorial thinking — to the assumption that a slight was coordinated, that a clumsy decision was a plot, that one bad meeting reveals a grand hidden agenda. Usually the simpler story — someone was rushed, under-informed, or working from an old habit — fits the facts perfectly well.

But there’s an EDI caveat worth naming, because Occam’s Razor can be misused. “Simplest” means simplest explanation that fits all the evidence — not the most comfortable one. It’s tempting to wave away systemic or structural explanations as “too complicated” and reach for an individual one instead. Sometimes, though, the pattern is the explanation: when the same group keeps hitting the same barrier, “lots of unrelated coincidences” is actually the more convoluted story. Occam cuts toward whatever genuinely fits the whole picture — structural causes included.

The Principle of Charity: argue with the best version

The Principle of Charity — sometimes called steelmanning — asks you to interpret what someone says in its strongest, most reasonable form before you respond. Instead of pouncing on the weakest reading of a clumsy sentence, you ask, “what’s the most sensible thing they might mean?” and engage with that. It’s the engine behind agreeing to understand: you can’t genuinely understand someone’s position if you’re busy defeating a caricature of it. Charity isn’t weakness or agreement — it’s the discipline that makes good-faith disagreement possible, and it’s disarming, because people argue far more openly with someone who has clearly understood them first.

Hitchens’s Razor & the Sagan Standard: test the claims

Two more razors help with sweeping assertions. Hitchens’s Razor says: what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. The Sagan Standard adds: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Both are handy when a conversation fills up with confident, unevidenced sweeps — “diversity doesn’t make any difference”, or “it’s all gone too far” — that are stated as fact but rest on nothing in particular. You don’t need to refute a claim that arrived with no support; you can simply, gently, ask what it’s based on.

The harder discipline is turning these razors on your own claims. Inclusion work has its share of over-confident statistics and tidy assertions, and the credible thing — the thing that earns trust in a sceptical room — is to hold our own evidence to the same standard we’d ask of anyone else. If a number can’t survive a fair question, don’t lean your case on it.

The motte-and-bailey: which claim are we actually debating?

Now the trap. A motte-and-bailey takes its name from a medieval castle: a desirable but hard-to-defend courtyard (the bailey) beside a small, fortified mound you can retreat to (the motte). As an argument, it works like this: someone advances a bold, contestable claim — the bailey — and enjoys the ground it wins. When challenged, they retreat to a much safer, almost unarguable claim — the motte — and say, “that’s all I really meant.” Once the challenge passes, they quietly walk back out to the bailey again.

It shows up on every side of these debates, and naming it fairly means seeing it everywhere, not just where it suits you:

• One direction. A specific, harmful remark is defended with “it’s just free speech.” The bailey was the particular thing said; the motte is the unarguable principle that speech matters. Few would attack the principle — but the principle isn’t actually what was in dispute.
• The other direction. A sweeping, over-claimed inclusion statistic is challenged, and the response retreats to “well, we just mean we value difference.” The bailey was the strong causal claim; the motte is the gentle sentiment nobody objects to — but it isn’t the claim that was questioned.

Spotting a motte-and-bailey isn’t about catching people out. It’s about keeping the conversation honest, so a real disagreement doesn’t dissolve into a fog. The move is simply to ask, kindly, “which claim are we actually debating — the strong one or the safe one?” That single question often does more to unstick a stalled conversation than any amount of force.

Using these as a leader

Put together, these tools describe a posture more than a procedure. As a leader you lead with charity and Hanlon — assume good faith, give people the strongest reading, treat the slip as unawareness rather than malice. You still hold impact — good faith shapes the tone, but it never cancels the harm, and the conversation continues until the impact is acknowledged. You test the claims, using Hitchens and Sagan on sweeping assertions, and — crucially — on your own. And when a conversation starts sliding between a bold claim and a safe one, you name the motte-and-bailey gently, not to win, but to keep everyone honest about what’s being argued.

That’s curiosity over correction in practice. These razors only work because they rest on a deeper assumption — that people are, on the whole, inherently good, doing their best with what they know. The tools sharpen the thinking; the warmth keeps it human. Explore the companion guide on the Johari and Overton Windows, or related thinking in courageous conversations, conscious inclusion and getting it wrong gracefully.