Hanlon's razor

Our chickens are pretty much free range, because it would really be a lot of work to fix all the holes in their fence, and they do complain a lot when they're stuck inside. Even on the nicer days in winter they like to strut their stuff, pecking at the gravel up and down the drive although we think they might also have a hankering after the ice worms since we have overheard their tiny iPods playing Jenny Omnichord's “When the ice worms nest again.” Yes, they are a tad concerned with the environment, and have been seen blockading the logging trucks barrelling down the road past the end of the drive.

Now those assiduous truckers consider this as a bit of animosity, on the part of our chickens' ecological leanings of course, as they always have to keep a watchful eye out for these unorganized demonstrators as chicken feathers tend to plug up their radiators quite effectively. We have had many bracing conversations with these drivers regarding these capricious incidents, and try to persuade them that they should not attribute malice on the part of our chickens to that which can adequately be explained by their stupidity, always out of hearing of our sensitive chickens ears of course. Even Charles Darwin surmised that ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. And all this doesn't even begin to beg the question of why our chickens are on the road. It probably never even crosses these truckers minds that our chickens may simply have environmental concerns and would be very willing to discuss the consequences of clear cutting on their more wild cousins, and may then listen to the insight that becoming flattened against overpowering forces is only survivable in cartoon format.

Musing over Dunning and Kruger who were awarded the 2000 satirical Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology for their paper, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," we found scientific proof of our conjectures. The Ig Nobel awards come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.

Now this is scientific proof of Hanlon's razor, which stipulates you should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. We have therefore implemented a truck driving course for our chickens, to enhance their metacognitive ability so that they may at least recognize their ineptitude and stay out of harms way, environmental concerns of course notwithstanding, whether they get hired on as truckers or not. Yes, higher learning affords many benefits beyond degree-ocracy, that emergence of a new kind of social status, a modern day version of aristocracy based not on a chicken’s heritage but on their level of academic achievements. Our poor coddled chickens, trapped into social darwinism more and more by the hour.

Now you keep that pot covered, eh.