Hypothesis B: it's not dangerously naïve, it's deliberate misinformation designed to coax technical but unskeptical people into lowering their guard against this class of threat.
If ((Assume it's stupidity) == (discount/ignore the risk)), then assuming it's stupidity is never the safer assumption, even if it's empirically more likely to be the correct assumption, no?
All boils down to an individual's threat model at the end of the day anyway, though.
The practice of assessing whether a tempting evaluation of "malice" can instead cover evidence of structural faults is part of the effort towards seeing things as they are. And keeps you away from paranoia.
The notion that paranoia is the default emergent state of not assuming incompetence when potential malicious incentives can be easily articulated is just yet another ideological presupposition.
That part about paranoia was a half-joke. But no, it was not suggested (that was not a «notion») that paranoia would be a «default emergent state». It is tough a temptation of many.
And while you will often be able to identify «potential malicious incentives», you have to put those possibilities together with the rest of those which can complete the set.
Assessments must be complete.
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Edit: oh, by the way, importantly: paranoia ("off-thought") means "delusionality", and in that sense the statement «And keeps you away from paranoia» was literal. "Be "cool" and exhaustive in assessment, and you will avoid getting stuck in alluring stories". The half joke was about the current use of the term (in the popular interpretation of the clinical state).
Malice is not falsifiable: anything could always just be another trick. So unless you want to end up believing everything is malice, it’s best to start with the benign explanations, until you’re sure they don’t fit.
"Stupidity" (term picked after Cipolla) is not a benign explanation. The entity stuck in the ice of Cocitus, at the bottom of hell, in Dante Alighieri's Commedia, is an apex of impotence.
But yes, it is an interesting proposal (perspective) to "resist from tempting explanation and picking the less attractive first" - just like the grit in delayed gratification.