Acton’s dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men […]”
Amara’s law states that, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” Named after Roy Amara(1925–2007).
Amdahl’s law is used to find out the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only a part of it is improved. Named after Gene Amdahl (1922–2015).
Ashby’s law of requisite variety, that the number of states of its control mechanism must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled.
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
The Asimov corollary to Parkinson’s law: In ten hours a day you have time to fall twice as far behind your commitments as in five hours a day.
Atwood’s law: Any software that can be written in JavaScript will eventually be written in JavaScript.
Beckstrom’s law, in economics, states that the value of a network equals the net value added to each user’s transactions conducted through that network, summed over all users. Named for Rod Beckstrom.
Benford’s law: In any collection of statistics, a given statistic has roughly a 30% chance of starting with the digit 1.
Brandolini’s law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. Named after Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini.
Campbell’s law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”[1] Named after Donald T. Campbell (1916–1996)
Cheops law: “Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.”
Claasen’s law, or the logarithmic law of usefulness: usefulness = log(technology).
First law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Conway’s law: Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it. Named after Melvin Conway.
Doctorow’s law: “Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn’t give you the key, they’re not doing it for your benefit.”
Gérson’s law: “An advantage should be taken in every situation, regardless of ethics.”
Gibrat’s law: “The size of a firm and its growth rate are independent.”
Gibson’s law: “For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD.”
Godwin’s law, an adage in Internet culture: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Coined by Mike Godwin in 1990.
Goodhart’s law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Greenspun’s tenth rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp; coined by Philip Greenspun.
Hick’s law, in psychology, describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a function of the number of possible choices.
Hickam’s dictum, in medicine, is commonly stated as “Patients can have as many diseases as they damn well please” and is a counterargument to the use of Occam’s razor.
Humphrey’s law: conscious attention to a task normally performed automatically can impair its performance. Described by psychologist George Humphrey in 1923.
Joy’s law in management: the principle that “no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,” attributed to Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy
Little’s law, in queuing theory: “The average number of customers in a stable system (over some time interval) is equal to their average arrival rate, multiplied by their average time in the system.” The law was named for John Little from results of experiments in 1961.
Littlewood’s law: individuals can expect miracles to happen to them, at the rate of about one per month. Coined by Professor J E Littlewood, (1885–1977).
Maes–Garreau law: most favorable predictions about future technology will fall around latest possible date they can come true and still remain in the lifetime of the person making the prediction.
Mendel’s laws are named for the 19th century Austrian monk Gregor Mendel who determined the patterns of inheritance through his plant breeding experiments, working especially with peas. Mendel’s first law, or the law of segregation, states that each organism has a pair of genes; that it inherits one from each parent, and that the organism will pass down only one of these genes to its own offspring. These different copies of the same gene are called alleles. Mendel’s second law, the law of independent assortment, states that different traits will be inherited independently by the offspring.
Miller’s law, in communication: “To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.” Named after George Armitage Miller.
O’Sullivan’s first law, in politics: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”
Papert’s principle: “Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.”
Parkinson’s law: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Corollary: “Expenditure rises to meet income.” Coined by C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993).
Peter principle: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) in his book The Peter Principle. In his follow-up book, The Peter Prescription, he offered possible solutions to the problems his principle could cause.
Poe’s law (fundamentalism): “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.”[5] Although it originally referred to creationism, the scope later widened to any form of extremism or fundamentalism.[6]
Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy: “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”
Price’s law (Price’s square root law) indicates that the square root of the number of all authors contribute half the publications in a given subject.
Putt’s law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand.
Putt’s corollary: Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion.
Ribot’s law: In amnesia, more recent memories are most affected.
Rothbard’s law: Everyone specializes in his own area of weakness.
Sayre’s law: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue.” By way of corollary, the law adds: “That is why academic politics are so bitter.”
Schneier’s law: “Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can’t think of how to break it.”
Segal’s law: “A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”
Shirky principle: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
Sod’s law states: “if something can go wrong, it will”.
Sowa‘s law of standards: “Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X.”[11]
Stein’s law: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. If a trend cannot go on forever, there is no need for action or a program to make it stop, much less to make it stop immediately; it will stop of its own accord.
Streisand effect: Any attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely.
Sturgeon’s law: “Ninety percent of everything is crud.” Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985).
Sutton’s law: “Go where the money is.” Often cited in medical schools to teach new doctors to spend resources where they are most likely to pay off. The law is named after bank robber Willie Sutton, who when asked why he robbed banks, is claimed to have answered “Because that’s where the money is.”
Teeter’s law: “The language of the family you know best always turns out to be the most archaic.” A wry observation about the biases of historical linguists, explaining how different investigators can arrive at radically divergent conceptions of the proto-language of a family. Named after the American linguist Karl V. Teeter.
Van Loon’s law: “The amount of mechanical development will always be in inverse ratio to the number of slaves that happen to be at a country’s disposal.” Named for Hendrik Willem van Loon.
Wirth’s law: Software gets slower more quickly than hardware gets faster.
Yao’s principle, in computational complexity theory: the expected cost of any randomized algorithm for solving a given problem, on the worst case input for that algorithm, can be no better than the expected cost, for a worst-case random probability distribution on the inputs, of the deterministic algorithm that performs best against that distribution. Named for Andrew Yao.
