This List is amazing.
Unfortunately a lot of the things it has don't come up in non-scientific, regular conversation, (whereas the others apply to many situations). Here are over 100 of the ones I find interesting. The ones I find especially useful are in bold.
Note that these are not necessarily things I believe, nor am I suggesting that you believe them.
Just as using fallacies doesn't automatically invalidate an argument, these heuristics and lines of thought don't automatically "prove" or "win" an argument.
They are just common things that other people say and may believe.
- Alder's razor: See Newton's flaming laser sword below.
- 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).
- Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics formulated by Isaac Asimov:
- 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.
- Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon(Frequency illusion): The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias).[40] This illusion may explain some examples of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, when someone repeatedly notices a newly learned word or phrase shortly after learning it.
- Benford's law: In any collection of statistics, a given statistic has roughly a 30% chance of starting with the digit 1.
- Benford's law of controversy: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.
- Bergmann's rule: within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, and species of smaller size are found in warmer regions.
- Betteridge's law of headlines: "any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".
- Bradford's law is a pattern described by Samuel C. Bradford in 1934 that estimates the exponentially diminishing returns of extending a library search.
- 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.
- Briffault's Law: "The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place." Named after Robert Briffault.
- Brooks' law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." Named after Fred Brooks, author of the well known book on project management The Mythical Man-Month.
- 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)
- Claasen's law, or the logarithmic law of usefulness: usefulness = log(technology).
- Clarke's three laws, formulated by Arthur C. Clarke. Several corollaries to these laws have also been proposed.
- 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.
- Cope's rule: Population lineages tend to increase in body size over evolutionary time.
- Cunningham's law: The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer. Attributed to Ward Cunningham by Steven McGeady.
- Dilbert principle: "the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management." Coined by Scott Adams as a variation of the Peter Principle of employee advancement; named after Adams' Dilbert comic strip.
- 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."
- Dollo's law: "An organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors." Simply put this law states that evolution is not reversible.
- Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150. First proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar.
- Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.
- Duverger's law: Winner-take-all (or first-past-the-post) electoral systems tend to create a 2 party system, while proportional representation tends to create a multiple party system. Named for Maurice Duverger.
- Engelbart's Law: "The intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential."
- Eroom's law, the observation that drug discovery is becoming slower and more expensive over time, despite improvements in technology. The name "Eroom" is "Moore" spelled backward, in order to contrast it with Moore's law.
- Finagle's law, related to Murphy's Law, states "Anything that can go wrong, will – at the worst possible time."
- Fitts's law is a principle of human movement published in 1954 by Paul Fitts which predicts the time required to move from a starting position to a final target area. Fitts's law is used to model the act of pointing, both in the real world, e.g. with a hand or finger, and on a computer, e.g. with a mouse.
- Gall's law: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."
- Gause's law, in ecology, the competitive exclusion principle: "complete competitors cannot coexist."
- 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.
- Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality: the death rate is the sum of an age-independent component and an age-dependent component.
- 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.
- Grosch's law: the economic value of computation increases with the square root of the increase in speed; that is, to do a calculation 10 times as cheaply you must do it 100 times as fast. Stated by Herb Grosch in 1965.
- Gustafson's law (also known as Gustafson–Barsis's law) in computer engineering: any sufficiently large problem can be efficiently parallelized. Coined by John Gustafson in 1988.
- Haber's rule is a mathematical statement relating the concentration of a poisonous gas and how long it must be breathed to result in death.
- Hanlon's razor is a corollary of Finagle's law, named in allusion to Occam's razor, normally taking the form "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." As with Finagle, possibly not strictly eponymous. Alternatively, "Do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence."
- Hauser's law is an empirical observation about U.S. tax receipts as a percentage of GDP, theorized to be a natural equilibrium.
- Hebb's law: "Neurons that fire together wire together."
- Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle: one cannot measure values (with arbitrary precision) of certain conjugate quantities, which are pairs of observables of a single elementary particle. The most familiar of these pairs is position and momentum.
- Herblock's law: "If it's good, they'll stop making it." Possibly coined by Herbert Lawrence Block, whose pen name was Herblock.
- 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.
- Hitchens's razor is an epistemological principle maintaining that the burden of evidence in a debate rests on the claim-maker, and that the opponent can dismiss the claim if this burden is not met: "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
- Hofstadter's law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law" (Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach, 1979).
- Hotelling's law in economics: Under some conditions, it is rational for competitors to make their products as nearly identical as possible.
- Hume's law, in meta-ethics: normative statements cannot be deduced exclusively from descriptive statements.
- Humphrey's law: conscious attention to a task normally performed automatically can impair its performance. Described by psychologist George Humphrey in 1923.
- Hutber's law: "Improvement means deterioration." Coined by financial journalist Patrick Hutber.
- Isaac Bonewits's laws of magic are synthesized from a multitude of belief systems from around the world, collected in order to explain and categorize magical beliefs within a cohesive framework.
- Kerckhoffs's principle of secure cryptography: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public.
- Koomey's law: the energy of computation is halved every year and a half.
- Korte's law: The greater the length of a path between two successively presented stimuli, the greater the stimulus onset asynchrony must be for an observer to perceive the two stimuli as a single moving object.
- Kranzberg's laws of technology: The first law states that technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
- Lamarck's theory of evolution has two laws: The first can be paraphrased as "use it or lose it." The second is the more famous law of soft inheritance.
- Lanchester's laws are formulae for calculating the relative strengths of predator/prey pair and application in military conflict.
- Leibniz's law is a principle in metaphysics also known as the Identity of Indiscernibles. It states: "If two objects have all their properties in common, then they are one and the same object."
- Lewis's law: The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.
- Liebig's law of the minimum: The growth or distribution of a plant is dependent on the one environmental factor most critically in demand.
- Linus' law: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Named for Linus Torvalds.
- 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).
- Lotka's law, in infometrics: the number of authors publishing a certain number of articles is a fixed ratio to the number of authors publishing a single article. As the number of articles published increases, authors producing that many publications become less frequent. For example, there may be 1/4 as many authors publishing two articles within a specified time period as there are single-publication authors, 1/9 as many publishing three articles, 1/16 as many publishing four articles, etc. Though the law itself covers many disciplines, the actual ratios involved are very discipline-specific.
- 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.
- Malthusian growth model, also referred to as the Malthusian law or simple exponential growth model, is exponential growth based on a constant rate. The model is named after Thomas Robert Malthus, who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), one of the earliest and most influential books on population.
- Metcalfe's law, in communications and network theory: the value of a system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system. Framed by Robert Metcalfe in the context of ethernet.
- 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.
- In psychology: the number of objects an average person can hold in working memory is about seven. Also named after George Miller.
- In software development: "All discussions of incremental updates to Bugzilla will eventually trend towards proposals for large scale redesigns or feature additions or replacements for Bugzilla." Named after Dave Miller.
- Mooers' law: "An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it." An empirical observation made by American computer scientist Calvin Mooers in 1959.
- Moore's law is an empirical observation stating that the complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 24 months. Outlined in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corporation.
- Muphry's law: "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." The editorial equivalent of Murphy's law, according to John Bangsund.
- Mrs. Murphy's Law: ". . while Murphy is out of town."
- Murphy's law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." Ascribed to Edward A. Murphy, Jr.
- Naismith's rule is a rule of thumb that helps in the planning of a walking or hiking expedition by calculating how long it will take to walk the route, including ascents.
- Neuhaus's law: Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed. This "law" had been expressed earlier. For example, Charles Porterfield Krauth wrote in his The Conservative Reformation: "Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points."
- Newton's flaming laser sword, also known as Alder's razor: What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.
- Newton's laws of motion, in physics, are three scientific laws concerning the behaviour of moving bodies, which are fundamental to classical mechanics (and since Einstein, which are valid only within inertial reference frames). Discovered and stated by Isaac Newton (1643–1727), they can be formulated, in modern terms, as follows:
- First law: "A body remains at rest, or keeps moving in a straight line (at a constant velocity), unless acted upon by a net outside force."
- Second law: "The acceleration of an object of constant mass is proportional to the net force acting upon it."
- Third law: "Whenever one body exerts a force upon a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force upon the first body."
- Niven's laws: "If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe."
- Occam's razor: explanations should never multiply causes without necessity. ("Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.") When two or more explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable. Named after William of Ockham (ca.1285–1349).
- Orgel's rules, in evolutionary biology, are a set of axioms attributed to the evolutionary biologist Leslie Orgel:
- First rule: "Whenever a spontaneous process is too slow or too inefficient a protein will evolve to speed it up or make it more efficient."
- Second rule: "Evolution is cleverer than you are."
- 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."
- Pareto principle: for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. Named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, but framed by management thinker Joseph M. Juran.
- 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).
- Parkinson's law of triviality (aka. "Bikeshedding"): "The time spent on any agenda item will be in inverse proportion to the sum of money involved." Also due to C. Northcote Parkinson.
- 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 (religious fundamentalism): "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing."[2] It is named after Nathan Poe who formulated it on the website Christian Forums in 2005.[3] Although it originally referred to creationism, the scope later widened to religious fundamentalism.[4]
- Postel's law (Robustness Principle): Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others. Derived from RFC 761 (Transmission Control Protocol, 1980) in which Jon Postel summarized earlier communications of desired interoperability criteria for the Internet Protocol (cf. IEN 111)[5]
- Premack's principle: More probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors. Named by David Premack (1925 – )
- Reed's law: the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network. Asserted by David P. Reed.
- Reilly's law of retail gravitation: People generally patronize the largest mall in the area.
- Ribot's law: In amnesia, more recent memories are most affected.
- Roemer's law: A hospital bed built is a bed filled.
- Rosenthal effect, also known as the Pygmalion effect: Higher expectations lead to an increase in performance, or low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.
- Rothbard's law: Everyone specializes in his own area of weakness.
- Sarnoff's law: The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers.
- Say's law, attributed to economist Jean-Baptiste Say by economist John Maynard Keynes: "supply creates its own demand", i.e., if businesses produce more output in a free market economy, the wages and other payment for productive inputs will provide sufficient demand so that there is no general glut.[6]
- Sayre's law ("bikeshedding" again): "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."
- Shermer's last law: "Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God".[7] This is a corollary to Clarke's third law.
- Shirky principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
- Smeed's law is an empirical rule relating traffic fatalities to traffic congestion as measured by the proxy of motor vehicle registrations and country population. After R. J. Smeed.[8]
- 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."[9]
- 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.
- Stigler's law: No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. Named by statistician Stephen Stigler who attributes it to sociologist Robert K. Merton, making the law self-referential.
- 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."
- Swanson's law: solar cell prices fall 20% for every doubling of solar cell industry manufacturing capacity. The law is named after SunPower Corporation founder Dr. Richard Swanson.
- Tobler's first law of geography: "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." Coined by Waldo R. Tobler (b. 1930).
- 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.
- Vierordt's law, states that, retrospectively, "short" intervals of time tend to be overestimated, and "long" intervals of time tend to be underestimated. Named after German physician Karl von Vierordt.
- Wiio's laws: The fundamental Wiio's law states that "Communication usually fails, except by accident".
- Wirth's law: Software gets slower more quickly than hardware gets faster.
- Zawinski's law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot expand are replaced by ones which can.
- Zipf's law, in linguistics, is the observation that the frequency of use of the nth-most-frequently-used word in any natural language is approximately inversely proportional to n, or, more simply, that a few words are used very often, but many or most are used rarely. Named after George Kingsley Zipf (1902–1950), whose statistical body of research led to the observation. More generally, the term Zipf's law refers to the probability distributions involved, which is applied by statisticians not only to linguistics but also to fields remote from that. See also Zipf–Mandelbrot law.