Interesting Laws

A collection of laws and/or observations that I think are fun. A lot of these have been collected while scrolling Hacker News or other social media sites. There’s something about building up a personal collection of mental models that I find to be satisfying! 😅

• Arthur C. Clarke: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
• 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.
• Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
• Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
• 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.
• Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
• 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.”
• Peter Principle: People in hierarchies will rise to the point of incompetence.
• Sagan Standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
• Schneier’s Law: Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can’t think of how to break it.
• The Law of the Instrument: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If you’re interested in collecting more of these for yourself, definitely check out the Wikipedia page List of eponymous laws.