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.