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dozens edited this page Oct 3, 2024 · 9 revisions

LAWS

there are lots of laws, razors, and adages out there in the world. here are a few.

  1. Betteridge's Law
  2. Brandolini's Law
  3. Chesterton's Law
  4. Conway's Law
  5. Cunningham's Law
  6. Godwin's Law
  7. Goodhart's Law
  8. Greenspun's 10th law
  9. Hanlon's Razor
  10. Hyrum's Law
  11. Lindy's Law
  12. Moore's Law
  13. Murphy's Law
  14. Pareto Principle
  15. Peter Principal
  16. Poe's Law
  17. Postel's Law
  18. Stein's Law
  19. Sturgeon's Law
  20. Zawinski's Law

Betteridge's Law

Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

Brandolini's Law

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. Also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle

Chesterton's Law

Never tear down a fence gate until you know what it is for.

Conway's Law

Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.

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. Also, from the French: preach the falsehood to know the truth

Godwin's Law

As an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.

Goodhart's Law

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Greenspun's 10th law

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp

Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Hyrum's Law

With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody.

Lindy's Law

The future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age.

Moore's Law

The number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years.

Murphy's Law

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. (And at the worst possible time.)

Pareto Principle

Roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes

Peter Principal

People in a hierarchy tend to rise to a level of respective incompetence

Poe's Law

Any parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.

Postel's Law

Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept.

Stein's Law

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

Sturgeon's Law

Ninety percent of everything is crap

Zawinski's Law

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

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