99 Eponymous Laws

List of Cognitive Biases and Laws

1. Maslow hammer: a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool.
2. Murphy Law (Finagle Law, Sod Law): Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
3. Parkinson's Law: The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource (If the price is zero).
4. Sturgeon Law: asserts that 90% of everything is crud.
5. Occam Razor: states that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
6. Hanlon Razor: suggests that one should not attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
7. Pareto Principle: also known as the 80/20 rule, states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
8. Peter principal: states that employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence within an organizational hierarchy.
9. Putts Law: states that 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.
10. Dilbert principle: states that incompetence is rewarded to sustain the status quo.
11. Shirky principle: suggests that institutions' resistance to change is directly proportional to the importance of the information they preserve.
12. Goodhart Law: states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
13. Campbell law: states that the more any quantitative social indicator is used for decision-making, the more it will distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
14. McNamara Fallacy: is the error of prioritizing easily measurable quantitative data while dismissing critical qualitative factors in decision-making
15. Dunbar Number: suggests that there is a cognitive limit to the number of stable social relationships a person can maintain, typically around 150.
16. Parrondo's Paradox: is a counterintuitive phenomenon where two losing strategies can combine to create a winning outcome.
17. Hottelling Law: also known as spatial competition, states that competitors in a market tend to locate close to each other to maximize their market share.
18. Cheop Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
19. Lindy Effect: suggests that the life expectancy of a non-perishable cultural artifact is proportional to its current age.
20. Conway Law: states that the design of a system reflects the communication structure of the organization that built it.
21. Hicks Law: states that the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number of choices or stimuli presented.
22. Fitts Law: states that the time required to reach a target with a pointing device is influenced by the distance to the target and its size.
23. Jakob’s Law: states that users spend most of their time on other websites, so web designs should align with established conventions to enhance usability.
24. Miller Law: also known as Miller's magic number, states that the average human working memory can hold around seven (plus or minus two) chunks of information.
25. Tesler Law: that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced.
26. Zeigarnik Effect: states that unfinished tasks or interrupted actions create a stronger memory and mental tension compared to completed tasks.
27. Claasen Law: Usefulness = log(Technology).
28. Brook Law: states that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later.
29. Gall Law: that a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
30. Hamilton's law: Relatedness(proportion of shared genes) * Benefits (How many more offsprings are produced > Cost to the altruist).
31. Pygmalion Galatea effect: suggests that higher expectations placed upon individuals can lead to improved performance and achievement.
32. Westermarck effect: is a psychological hypothesis stating that people who live closely together during early childhood develop sexual disinterest towards each other
33. Rashomon effect: refers to the subjectivity and multiple interpretations of an event or story, each differing based on the perspective of the individuals involved.
34. Mandela effect: is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event or detail differently from the documented evidence.
35. Diderot effect: refers to the tendency for a newly acquired item to create a spiral of consumption, leading to a need for further purchases to complement it.
36. Chesterton Fence: advises against removing or altering something without first understanding its purpose.
37. Barnum Effect: is the psychological phenomenon where individuals perceive vague, general personality descriptions as uniquely accurate to themselves despite their universal applicability.
38. Betteridge Law of headlines: states that any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with 'no'.
39. Briffault Law: suggests that the influence of a woman in a romantic relationship is determined by her current and anticipated future contribution.
40. Cunningham law: states that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
41. Doctorow Law: Any time 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.
42. Duverger Law: states that plurality rule electoral systems tend to lead to a two-party system.
43. Dunnigham Kruger effect: is a cognitive bias where incompetent individuals overestimate their abilities, while highly competent individuals may underestimate their abilities.
44. Gibrat Law: known as the law of proportionate effect, states that the growth rate of a firm is independent of its initial size.
45. Gerson Law: one should take unfair advantage out of every possible situation, having no concern for ethics.
46. Godwin Law: states that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1.
47. Gresham Law: states that bad or debased currency tends to drive out good currency from circulation.
48. Hitchens Razor: states that what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
49. Humphreys Law: once a task has become automatized, conscious thought about the task, while performing it, impairs performance.
50. Hofstadter Law: states that tasks always take longer than expected, even when accounting for Hofstadter's law.
51. Hutber Law: improvement means deterioration.
52. Jevon Paradox: states that improvements in resource efficiency can lead to increased overall consumption of that resource.
53. Joy’s Laws: no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.
54. Kranzberg law of technology: states that technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral; its impacts are shaped by social, political, and cultural factors.
55. Lamark Theory of Evolution: suggests that acquired traits can be inherited, leading to species' adaptations over time.
56. Lanchestor law: states that the combat power of a force is proportional to the square of its numerical strength.
57. Lems Law: No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets.
58. Muphry Law: states that any criticism of writing or editing will inevitably contain errors itself.
59. Alder's Razor: Adler's razor, or the principle of economy, suggests that the simplest explanation or solution is often the most likely.
60. Conquest's second law/O'Sullivan's First Law: states that any organization or individual that is not explicitly right-wing will eventually become left-wing over time.
61. Papert 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.
62. Peltzman Effect: suggests that individuals may engage in riskier behavior when they perceive increased safety measures, offsetting some of the intended safety benefits.
63. Postel Law: also known as the robustness principle, advises software to be liberal in what it accepts and conservative in what it sends, promoting interoperability and error tolerance.
64. Premack Principle: states that a preferred activity can serve as a motivator to perform a less preferred activity.
65. Reily Law of Retail Gravitation: states that consumers are attracted to larger retail centers, which have a greater pull due to their size, accessibility, and variety of offerings.
66. Rothbard Law: People tend to specialise in what they're worst at.
67. Russell's Teapot: is a philosophical analogy highlighting the burden of proof on those making unfalsifiable claims.
68. Ramsey Problem: to decide exactly how much to raise each product's price above its marginal cost so the firm's revenue equals its total cost.
69. Sayre Law: states that in any dispute, the intensity of the dispute is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue.
70. Segal Laws: A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
71. Steins Law: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
72. Stiglers Law: states that scientific discoveries or concepts are rarely named after their original discoverer.
73. Streisand Law: refers to the phenomenon where attempting to suppress or censor information inadvertently draws more attention to it, leading to greater publicity.
74. Sutton Law: in medical decision-making, one should prioritize the most likely diagnosis based on common patterns or conditions.
75. Toblers first Law of geography: states that 'everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things,' emphasizing the principle of spatial autocorrelation.
76. Teeters law: language of the family you know best always turns out to be the most archaic.
77. Twyman law: Any figure that looks interesting or different is usually wrong.
78. Tullock paradox: highlights the concept that rational individuals have limited incentive to expend significant effort in political activities due to the low likelihood of influencing outcomes.
79. Van Loons 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.
80. Verdoorns Law: there is a positive relationship between productivity growth and output growth, suggesting that increased output leads to higher productivity.
81. Veirordts Law: a robust phenomenon in time estimation research that has been observed with different time estimation methods.
82. Wiio's Law: states that communication usually fails, except by accident.
83. Wirths Law: states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster, highlighting the disparity between software efficiency and hardware advancements.
84. Zawinski Law: states that every program expands until it can send email, reflecting the tendency for software to continually add features and complexity.
85. Acton's Law: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
86. Linus's Law: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
87. Hume’s Guillotine: arises when one makes claims about what ought to be that are based solely on statements about what is.
88. Walson's Law: If you prioritize knowledge and intelligence, money will follow.
89. Falkland's Law: If you don't have to make a decision, don't make one.
90. Kidlin's Law: If you write the problem down clearly, then the matter is half solved.
91. Gilbert's Law: The biggest problem in work is that no one tells you what to do.
92. Baader-Meinhof's Effect: The illusion that a topic or word that recently came to your attention seems to occur more frequently afterward.
93. Ishikawa Diagram: A visual tool that shows potential causes of a problem, resembling a fishbone with the main issue at the head and causal factors branching off as "bones.”
94. Eisenhower Matrix: A time management tool that prioritizes tasks based on their urgency and importance, dividing them into four quadrants: do first, schedule, delegate, and eliminate.
95. Socrates Method: A form of cooperative dialogue based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking, challenge assumptions, and uncover presuppositions.
96. Hegelian Dialectic: A philosophical concept describing the development of ideas through a process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or more accurately, through the stages of abstract, negative, and concrete.
97. Asimov's Three Laws:
    • First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
    • Second Law: A robot must obey orders given by human beings, except where such orders conflict with the First Law.
    • Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
98. Clarke's Three Laws:
    • 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.
99. Münchhausen Trilemma: A thought experiment demonstrating the theoretical impossibility of proving any truth without relying on accepted assumptions. It presents three unsatisfactory options for completing a proof:
    • Circular argument: The proof of a proposition presupposes its own truth.
    • Regressive argument: Each proof requires further proof, leading to infinite regress.
    • Dogmatic argument: Relying on accepted precepts that are merely asserted rather than defended.