Dura lex...
A few "laws" formulated by a few luminaries from http://www.edge.org/q2004/ that I particularly liked, in almost no particular order:
Rupert Sheldrake
Sheldrake's Principle
The "laws" of nature are more like habits.
[Late by a few thousand years, alas. - spamsink]
Eric S. Raymond
Raymond's Law of Consequences
The road to hell has often been paved with good intentions. Therefore, evil is best recognized not by its motives but by its methods.
Nicholas Humphrey
Humphrey's Law of the Efficacy of Prayer
In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not.
[Think about it. - N.H.]
[Boy, do I like it! - spamsink]
John Rennie
Rennie's Law of Evolutionary Biology
The most important environmental influences on any organism are always the other organisms around it.
Corollary to the Law of Evolutionary Biology
Species do not occupy ecological niches; they define them.
Brian Eno
Eno's First Law
Culture is everything we don't have to do
Mike Godwin
Godwin 's Law
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Henry Warwick
Warwick's First Law
Art takes you out of town, and gives you a destination. Science builds the bus that takes you there.
Warwick's Second Law
Art tells the jokes that science insists on explaining.
Adam Bly
Bly's First Law
Science is culture.
Bly's Second Law
High public interest in science without growing public understanding of science is worse than low public interest in science.
David Buss
Buss’s Laws of Human Mating
Buss’s Third Law of Human Mating
For every mating adaptation in one sex, there exists at least one co-evolved adaptation in the other sex designed to manipulate and exploit it.
Buss’s Fourth Law of Human Mating
For every co-evolved exploitative mating adaptation, there exists at least one co-co-evolved defensive adaptation designed to circumvent being manipulated and exploited.
Buss’s Seventh Law of Human Mating
Never reveal your first two laws of mating, lest they be used to manipulate and exploit you.
Tor Nørretranders
Nørretranders' Law of Symmetrical Relief
If you find that most other people, upon closer inspection, seem to be somewhat comical or ludicrous, it is highly probable that most other people find that you are in fact comical or ludicrous. So you don't have to hide it, they already know.
J. Craig Venter
Venter's First Law
Discoveries made in a field by some one from another discipline will always be upsetting to the majority of those inside.
Venter's Second Law
The ability to directly read the genetic code will continue exponentially, with the cost per nucleotide (base pair) decreasing by one-half every two years.
Corollary to Law 2
While DNA sequencing has changed faster than Moore's Law for computer chips, it will become dependent on and therefore limited by Moore's Law. (Based on an exchange with Gordon Moore).
Verena Huber-Dyson
Verena's Law of Sane Reasoning
Hone your Hunches, Jump, then backtrack to blaze a reliable trail to your Conclusion.
But avoid reductions; they lead to mere counterfeits of truth.
Colin Blakemore
Blakemore's First Law
People are never more honest than you think they are.
Blakemore's Second Law
The only form of intelligence that really matters is the capacity to predict.
Michael Shermer
Shermer's Last Law
Any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God.
Shermer's Three Principles of Provisional Morality and Evolutionary Ethic
1. The ask-first principle: to find out whether an action is right or wrong, ask first.
2. The happiness principle: it is a higher moral principle to always seek happiness with someone else's happiness in mind, and never seek happiness when it leads to someone else's unhappiness.
3. The liberty principle: it is a higher moral principle to always seek liberty with someone else's liberty in mind, and never seek liberty when it leads to someone else's loss of liberty.
0. The Zeroeth principle: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Stuart Pimm
Pimm's First Law
No language spoken by fewer than 100,000 people survives contact with the outside world, while no language spoken by more than one million people can be eliminated by such contact.
Pimm's Second Law
With every change in language (including first contact with humanity), a region's biodiversity shrinks by 20%.
John Skoyles
Skoyles' Law of Literacy
A society develops democracy to the degree that it writes social, legal and religious ideas using the syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation of everyday speech, rather than that of a professional, literary or dead language.
Keith Devlin
Devlin's First Law
Buyer beware: in the hands of a charlatan, mathematics can be used to make a vacuous argument look impressive.
Devlin's Second Law
So can PowerPoint.
Marvin Minsky
Minsky's First Law
Words should be your servants, not your masters.
Minsky's Second Law
Don't just do something. Stand there.
Kevin Kelly
Kellys' First Law
Power, understanding, control. Pick any two.
Kellys' Second Law
Nobody is as smart as everybody.
Karl Sabbagh
Sabbagh's First Law
Never assume.
All the mistakes I have made in my life—not that there are that many, of course—have been because I failed to follow my own law.
Sabbagh's Second Law
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred. I think this is the more original and far-reaching of the two laws but I have put it second because it's not really mine. It was said to me by Alan Mulally, an inspiring Boeing manager (and they need inspiring managers at
the moment.)
Douglas Rushkoff
Rushkoff's Law
A religion will increase in social value until a majority of its members actually believe in it—at which point the social damage it causes will increase exponentially as long as it is in existence.
Rushkoff's Law of Media
True communication can only occur between people with equal access to the medium in which the communication is taking place.
Irene Pepperberg
Pepperberg's Law of Comparative Cognition
Any behavior exhibited by young children that is taken as evidence of the early emergence of intelligence will, when subsequently exhibited by nonhumans, be interpreted by many humans as a set of simple stimulus-response associations lacking cognitive processing, whereas the stimulus-response explanation will rarely be used to re-interpret the behavior of the child.
Rupert Sheldrake
Sheldrake's Principle
The "laws" of nature are more like habits.
[Late by a few thousand years, alas. - spamsink]
Eric S. Raymond
Raymond's Law of Consequences
The road to hell has often been paved with good intentions. Therefore, evil is best recognized not by its motives but by its methods.
Nicholas Humphrey
Humphrey's Law of the Efficacy of Prayer
In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not.
[Think about it. - N.H.]
[Boy, do I like it! - spamsink]
John Rennie
Rennie's Law of Evolutionary Biology
The most important environmental influences on any organism are always the other organisms around it.
Corollary to the Law of Evolutionary Biology
Species do not occupy ecological niches; they define them.
Brian Eno
Eno's First Law
Culture is everything we don't have to do
Mike Godwin
Godwin 's Law
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Henry Warwick
Warwick's First Law
Art takes you out of town, and gives you a destination. Science builds the bus that takes you there.
Warwick's Second Law
Art tells the jokes that science insists on explaining.
Adam Bly
Bly's First Law
Science is culture.
Bly's Second Law
High public interest in science without growing public understanding of science is worse than low public interest in science.
David Buss
Buss’s Laws of Human Mating
Buss’s Third Law of Human Mating
For every mating adaptation in one sex, there exists at least one co-evolved adaptation in the other sex designed to manipulate and exploit it.
Buss’s Fourth Law of Human Mating
For every co-evolved exploitative mating adaptation, there exists at least one co-co-evolved defensive adaptation designed to circumvent being manipulated and exploited.
Buss’s Seventh Law of Human Mating
Never reveal your first two laws of mating, lest they be used to manipulate and exploit you.
Tor Nørretranders
Nørretranders' Law of Symmetrical Relief
If you find that most other people, upon closer inspection, seem to be somewhat comical or ludicrous, it is highly probable that most other people find that you are in fact comical or ludicrous. So you don't have to hide it, they already know.
J. Craig Venter
Venter's First Law
Discoveries made in a field by some one from another discipline will always be upsetting to the majority of those inside.
Venter's Second Law
The ability to directly read the genetic code will continue exponentially, with the cost per nucleotide (base pair) decreasing by one-half every two years.
Corollary to Law 2
While DNA sequencing has changed faster than Moore's Law for computer chips, it will become dependent on and therefore limited by Moore's Law. (Based on an exchange with Gordon Moore).
Verena Huber-Dyson
Verena's Law of Sane Reasoning
Hone your Hunches, Jump, then backtrack to blaze a reliable trail to your Conclusion.
But avoid reductions; they lead to mere counterfeits of truth.
Colin Blakemore
Blakemore's First Law
People are never more honest than you think they are.
Blakemore's Second Law
The only form of intelligence that really matters is the capacity to predict.
Michael Shermer
Shermer's Last Law
Any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God.
Shermer's Three Principles of Provisional Morality and Evolutionary Ethic
1. The ask-first principle: to find out whether an action is right or wrong, ask first.
2. The happiness principle: it is a higher moral principle to always seek happiness with someone else's happiness in mind, and never seek happiness when it leads to someone else's unhappiness.
3. The liberty principle: it is a higher moral principle to always seek liberty with someone else's liberty in mind, and never seek liberty when it leads to someone else's loss of liberty.
0. The Zeroeth principle: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Stuart Pimm
Pimm's First Law
No language spoken by fewer than 100,000 people survives contact with the outside world, while no language spoken by more than one million people can be eliminated by such contact.
Pimm's Second Law
With every change in language (including first contact with humanity), a region's biodiversity shrinks by 20%.
John Skoyles
Skoyles' Law of Literacy
A society develops democracy to the degree that it writes social, legal and religious ideas using the syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation of everyday speech, rather than that of a professional, literary or dead language.
Keith Devlin
Devlin's First Law
Buyer beware: in the hands of a charlatan, mathematics can be used to make a vacuous argument look impressive.
Devlin's Second Law
So can PowerPoint.
Marvin Minsky
Minsky's First Law
Words should be your servants, not your masters.
Minsky's Second Law
Don't just do something. Stand there.
Kevin Kelly
Kellys' First Law
Power, understanding, control. Pick any two.
Kellys' Second Law
Nobody is as smart as everybody.
Karl Sabbagh
Sabbagh's First Law
Never assume.
All the mistakes I have made in my life—not that there are that many, of course—have been because I failed to follow my own law.
Sabbagh's Second Law
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred. I think this is the more original and far-reaching of the two laws but I have put it second because it's not really mine. It was said to me by Alan Mulally, an inspiring Boeing manager (and they need inspiring managers at
the moment.)
Douglas Rushkoff
Rushkoff's Law
A religion will increase in social value until a majority of its members actually believe in it—at which point the social damage it causes will increase exponentially as long as it is in existence.
Rushkoff's Law of Media
True communication can only occur between people with equal access to the medium in which the communication is taking place.
Irene Pepperberg
Pepperberg's Law of Comparative Cognition
Any behavior exhibited by young children that is taken as evidence of the early emergence of intelligence will, when subsequently exhibited by nonhumans, be interpreted by many humans as a set of simple stimulus-response associations lacking cognitive processing, whereas the stimulus-response explanation will rarely be used to re-interpret the behavior of the child.