| Name | Law | Examples/Explanations |
|---|---|---|
| Betteridge’s Law of Headlines | Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no.” | If the journalist had proof, they wouldn’t need to ask. |
| Brandolini’s Law | The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. | Gish Gallop; Steve Bannon “flooding the zone with shit”; Tucker Carlson |
| Cunningham’s Law | The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer. | People love correcting others more than helping them. |
| The Dilbert Principle | Companies promote their least competent employees to management to minimize the damage they can do. | Unlike the Peter Principle, this suggests incompetence is rewarded with power. |
| Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect | You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see it’s wildly wrong on facts or issues. But you read the rest of the paper as if it were accurate. | Do you really need an example? |
| Givens’ Observation | If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole. | Agencies, Military leaders, etc. who disagree with Trump are all “losers” |
| Godwin’s Law | As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1. | Bonus points if someone declares the conversation over once Hitler is mentioned. |
| Godwin’s Law Corollary | The first person to mention Hitler automatically loses the argument, regardless of context. | … because they’ve obviously run out of actual arguments. |
| Hanlon’s Razor | Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. | Most screw-ups are just incompetence, not conspiracy. (Like the time I was an Orderly and didn’t notice at the end of a shift that a patient had soiled himself and needed a cleanup.) |
| Hofstadter’s Law | It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law. | |
| Iron Law of Institutions | Those in control of institutions prioritize maintaining their power within the institution above all else, even the institution’s success. | From political blogger Jon Schwarz |
| Murphy’s Law | Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. | And it’ll happen at the worst possible moment. |
| Occam’s Razor | The simplest explanation is usually correct. | But humans love complicated conspiracy theories instead. |
| The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) | 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. 80% of your problems come from 20% of your customers, 80% of your work gets done in 20% of your time, etc. | |
| Parkinson’s Law | Work expands to fill the time available. | Give someone a week to do a task, and they’ll somehow need the full week. |
| Poe’s Law | Without clear indicators like emoticons, it’s impossible to distinguish extreme views from parodies of those views in online text. | |
| Rule 34 | If something exists, there’s inappropriate internet content about it. | |
| The Streisand Effect | Attempting to hide or censor information only makes it spread more widely. | Named after Barbra Streisand’s failed attempt to suppress photos of her house. |
| Sturgeon’s Law | Ninety percent of everything is crap. | Named after science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who was defending his genre against critics. |
| Wadsworth Constant | The actual content of any YouTube video begins at the 30% mark. | Everything before that is fluff. |
I plan to update this from time-to-time as more wry observations come to my attention again.