# List of universal laws and axioms

These are philosophical rules other people have discovered, paraphrased into the simplest possible language I could make them into.

It's worth noting that I've broadened the ideas when possible. It's also worth noting that many philosophical laws didn't make this list because they don't create patterns across many domains, such as most scientific and linguistic rules.

I've grouped them starting with where the law starts coming into effect, progressing from inanimate objects, through individual perception, upwards into large groups.

I've separated the [technology-specific axioms](lawsaxioms-tech.md).

## Physical Objects

Archimedes' Principle / Avogadro's Law - Physical things, all things being equal, take up the same space.

Chesterton's Fence - Making changes without understanding the reasoning behind the present condition is a terrible idea.

Clarke's Second Law - Knowing how far things are possible requires venturing a little into the impossible.

Newton's Law of Cooling - Things change proportionally the difference between the two things.

De Morgan's Laws - When at least one of two things aren't, they aren't when put together. When both of something isn't, one of them certainly isn't.

Emmert's Law - Things that are the same size appear to be different sizes when they're at different distances.

Faraday's Law of Electrolysis - The new mass made on an electrode is proportional to the electric current run through it.

Faraday's Law of Induction - A changing magnetic field creates a proportional amount of electricity.

Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection - Living things adapt proportionally to their environment based on the variety of what they have.

Grassman's Law/Abney's Law - Each visible color is a precise combination of various colors.

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - Many things operate in pairs, where measuring one of them makes another measurement impossible.

Hess' Law - Chemical reactions create the same results, no matter how many steps you take.

Kirchhoff's Three Laws of Spectroscopy - If a solid, liquid, and gas emit light, it'll cover the entire light spectrum. A gas will only emit certain light wave frequencies, and will absorb certain light wave frequencies.

Kopp's Law - Physically, the whole is *precisely* the sum of its parts.

Mendel's Second Law - New things are always a remix of old things.

Newton's First Law of Motion - Things stay the same or keep moving until something else affects them.

Newton's Third Law of Motion - If something exerts a force on something else, that thing in turn responds with the same amount of opposite force.

Oddo-Harkins Rule - Elements with an even atomic number are more common than with an odd one.

Ohm's Acoustic Law - People perceive in harmonized blocks, not with individual data.

Square-Cube Law - When something scales proportionally in surface area, it scales exponentially in volume.

Third Law of Thermodynamics - Chaos is easier to predict as activity ceases.

Wiedemann-Franz Law - The heat and electricity through a metal is proportional to its temperature.

Wolff's Law - Structures adapt to pressure, or lack of it.

## Brain/Psychology

Adversity Paradox - We don't seek hardship, but we find [meaning](meaning.md) through overcoming it.

Law of Common Region - Elements are perceived as groups if they share a clearly defined boundary.

Gossen's First Law/Marginal Utility Law - Adding 1 more thing is less pleasure/pain than the previous thing.

Hebb's Law - Neurons that fire at the same time make and strengthen links, or weaken if only one of them fires.

Korte's Third Law of Apparent Motion - The more distant two things are, the more out-of-sync someone's perception has to be for them to look like they're the same.

Law of Prägnanz - Since it takes the least amount of effort, people will distill things into the simplest form possible.

Law of Proximity - Elements tend to get grouped when they're near each other.

Segal's Law - More information always creates uncertainty.

Law of Similarity - Even when they're separated, people tend to observe similar elements as a complete picture, shape, or group.

Law of Uniform Connectedness - People see visually connected elements as more related than elements with no connection.

Vierordt's Law - We tend to overestimate relatively short amounts of time and underestimate relatively long amounts of time.

## Thoughts/Understanding

Basket Case Theory - Everyone, no matter [how good they look](image.md), is screwed up.

Bellisario's Maxim - Every [creation](creations.md) has elements the creator overlooked.

Benford's Law of Controversy - [Passion](mind-feelings.md) and available [information](understanding.md) are inversely proportional to one another.

Diminishing Intent Law - If someone doesn't act quickly with an idea, the idea will be lost.

Hume's Law - No statement of "what is" can ever describe "what ought to be".

Kranzberg's Second Law of Technology - Inventions create needs. Inverts the proverb, "needs create inventions".

Lem's Law - Most people don't read, reading isn't understanding, and understanding isn't remembering.

Liebniz's Law - If two things have all the same attributes, they're effectively the same thing.

Miller's Law - Most people can only keep 5--9 things in their memory at once.

Navy SEAL Training Mantra - Slow is smooth, smooth is steady, steady is fast.

Niven's Fourth Law - Technology changes [ethics](morality.md).

Occam's Razor - All things equal, a simpler explanation with the least assumptions is better.

Okrent's Law - Balancing an opinion becomes unbalancing it when an extreme reality threatens it.

Pareto Principle - 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes.

- All-or-Nothing Principle - When the Pareto Principle doesn't apply, things must be 100% or they're effectively 0%.

Peak-End Rule - People judge an experience by how they [felt](mind-feelings.md) at the end, not on the total sum of the experiences.

Serial Position Effect - People more easily remember the first and last things in a series.

Tesler's Law of Conservation of Complexity - Everything has a certain amount of complexity that you can't remove.

Tobler's First Law of Geography - Everything is related to everything else, about as much as they're close to each other.

Second Law of Thermodynamics - Order always decays into complete chaos.

Von Restorff Effect/Isolation Effect - When people see multiple similar objects, they'll most likely remember the one that's the most different.

Wirth's Law - Ideas compound faster than physical reality can keep up.

## Power/Purpose

Acton's Dictum - Power corrupts people, so complete power creates complete corruption.

Andy and Bill's Law - New [power](power.md) is almost immediately used for a new purpose.

Amara's Law / Hype Cycle - We usually overestimate how [technology](technology.md) can affect us short-term and underestimate its long-term [trends](trends.md).

Doherty Threshold - People are most productive when they're interacting with their objects with less than 0.4 seconds' delay between events.

Dunning-Kruger Effect - People tend to overstate their competence.

Engelbart's Law - People perform exponentially better across time.

Familiarity Heuristic/Availability Heuristic/Mere-Exposure Effect - People tend to favor things they're familiar with, a major component of how [culture](people-culture.md) forms.

Fitts' Law - The longer the distance and smaller the size, the longer it takes to acquire a target.

Forbidden Fruit Effect - We want things more when we can't have them.

Gérson's Law - The most advantageous decision will disregard [ethics](morality.md).

Goal-Gradient Effect - The closer someone is to a goal, the faster they approach it.

Goodhart's Law / Perverse Incentive - When a goal becomes a measurement, that measurement isn't a good goal anymore.

Hick's/Hick-Hyman Law - Each additional choice makes deciding longer (specifically, a logarithm based on quantity and complexity).

Jakob's Law - When people interact with something, they treat it like other things they're familiar with.

KISS Principle - Things that are simple are more reliable than things that are complicated.

Matthew Principle - People who succeed are more likely to succeed, and people who fail are more likely to fail.

McBryan's Law - You can't improve it until you make it work.

Niven's Third Law - [Creating](creations.md) is harder than destroying.

Papert's Principle - Mental growth hinges less on making new skills and more on finding new ways to use existing skills.

Parkinson's Law/Roemer's Law/Bicycle-Shed Effect/Law of Triviality - Work and resources will rise to the allotted amount available (e.g., 2 hours of work takes 5 hours if nothing else obstructs it).

- Asimov Corollary to Parkinson's Law - Twice the resources means twice the mismanagement.

Peltzman Effect - New safety measures create new risk-taking.

Power Law Principle - In a mature [trend](trends.md), the most powerful thing is twice as powerful as the second, which is twice as powerful as the third, and so on for the first 20% until it tapers off.

Precautionary Principle - When unsure, scientifically examine more thoroughly.

Premack's Principle - In some situations, more desirable behaviors can motivate less desirable ones.

Pygmalion Effect/Rosenthal Effect - High expectations create better results, low expectations create worse results.

The Scout Rule - Always leave the environment/workspace/code cleaner than when you found it.

Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything made is low-[quality](values-quality.md).

Sutton's Law - The most likely cause/effect is the best thing to pursue.

Tobler's Second Law of Geography - If you're looking at something, everything around it affects it.

Yerkes-Dodson Law - Performance increases with stimulation, but only to a point.

Zeigarnik Effect - People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

## Small Tasks/Projects

Akin's First Law of Spacecraft Design - [Engineering](engineering.md) uses [numbers](math.md), and [analysis](logic.md) without numbers is merely an opinion.

Akin's Second Law of Spacecraft Design - [Designing](engineering-design.md) something correctly takes an infinite amount of effort, so it's a good idea to design things to operate when something is wrong.

Akin's Third Law of Spacecraft Design - Good design is never complete, and always requires one more iteration.

Akin's Fourth Law of Spacecraft Design - The final design will render the best efforts of previous designs useless.

Akin's Twenty-Third Law of Spacecraft Design - The project schedule doesn't matter, until you're fired for it.

Akin's Forty-First Law of Spacecraft Design - Somehow, there's never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over.

Atwood's Law - Everything that can be [created](creations.md) on the most commonplace media will eventually be recreated on that media.

Edison's Law - "Better" is the enemy of "Good".

Hofstadter's Law - It always takes longer than you expect, even if you thought of everything.

Humphrey's Law - People can impair their performance when they pay attention to a [habitual](habits.md) task.

Lachance's Law - "Plenty of time" becomes "not enough time" in a very short time.

Landauer's Principle - It always takes a minimum amount of energy to make a change.

Law of the Instrument - People tend to use tools they're familiar with instead of the best possible tool.

Murphy's Law/Finagle's Law/Sod's Law - If anything can go wrong, it will somehow.

Naismith's Rule - While walking or hiking, add an hour for every 3 miles, plus another hour for every 2,000 feet of rising altitude.

Peter Principle - Things and people will be used for increasingly challenging purposes until they fail.

Patton's Law of Program Planning - A good plan harshly executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.

Schneier's Law - Anyone can make a security system so clever that they can't theoretically break into it.

Twyman's Law - The more interesting or unusual the data, the more likely that it's wrong.

Varsi's Law - Schedules only move in one direction.

Verdoorn's Law - Doing something over and over creates exponentially more returns over time.

Von Tiesenhausen's Law of Program Management - An accurate estimate of final program requirements requires multiplying the initial time estimates by pi, then sliding the decimal point on the cost estimates one place to the right.

## Small Interactions

Akin's Twentieth Law of Spacecraft Design - Bad designs with a good image are eventually doomed, but good designs with a bad image are immediately doomed.

Adverse Selection - When people have more information than others, they use that information to gain an advantage with those other people.

Alder's Razor / Newton's Flaming Laser Sword - If it can't be tested, it's not worth a debate.

Doctorow's Law - If someone puts a lock on your thing against your wishes and doesn't give you the key, they aren't doing it for your benefit.

Gause's Competitive Exclusion Principle - No two competitors over the same resource can stay at a constant number.

Gossen's Second Law - People stop buying or selling stuff when it no longer gives a net pleasure.

Gossen's Third Law - People only give economic value to things that might stop being available.

Hanlon's Razor - Things that appear malicious are often from stupidity.

Menzerath's Law - The longer sentences get in [language](language.md), the shorter the sounds get inside the sentence.

Miller's Law - The only way to understand others is to assume they're being truthful, then imagine what could be true about what they're saying.

Postel's Law / Robustness Principle - Ideal scenarios come from receiving liberally and sending carefully.

Sagan Standard - Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.

Wheaton's Law - Don't be a jerk.

Zeroeth Law of Thermodynamics - If two systems are synchronized with a third one, they're synchronized with each other.

## Small Groups

Campbell's Law - As a social measurement influences more social decisions, it'll be more corrupted by the social system it's monitoring.

Conway's Law - If a system makes another system, it'll copy how it communicates.

Gresham's Law - When things are equal and regulated, undervalued things tend to drive out precisely valued things during circulation.

Hitchens' Razor - If someone makes an absolute claim, they must give evidence or nobody has to listen to it.

Liebig's Law of the Minimum - Growth and expansion depends on the most competed-for resource.

Shirky Principle - [Organizations](groups-small.md) try to maintain problems when they're the solution.

Triffin Dilemma - If you use something that everyone else uses, you're maintaining it more than you'd otherwise need if it was just you using it.

The Ten-Scale Shame Rule - The proportion is a factor of 10 between an extremely honorable or shameful activity occurring versus being publicized.

The Two Pizza Rule - A team that requires more than two pizzas (i.e., 4--8 people) is too large.

Walras' Law - Because each decision means deciding against something else, every this/that decision together adds up to zero.

## Large Systems

Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety - The number of unique states to control something is always more than the number of unique states of the thing being controlled.

Beckstrom's Law/Metcalfe's Law - The value of a network is approximately the square of the users: each individual element/user's interactions added to that network, added together with every other element/user's interactions.

Bowden's Law - After failing a test based on a theory, it's always possible to tweak the theory to prove that the test would have failed.

Dead Sea Effect - The quality of technical workers in a group is often inversely proportional to their time in the organization.

First Adopters Rule - The first pioneers to something new will reap the greatest rewards, with decreasingly fewer rewards by future adopters all the way down to when the space is filled up.

Gibrat's Law - Groups grow proportionally, no matter their size.

Graham's Addiction Axiom - In any [free market](economics.md), products become more [addictive](addiction.md).

Hickam's Dictum - For multiple issues, several simple explanations are better than an odd circumstance that explains all of them.

Hutber's Law - Improvements in a system hide other parts that are decaying.

Law of Demeter - The best groups come from each individual only knowing a portion of the whole, and everyone only communicating with their friends who are nearby.

Gall's Law - A complex system that works always comes from a simple system that works.

Lamarck's First Law - Components of a system that aren't used are slowly discarded.

Larrabee's Law - Half of everything taught in a classroom is wrong, and education is figuring out which half.

Little's Law - The average number of elements in a stable system in a given time are their average arrival rate multiplied by their average time in the system.

Littlewood's Law - With a large enough sample size, miracles happen once a month.

Magus' Correlation - A culture's complexity is directly correlated to the number of resources available to it.

Malthusian Growth Model - Large-scale things grow exponentially over time.

Optimal Fragmentation Principle - People are most creative when there's a moderate level of division that isn't severe enough to be destructive and isn't mild enough to create complacency.

Orgel's First Rule - Spontaneous processes will create spontaneous solutions.

Ostrom's Law - Something that works in practice can work in a theoretical model.

Reed's Law - The usefulness of a network scales exponentially with its size.

Say's Law - Things are scarce relative to other things, so there's never really "too much" of everything at once.

Sowa's Law of Standards - When a [large organization](groups-large.md) uses a system for doing something, everyone will improvise a simpler system for doing that thing.

Stein's Law - If something can't go on forever, it'll stop, and there's zero need to make it stop.

Tragedy of the Commons - Community property deteriorates worse than private property.

YAGNI / You Ain't Gonna Need It - It's only worth the time to add things as you need them, not as you imagine you'll need them.

Zipf's Law/Lotka's Law - The more an individual has something, the less likely other individuals will share that quantity.

## Large Systems - Social Interactions

Bobby Knight Problem - Large-scale leaders draw people around them who protect their [power](power-types.md).

Bullwhip/Forrester Effect - As something ripples outward from a cause, its effect becomes more radical and unpredictable.

Dunbar's Number - A person can only maintain stable social relationships up to a limit (~100-250).

Economist Effect - When we understand a one-paragraph summary of a concept, we often believe we understand how to work with that concept.

Elliott Wave Principle - Large groups tend to cycle between optimism and cynicism.

Greenhouse Effect - Supreme Court [justices](people-rules.md) tend to vote with [liberals](politics-conservativeliberal.md) more often as their [careers progress](legacy.md) because they want more favorable [press coverage](stories-storytellers.md).

Jevons Paradox - The more efficient people are with a resource, the more they consume that resource.

Joy's Law in Management - Most of the smartest people aren't in your [group](groups-large.md).

Kondratiev Wave - Every large-scale system cycles up and down with a generally predictable flow.

Linus' Law/Orgel's Second Rule - Given enough people, every problem is petty.

Marchetti's Constant - People are only willing to travel up to 1 hour each day, or a half-hour on a two-way trip (e.g., commute).

Mooers' Law - People only gather information from a system if it's less trouble than not knowing.

Narrative Gravity Law - People are drawn to [stories](stories.md) that skew facts proportional to how many people believe those stories.

Orgel's Second Rule - The collective system is smarter than anyone in it.

Poe's Law - Every parody will eventually be mistaken by someone else as truth.

Putt's Law - Managers don't understand technical matters, and technical people don't manage.

- Putt's Corollary - Every technical hierarchy develops an inversion of competence.

Reilly's Law of Retail Gravitation - People tend to consume at the largest supplier.

Rothbard's Law - Everyone has a specific, specialized weakness.

## Large Projects

Akin's Seventh Law of Spacecraft Design - At the beginning of an effort, the person who most wants to lead the project will be the least qualified for it.

Box's Law / All Models Are Wrong - All system models are wrong, but some are useful.

Brooks' Law - Adding more people to a late [creative](mind-creativity.md) project stalls it further.

Cheops Law - Everything is built late or over budget.

Conway's Law - Any creation made by an organization reflects that organization's structure.

Dilbert Principle - The most ineffective workers are moved to where they can damage things the least: management.

Economies of Scale - Things get cheaper per-item when you make a lot of them.

Eroom's Law - Over time, new drugs are pricier and slower to discover, despite developments in technology. The opposite of Moore's Law.

Gustafson-Barsis Law - If a project is big enough, it has repetitive parts to it that can be handed off to multiple workers at once.

Henshaw's Law - Success often depends on knowing who to blame.

Norman Augustine's Fifth Law - 1/10 of the participants produce >1/3 of the output, and increasing the participants only reduces the average output.

Norman Augustine's Seventh Law - Overhead is more expensive relative to cost when the business base is decreased, but more expensive overall when increased.

Norman Augustine's Eighth Law - Cost estimates are typically performed by people who are awful at cost estimates.

Norman Augustine's Twelfth Law - Building bad products costs more in the long term.

Parkinson's Law of Triviality/Sayre's Law - We feel the intensity of something proportional to its insignificance, so groups spend most of their resources on unimportant details.

Poisson's Law of Large Numbers - The more samples measured, the closer the average represents an accurate estimation.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy - The people devoted to an organization will slowly gain more control than the people devoted to that organization's purpose.

Price's Law - The square root of the number of people in a group do 50% of the work:

- 10 people do 50% of the work in a 100-person group.
- 50 people do 50% of the work in a 2,500-person group.

Swanson's Law - Every time solar cell manufacturing is doubled, solar cells get 20% cheaper to make.

Wike's Law of Low Odd Primes - If the number of classifications of something is a low, odd, prime number (e.g., 3, 5, 7, 11, etc.), then it's not taking everything into account.

[Continued](lawsaxioms-2.md)