principles and laws
eponymous laws
1% rule - 90% of the participants of a community only view content, 9% of the participants edit content, and 1% of the participants actively create new content.
Ben Franklin effect - a psychological phenomenon in which people like someone more after doing a favour for them.
Conway’s law - any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.
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."
Dilbert principle - "the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management."
Dunbar’s number - a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.
Dunning–Kruger effect - a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average.
Gall’s law - "a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."
Gell-Mann amnesia effect - you ascribe credibility to news on which you are not an expert, despite knowing how badly reported the news can be on things you ARE an expert.
Gérson’s law - "an advantage should be taken in every situation, regardless of ethics."
Gervais principle - a theory that categorizes employees into three types - Losers, Clueless, and Sociopaths - based on their understanding and manipulation of power dynamics within organizations.
Godwin’s law - "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
Goodhart’s law - when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Gresham's law - bad money drives out good.
Hanlon’s razor - "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Hick’s law - describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a function of the number of possible choices.
Jevons paradox - increasing the efficiency with which a resource is used increases the usage of that resource.
Illich’s law - "beyond a certain threshold, human efficiency decreases, even becoming negative."
Lindy effect - a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age.
Littlewood’s law - in the course of any normal person’s life, miracles happen at a rate of roughly one per month.
Metcalfe’s law - the value of a system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system.
Moore’s law - an empirical observation stating that the complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 24 months.
Murphy’s law - "anything that can go wrong will go wrong."
Occam’s razor - when two or more explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable.
Pareto principle - for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes.
Parkinson’s law - "work expands to fill the time available for its completion."
Peter principle - "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."
Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy - "in any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."
Power law - the largest entity is typically bigger, more valuable, or more powerful than all others combined. The second-largest is likewise bigger than the total of all those after it, and so on.
Ringelmann effect - work less when group is larger.
Sagan standard - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Segal’s law - "a man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."
Shirky principle - "institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
Sinclair's law - "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Stein's law - "if something can’t go on forever, it won’t."
Streisand effect - any attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely.
Sturgeon's law - "90 per cent of everything is crap."
Wrights law - aims to provide a reliable framework for forecasting cost declines as a function of cumulative production. Specifically, it states that for every cumulative doubling of units produced, costs will fall by a constant percentage.
influence
reciprocity
commitment
authority
social proof
scarcity
liking
unity
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