That will not be very fun, for which I apologize. I have grown to dislike most eponymous laws, logical fallacies, and, more generally, discoursive taxonomies. It is not that I find them to be...
That will not be very fun, for which I apologize.
I have grown to dislike most eponymous laws, logical fallacies, and, more generally, discoursive taxonomies. It is not that I find them to be inherently wrong or flawed, but they function like irresistible reasoning shortcuts that are often put in place of more effective arguments. Because they are known and because they are written in ways that are persuasive and attractive, discoursive shorthand is often employed incorrectly as lazy conversation enders, concealing the complexity of an issue. I'd rather never mention eponymous laws as reasoning tools in conversation.
This could be Lou's law, I apologize too for the witty comment.
The more easily a concept can be deployed as a quick, often superficial, argument ender, the less likely it is to contribute meaningfully to understanding or resolving complex issues.
This could be Lou's law, I apologize too for the witty comment.
Some of the "laws" on this list are pithy rhetorical statements of the kind you mention, but many others are just scientific or mathematical principles or discoveries that are named after a...
Some of the "laws" on this list are pithy rhetorical statements of the kind you mention, but many others are just scientific or mathematical principles or discoveries that are named after a particular person.
For instance, in linguistics it's common for major historical sound changes to be named after the guy who discovered them and called "laws". The two of these that are by far the most famous are Grimm's law and Verner's law, which I'll elaborate on in a collapsible section for those curious, but there are several others cited on that page, including (from what I could find while skimming): Aitken's law, Dahl's law, Kluge's law, Siever's law, Stang's law, and Winter's law. Based on the surnames and most of the languages involved, seems like Germans particularly liked calling their sound changes "laws". Or at least particularly liked putting them on Wikipedia.
An overly-long explanation of Grimm's and Verner's laws for some linguistic trivia
Grimm's law is a description of some sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic that explain some systematic correspondences between Germanic and other Indi-European languages. Voiceless stops (like p, t, k) became voiceless fricatives (like f, þ, h), voiced stops (like b, d, g) became voiceless stops (like p, t, k), and voiced aspirated/breathy voiced stops (written as bʰ, dʰ, gʰ -- afaik not present in modern European languages but still around in many Indo-Aryan languages) became voiced fricatives/stops (pronounced like voiced versions of f, þ, h which are written as β, ð, ɣ in some contexts, and pronounced like b, d, g in other contexts). These sound changes were extremely regular and account for a lot of systematic correspondences between Germanic languages and other Indo-European languages.
For instance, the Proto-Indo-European word for "foot" was *pṓds, with descendants in other branches of the family like Ancient Greek podós, Latin pedis, Sanskrit pāda, Persian pa, Russian pod, Latvian pēda, and more. In Proto-Germanic, however, voiceless stops like *p became voiceless fricatives, and voiced stops like *d became voiceless, which resulted in the the Proto-Germanic word *fots, which evolved into English foot, German Fuß, Norwegen fot, Icelandic fótur, Gothic fōtus, and more.
If you know a Germanic and a non-Germanic Indo-European language, you might start to notice the correspondences just like Jacob Grimm (of the Brothers Grimm, fwiw) once did! Wikipedia article has several more examples like this, so if you're interested do click that link.
Verner's law is another Proto-Germanic sound change that explains a handful of "exceptions" to Grimm's law. In some contexts, Grimm's law predicted that Proto-Indo-European *p, *t, *k should become voiceless fricatives *f, *þ, *h but they actually became voiced fricatives *β, *ð, *ɣ instead. For instance, Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr became Proto-Germanic *faðēr with a voiced ð (a voiced th-sound like in modern English they or indeed like the th-sound in the modern English descendant father) whereas the very similar word *bʰréh₂tēr became *brōþēr with the expected voiceless þ sound (pronounced like the th-sound in the modern English words thigh and broth -- due to later sound changes from Proto-Germanic to English, the English word brother uses the voiced version of this consonant just like father does).
Verner was the first one to publish an explanation for this irregularity based on the preceding syllable being stressed or not, which was hard to tell from Germanic languages alone, since Proto-Germanic shifted the stress to the first root syllable in all words, but could be reconstructed from correspondences with other Indo-European languages that usually retained the stress from Proto-Indo-European, like Ancient Greek and early Sanskrit -- for our example, the Sanskrit cognates pitā́ and bhrā́tā show the stress on the second syllable in one word but on the first syllable in the other.
Hope this was interesting!
Another linguistics-related "law" in the list is Zipf's law, which was originally coined to describe the long-tailed distribution in word frequencies -- the frequency of the nth most common word (in a text, a corpus, or a language as a whole) is roughly inversely proportional to n. This turned out to describe other non-random statistical distributions, not just word frequency, but its origin was in linguistics!
I have my own list (not all eponymous). The two I invoke most often are Hanlon's Razor – to keep from feeling the world is out to get me: And Paul's Law – usually related to averting disasters...
The two I invoke most often are Hanlon's Razor – to keep from feeling the world is out to get me:
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
And Paul's Law – usually related to averting disasters instigated by my daughter leaving things in precarious places where they may be tipped or knocked over:
You cannot fall off the floor.
Another one I like, because it keeps things in perspective, is Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
I love Hanlons Razor, I reference it at work often. Usually as a humorous way to start a conversation about what I'm actually observing: the Fundamental Attribution Error
I love Hanlons Razor, I reference it at work often. Usually as a humorous way to start a conversation about what I'm actually observing: the Fundamental Attribution Error
Uh Which other one were you looking at? I can't even link that to Hick's Law.
Uh
Hickam's dictum, in medicine, is commonly stated as "Patients can have as many diseases as they damn well please" and is a counterargument to the use of Occam's razor.
Which other one were you looking at? I can't even link that to Hick's Law.
This one did me in a little. Benford's law of controversy: I don't know if he was thinking any modern events when he said this, or fields of research, but I think it applies best in the former and...
This one did me in a little. Benford's law of controversy:
Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.
I don't know if he was thinking any modern events when he said this, or fields of research, but I think it applies best in the former and does a good job of summarizing the conflicts of interest in which for-profit social media platforms exist.
That will not be very fun, for which I apologize.
I have grown to dislike most eponymous laws, logical fallacies, and, more generally, discoursive taxonomies. It is not that I find them to be inherently wrong or flawed, but they function like irresistible reasoning shortcuts that are often put in place of more effective arguments. Because they are known and because they are written in ways that are persuasive and attractive, discoursive shorthand is often employed incorrectly as lazy conversation enders, concealing the complexity of an issue. I'd rather never mention eponymous laws as reasoning tools in conversation.
This could be Lou's law, I apologize too for the witty comment.
This seems like a good place to note that I think everyone should enjoy Kohl's Law.
Thinly sliced cabbage and onions with a creamy dressing?
Aye, only hold the onions. And according to many places, triple the sugar. heh
That is indeed a good principle to have!
Some of the "laws" on this list are pithy rhetorical statements of the kind you mention, but many others are just scientific or mathematical principles or discoveries that are named after a particular person.
For instance, in linguistics it's common for major historical sound changes to be named after the guy who discovered them and called "laws". The two of these that are by far the most famous are Grimm's law and Verner's law, which I'll elaborate on in a collapsible section for those curious, but there are several others cited on that page, including (from what I could find while skimming): Aitken's law, Dahl's law, Kluge's law, Siever's law, Stang's law, and Winter's law. Based on the surnames and most of the languages involved, seems like Germans particularly liked calling their sound changes "laws". Or at least particularly liked putting them on Wikipedia.
An overly-long explanation of Grimm's and Verner's laws for some linguistic trivia
Grimm's law is a description of some sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic that explain some systematic correspondences between Germanic and other Indi-European languages. Voiceless stops (like p, t, k) became voiceless fricatives (like f, þ, h), voiced stops (like b, d, g) became voiceless stops (like p, t, k), and voiced aspirated/breathy voiced stops (written as bʰ, dʰ, gʰ -- afaik not present in modern European languages but still around in many Indo-Aryan languages) became voiced fricatives/stops (pronounced like voiced versions of f, þ, h which are written as β, ð, ɣ in some contexts, and pronounced like b, d, g in other contexts). These sound changes were extremely regular and account for a lot of systematic correspondences between Germanic languages and other Indo-European languages.
For instance, the Proto-Indo-European word for "foot" was *pṓds, with descendants in other branches of the family like Ancient Greek podós, Latin pedis, Sanskrit pāda, Persian pa, Russian pod, Latvian pēda, and more. In Proto-Germanic, however, voiceless stops like *p became voiceless fricatives, and voiced stops like *d became voiceless, which resulted in the the Proto-Germanic word *fots, which evolved into English foot, German Fuß, Norwegen fot, Icelandic fótur, Gothic fōtus, and more.
If you know a Germanic and a non-Germanic Indo-European language, you might start to notice the correspondences just like Jacob Grimm (of the Brothers Grimm, fwiw) once did! Wikipedia article has several more examples like this, so if you're interested do click that link.
Verner's law is another Proto-Germanic sound change that explains a handful of "exceptions" to Grimm's law. In some contexts, Grimm's law predicted that Proto-Indo-European *p, *t, *k should become voiceless fricatives *f, *þ, *h but they actually became voiced fricatives *β, *ð, *ɣ instead. For instance, Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr became Proto-Germanic *faðēr with a voiced ð (a voiced th-sound like in modern English they or indeed like the th-sound in the modern English descendant father) whereas the very similar word *bʰréh₂tēr became *brōþēr with the expected voiceless þ sound (pronounced like the th-sound in the modern English words thigh and broth -- due to later sound changes from Proto-Germanic to English, the English word brother uses the voiced version of this consonant just like father does).
Verner was the first one to publish an explanation for this irregularity based on the preceding syllable being stressed or not, which was hard to tell from Germanic languages alone, since Proto-Germanic shifted the stress to the first root syllable in all words, but could be reconstructed from correspondences with other Indo-European languages that usually retained the stress from Proto-Indo-European, like Ancient Greek and early Sanskrit -- for our example, the Sanskrit cognates pitā́ and bhrā́tā show the stress on the second syllable in one word but on the first syllable in the other.
Hope this was interesting!
Another linguistics-related "law" in the list is Zipf's law, which was originally coined to describe the long-tailed distribution in word frequencies -- the frequency of the nth most common word (in a text, a corpus, or a language as a whole) is roughly inversely proportional to n. This turned out to describe other non-random statistical distributions, not just word frequency, but its origin was in linguistics!
I have my own list (not all eponymous).
The two I invoke most often are Hanlon's Razor – to keep from feeling the world is out to get me:
And Paul's Law – usually related to averting disasters instigated by my daughter leaving things in precarious places where they may be tipped or knocked over:
Another one I like, because it keeps things in perspective, is Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom
But you may be more likely to tread on it. Not at all said from the experience of hearing the sickening crunch of expensive electronics underfoot.
I love Hanlons Razor, I reference it at work often. Usually as a humorous way to start a conversation about what I'm actually observing: the Fundamental Attribution Error
I'm a fan of Hickam's dictum. I have heard that one many times on the wards.
Interesting, after reading it, the first thing that came to my mind was Keith the unofficial C++ mascot
Uh
Which other one were you looking at? I can't even link that to Hick's Law.
I think they might be making a reference to how diseased the rat looks?
What of Wheaton's Law? It's so simple, so fundamental, so applicable to day-to-day life. Just don't be a dick.
Reminds me of Deimos's law.
Do you have a favorite?
Chestertons Fence seems apt right now
I apply this principle in programming all the time, If I can't understand the logic of a piece of code, I won't touch it.
This one did me in a little. Benford's law of controversy:
I don't know if he was thinking any modern events when he said this, or fields of research, but I think it applies best in the former and does a good job of summarizing the conflicts of interest in which for-profit social media platforms exist.