# 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 [science-specific](lawsaxioms-science.md), [design](lawsaxioms-design.md), and [technology-specific axioms](lawsaxioms-tech.md).

## 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](people-image-why.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".

Kidlin's Law - Writing down a problem clearly and specifically solves half of it.

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).

Objective Value Doctrine - Some attitudes about the universe are entirely true, and others are entirely false.

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.

Wilson's Law - Money drifts toward knowledge and intelligence.

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).

Bent Key Principle - If something feels "off" somehow, it probably hides a spectacularly large problem.

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.

Falkland's Law - When a decision doesn't have to be made, it's better to postpone it.

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/Empty Plate Effect - We want things more when access to them is limited.

Frankl's Inverse Law - When someone can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.

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

Gilbert's Law - The person who decides to perform a task is always responsible to find the best way to accomplish it.

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.

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.

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

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.

Dirty Window Rule - Imperfection demonstrates humanity, and is therefore more appealing than perfection.

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.

[Larger-scale axioms](lawsaxioms-large.md)