Eponymous laws

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The following is a list of eponymous laws of varying degrees. Some are well known, others exist only on the internet.

  • Poe's Law:
    • Without the use of a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to make a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.
  • Russell's Law:
    • It is impossible to distinguish a creationist from a parody of a creationist.
  • Godwin's Law:
    • As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
  • Hofstadter's Law:
  • The Peter Principle:
    • In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
  • The Dilbert Principle:
    • Leadership is nature's way of removing morons from the productive flow.
  • Parkinson's Law:
    • Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
      • Corollaries:
Data expands to fill the space available for storage.
Your stuff accumulates to fill the size of your home.
  • Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
    • First law: A robot may not, through its actions or inactions, allow a human to come to harm.
    • Second law: A robot must obey any order given to it, unless in contradiction of the First Law.
    • Third law: A robot must protect its own existence, unless in contradiction of the First or Second Law.
  • Clarke's Laws:
    • First law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
    • Second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little ways past them into the impossible.
    • Third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
  • Arken's Law:
    • a discussion is over when present society is compared to Orwell's Oceania in the book 1984.
  • Acton's Law:
    • Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  • Beach's Law:
    • No two identical parts are alike.
  • Beauregard's Law:
    • When you are up to your eyeballs in it, keep your mouth shut.
  • Beckhap's Law:
    • Beauty times brains equals a constant.
  • Colson's Law:
    • When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
  • Dykstra's Law:
    • Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
  • Ebert's Law:
    • It's not what it's about, it's how it's about it. (Referring to films)
  • Firestone's Forecasting Law:
    • Chicken Little only has to be right once.
  • Gumperson's Law:
    • The probability of a given event occurring is inversely proportional to its desirability.
  • Kitman's Law:
    • Pure drivel tends to drive away ordinary drivel.
  • Lee's Law:
    • Mother said there would be days like this, but she never said that there'd be so many!
  • Murphy's Law
    • If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.
  • Mencken's Law or Shaw's Law:
    • Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach. (Or, as put by Shaw in 1903: "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.")
      • Martin's Extension: Those who cannot teach, teach education (or administrate).
      • Short's Extension: Those who cannot teach, criticize.
      • Russell’s Extension: Those who cannot teach, write[1].
      • Some Yale Prof's Extension: Those who cannot teach, do research.
      • Allen's Extension: Those who cannot teach, teach gym.
  • Napoleon's Law:
    • Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
  • Skitt's Law
    • Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself.
  • Thoreau's Law:
    • If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention of doing you good, you should run for your life.

See also

References

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