Useful Maxims

There are many short principles that help clarify reasoning, decision-making, or analysis. I featured some of them in a series of posts, expositing a few of them each time. Now here is the composite list of 30 of them assembled together. These are not iron-clad laws in the scientific sense, but more like tendencies that look shrewdly at human behaviour and draw inferences from it. Some of them are humorous and satirical, but all contain a kernel of insight.

1. The most famous is probably Occam’s Razor.

Named after William of Ockham, it tells us that, when faced with competing theories that might explain something, to select the one with the fewest or simplest assumptions. It is used in science and in daily life to avoid unnecessary assumptions and to narrow down possibilities.

It is a working rule of thumb, not a proof. The simplest explanation is not always the correct one, but in science simplicity is sought as well as predictability. The Ptolemaic solar system initially generated better predictions than the Copernican model, but the latter was simpler, avoiding the need to construct imagined cycles within cycles.

Occam’s Razor is sometimes expressed as “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity,” and is useful in avoiding imagined complications when a simple explanation will suffice.

2. Chesterton’s Fence suggest that we go cautiously.

Devised by G K Chesterton, it says that if we see a fence that seems unnecessary, then before we pull it down, we should find out why it was put there in the first place. It might be completely useless, but let’s make sure it is before we pull it down.

It is a metaphor urging against the rash abandonment of laws, customs or traditions until we have first divined what purpose they originally served. It may be that in exploring the reason they arose we could discover the value they still have. There may have been valid, unseen reasons for establishing the rule or structure.

Its use is commonly found in social and political discussions about modernizing or updating aspects of law and government. There are occasions when that needs to be done, but the axiom tells us to look cautiously at why the status quo is what it is before abolishing it and risking the unintended adverse consequences it might have prevented.

3. Buridan’s Ass tells a cautionary tale.

The 14th-century French philosopher Jean Buridan dealt with choosing between two options that are identical. He said, “Should two courses be judged equal, then the will cannot break the deadlock.” This was later satirized by the example of a tethered ass placed equidistantly from two equally attractive piles of food. Unable to decide between them, the poor animal remains where it is and starves to death.

The parable illustrates a dilemma free will. Given different choices that produce equally attractive outcomes, do we have a reason to choose one over the other, or are we stuck in a paralysis of indecision? Commentators claim that in the real world no two choices are identical, and that there are always biases, albeit tiny and unconscious, that lead us to make a preference.

And even if there were no such biases, the parable contains an assumption that one choice precludes the other. This is not always so. A real ass would probably take one pile first, then amble over to eat the other. And if a human couldn’t decide which choice to make, they could toss a coin. Since the outcomes were deemed equally attractive, they wouldn’t lose by doing do.

4. Morton’s Fork poses a false dilemma in which contradictory alternatives both lead to an unfavourable conclusion.

 It is named after Cardinal John Morton, who used it to justify taxes for Henry VII. He claimed that those who lived modestly must thereby be saving money and could thus afford to pay his tax. On the other hand, those who lived extravagantly proved they were rich enough to pay it.

Morton’s Fork is a version of the “heads I win, tails you lose” alternative. All courses lead to unpleasantness. In chess, the term Zugzwang is used to describe a position in which every possible move a player can make leads to their downfall. Since they must make a move, their disadvantage must follow. This is a version of a Morton’s Fork.

In politics it describes a situation in which all the choices seemingly available to a party or government are shown to produce disadvantageous outcomes. If they announce a potentially harmful policy, they are described as thoughtless. If they U-turn and withdraw it, they are described as weak. Either way they are caught on Morton’s Fork.

5. Hanlon’s Razor suggests that you should never attribute malice behind an action if it can be explained by simple stupidity.

There are doubts about who Hanlon was, and it might even be a corruption of Robert Heinlein, one of whose characters uttered the sentiment, but the term has passed into computer jargon.

People sometimes do things that harm or upset others, and it is easy to attribute their behaviour to willful intent. But Hanlon’s Razor suggests it might arise from a lack of awareness on their part, or simple incompetence. Not everyone is clever enough to work out the likely consequences of their actions so, rather than assume that an evil genius is systematically out to do you down, consider instead that it might be a mindless idiot thoughtlessly blundering about.

Paranoid behaviour assumes that people are out to get you, and that their actions denote hostility. But it might just be ordinary people doing thoughtless things without regard to their consequences. Hanlon’s Razor tells us never to assume wicked intent if stupidity could also explain their action.

6. Hobson’s Choice presents apparent alternatives where in reality only one option is available.

Thomas Hobson, operating a livery stable from Cambridge, wanted his best horses rested, so he devised a rotation system in which the customer had to choose the next horse in line, usually the one nearest the door. The choice was between that one or none at all. This came to be called Hobson’s Choice.

In modern parlance it describes a take-it-or-leave-it offering in which only one choice is offered as an alternative to nothing at all. It says that beggars can’t be choosers; they must take what is offered or go without. Henry Ford famously told car-buyers that they could have any colour they liked, so long as it was black.

The term ‘choice’ implies that the recipient can select an option between alternatives, but this is illusory. Only one choice is offered, and nothing else is on offer.

7. Sagan’s Standard concerns itself with extraordinary claims.

Carl Sagan postulated in his writing and his TV show that ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ This is sometimes abbreviated to ECREE. It means that if a claim is made that seems to go far against conventional science or experience, to be taken seriously it must be backed up by rigorous evidence

The idea has a long history, with similar points made by earlier thinkers. The Scottish philosopher, David Hume, in his posthumously published essay on miracles, declared that “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.”

When people propose paranormal phenomena or alien encounters, the critical thinker will opt for an explanation that lies within conventional experience rather than accept the remarkable claim at face value. To gain acceptance, the assertion must be accompanied by evidence such as multiple eye-witnesses, photographs, radar logs, or physical and tangible signs that it happened.

Sagan’s Standard Is similar in its approach to Occam’s Razor, in that it invokes the fundamental principle of scientific skepticism.

8. Goodhart’s Law started as a jocular observation on monetary policy.

The economist Charles Goodhart observed in a 1975 paper on monetarism that whenever a monetary target is set, it ceases to be a good measure. It has since been broadened to cover other areas. The reasoning is that people game the system to their advantage, so that whenever a target is set, they will pursue that target instead of the factor it was set up to measure.

Adam Smith pointed out that the British government's ‘tonnage bounty’ on the white-herring fishery incentivized building larger ships to entrap the bounty rather than the fish. When the mythical Soviet nail factory was rewarded according to the miles of nails it produced, it made only long thin ones. When the target was changed to width of nails, it made only fat ones. And when the target was set as weight of nails, it produced one giant nail weighing several tons.

It is because people game the system that any published target will cease to be an effective measure. When governments pay farmers for rats’ tails, they breed rats. When British India paid bounties for dead cobras, people began to breed cobras. Famously, when schools are measured on the test scores of their pupils, they teach them to pass the test instead of educating them.

If you set a target for something, people will aim at the target rather than what it was set to measure.

9. Murphy’s Law tells us that if anything can go wrong, it will.

It was allegedly coined by Captain Edward Murphy Jr when a technician put him through a life-threatening ride on a rocket sled by installing all the components backwards. It is sometimes called Sod’s Law in the UK, warning us that things usually go wrong at the worst possible time. 

My Chemistry teacher at school used an eloquent version of it, saying “The universe opposes what you try to do.” If anything can go wrong, it will. Buttered toast, when dropped, lands with the butter side down. If you write a piece about spelling, there will be a typographical error in your piece. Nothing is as easy as it looks. Everything takes longer than you think.

It is a useful maxim because it warns us to be cautious, to think things through and calculate what might go wrong. It teaches us to investigate possible disasters and to build in measures to prevent them if we can. It paints the ’worst case’ scenario. In business and in politics it is the rock of unintended consequences on which the best-rigged ships founder.

If it can go wrong, it will.

10. Gall’s Law was coined by John Gall in his 1975 book Systemantics.

It tells us to start small because complex systems are built up from simpler working systems. The attempt to construct a complex system directly rarely succeeds. Gall’s Law teaches us to start with a simple system that works, and build from there by stages into a more complex system.

Its message is that complex systems evolve, rather than being created from scratch. Complexity is built up gradually from simplicity. The term ’iterative’ is often used to describe this process of repeating what works. Negative feedback can eliminate the errors in simple systems before they are built upon to create complex ones.

Complex systems that are not built up from simpler ones often fail because of unanticipated factors. Trial and error, the basis of my own philosophy, enables us to debug and improve the simpler systems before we build them up into complex ones.

11. The Law of unintended consequences has led many times to ruin.

It tells us that human actions often produce unforeseen and often undesirable outcomes. It arises from the complexity and interconnectedness of our actions. Moves to achieve one result can often trigger effects that cause it to fail, or in some cases bring about the opposite result to the one intended.

Banning the sale of alcohol in America’s 1920s Prohibition was intended to cut crime, but it led to the growth of organized crime, gang wars, and Al Capone. Rent controls, designed to bring about cheaper housing, have led to reductions in the quantity and quality of rental units, and to seemingly interminable waiting lists for them.

The law applies because we cannot foresee all the future effects of our actions. In seeking to address short-term problems, we may be building up secondary or tertiary effects farther down the road. The law is particularly relevant in politics, where legislators look to the next election rather than the next generation, and frequently build up problems other than the ones they hoped to resolve.

12. The Abilene Paradox explains why group decisions can run counter to what most of the members want.

It involves a breakdown in communication, where the action that a group decides upon might not be what the individuals want, but where they act in the belief that others favour it.

It was named after an anecdote told by Jerry B Harvey in a 1974 article. A whole family embarks on an arduous and pointless trip to Abilene because each of them thinks the others want to. In organizations such as businesses, people might be reluctant to express contrary opinions, not wanting to rock the boat or to stand out as dissenters.

It arises from group pressure and the desire to avoid being thought of as ‘not a team player.’ It is alleged that the disaster to the Challenger space shuttle happened because individuals who had misgivings about the boosters’ O-rings becoming hardened by very low temperatures were each individually reluctant to diverge from what they thought was a go-ahead that everyone wanted.

The way to combat the paradox is thought to be by encouraging open dissent and using anonymous registration of real, as opposed to perceived, opinions.

13. Parkinson’s Law presented insights into the Civil Service

Having worked as an historian in the Admiralty Civil Service, in 1955 C. Northcote Parkinson published a satirical essay two days after the report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service. His main content was that ‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,’ making the point that Civil Servants find ways of justifying their existence by creating ‘work’ that is unnecessary. The more time available for a task, the more complicated and bloated it becomes in order to fill that time. That this induces inefficiency is obvious.

Parkinson expanded his essay into a book, Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress. One of his themes was that without urgency, the hours available are spent on constant revisions and improvements that add noting to the successful completion of the task. 

Although he was initially motivated to explain the inefficiency of the Civil Service, his insights have been incorporated into the thinking of businesses and non-governmental committees. Another of his observations was that the number of employees in public bodies tends to increase, regardless of the amount of work they have to do.

Parkinson became an international celebrity for his insights, and spent years afterwards as a star on the international lecture circuit because people realized he has uncovered a basic organizational trait that needed to be addressed.

14. The Iron Law of Bureaucracy tells that the organization matters more than its goals.

Jerry Pournelle was an acclaimed science fiction writer who was involved in the US space programme, working for both government and private firms. He studied organizations and postulated that in any organization, those motivated to maintaining the organization itself would always win control over those who worked to achieve its goals.

Those in the organization who prioritize its internal survival over its original purpose will always seize control, writing the rules and managing promotions to ensure their continued power. The goal of this group is to perpetuate the organization itself, to divert its purpose into justifying its own existence, and to prioritize compliance with internal processes rather than seeking to achieve the original purpose it was designed to achieve.

This can be observed in many NGOs, whose purpose has shifted from achieving worthwhile goals into perpetuating the organization itself, and in continuing to pay high salary and expenses to those who run it.

It is more of a tendency than an iron law, but it is a useful insight that can be seen in action, and that those who establish an organization would be well to take into account when setting up its structure and rewards.

15. The Peter Principle is that people will be promoted above their level of competence.

Lawrence J Peter noted that people in an organization tend to be promoted until they reach a level beyond their ability to succeed in. Originally intended as satire, it contained enough truth to be taken seriously, and was subsequently taken on board in management studies.

Its basis is that if someone performs well at their job, they will be promoted to a level that gives them more authority and introduces different skills. If they are good at it, they will be promoted again. This continues until they reach a level at which the lack the competence to perform successfully. At that point they cease to be promoted, and remain at a level beyond their competence.

The conclusion that "In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties" (as Peter put it) leads to some employers using the so-called Cravath system. This is where employees who fail to rise are periodically fired and replaced by new hiring. This is summarized as ‘up or out.’

16. The Law of diminishing returns tells that more effort brings fewer gains.

It says that at a certain point, employing an additional factor of production causes a relatively smaller increase in output. We might add more chefs in a kitchen to increase output, but there will come a point where there are too many, and they get in each other’s way. A farmer might add more fertilizer to gain more produce from his or her land, but there will come a point when enough fertilizer has been added to extract everything the soil can produce. At this point, the addition of more fertilizer will not increase production.

Someone who is hungry can derive huge satisfaction by eating a slice of pizza. Since some of their hunger has been abated, they will gain less satisfaction from subsequent slices until their hunger has gone, and there is no further satisfaction to be gained by eating more because they are now full.

People talk of the ‘low hanging fruit,’ referring to easily achievable goals that require little effort to gain significant and immediate results. But, like the fruit on a tree, the subsequent ones will take more effort to reach, and the ratio of effort to achievement will be higher. In business, the later sales will take more effort to achieve than the earlier ones.

17. Opportunity Cost means that you can’t have everything at once.

It tells us that everything is a trade-off. Money spent on one thing cannot also be spent on another. Time spent on one activity uses up the time you might have spent on another. Technically, it represents the value of what you had to give up in order to take the option you take.

When Bjorn Lomborg presented a UN panel with a range of objectives and asked them to put them in order, they said, “But these are all worthwhile.” Lomborg was making the point that we can’t spend infinite money on everything; we have to prioritize. The less important things are the opportunity cost of committing resources to the more important things. We cannot spend the same money on providing clean water everywhere and eliminating malaria as we spend on combatting global warming.

Everything we do supplants what we could have done instead. Do we take the pleasant evening dining out, or the evening at the races? The one excludes the other. The increase in welfare spending uses up money that could have gone to increase defence spending. Everything is a trade-off and has its opportunity cost.

18. The Tragedy of the Commons is that people overuse free resources.

It occurs were people are motivated to overuse and deplete a finite shared resource. If there is common land, it is in each herdsman’s interest to graze his livestock there, even though each of them is overusing and depleting the value of that common land. Because the resource is ‘common,’ is has no individual owner, and no-one is incentivized to maintain it.

Modern examples include over-fishing and causing fish stocks to decline. Iceland and New Zealand have countered this by assigning ownership of fish stock to their vessels. This gives skippers property rights that they have an interest in protecting, and both countries have seen a rise in their fishing stocks as a result. Botswana gave villagers ownership of wild elephants in their area, and saw a rise in elephant numbers as the villagers began protecting their precious asset.

We can avoid the tragedy of the commons by assigning ownership to what was previously common, thereby motivating someone to protect it. Communism’s collective farms were a disaster that was only resolved by assigning the land to individual families. Private property will be protected; common property will not.

19.Sayre’s Law claims that trivial disputes arouse the fiercest passions.

Named after Columbia Professor Wallace Stanley Sayre, it claims that disputes where the stakes are low often arouse the most intense and bitter arguments. It is often incorrectly attributed to Henry Kissinger in the form: “Academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small,” but it was Sayre who first suggested that people spend much energy on trivial details, while ignoring the big issues. He said that the intensity of the dispute is inversely proportional to the value of what is at stake.

The suggestion is obviously jocular, but because academic disputes often lack significant real-world impact, the participants focus their passion and competitive energy on minor, symbolic, or petty differences. A committee might pass approval of a nuclear power plant in 15 minutes, then spend an hour or two arguing passionately as to whether the door should be coloured red or green.

It possibly points to a trait in human psychology that leads them to dispute fervently the trivial matters of which they have some knowledge and opinion, rather than the more important real-world issues on which their knowledge is more limited.

20. The Black Swan Principle developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb suggests that random and unpredictable events have unforeseen consequences that we subsequently claim, wrongly, form part of a narrative that we could have predicted, given more knowledge.

At its heart is our desire to control our environment and to form theories about how society develop and responds. Taleb’s insight is that there are sometimes shocks that come at random that are by their nature unpredictable, yet have a huge impact on events. Nothing in the past enables us to incorporate them into our pattern of regular expectations.

Taleb suggests that our response should not concentrate on trying to predict the unpredictable, but on building resilience and robustness into our systems to reduce the negative effect these shocks might otherwise have. Since we cannot predict them, we should arrange our affairs so that we can handle them when they come.

21. Gresham’s Law tells us that bad money drives out good.

Sir Thomas Gresham wrote about money and minting in the 16th Century and observed that when Henry VIII altered the English shilling by adding more base metal to it, people hoarded the silver coins because they had more value than the new ones. Bad money circulated more because it held less value than its face value. Good money, which could appreciate, disappeared from use. People chose to use bad money first and hold onto the good money. The bad coins drove it out.

The law applies most under government-mandated exchange rates where two types of money are given the same value, despite differences in their real value. The notion of legal tender is of money that cannot be refused in payment of a debt. It has the force of law behind it. Without legal tender, Gresham’s Law could be reversed, in that people would insist on being paid in the high value money instead of the depreciated money, and good money would drive out bad. More likely would be a gap between the official value and the market value. I still have a 1,000 trillion note of Zimbabwe dollars.

Sometimes the concept of Gresham’s Law is used metaphorically where low-quality goods or practices displace high-quality ones because they are cheaper. It happens in competing human groups or organizations. When bad behavior has taken root, it becomes difficult, and occasionally impossible, to drive out the bad behaviour.

22. The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect occurs when people trust media in areas they are ignorant about.

People can often spot errors in the media in areas they have knowledge of, but continue to trust the same media in areas they don’t know much about. The amnesia part of the effect is that they forget or overlook the known inaccuracy in their area of expertise when they consult it on other matters.

It was originally coined to refer to print media, but the spread of other sources of information has led it to become a phenomenon on social media, network news outlets and other information sources. In the 1980s, many UK readers of the Economist magazine spotted errors and biases in some of its UK coverage, but thought it good on its US coverage. Similarly, US readers thought it good on UK matters, but less so on US matters they had some knowledge of.

The phenomenon was identified by the author Michael Crichton, and named after the American Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann. It referred to scientists who were quick to spot errors in papers covering their own area of expertise, but less skeptical about articles in the same journals in fields they were less familiar with.

23. Hitchens’s Razor tells us we need evidence behind assertions.

The journalist Christopher Hitchens coined it in 2005, updating the Latin phrase that tells us that ‘what is asserted gratuitously is denied gratuitously.’ His version of it suggests that what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

It is a version of the fallacy known as ‘Shifting the burden of proof.’ When someone makes a gratuitous assertion, you don’t have to show that it isn’t so; they have to show that it is. It encourages evidence-based reasoning because it dismisses claims that are presented without any evidence to back them up.

Its practical use is that it enables us to waste no time on unsubstantiated assertions that have nothing to back them up with. It enables us to quickly reject baseless or pseudoscientific assertions that are made without any reason to suppose they might be accurate.

24. The Matthew Effect tells us that success breeds success.

It derives its name from the biblical verse Matthew 13:12, “To him that hath shall it be given, and from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.” It tells us that those with wealth or power or status or skill will gain even more of them, leaving those less well-endowed struggling to catch up.

There is a case for suggesting that those with initial advantages find it easier to use those advantages to augment them. Children of wealthier parents are more likely to have a better education, to have access to their parents’ contacts, and to have parental help in gaining employment and accommodation, or capital to start a business.

Those who achieve status in science are more likely to receive acclaim for subsequent work, and more funding, than relatively unknown scientists. Those talented in sport are more likely to receive superior coaching and financial support. Early readers pull ahead by reading more and becoming more adept at absorbing information and communicating it.

However, it cannot be summarized as “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” because this is not true. In the UK, the gap has been narrowing, and even more spectacularly on a world scale where the richer are indeed getting richer, but the poor are getting richer, too, and at a much faster pace. The Matthew effect has elements of truth, but it doesn’t apply everywhere.

25. Amara’s Law tells how we assess the impact of technology.

It says that we tend to overestimate the difference that new technology will make in the short term, and to underestimate the long-term impact it will have. When new technology comes along, people tend to hype it up as the newest thing, a revolutionary difference, a game-changer.

Roy Amara, an American science ‘futurist,’ identified this trait, pointing out that people rave over the innovation, giving it massive positive publicity and identifying all sorts of problems it might solve and all sort of uses to which it might be put. After this phase of enthusiasm, people realize that it was over-sold, and a more rational and skeptical assessment takes place.

But when time passes and the new technology is subject to tweaks and improvements, more of its potential applications emerge, and it proves more useful than the earlier disillusion foretold. People enthuse about it early, cool off toward it later, and appreciate its merits later still.

26. Lindy’s Law says that long-lived things tend to live even longer.

It postulates that the anticipated life expectancy of non-perishable things, such as technologies or books, or performers, tends to be proportional to their current age. The longer they have been around, the more likely they are to endure even more.

It was allegedly named after Lindy’s Delicatessen in New York, which comedians patronized. They noted that the longevity of their future success seemed to depend on their past success. A new thing can be a fad, but one that has endured is more likely to last.

Knowledge of the law is an aid to decision making because it notes that the longevity of cultural trends, consumer preferences and business technologies is a guide to how long they might continue to last until they are supplanted. It suggests that things that have stood the test of time might be a better bet than some new thing that has recently appeared to challenge them.

It’s a law well-known to those of a conservative disposition. They think that if it has lasted, it’s probably because there’s merit in it. They suggest that new fads usually turn out to be new follies.

27. Betteridge’s Law tells us that headlines ending with a question mark can be answered with ‘no.’

Ian Betteridge, a technology journalist, posed the law in 2009 as a humorous observation, but there is reasoning behind it. If the journalist knows what they are talking about, and knows something to be true, their headline will present it as a statement. If they are uncertain about it, they will pose it as a question.

Headlines that end with a question mark tend to be speculative, attention-seeking and sensational, relating rumour rather than fact.

“Is the rural middle class headed for extinction?” No.

“Is another world war inevitable?” No.

“Must economic growth now stop?” No.

“Will the present population overwhelm Earth’s resources? No.

“Will the world run out of food?” No.

When we read sensationalist headlines ending with a question mark, Betteridge’s Law is a good way of separating the reality from the rubbish.

28. Paco’s Law says that you spend whatever you have available to spend.

“My salary’s gone up by 20 percent, but I’m no richer.” Many of us have been there or seen it among our friends. Welcome to Paco’s Law. It expresses a simple truism that when you have more, you tend to spend more.

In David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Micawber says, "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."

This is widely cited as a wise rule to follow in personal finance. Spend less than you earn. Unfortunately, human nature and Paco’s Law conspire against it. The tendency is to spend more if you have more. With more money, you can more often afford a taxi instead of a bus. You can afford to eat out more often, and to drink a more expensive bottle of wine. You can buy newer and more fashionable clothes, and take better holidays. There is no limit to the ways in which you can spend you extra cash.

In theory you can counter this by careful budgeting and put your surplus cash into a savings account. No-one seems to know who Paco was - maybe a fictional character like Micawber - but he recognized the essential human trait that the point of being richer is that you can live richer.

29. Twyman's Law tells us that surprising data, is likely to be wrong data.

We are surrounded by data, some of it useful, some not, some right, and some wrong. Twyman’s Law warns that if a statistic looks too good or too strange to be true, it almost certainly is.

We look for patterns and sometimes see them where they don’t exist. When we see really surprising connections, they probably don’t exist. The Welsh analyst who composed a grid to measure the neatness of handwriting in children in Wales was astounded to find that the children with bigger feet had neater handwriting. He took the data to a teacher, who told him that older children tended to have neater handwriting, and also had bigger feet.

The law says you should be suspicious about taking data at face value.  Twyman’s Law tells us that, ‘The more unusual or interesting the data, the more likely they are to have been the result of an error of one kind or another’. This because errors and data manipulation are far more common than genuinely surprising results.

As a general rule, it cautions that the more boring the data, the more trustworthy it tends to be. Look out for the outliers. They are more likely to be a mistake rather than a breakthrough.

30. Brandolini's Law says it’s harder to refute bullshit than to publish it.

Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini coined the law to explain that it is much easier to spread misinformation than it is to refute it. It is time-consuming to delve into the absurd claims being made, and to do the research that reveals nonsense to be what it is.

As they say, “A lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.” James Randi was someone who dedicated his life to debunking paranormal, supernatural, and pseudoscientific claims. He put in the time and the effort that most people would not, in order to refute claims of psychic power, Bermuda triangles and the like. Randi notably showed that Uri Geller’s alleged psychic powers were no more than cheap stage tricks regularly used by conjurers.

Some people, not most, are prepared to put in the effort to show that fake moon landing stories are themselves fake, and that vaccines do not introduce nano-particles into the bloodstream to trace people.

Brandolini’s Law is normally expressed as “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” And those who propagate bullshit take advantage of this. By the time someone has expended their time an energy to expose them, they have moved on to yet another conspiracy theory.

Madsen Pirie