42 Laws You Should Know (Part 3)
Welcome back to those who read Part 1 and Part 2 in this series.
For newcomers, here are three laws we’ve already covered to give you a flavour of what’s to come in this post:
1. Emmett’s Law: ‘The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing it.’
2. Gibson's Law: ‘Every subject matter expert has an opposite equivalent.’
3. The Backwards Law: ‘The more you pursue something, the less likely you will achieve it.’
If you found the above ‘laws’ interesting, read on to learn about seven more.
1. Goodhart’s Law
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
For most of the 20th century, Gosplan was the central planning agency for all economic activity in the Soviet Union.
The organisation set overall targets for various commodities and then broke them down for individual factories.
In theory, this seems like a sensible approach. In practice, it often wasn’t.
Let’s use the example of a factory producing metal nails.
If Gosplan measured the factory’s success by the ‘number of nails made’, this would incentivise the workers to produce many small nails.
On the other hand, if the measurement were ‘weight of nails made’, the factory might make a few large and very heavy nails.
You can see the problem here.
If a specific target is set, people will tend to over optimise for the outcome even if that has undesirable consequences.
This is known as ‘Goodhart’s law’, named after the British economist Charles Goodhart who originally wrote about the idea in an article on the UK’s monetary policy.
2. Metcalfe’s Law
The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users.
‘Metcalfe’s law’, also referred to as the ‘network effect’, states that ‘a network's impact is the square of the number of nodes in the network’.
In other words, a network increases in value as more users join it.
This doesn’t occur linearly but exponentially.
It’s named after Robert Metcalfe, the co-inventor of Ethernet, the internet networking technology.
It explains why social media apps are so obsessed with fast growth. They need to benefit from network effects as fast as possible to encourage other people to keep joining.
3. Law of Diminishing Returns
When adding more of something has no additional positive effect.
Generally speaking, the bigger the input, the greater the output.
But only up to a point.
For example, the more effort you put into a project, the greater the progress you will make.
However, there comes the point when working any harder only makes you tired.
Tiredness makes it more difficult to do the work, so your progress begins to slow.
In other words, more effort doesn’t always lead to better results.
Or, as the law of diminishing returns predicts, ‘After some optimal level of capacity is reached, adding an additional factor of production will actually result in smaller increases in output.’
4. Sayre’s Law
In any argument, the emotional response is inversely proportional to the value of what’s at stake.
‘Sayre's law’ is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre, a U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia University.
A 1973 Wall Street Journal article quoted Sayre saying, ‘Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.’
Sayre’s comments were an observation about human nature’s tendency to spend disproportionate amounts of energy on trivial matters whilst paying little attention to more serious matters.
Or, as Sayre's law states, ‘In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.’
5. Amara’s Law
The impact of technology is overestimated in the short run and underestimated in the long run.
When any new technology is released, there tends to be a ‘hype phase’ where it appears to be the answer to every problem.
This phase eventually dies when people realise the technology was initially oversold.
Later, when it has evolved and more use cases are discovered, the technology’s true potential is revealed.
Named after Roy Amara, Amara's law states that ‘We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.’
6. Lindy’s Law
The longer something has been around, the more likely it is to continue to be around.
‘Lindy’s law’ (also referred to as the ‘Lindy effect’) states that ‘The future life expectancy of any non-perishable thing (e.g. a technology, idea) is directly proportional to its current age.’
In other words, if something has been around for a long time already, it increases the chance of it being around for much longer.
You can use ‘Lindy’s law’ as a filter for decision making.
For example, a book that has been around for a long time is almost always a better choice than a new one.
It also means that something that’s a recent invention is more likely than not to be a fad.
In short, it’s better to rely on things that have stood the test of time.
7. Betteridge’s Law of Headlines
Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'.
In 2009, a British technology journalist, Ian Betteridge, made the following observation about newspaper headlines:
‘Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'’.
Why?
Well, for the simple fact that if the journalist knew it to be accurate, they would make it a statement instead of a question.
When reading the news, keeping this law in mind can be a helpful filter for the anxious mind!
