Dyson's Law George Dyson Science Historian; Author, Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Univer se;

Darwin Among the Machines Dyson's Law of Artificial Intelligence Anything simple enough to be understandable will not be complicated enough to be have intelligently, while anything complicated enough to behave intelligently wi ll not be simple enough to understand. Sterling's Law Bruce Sterling Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Sterling's Law of Ubiquitous Computation First, your home is a constant, while the Net is a place you go; then the Net be comes a constant while your home is a place you go. Sterling's Corollary to Clar e's Law Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic. Calvin's Law of Coherence William H. Calvin Neuroscientist; Professor, University of Washington; Author, Global Fever When things "all hang together," you have either gotten the jo e, solved the puz zle, argued in a circle, focused your chain of logic so narrowly that you will b e blindsided or discovered a hidden pattern in nature. Science, in large part, con sists of imagining coherent solutions and then ma ing sure that you weren't fool ed by a false coherence as in astrology. Gardner's Law Howard Gardner Psychologist, Harvard University; Author,Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed Gardner's First Law

Gardner's Second Law You can never go directly from a scientific discovery to an educational recommen dation: all educational practices presuppose implicit or explicit value judgment s. O'Donnell's Law James J O Donnell Classicist; Provost, Georgetown University; Author, The Ruin of the Roman Empire ; Webmaster, St. Augustine's Website O'Donnell's Law of Academic Administration

Don't as how smart someone is; as

in what ways is he or she smart.

If it feels good, don't do it. Because if it feels good, it's going to be because it eases some frustration you 're feeling from all the constraints and hassles of the institution; or because it really shows up so-and-so; or because it ma es you feel you really do have a little authority around here after all. It won't, it won't, and you don't. Bette r to calm down, ma e sure you now all the facts, ma e sure you've tal ed to all 49 sta eholders, and sleep on it, then do the thing you have to hold your nose to do. O'Donnell's Law of History There are no true stories. Story-tellers are in the iron grip of readers' expectations. Stories have beginn ings, middles, ends, heroes, villains, clarity, resolution. Life has none of tho se things, so any story gets to be a story (especially if it's a good story) by edging away from what really happened (which we don't now in anywhere near enou gh detail anyway) towards what ma es a good story. Historians exist to wrestle w ith the story temptation the way Laocoon wrestled with the sna es. But at the en d of the day, to tell anybody anything, you'll probably tell a story, so then be sure to follow: Luther's Law Pecca fortiter. Literally, "Sin bravely." His idea was that you're going to ma e a mess of thing s anyway, so you might as well do so boldly, confidently, with a little energy a nd imagination, rather than timidly, fearfully, half-heartedly. Hauser's Law Marc D. Hauser Psychologist and Biologist, Harvard University: Author, Moral Minds Hauser's First Law Every uniquely human ability, including coo ing, mathematics, morality, and musi c, is based on a set of biologically primitive capacities that evolved before ou r species wal ed the earth. Hauser's Second Law The historical stability of our prescriptive claims (what we ought to do) are de termined by principles underlying our universal judgments. Nature's is constrain s our lofty hopes for what ought to be. Ly en'st Law David Ly en A behavioral geneticist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Minnesota. Ly en's First Law The quality of one's intellectual productions is a function of the product of ta lent (e.g., intelligence) times mental energy. Although there are many and varie d tests for assessing intelligence, psychologists have not as yet even attempted to construct a measure of individual differences in mental energy.

Ly en's Second Law The mind consists of genetically-determined hardware and experientially-determin ed software. The hardware components are not constructed by genes wor ing either individually or additively but, rather, by groups of genes wor ing sequentially and configurally. Each human mating produces at least some gene configurations that are unique, having never occurred previously. This is why, among other thin gs, human genius often occurs uniquely in an otherwise undistinguished family li ne. Pepperberg's Law of Comparative Cognition Irene Pepperberg Research Associate & Lecturer, Harvard; Adjunct Associate Professor, Brandeis; A uthor, Alex & Me Any behavior exhibited by young children that is ta en as evidence of the early emergence of intelligence will, when subsequently exhibited by nonhumans, be int erpreted by many humans as a set of simple stimulus-response associations lac in g cognitive processing, whereas the stimulus-response explanation will rarely be used to re-interpret the behavior of the child. Gilbert' Law Daniel Gilbert Professor of Psychology at Harvard University Happy people are those who do not pass up an opportunity to laugh at themselves or to ma e love with someone else. Unhappy people are those who get this bac war ds. Traub's Law Joseph Traub Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University; coauthor, Complexity and Inf ormation Traub's Law (Version 1) The important things in life often happen by chance while we're agonizing over t he trivia. Traub's Law (Version 2) The important events of a person's life are the products of chains of highly imp robable occurrences. Schan 's Law Roger Schan Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Engines for Education Inc.; Author, Ma ing Mi nds Less Well Educated Than Our Own Because people understand by finding in their memories the closest possible matc h to what they are hearing and use that match as the basis of comprehension, any new idea will be treated as a variant of something the listener has already tho ught of or heard. Agreement with a new idea means a listener has already had a s imilar thought and well appreciates that the spea er has recognized his idea. Di sagreement means the opposite. Really new ideas are incomprehensible. The good n ews is that for some people, failure to comprehend is the beginning of understan

ding. For most, of course, it is the beginning of dismissal. Rush off's Law Douglas Rush off Media Analyst; Documentary Writer; Author, Program or Be Programmed; Life, Inc. A religion will increase in social value until a majority of its members actuall y believe in it at which point the social damage it causes will increase exponenti ally as long as it is in existence. Rush off's Law of Media True communication can only occur between people with equal access to the medium in which the communication is ta ing place. Sabbagh's Law Karl Sabbagh Writer and Television Producer; Author, Remembering Our Childhood: How Memory Be trays Us Sabbagh's First Law Never assume. All the mista es I have made in my life not that there are that many, of course have been because I failed to follow my own law. Sabbagh's Second Law The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred. I t hin this is the more original and far-reaching of the two laws but I have put i t second because it's not really mine. It was said to me by Alan Mulally, an ins piring Boeing manager (and they need inspiring managers at the moment.) Rovelli's Two Principles Carlo Rovelli Theoretical Physicist; University of the Mediterraneum, Marseille; Author, Quant um Gravity Time Does Not Exist Contrary to what generally assumed, the physical world does not exist "in time". At the basic microscopic level, the world is better described in terms of a a-t emporal theory, where physical laws do not express time evolution of physical va riables, but just relations between variables. Time emerges only thermodynamical ly when describing macroscopic variables. Therefore time is only a side effect o f our ignorance of the microscopic state of the world. "Time is a side effect of ignorance." Space Does Not Exist The physical world does not exist "in space". The physical world is made by an e nsemble of particles and fields, which do not live in an external space, but rat her live "on each other", and which can be in a relation of contiguity with resp ect to one another. "Space" is the order implied by this relation. These two pri nciples are implied by what we have learned about the physical world with genera

l relativity and with quantum mechanics. The second principle is largely a retur n to the Pre-Newtonian relational understanding of space, while the first has fe w antecendents in our culture. Taylor's Law Timothy Taylor Archaeologist, University of Bradford; Author, The Artificial Ape There are no laws of human behavior. Nisbett's Law Richard Nisbett Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan; Author, Intelligence and How We Get It When you have the beginnings of an idea about something, the worst thing to do i s to consult "the literature" before you get started to wor on it. You are sure to assimilate your potentially original idea to something that is already out t here. Dyson's Law of Obsolescence Freeman Dyson Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Study; Author, Many Colored Glass; The Scientist as Rebel If you are writing history and try to eep it up-to-date up to a time T before t he present, it will be out-of-date within a time T after the present. This law applies also to scientific review articles. ( Than s for including the Doctor Moreau quote, which describes us very well. Paulos' Law of Coincidence John Allen Paulos Professor of mathematics at Temple University People often note some unli ely conjunction of events and marvel at the coincide nce. Could anything be more wonderfully improbable, they wonder. The answer is Y es. The most amazing coincidence of all would be the complete absence of coincid ence. McWhorter's Law of Social History John Mcwhorter Linguist; Cultural Commentator; Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute; Author, Doin g Our Own Thing In a context of widespread literacy, easy communications, and a large class of p eople with ample leisure time, the social movement that begins by addressing a c oncrete grievance will, after the grievance has been largely addressed, pass int o the hands of persons inclined for individual reasons towards the dramatic and self-righteous, who will manipulate the movement's iconography and passion into a staged indignation difficult for outsiders to square with reality, and with li ttle actively progressive or beneficent intention.

Kelly's Law Kevin Kelly Editor at Large, Wired, Author-What Technology Wants Kellys' First Law Power, understanding, control. Pic any two. Kellys' Second Law Nobody is as smart as everybody. Goodwin's Limited Law Brian Goodwin Professor of biology at the Schumacher College The truth has as many faces as there are beings that express it. so no-one is ev er wrong. everyone is right, though in limited ways. wisdom lies in spotting the limitation while being grateful for the insight. Barrow's law John D. Barrow A physicist, is Professor of Mathematical Science, Director of the Millennium Ma thematics Project, University of Cambridge, and Gresham Professor of Geometry Barrow's first 'law' Any Universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind able to understand it. Barrow's second 'law' All difficult conjectures should be proved by reductio ad absurdum arguments. Fo r if the proof is long and complicated enough you are bound to ma e a mista e so mewhere and hence a contradiction will inevitably appear, and so the truth of th e original conjecture is established QED. Mins y's Law Marvin Mins y Mathematician; computer scientist; Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT; co founder, MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; author, The Emotion Machine Mins y's First Law Words should be your servants, not your masters. Mins y's Second Law Don't just do something. Stand there Curtis' Law Garniss Curtis Geochronologist Emeritus, University of California, Ber eley Curtis' First Law

With several un nown eys in hand, one of which fits the loc in front of you, t he first time you try all the eys, none will open it. Curtis' Second Law

Siler's Law Todd Siler Founder and director of Psi-Phi Communications Siler's First Law The brain is what the brain creates. Its wor ings reflect the wor ings of everyt hing it creates. Siler's Second Law Genius is everywhere, everyday, in everyone, in every way imaginable. Rheingold's Law Howard Rheingold Communications Expert; Author, Smart Mobs Communication media that enable collective action on new scales, at new rates, a mong new groups of people, multiply the power available to civilizations and ena ble new forms of social interaction. The alphabet enabled empire and monotheism, the printing press enabled science and revolution, the telephone enabled bureau cracy and globalization, the Internet enabled virtual communities and electronic mar ets, the mobile telephone enabled smart mobs and tribes of urban info-nomad s. Myers' Law David G. Myers Professor of Psychology, Hope College; author Psychology, 10th Edition Myers' Law of Truth The surest truth is that some of our beliefs err. Monotheism, someone has said, offers two simple axioms: 1) There is a God. 2) It 's not you. Knowing that we are fallible humans underlies the humility and openn ess that inspires science, and democracy. As Madeline L'Engle noted, "The na ed intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument." Myers' Law of Self-Perception Most people see themselves as better than average. Nine in ten managers rate themselves as superior to their average peer. Nine in ten college professors rated themselves as superior to their average colleague. And six in ten high school seniors rate their "ability to get along with others" as in the top 10 percent. Most drivers even most drivers who have been hospitaliz ed after accidents believe themselves more s illed than the average driver. "The o ne thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, econ

If you try all the ccessful.

eys again, there is only a fifty/fifty chance you will be su

omic status or ethnic bac ground," observes Dave Barry, "is that deep down insid e, we all believe that we are above average drivers." Excess humility is an unco mmon flaw. Myers Law of Writing Anything that can be misunderstood will be. Nesmith's Law Michael Nesmith Existence is Non-Time, Non-Sequential, and Non-Objective Nesmith's First Law The Universe includes no contrary laws Nesmith's Second Law Mind is the Constant in all equations Trehub's Law Arnold Trehub Psychologist, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Author, The Cognitive Brain For any experience, thought, question, or solution there is a corresponding anal og in the biophysical state of the brain. Devlin's Law Keith Devlin Executive Director, H-STAR Institute, Stanford University; Author, The Man of Nu mbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution Devlin's First Law Buyer beware: in the hands of a charlatan, mathematics can be used to ma e a vac uous argument loo impressive. Devlin's Second Law So can PowerPoint. Maddox's Law Sir John Maddox Royal Commissions on environmental pollution and genetic manipulation Maddox's First Law Those who scorn the "publish or perish" principle are the most eager to see thei r own manuscripts published quic ly and given wide publicity and the least willing to see their length reduced. Maddox's Second Law Reviewers who are best placed to understand an author's wor are the least li el y to draw attention to its achievements, but are prolific sources of minor criti cism, especially the identification of typos.

Maddox's Third Law Just as nature is supposed to abhor a vacuum, so scientific opinion abhors quest ions unli ely to be answered soon, whence the general belief that the origin of the Universe is now nearly understood. S oyles' Law John R. S oyles Researcher in the evolution of human intelligence in the light of recent discove ries about the brain S oyles' Law of Culture and the Brain Human culture and human cognition exists because the brain's neural plasticity a llows learned symbolic associations to substitute for the innate inputs and outp uts of already evolved ape cognitions, a process that extends greatly their func tionality. S oyles' Law of Literacy A society develops democracy to the degree that it writes social, legal and reli gious ideas using the syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation of everyday speech, r ather than that of a professional, literary or dead language. McCorduc 's Law Pamela Mccorduc Author or coauthor of seven published boo s A linear projection into the future of any science or technology is li e a form of propaganda often persuasive, almost always wrong. Anderson's Law Philip W. Anderson Nobel laureate physicist, Princeton More is different. Arthur's Law Charles Arthur Technology editor at The Independent newspaper Arthur's First Law Nothing is evenly spread; everything happens in clumps. The universe has clumps ga laxies, star systems, stars, planets, asteroids. You meet an old friend for the first time in years, then again and again. The smart fol are all together. It's a universal. Arthur's Second Law More data is good, and drives out the bad. Bunnell's Law David Bunnell

Founder of several major media properties including PC Magazine, PC World, Macwo rld, Macworld Expo, New Media and BioWorld Bunnell's First Law of Retrievability Everything is retrievable. Bunnell's Second Law of Retrievability Everything is stored somewhere. The secret to retrieving things is simply findin g out where they are stored. Dyson's Law Esther Dyson Catalyst, Information Technology Startups, EDventure Holdings, Former Chariman,E lectronic Frontier Foundation and ICANN; Author: Release 2.1 Do as ; don't lie. (Rationale:) How can we find the happy medium between disclosure and prying, bet ween transparency and overexposure? The last thing we want is a law saying that everyone should disclose everything: vested interests, negotiating strategies, i ntentions, ban account, marital status, whatever. How can we instead devise some rule that fits the best qualities of the Net dece ntralized, more or less self-enforcing, flexible.....and responsive to personal choices? The idea is to create a culture thatexpects disclosure, rather than a l egal regime that requires it. People can decide how much they want to play, and others can decide whether to play with them. First of all, it's two-way. It's not for a single person; it's for an interactio n. The first person has to as ; the second person, to answer truthfully or refus e openly to answer. It drives the responsibility for requiring disclosure down to where it belongs to those most li ely to be affected by the disclosure. It decentralizes the req uirement and the enforcement to everyone, instead of leaving it in the hands of a few at the top. (If that's an aw ward use of "requirement," it's because we do n't even have a word for "decentralized command.") As an individual, you are not commanded to answer; you may want to protect your own privacy or someone else's. But if you do answer, you must do so truthfully. Then it's up to the people involved to decide whether to engage - in conversatio n, in a transaction, in whatever ind of interaction they might be contemplating . The magic of Do as ; don't lie is that the parties to any particular interacti on can ma e a specific, local decision about what level of disclosure is appropr iate. Atran's Law Scott Atran Anthropologist, National Center for Scientific Research, Paris; Author, Tal ing to the Enemy Atran's Power Law of History (a corollary to the law of unintended consequences)

The major events that determine human history follow a power distribution (a mor e or less straight line on a log-log scale), with catastrophic and cascading con sequences (economic and health crises, political and cultural revolutions, war a nd terrorism, etc.), because people naturally prefer to act upon the future base d on their modeling of past occurrences. People do not repeat the catastrophes o f history because they forget it; people build up self-destructing ideologies an d behavior patterns that continue history's catastrophic path because they remem ber the past too well (e.g., "the maginot effect" for war and the soon-to-be "bo x-cutting effect" for terrorism). Ancillary: For politics, history's most well-developed and self-assured "isms" ( e.g., colonialism, fascism, communism, globalism) are those most prone to radica l collapse. Atran's Law of Bare Counterintuition (for the cultural survival of absurd ideas) Natural selection endowed humans with an intuitive ontology that includes fol bi ology (e.g., biodiversity divides into mutually exclusive groups of beings, and each group has a proprietary essence), fol psychology (e.g., intentional and emo tional beings have bodies, and have nowledge of other li e beings by observing and inferring how other bodies act), and fol physics (e.g., two bodies cannot si multaneously occupy the same place at the same time, and no body can occupy diff erent places at the same time). Barely counterintuitive ideas, which violate uni versal constraints on intuitive ontology (e.g., a bodiless being) but otherwise retain most commonsense properties associated with intuitive ontology (a bodiles s being who mostly acts and thin s li e a person), are those fictions most apt t o survive within a culture, most li ely to recur in different cultures, and most disposed to cultural variation and elaboration (e.g., sphinxes and griffins, sp irits and crystal balls, ghosts and gods). Ancillary: For religion (i.e., for most humans in all human societies), the more costly one's commitment to some factually absurd but barely counterintuitive wo rld (e.g., afterlife), the more others believe that person to be sincere and tru stworthy. Ogilvy's Law Jay Ogilvy A cofounder of GBN, a Partner in the Monitor Group of Companies Many well defined manifolds lac unifying centers that define or control them. Just because some things are genuinely sacred does not mean that there is a god. Just because a corporation or a country seems to be hierarchically structured do es not mean that any single leader is really in charge. Just because some behavior is conscious and intentional does not entail a "ghost in the machine," a homunculus, or a central intender. Just because evolution appears to be directional, from less order and complexity toward greater order and complexity, that does not presuppose either an alpha-d esigner or an omega-telos. Precursors to Ogilvy's Law: 1. Derridean Deconstruction, which is not about ta ing things apart, but showing how they were never all that unified in the first place

2. Wittgenstein's replacement of Platonic Ideas e.g., that one thing which all ins tances of 'game' or 'justice' have in common with the much looser notion of "famil y resemblances" Lemma to Ogilvy's Law: Demythologizing false unities does not degrade the values to be found in their r espective manifolds.

Nietzsche's announcement of the death of god does not mean that nothing is sacre d. S epticism regarding conspiracy theories does not entail naivet regarding power o r the impossibility of effective leadership. Seeing through Cartesianism in the cognitive sciences does not entail eliminativ e materialism, a lac of intentionality, or the reduction of mind to matter. Dismissing teleology does not deny a manifest directionality to evolution. In each of these cases and many others li e them, the deconstructive turn should not be confused with nihilism or deflationary debun ing. The value of Ogilvy's Law lies in its ability to help predict which valleys harbor real value, and whi ch pea s are better left undefended Kosslyn's Law Stephen M. Kosslyn Psychologist; Director, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences , S tanford University Kosslyn's First Law Body and mind are not as separate as they appear to be. Not only does the state of the body affect the mind, but vice-versa. Kosslyn's Second Law The individual and the group are not as separate as they appear to be. A part of each mind spills over into the minds of other people, who help us thin and reg ulate our emotions. Epstein's Law Jeffrey Epstein Money manager and science philanthropist Epstein's First Law Know when you are winning. Epstein's Second Law The ey question is not what can I gain but what do I have to lose. Brand's Law Stewart Brand

Founder, The Whole Earth Catalog; Co-founder, The Well; Co-Founder, The Long Now Foundation; Author, Whole Earth Discipline Information wants to be free. The rest of Brand's Law Information also wants to be expensive. Brand's Pace Law In haste, mista es cascade. With deliberation, mista es instruct Brand's Asymmetry The past can only be nown, not changed. The future can only be changed, not no wn. Brand's Shortcut The only way to predict the future is to ma e sure it stays exactly the same as the present. Hut's Law Piet Hut Professor of astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton Hut's First Law Any attempt to define what is science is doomed to failure Scientists often attac what they consider irrational creeds by first defining w hat counts as science and then showing that those creeds don't fit within the li mits specified. While their motive is often right, their approach is totally wro ng. Science has no method. It is opportunistic in the extreme, with theory adapt ing with admirable agility to the most amazing experimental discoveries, no matt er what previous 'corner stones' have to be given up: quantum mechanics is the m ost stri ing example. This opportunism is the only reason that science has remai ned alive and well, notwithstanding the human tendency for stagnation that is ex emplified so clearly through more than a dozen successive generations of individ ual scientists. Hut's Second Law In scientific software development, research = education When writing a large software pac age or a whole software environment, the most efficient way to produce a robust product is to write documentation simultaneous ly with the computer codes, on all levels: from comment lines to manual pages to narrative that explains the reasons for the many choices made. Having to explai n to yourselves and your cowor ers how you choose what why when is the best guid e to quic ly discovering hidden flaws and better alternatives, minimizing the ne ed to bac trac later. Therefore, the most efficient way to write a large coherent bod y of software as a research project is to view it as an educational project. I have come across similar endorsements of documentation in various places, incl uding Donald Knuth's idea of literate programming, and Gerald Sussman's advice t o write with utmost clarity for humans first, and for computers as an afterthoug ht.

Miller's Law Geoffrey Miller Evolutionary Psychologist, University of New Mexico; Author, Spent: Sex, Evoluti on, and Consumer Behavior Miller's Law of Strange Behavior To understand any apparently baffling behavior by another human, as : what statu s game is this individual playing, to show off which heritable traits, in which mating mar et? Miller's Iron Law of Iniquity In principle, there is an evolutionary trade-off between any two positive traits . But in practice, every good trait correlates positively with every other good trait. Miller's First Law of Offspring Ingratitude People who don't understand genetics attribute their personal failings to the in ane role models offered by their parents. Miller's Second Law of Offspring Ingratitude People who do understand genetics attribute their personal failings to the inane mate-choice decisions made by their parents. Taleb's Law Nassim Nicholas Taleb Distinguished Professor of Ris Engineering, NYU-Poly; Author, The Blac Swan Taleb's First Blac Swan Law The ris you now anything about today is not the one that matters. What will hu rt you next has to loo completely unplausible today. The more unplausible the e vent the more it will hurt you. Consider that had the WTC attac been deemed a reasonable ris then we would hav e had tighter control of the s ies and it would have not ta en place. It happene d because it was improbable. The awareness of a specific danger ma es you protec t yourself from its precise effect and may prevent the event itself from occurri ng.

We don't learn that we don't learn. We don't learn the First Blac Swan Law from experience, yet we thin that we le arn something from it. Abstract subject matters (and metarules) do not affect ou r ris avoidance mechanisms; only vivid images do. People did not learn from the WTC (and the succession of similar events in history such as the formation of f inancial bubbles) that we have a horrible trac record in forecasting such occur rences. They just learned the specific tas to avoid tall buildings and Islamic terrorists after the fact. Hoffman's Law Donald D. Hoffman

Taleb's Second Blac

Swan Law (corollary)

Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, Visual Intelligence Hoffman's First Law A theory of everything starts with a theory of mind. Quantum measurement hints that observers may create microphysical properties. Co mputational theories of perception hint that observers may create macrophysical properties. The history of science suggests that counterintuitive hints, if purs ued, can lead to conceptual brea throughs. Hoffman's Second Law Physical universes are user interfaces for minds. Just as the virtual worlds experienced in VR arcades are interfaces that allow t he arcade user to interact effectively with an unseen world of computers and sof tware, so also the physical world one experiences daily is a species-specific us er interface that allows one to survive while interacting with a world of which one may be substantially ignorant. Rab in's Rule Richard Rab in Psychiatrist Nothing is a simple as it seems. Rab in's Dictum If you don't understand something, it's because you aren't aware of its context. Dehaene's Law Stanislas Dehaene Neuroscientist; Collge de France, Paris; Author, The Number Sense; Reading In the Brain Dehaene's First Law Every successful human invention such as arithmetic or the alphabet has a "neuro nal niche" a set of cerebral processors that evolved for a distinct purpose, but c an be recycled to implement the new function. Two corollaries: The difficulty of learning a new concept or technique is directly related to the amount of recycling needed the distance between the evolutionary older function a nd the new one. When the old and the new functions are closely related (isomorphic), an evolutio nary old cerebral processor can provide a fast, unconscious and unexpected solut ion to a recent cultural problem this is what we call "intuition". Dehaene's Second Law The confusability of two ideas, however abstract, is a direct function of the ov erlap in their neuronal codes.

Blac more's Law Susan Blac more Psychologist; Author, Consciousness: An Introduction Blac more's First Law People's desire to believe in the paranormal is stronger than all the evidence t hat it does not exist. Blac more's Second Law Humans are not in control of the web; the memes are. Kasper's Law Raphael Kasper Physicist, is Associate Vice Provost for Research at Columbia University and was Associate Director of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory One should never blindly accept things as they are. Jose Saramago writes in The Cave with his usual quir y punctuation and sentence structure: "... we often hear it said, or we say it ourselves, I'll get used to it, we say or they say, with what seems to be genuine acceptance ..., what no one as s is a t what cost do we get used to things." Kasper's Second Law Try to now where and how your thoughts arise and always give credit to your tea chers. Gopni 's Learning Curve Alison Gopni Psychologist, UC, Ber eley; Author, The Philosophical Baby The ability to learn is inversely proportional to years of school, adjusted for hormones.

Gopni 's Gender Curves The male curve is an abrupt rise followed by an equally abrupt fall. The female curve is a slow rise to an extended asymptote. The areas under the curves are ro ughly equal. These curves apply to all activities at all time scales (e.g. atten tion to TV programs, romantic love, career scientific productivity).

De Vany's Law Arthur De Vany Professor Emeritus of Economics and Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California The future is over-forecasted and underpredicted.

Provine's Law Robert Provine Psychologist and Neuroscientist, University of Maryland; Author, Laughter Provine's Motor Precocity Principle Organisms spond before they respond (act before they react). This principle of neurobehavioral development and evolution describes the tenden cy of the nervous system to produce motor output before it receives sensory inpu t. Because motor systems often evolve and develop before sensory systems, sensor y input cannot have the dominant influence on neural structure and function pred icted by some psychological and neurological theories. The evolutionary precocity of motor relative to sensory systems also argues agai nst the classical reflex as a primal step in neurobehavioral evolution. Spontane ously active motor processes are adaptive and can emerge through natural selecti on unli e sensory processes that are not adaptive without a behavior to guide. S ensory systems evolved to control already existing movement. Another argument against the primacy of reflexes is that they require the unli e ly simultaneous evolution of a sensory and a motor process. The tendency of orga nisms to "spond before they respond" requires the re-evaluation of many other tr aditional neurobehavioral concepts and processes. Provine's Self/Other Exclusionary Principle The "self," the most basic sense of personhood, is defined as that which is not "other." "Other," the most primitive level of social entity, is defined as a non -self, animate stimulus on the surface of your s in. Self is distinguished from other by a neurological cancellation process. These d efinitions are attractive because they permit a neurologically and computational ly based approach to problems that are traditionally mired in personality and so cial theory. Although our sense of identity involves more than self/non-self dis crimination, such a mechanism may be at its foundation and a first step toward t he evolution of personhood and the neurological computation of its boundaries. F or a demonstration of this mechanism, consider your inability to tic le yourself . Tic le requires stimulation by a non-self animate entity on the surface of you r s in. Similar, self-produced stimulation is cancelled and is not tic lish. Without such a self/non-self discriminator, we would be constantly be tic ling o urselves by accident, and the world would be filled with goosey people lurching their way through life in a chain reaction filled with tactile false alarms. Dev eloping a similar machine algorithm may lead to "tic lish" robots whose performa nce is enhanced by their capacity to distinguish touching from being touched, an d, provocatively, a computationally based construct of machine personhood. Pimm's Law Stuart Pimm Doris Du e Professor of Conservation Ecology; Author, The World According to Pim m: a Scientist Audits the Earth Pimm's First Law No language spo en by fewer than 100,000 people survives contact with the outsid

e world, while no language spo en by more than one million people can be elimina ted by such contact. Pimm's Second Law With every change in language (including first contact with humanity), a region' s biodiversity shrin s by 20%. Anderson's Law Chris Anderson Curator, TED conferences, TED Tal s Anderson's Law of Causal Instinct Humans are engineered to see for laws, whether or not they're actually there. Anderson's Law of S epticism Most proposed laws, including this one, will probably turn out to be vacuous. Alda's Laws Alan Alda Actor, Writer, Director; Host of PBS program The Human Spar ; Author, Things I O verheard While Tal ing to Myself The following is written by a non-scientist who supposes it might be entertainin g for scientists to see what passes through the head of a curious layman while t rying to understand the people who try to understand Nature. Alda's First Law of Laws All laws are local. In other words, something is always bound to come along and ma e you rethin wha t you now by forcing you to loo at it in a broader context. I've arrived at th is notion after interviewing hundreds of scientists, and also after being marrie d for 46 years. I don't mean that laws are not true and useful, especially when they have been v erified by experiment. But they are li ely to continue to be true only within a certain frame, once another frame is discovered. Some scientists will probably find this idea heretical and others may find it ob vious. According to this law, they'll both be right (depending on the frame they 're wor ing in). Another way of saying this is that no matter how much we now about something, i t is just the tip of the iceberg. And most disasters occur by coming in contact with the other part of the iceberg. Alda's Second Law of Laws A law does not now how local it is. Citizens of Lawville do not realize there are city limits and are constantly sur prised to find out they live in a county.

When you're operating within the frame of a law, you can't

now where the edges

of the frame are where dragons begin showing up. I've just been interviewing astronomers about dar matter and dar energy in the universe. These two things ma e up something li e 96% of the universe. The part of the universe we can see or in some way observe is only about 4%. That leaves a lot of universe that needs to be rethought. And some people speculate that da r energy may be lea ing in from a whole other universe; an even bigger change o f frame, if that turns out to be the case. It s now nown that vast stretches of DNA once thought to be Jun DNA because they don t code for proteins actually regulate or even silence conventional genes. The conventional genes what we used to thin were responsible for everything we new about heritability account for only 2% of our DNA. Apparently, it s not yet nown ho w much of the other 98% is active, but I thin the frame has just shifted here. Welcome to Lawville; you are now leaving Lawville. Clar 's Law Andy Clar Philosopher and Cognitive Scientist, University of Edinburgh; Author: Supersizin g the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension Everything lea s. There are no clear-cut level distinctions in nature. Neural software bleeds into neural firmware, neural firmware bleeds into neural hardware, psychology bleeds into biology and biology bleeds into physics. Body bleeds into mind and mind bl eeds into world. Philosophy bleeds into science and science bleeds bac .The idea of levels is a useful fiction, great for hygienic text-boo writing and quic a nswers that defend our local turf but seldom advance scientific understanding). Seife's Law Charles Seife Professor of Journalism, New Yor University; formerly journalist, Science Magaz ine; Author, Proofiness: The Dar Arts of Mathematical Deception Seife's First Law A scientific revolution is a complete surprise. Especially to its authors. Seife's Second Law Each generation's scientific neologisms adorn the labels of the next generation' s quac cures. Lanier's Law Jaron Lanier Computer scientist; musician; author, You Are Not A Gadget The following are Lanier's Laws for Putting Machines in their Place, distilled f rom comments I've posted on Edge over the years. They are all stolen from earlie r laws that predate the appearance of computers by decades or centuries. Lanier's First Law Humans change themselves through technology.

Example: Lanier's Law of Eternal Improvement for Virtual Reality: Average human sensory perception will gain acuity over successive generations in tandem with t he improving qualities of pervasive media technology. Lanier's Second Law Even though human nature is dynamic, you must find a way to thin of it as being distinct from the rest of nature. You can't have a categorical imperative without categories. Or, You can't have a golden rule without gold. You have to draw a Circle of Empathy around yourself and others in order to be moral. If you include too much in the circle, you beco me incompetent, while if you include too little you become cruel. This is the "N ormal form" of the eternal liberal/conservative dichotomy. Lanier's Third Law You can't rely completely on the level of rationality humans are able to achieve to decide what to put inside the circle. People are demonstrably insane when it comes to attributing nonhuman sentience, as can be seen at any dog show. Lanier's Fourth Law Lanier's Law of AI Unrecognizability. You can't rely on experiment alone to decide what to put in the circle. A Turing Test-li e experiment can't be designed to distinguish whether a computer has go tten smarter or a person interacting with that computer has gotten stupider (usu ally by lowering or narrowing standards of human excellence in some way.) Lanier's Fifth Law If you're inclined to put machines inside your circle, you can't rely on metrics of technological sophistication to decide which machines to choose. These metri cs have no objectivity. For just one example, consider Lanier's retelling of Par inson's Law for the Pos t-dot-com Era: Software inefficiency and inelegance will always expand to the le vel made tolerable by Moore's Law. Put another way, Lanier's corollary to Brand' s Laws: Whether Small Information wants to be free or expensive, Big Information wants to be meaningless. Lanier's Sixth Law

Best guess for Circle of Empathy: Danger of increasing human stupidity is probab ly greater than potential reality of machine sentience. Therefore choose not to place machines in Circle of Empathy. Lloyd's Law Seth Lloyd Professor of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT; Author, Programming the Univer se Lloyd's It From Qubit Law The universe is a quantum computer: life, sex, the brain, and human society all

When one must ma e a choice despite almost but not quite total uncertainty, wor hard to ma e your best guess.

arise out of the ability of the universe to process information at the level of atoms, photons and elementary particles. Horgan's Law John Horgan Science writings program at the Stevens Institute of Technology Horgan's First Law If science has limits and science tells us that it does the only question is when, n ot if, it reaches them. Horgan's Second Law Every garbage-removal system whether Zen, s epticism, or existentialism generates ga rbage. If you want to clear your mind, the best you can hope for is to find a sy stem, or anti-system, that removes more garbage than it generates. Aunger's Law Robert Aunger Biological anthropologist Aunger's Law of Human Evolution Human life is unique in being the result of three coevolving information inherit ance systems: genes, minds and technology. Aunger's Law of Technological Evolution As the rate of technological innovation increases, so too does the inertia from ancillary institutions, but not as much. Ernst Law Ernst Pppel Neuroscientist; Chairman, Board of Directors Human Science Center; Department of Medical Psychology, Munich University; Author, Mindwor s I refer to my "laws" as "Pppel's Paradox", and "Pppel's Universal". Actually the n ames have been invented by others. Pppel's Paradox Not to see, but to see. Some years ago (1973) we described a phenomenon that pat ients with a certain brain injury show some residual vision although they do not have a conscious representation of their remained visual capacity. They can ori ent in space, or they can discriminate simple patterns, but they do not now tha t they can do it. This phenomenon became nown as "blindsight". Apparently there is a lot of implicit processing going in our brain that lac s an explicit repre sentation, but which usually is associated with conscious experience. Interestin gly, the phenomenon of blindsight not only made a "career" in the neurosciences, but also in philosophy. Pppel's Universal We ta e life 3 seconds at a time. Human experience and behaviour is characterize d by temporal segmentation. Successive segments or "time windows" have a duratio n of approx. 3 seconds. Examples: Intentional movements are embedded within 3 s

(li e a handsha e); the anticipation of a precise movement li e hitting a golf b all does not go beyond 3 s; if we reproduce the duration of a stimulus, we can d o so accurately up to 3 s but not beyond; if we loo at ambiguous figures (li e a vase vs. two faces) or if we listen to ambiguous phoneme sequences (li e Cu-Ba -Cu-Ba-.., either hearing Cuba or Bacu) automatically after approx. 3 s the perc ept switches to the alternative; the wor ing platform of our short term memory l asts only 3 s (being interrupted after 3 s most of the information is gone); spo ntaneous speech in all languages is temporally segmented, each segment lasting u p to 3 s; this temporal segmentation of speech shows up again in poetry, as a ve rse of a poem is embedded within 3 s (Sha espeare: "Shall I compare thee to a su mmer's day"); musical motives preferably last 3 s (remember Beethoven's Fifth Sy mphony); decisions are made within 3 s (li e zapping between TV channels); and t here are more examples. Thus, the brain provides a temporal stage that last appr ox. 3 s, which is used in perception, cognition, movement control, memory, speec h, or music. Shermer's Law Michael Shermer Publisher, S eptic magazine; monthly columnist, Scientific American; Author, The Believing Brain Shermer's Last Law Any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable fr om God. Any ETI that we might encounter would not be at our level of culture, science, a nd technology, nor would they be behind us. How far ahead of us would they be? I f they were only a little ahead of us on an evolutionary time scale, they would be light years ahead of us technologically, because cultural evolution is much m ore rapid than biological evolution. God is typically described by Western relig ions as omniscient and omnipotent. Since we are far from the mar on these trait s, how could we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely, from an ETI who has them in relatively (to us) copious amounts? Thus, we would be unable to distinguish between absolute and relative omniscience and omnipotence. But if Go d were only relatively more nowing and powerful than us, then by definition it would be an ETI! Shermer's Three Principles of Provisional Morality and Evolutionary Ethic

2. The happiness principle: it is a higher moral principle to always see happin ess with someone else's happiness in mind, and never see happiness when it lead s to someone else's unhappiness. 3. The liberty principle: it is a higher moral principle to always see liberty with someone else's liberty in mind, and never see liberty when it leads to som eone else's loss of liberty. 0. The Zeroeth principle: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (These principles were derived from a scientific analysis of the evolutionary or igins of the moral sentiments and the historical development of evolutionary eth ics. The Zeroeth Principle, which precedes the three principles, first evolved h undreds of thousands of years ago but was first codified in writing by the world 's great religious leaders and has come down to us as the golden rule. The found ation of the Zeroeth Principle, and the three derivative principles is, in evolu

1. The as -first principle: to find out whether an action is right or wrong, as first.

tionary theory, reciprocal altruism and the process of reciprocity.) Bla emore's Law Colin Bla emore Chief Executive, Medical Research Council;Waynflete Professor of Physiology, Uni versity of Oxford Bla emore's First Law People are never more honest than you thin they are. Bla emore's Second Law The only form of intelligence that really matters is the capacity to predict. Sampson's Law of Interdependent Origination Scott Sampson Dinosaur paleontologist and science communicator; Author, Dinosaur Odyssey: Foss il Threads in the Web of Life Life's unfolding is a tapestry in which every new thread is contingent upon the nature, timing, and interweaving of virtually all previous threads. This is an extension of the idea that the origin of new life forms is fundamenta lly contingent upon interactions among previous biotas. As Stephen J. Gould desc ribed it, if one could rewind the tape of life and let events play out again, th e results would almost certainly differ dramatically. The point of distinction h ere is a deeper incorporation of the connections inherent in the web of life. Sp ecifically, the origin of new species is inextricably lin ed both to evolutionar y history and to intricate ecological relationships with other species. Thus, sp eciation might be aptly termed "interdependent origination." So, for example, it is often said that the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago cleared the way for the radiation of mammals and, ultimately, the origin of humans. Yet the degree of life's interconnectedness far exceeds that implied in this statement. Dinosaurs persisted for 160 million years prior to this mass dying, co-evolving in intricate organic webs with plants, bacteria, fungi, and algae, as well as o ther animals, including mammals. Together these Mesozoic life forms influenced t he origins and fates of one another and all species that followed. Had the major extinction of the dinosaurs occurred earlier or later, or had dinosaurs never e volved, subsequent biotas would have been wholly different, and we almost certai nly wouldn't be here to contemplate nature. An equivalent claim could be made fo r any major group at any point in the history of life. Verena's Law Verena Huber Dyson Emeritus professor of the Philosophy department of the University of Calgary, Al berta Canada Verena's Law of Sane Reasoning Hone your Hunches, Jump, then bac trac to blaze a reliable trail to your Conclu sion. But avoid reductions; they lead to mere counterfeits of truth. Verena's Law of Constructive Proof

Every sound argument can and ought to be turned into a construction that embodie s and explains its conclusion Marcus' Law Gary Marcus Cognitive Scientist; Author, Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind Marcus' First Law Nature and nurture are not in opposition; nature is what ma es nurture possible. Marcus' Second Law Nothing in evolution is without precedent; even the most wondrous adaptations ar e modifications of pre-existing systems. Marcus' Third Law What's good enough for the body is good enough for the brain. Brains, li e any o ther organ, ta e their special character from the actions of individual cells th at divide, differentiate, migrate, and die, according to genetic programs that a re the product of evolution. Broo s' Law Rodney A. Broo s Roboticist; Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus) , MIT; Founder, Chairman & CTO, Heartland Robotics, Inc.; Author, Flesh and Machines Broo s' First Law A good place to apply scientific leverage is on an implicit assumption that ever yone ma es and that is so implicit that no one would even thin to mention it to students entering the field. Negating that assumption may lead to new and inter esting ways of thin ing. Broo s' Second Law If you don't have a solid example then your theory is not a good theory. Deutsch's Law David Deutsch Physicist, University of Oxford; author, The Beginning of Infinity; The Fabric o f Reality Every problem that is interesting is also soluble. Corollary #1 Inherently insoluble problems are inherently boring. Corollary #2 In the long run, the distinction between what is interesting and what is boring is not a matter of subjective taste but an objective fact. Corollary #3

The problem of why every problem that is interesting is also soluble, is soluble . Grand's Law Steve Grand Founder, Cyberlife Research; author, Creation: Life and How to Ma e It Grand's First Law Things that persist, persist; things that don't, don't. This tautology underlies every single phenomenon we see around us, from molecules to religions. The purpose of science is simply to discover how and why any given class of pattern manages to persist. Life is best understood as a group of patterns that are able to persist because they spontaneously duplicate themselves and adapt to change. Equally, an electron is a pattern that persists as a self-maintaining resonant mode in the electromagnetic field. The universe is what is left over when all the non-self-maintaining patterns have faded away. Grand's Second Law Cortex is cortex is cortex. Our brains may end up as a collection of highly specialised 'modules', but the functioning of these modules is not the ey to intelligence. The ey is the deeper set of rules that enable a homogeneous pin goo to wire itself up into such a collection of specialised machines in the first place, merely by being exposed to the sensory world. Grand's Third Law The more carefully one ma es contingency plans, the more bizarre the actual circumstances will turn out to be. Davies' Law Paul Davies Theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astro-biologist, and co-Director of BEYOND, Arizona State University; author, The Eerie Silence and The Cosmic Jac pot Davies' First Law Time does not pass. Davies' Second Law Never let observation stand in the way of a good theory. Fin elstein's Law David Fin elstein Professor Emeritus, School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology Fin elstein's First Law Everything is relative. Fin elstein's Second Law

Everything (which is relative). Daw ins's Law Richard Daw ins Evolutionary Biologist; Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Scienc e, Oxford; Author, The Greatest Show on Earth, The Magic of Reality Daw ins's Law of the Conservation of Difficulty Obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity. Daw ins's Law of Divine Invulnerability God cannot lose. Lemma 1 When comprehension expands, gods contract but then redefine themselves to restore the status quo. Lemma 2 When things go right, God will be than ed. When things go wrong, he will be than ed that they are not worse.

Lemma 3 Belief in the afterlife can only be proved right, never wrong. Lemma 4 The fury with which untenable beliefs are defended is inversely proportional to their defensibility The following law, though probably older, is often attributed to me in various v ersions, and I am happy to formulate it here as Daw ins's Law of Adversarial Debate When two incompatible beliefs are advocated with equal intensity, the truth does not lie half way between them. Venter's Law J. Craig Venter Leading scientist of the 21st century for Genomic Sciences; Co-Founder, Chairman , CEO, Co-Chief Scientific Officer, Synthetic Genomics, Inc.; Founder, President and Chairman of the J. Craig Venter Institute; author, A Life Decoded Venter's First Law Discoveries made in a field by some one from another discipline will always be u psetting to the majority of those inside. Venter's Second Law The ability to directly read the genetic code will continue exponentially, with

the cost per nucleotide (base pair) decreasing by one-half every two years. Corollary to Law 2 While DNA sequencing has changed faster than Moore's Law for computer chips, it will become dependent on and therefore limited by Moore's Law. (Based on an exch ange with Gordon Moore). Venter's Third Law We have the tools for the first time in the history of humanity to answer virtua lly any question about biology and our own evolution. Venter's Fourth Law The Earth's Oceans are the ultimate source of genetic/genomic diversity providin g at least half of the more than 10 billion genes in the planet's gene pool. Venter's Fifth Law Life is li e sailing: It is easy to run downwind but usually if you want to get somewhere worthwhile a long hard beat to weather is necessary. Quartz's Law Steven R. Quartz Neuroscientist; Associate Professor of Philosophy, Caltech; Coauthor, Liars, Lov ers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We A re Quartz's Law of The Primacy of Feeling In everyday life, one's anticipated emotions regarding a decision is a better gu ide than rational deliberation. Brain science is increasingly appreciating the c entrality of emotions as guides to life, and emotions are typically more in line with one's wishes than rational deliberation, which can be easily disconnected from one's desires and goals. The upshot: deliberation is cheap, emotions are ho nest. Quartz's Law of Latent Plasticity Failure to alter thought, mood, personality, or other facets of ourselves throug h environmental means is not a demonstration that these are hard-wired. Rather, such failure should be ta en merely as an indication that we have not yet discov ered the appropriate regime of experience. New experience-based approaches to br ain change are rapidly emerging, and overturn the dogma of the inflexible brain. We can now utilize the brain's latent capacity for change to treat mood disorde rs through experience-based brain change. Learning how to utilize the brain's la tent plasticity, or capacity for change, will produce revolutions in physical, c ognitive, and mental health remediation. Campbell's Law Philip Campbell Editor-in Chief, Nature Campbell's First Law Whatever the science, the forces of nature will exploit any loophole in experime ntal or theoretical design and construction, any ambiguity in measurement and an

y unchec ed or unrecognised assumption to lead a researcher to enticing but fals e conclusions. Campbell's Second Law Scientists are as vigorous in complaining about the incomprehensibility of other s' scientific papers as they are lazy in clarifying their own. Campbell's Third Law The probability that a Powerpoint presentation will fail is proportional to the technical sophistication of the institution at which you are presenting it. (And by the way, where the failure is total, your tal will be all the better for it .) Nrretranders' Law Tor Nrretranders Science Writer; Consultant; Lecturer, Copenhagen; Author, The Generous Man Nrretranders' Law of Symmetrical Relief If you find that most other people, upon closer inspection, seem to be somewhat comical or ludicrous, it is highly probable that most other people find that you are in fact comical or ludicrous. So you don't have to hide it, they already n ow. Nrretranders' Law of Understanding Novelty The difficulty in understanding new ideas originating from science or art is not intellectual, but emotional; good ideas are simple and clear, but if they are t ruly new, they will be hard to swallow. It is not difficult to understand that t he Earth is not at the center of the Universe, but it is hard to believe it. Sci ence is simple, simply strange. Barbour s Law Julian Barbour Theoretical physicist; author, The End of Time My laws ma e more precise Carlo Rovelli s two principles: time does not exist, spa ce does not exist. He argues that the universe is a networ of relations and not a game played out on some invisible arena of absolute space and time such as Ne wton postulated. I agree but believe it is important to formulate precisely the manner in which the universe is relational. Barbour s First Law The change of a physical field at a given point is not measured by time but by t he changes of all the other physical fields at the same point. To determine a ra te of change, one does not divide an infinitesimal change by an infinitesimal ti me interval but by the weighted average of all the other changes at the same poi nt. This ensures that an invisible time can play no role in the dynamics of the universe. Barbour s Second Law Geometry is founded on congruence, dynamics on minimisation of incongruence. This requires amplification. Suppose just three particles in space. Newton defin

ed their motions relative to absolute space. In relational dynamics, this is not allowed. Instead, the motions (changes) between two instantaneous states of the three particles are completely determined by the intrinsic changes of the trian gles that they form. Real change will happen when a triangle becomes incongruent with itself. To determine the intrinsic change between one triangle and another ever so slightly incongruent with it, move one relative to each other until the position of best matching, in which they coincide more closely than in any othe r possible relative positioning, is achieved. The corresponding displacements (c hanges) determined by this minimisation of incongruence are the true physical di splacements. The notion of best matching can be applied universally to both part icles and fields. Barbour s Third Law Space is Riemannian. Spelled out in the appropriate mathematical detail, these three laws seem to exp lain the structure of all currently nown physical fields as well as the existen ce of the universal light cone of Einstein s special relativity and gauge theory. Maria's Law Maria Spiropulu Physicist, CERN Maria's 1st Law The anthropic principle in cosmology is just a (silly) corollary of the anthropi c principle in religion: We are, therefore god is. Maria's 2nd Law We are not the source of the laws of nature. Nature is, whether we are or not. Maria's 3rd Law A law at the time of its conception is the solution to a problem or the answer t o a question; at that time both the solution and the problem, the question and t he answer, are ill-posed. Zangger's Law Eberhard Zangger Managing director of science communications Zangger's First Law Most scientific brea throughs are nothing else than the discovery of the obvious . Zangger's Second Law Truly great science is always ahead of its time. Although there seems to be a slight contradiction in my laws, historical evidenc e proves them right: The Hungarian surgeon Ignaz Semmelweiss in 1847 reduced the death rate in his ho spital from twelve to two percent, simply by washing hands between operations -a concept that today would be advocated by a four year old child. When Semmelwe

iss urged his colleagues to introduce hygiene to the operating rooms, they had h im committed to a mental hospital where he eventually died. The German meteorologist Alfred Wegener discovered in 1913 what every ten year o ld loo ing at a globe will notice immediately: That the Atlantic coasts of the A frican and South American continents have matching contours and thus may have be en loc ed together some time ago. The experts needed sixty more years to compreh end the concept. When Louis Pasteur stated that bacteria could cause disease, colleagues treated the idea as "an absurd fantasy'! The theories of the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud were called "a case for the police" during a neurologists congress in Hamburg in 1910. Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, only eight years before Orville and Wilbur Wright left the ground in an aeroplane, remar ed: "Machines that are hea vier than air will never be able to fly!" German physicists Erwin Schrdinger's PhD thesis, in which he first introduced his famous equation, was initially rejected. When the Spanish nobleman de Satuola discovered the Late Ice Age painted cave at Altamira, established scholars described him as a forger and a cheat. The decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean Francois Champollion in 1822 wa s still rejected by scholar twenty years after his death. And when Johann Karl Fuhlrott discovered the bones of a Neanderthal in a cave ne ar Duesseldorf in 1856, the president of the German Society of Anthropology cons idered it a bow-legged, Mongolian Cossac with ric ets, who had been luc y enoug h to survive multiple head injuries, but who, during a campaign by Russian force s against France in 1814, had been wounded, and (star na ed) had crawled into a cave, where he died. Heinrich Schliemann s excavation of Bronze Age Mycenae and Tiryns in Greece was co nsidered by English archaeologists inThe Times as the remains of some obscure bar barian tribe from the Byzantine period. In particular, the so-called prehistoric palace in Tiryns was labelled "the most remar able hallucination of an unscienti fic enthusiast that has ever appeared in literature." Scientific brea throughs will always be held hostage to the lag needed to overco me existing beliefs. Lucius Annaeus Seneca realized this already two thousand ye ars ago, when he said: "The time will come, when our successors will be surprise d that we did not now such obvious things." Buss s Laws of Human Mating David M. Buss Professor of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin; Coauthor: Why Women Have S ex; Author, The Dangerous Passion Buss s Third Law of Human Mating For every mating adaptation in one sex, there exists at least one co-evolved ada ptation in the other sex designed to manipulate and exploit it. Buss s Fourth Law of Human Mating For every co-evolved exploitative mating adaptation, there exists at least one c

o-co-evolved defensive adaptation designed to circumvent being manipulated and e xploited. Buss s Seventh Law of Human Mating Never reveal your first two laws of mating, lest they be used to manipulate and exploit you. Mirs y's Law Mar Jay Mirs y Writer and founder and editor of Fiction Magazine Imagination precedes reality. To imagine the universe is to fear it, even as one feels the power and pleasure of trying to find its furthest boundaries. To meet that fear one has to see con solation whether in scientific theory or intuitive vision. As a corollary to that, the return of past time in the present, as death comes s teadily closer, if not unique to the human mind, is certainly one of the consola tions of consciousness, and of the shadow realm of dream. If there is hope it is in our ability as men and women to imagine ourselves not only in other worlds b ut as an "other," as an opposite. Robert Musil, Proust, Kaf a, Sha espeare, Dant e Alighieri together with the anonymous scribes of the religious epics, Gilgames h, the Old Testament, were uncanny in their ability to imagine in this way. Imagination precedes what we call reality. I would propose this as a law of dail y life and suspect that it plays a large part in our evolution. Trying to preser ve and recreate what was best in my past and the past of distant ancestors is pa rt of what eeps me balanced before a future in which I want to hope. To imagine is not just to exist, but to prolong existence. At the last moment Sp inoza could not surrender the idea that somehow memory of what had happened woul d not be lost in the vastness of the universe. Spinoza needed that consolation. Whether it does or not, we need to believe that memory persists, and that we are capable of influencing just what memory will be valued and given predominance. Smolin's Law Lee Smolin Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics Smolin's First Law Genuine advances are rarely made by accident; in fact, the outcome of a scientif ic investigation is usually less dramatic than originally hoped for. Therefore, if you want to do something really significant in science, you must aim high and you must ta e genuine ris s. Smolin's Second Law In every period and every community there is something that everybody believes, but cannot justify. If you want to understand anything, you have to start by ign oring what everyone believes, and thin ing for yourself. This was advice given to me by my father when I was a child. Feynman said someth ing very similar: "Science is the organized s epticism in the reliability of exp ert opinion."

Smolin's Third Law Time does exist. Smolin's Zeroth Law A measure of our ignorance about nature is the extent to which our theories depe nd on bac ground structures, which are entities necessary to define the quantiti es in the theory, that do not themselves refer to anything which evolves dynamic ally in time. Our understanding can always be deepened by bringing such fixed, b ac ground structures into the domain of dynamical law. By doing so, we convert a bsolute properties, defined with respect to bac ground structures, into relation al properties, defined in terms of relationships among dynamical degrees of free dom. Etcoff's Law Nancy Etcoff Psychologist and faculty member of the Harvard Medical School and of Harvard Uni versity Be wary of scientific dualisms. Approach them with caution, the way demolition experts regard bombs, li ely to e xplode, in this case into unproductive argument and the obscuring of truth. "Opp osing forces" are the scientific version of the original dualism good vs evil and dar ness vs. light. Instead, of acting in opposition, in nature two forces are l i ely to dependent, interactive and interwoven; sometimes they are merely two na mes for the same thing. For example: Brain vs Mind Mind vs Body Emotion vs Reason Nature vs Nurture Us vs Them See unity. Remember always that it is easy to be in possession of some facts, extraordinari ly difficult to now the truth. Zeilinger's Law Anton Zeilinger Physicist, University of Vienna; Scientific Director, Institute of Quantum Optic s and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences; Author, Dance of the Ph otons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation Zeilinger's Fundamental Law There is no Fundamental Law. Zeilinger's Law on Reality, Space and Time Information is the most Fundamental Concept, it's all we have. Laumann's Proposition

Edward O. Laumann Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago Laumann's First Proposition Moderation in levels of partnered sex activity is the mode for the bul of human ind and is consistent with high levels of subjective well-being.

Laumann's Second Proposition Low levels of subjective sexual well-being is associated with poor physical, emo tional, and mental health. These propositions (they are empirical associations and not established as causa l) are based on my extensive international wor on human sexuality. They are bas ed on surveys I have conducted in the United States and China as well as the Pfi zer-funded Global Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Behavior (N = 27,500) which int erviewed equal numbers of men and women 40 to 80 years old in 29 countries world wide. The real question is the nature of the causal lin between these variable s. La off's Law George La off Fellow at The Roc ridge Institute La off's First Law Frames trump facts. All of our concepts are organized into conceptual structures called "frames" (wh ich may include images and metaphors) and all words are defined relative to thos e frames. Conventional frames are pretty much fixed in the neural structures of our brains. In order for a fact to be comprehended, it must fit the relevant fra mes. If the facts contradict the frames, the frames, being fixed in the brain, w ill be ept and the facts ignored. We see this in politics every day. Consider the expression "tax relief" which th e White House introduced into common use on the day of George W. Bush's inaugura tion. A "relief" frame has an affliction, an afflicted party, a reliever who rem oves the affliction and is thereby a hero, and in the frame anyone who tries to stop the reliever from administering the relief is a bad guy, a villain. "Tax re lief" imposes the additional metaphor that Taxation Is an Affliction, with the e ntailments that the president is a hero for attempting to remove this affliction and the Democrats are bad guys for opposing him. This frame trumps many facts: Most people wind up paying more in local taxes, payments for services cut, and d ebt servicing as a result of the Bush's tax cuts. There is of course another way to thin about taxes: Taxes are what you pay to l ive in America to have democracy, opportunity, government services, and the vast i nfrastructure build by previous taxpayers the highways, the internet, the schools, scientific research, the court system, etc. Taxes are membership fees used to m aintain and expand services and the infrastructure. But however true this may be , it is not yet an established frame inscribed in the synapses of our brains. This has an important consequence. Political liberals have inherited an assumpti on from the Enlightenment, that The facts will set us free, that if the public i s just given the facts, they will, being rational beings, reach the right conclu sion. It is simply false. It violates La off's Law.

La off's Second Law Voters vote their identities, not their self-interest. Because of the way they frame the world, voters vote in a way that best accords with their identities and not in accord with their self-interest. That is why it is of no use for Democrats to eep pointing out that Bush's tax cuts go to the top 1 percent, not to most voters. If they identify with Bush because they share his culture and his world view, they will vote against their self-interest. We saw this in California in the recall election, when, for example, union membe rs overwhelming favored Gray Davis' policies as being better for them, yet voted for Schwarzenegger. Harari s Law of Science Education Haim Harari Physicist, former President, Weizmann Institute of Science; Author, A View from the Eye of the Storm The faster Science and Technology advance the more important it is to teach and to learn the basics of Math and Science and the less important it is to teach and to learn the latest developments. Harari s Law of Particle Physics The electron, its replicas (muon and tau), the quar s and the neutrinos are all composed of the same set of more fundamental objects, which will become the newl y accepted basic building bloc s of all of nature. Harari s Law of Scientific Fads and Bandwagons Every scientific discovery is first made by one person or by a few people. At th e time of the discovery, they are the only ones aware of it. It follows logicall y that democratic votes, public opinion polls, majority views of scientists and scientific fads do not necessarily represent scientific truth. Only correct expe rimental results do. Ridley's Law Matt Ridley Science Writer; Founding chairman of the International Centre for Life; Author, The Rational Optimist Ridley's First Law Science is the discovery of ignorance. It is not a catalog of facts. Ridley's Second Law Experience affects an organism largely by switching genes on and off. (Nurture w or s through nature.) Ridley's Third Law Neither the number of base pairs nor the number of genes in an organism's genome bears much if any relation to that organism's size or complexity. Dennett's Law of Needy Readers

Daniel C. Dennett Philosopher; University Professor, Co-Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tu fts University; Author, Brea ing the Spell is an extension of Schan 's Law On any important topic, we tend to have a dim idea of what we hope to be true, a nd when an author writes the words we want to read, we tend to fall for it, no m atter how shoddy the arguments. Needy readers have an asymptote at illiteracy; i f a text doesn't say the one thing they need to read, it might as well be in a f oreign language. To be open-minded, you have to recognize, and counteract, your own doxastic hungers. Arthur's Law W. Brian Arthur Citiban Professor at the Santa Fe Institute Arthur's First Law High-tech mar ets are dominated 70-80% by a single player product, company, or cou ntry. The reason: Such mar ets are subject to increasing returns or self-reinforcing m echanisms. Therefore an initial advantage often bestowed by chance leads to increasi ng advantage and eventually heavy mar et domination. (Absent government interven tion, of course). Arthur's Second Law As technology advances it becomes ever more biological. We are leaving an age of mechanistic, fixed-design technologies, and entering an age of metabolic, self-reorganizing technologies. In this sense, as technology becomes more advanced it becomes more organic therefore more "biological." Further , as biological mechanisms at the cellular and DNA levels become better understo od, they become harnessed and co-opted as technologies. In this century, biology and technology will therefore intertwine. Arthur's Third Law The modularization of technologies increases with the extent of the mar et. Just as it pays to create a specialized wor er if there is sufficient volume of throughput to occupy that specialty, it pays to create a standard prefabricated assembly, or module, if its function recurs in many instances. Modularity theref ore is to a technological economy what the division of labor is to a manufacturi ng one it increases as the economy expands. Barondes' Law Samuel Barondes Professor of Neurobiology and Psychiatry, UCSF; Author, Ma ing Sense of People Barondes' First Law Science abhors contradictions; scientist's minds are replete with them. Barondes' Second Law

Self-understanding is inherently inaccurate because most of our nowledge comes from specific behavioral experiences that are often inconsistent; and our mechan isms of learning are designed to store memories whether or or not their implicat ions are formally contradictory. Bharucha's Law Jamshed Bharucha Psychologist; President, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art To understand what people are thin ing and feeling, loo beyond what they say. L anguage does not capture the full range and grain of thought and experience, and its unique power enables us as easily to mas our thoughts and feelings as it d oes to express them. Kurzweil's Law (a a Ray Kurzweil Principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition Evolution applies positive feedbac in that the more capable methods resulting f rom one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. Each e poch of evolution has progressed more rapidly by building on the products of the previous stage. Evolution wor s through indirection: evolution created humans, humans created te chnology, humans are now wor ing with increasingly advanced technology to create new generations of technology. As a result, the rate of progress of an evolutio nary process increases exponentially over time. Over time, the "order" of the information embedded in the evolutionary process ( i.e., the measure of how well the information fits a purpose, which in evolution is survival) increases. A comment on the nature of order. The concept of the "order" of information is important here, as it is not the sa me as the opposite of disorder. If disorder represents a random sequence of even ts, then the opposite of disorder should imply "not random." Information is a se quence of data that is meaningful in a process, such as the DNA code of an organ ism, or the bits in a computer program. Noise, on the other hand, is a random se quence. Neither noise nor information is predictable. Noise is inherently unpred ictable, but carries no information. Information, however, is also unpredictable . If we can predict future data from past data, then that future data stops bein g information. We might consider an alternating pattern ("0101010. . . .") to be orderly, but it carries no information (beyond the first couple of bits). Thus orderliness does not constitute order because order requires information. H owever, order goes beyond mere information. A recording of radiation levels from space represents information, but if we double the size of this data file, we h ave increased the amount of data, but we have not achieved a deeper level of ord er. Order is information that how well the information purpose is to survive. In ulates evolution to solve et, the purpose is to ma sarily result in a better nvolve less data. fits a purpose. The measure of order is the measure of fits the purpose. In the evolution of life-forms, the an evolutionary algorithm (a computer program that sim a problem) applied to, say, investing in the stoc mar e money. Simply having more information does not neces fit. A superior solution for a purpose may very well i

The concept of "complexity" is often used to describe the nature of the informat ion created by an evolutionary process. Complexity is a close fit to the concept of order that I am describing, but is also not sufficient. Sometimes, a deeper order a better fit to a purpose is achieved through simplification rather than furth er increases in complexity. For example, a new theory that ties together apparen tly disparate ideas into one broader more coherent theory reduces complexity but nonetheless may increase the "order for a purpose" that I am describing. Indeed , achieving simpler theories is a driving force in science. Evolution has shown, however, that the general trend towards greater order does generally result in greater complexity. Thus improving a solution to a problem which may increase or decrease complexity inc reases order. Now that just leaves the issue of defining the problem. Indeed, th e ey to an evolution algorithm (and to biological and technological evolution) is exactly this: defining the problem. We may note that this aspect of "Kurzweil s Law" (the law of accelerating returns) appears to contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which implies that entr opy (randomness in a closed system) cannot decrease, and, therefore, generally i ncreases. However, the law of accelerating returns pertains to evolution, and ev olution is not a closed system. It ta es place amidst great chaos, and indeed de pends on the disorder in its midst, from which it draws its options for diversit y. And from these options, an evolutionary process continually prunes its choice s to create ever greater order. Even a crisis, such as the periodic large astero ids that have crashed into the Earth, although increasing chaos temporarily, end up increasing deepening the order created by an evolutionary process. A primary reason that evolution of life-forms or of technology speeds up is that it builds on its own increasing order, with ever more sophisticated means of record ing and manipulating information. Innovations created by evolution encourage and enable faster evolution. In the case of the evolution of life forms, the most n otable early example is DNA, which provides a recorded and protected transcripti on of life s design from which to launch further experiments. In the case of the e volution of technology, ever improving human methods of recording information ha ve fostered further technology. The first computers were designed on paper and a ssembled by hand. Today, they are designed on computer wor stations with the com puters themselves wor ing out many details of the next generation s design, and ar e then produced in fully-automated factories with human guidance but limited dir ect intervention. The evolutionary process of technology see s to improve capabilities in an expon ential fashion. Innovators see to improve things by multiples. Innovation is mu ltiplicative, not additive. Technology, li e any evolutionary process, builds on itself. This aspect will continue to accelerate when the technology itself ta e s full control of its own progression. We can thus conclude the following with regard to the evolution of life-forms, a nd of technology: the law of accelerating returns as applied to an evolutionary process: An evolutionary process is not a closed system; therefore, evolution dr aws upon the chaos in the larger system in which it ta es place for its options for diversity; and evolution builds on its own increasing order. Therefore, in a n evolutionary process, order increases exponentially. A correlate of the above observation is that the "returns" of an evolutionary pr ocess (e.g., the speed, cost-effectiveness, or overall "power" of a process) inc rease exponentially over time. We see this in Moore s law, in which each new gener ation of computer chip (now spaced about two years apart) provides twice as many components, each of which operates substantially faster (because of the smaller distances required for the electrons to travel, and other innovations). This ex

ponential growth in the power and price-performance of information-based technol ogies now roughly doubling every year is not limited to computers, but is true for a wide range of technologies, measured many different ways. In another positive feedbac loop, as a particular evolutionary process (e.g., c omputation) becomes more effective (e.g., cost effective), greater resources are deployed towards the further progress of that process. This results in a second level of exponential growth (i.e., the rate of exponential growth itself grows exponentially). For example, it too three years to double the price-performance of computation at the beginning of the twentieth century, two years around 1950 , and is now doubling about once a year. Not only is each chip doubling in power each year for the same unit cost, but the number of chips being manufactured is growing exponentially. Biological evolution is one such evolutionary process. Indeed it is the quintess ential evolutionary process. It too place in a completely open system (as oppos ed to the artificial constraints in an evolutionary algorithm). Thus many levels of the system evolved at the same time. Technological evolution is another such evolutionary process. Indeed, the emerge nce of the first technology-creating species resulted in the new evolutionary pr ocess of technology. Therefore, technological evolution is an outgrowth of and a c ontinuation of biological evolution. Early stages of humanoid created technology w ere barely faster than the biological evolution that created our species. Homo s apiens evolved in a few hundred thousand years. Early stages of technology the whe el, fire, stone tools too tens of thousands of years to evolve and be widely depl oyed. A thousand years ago, a paradigm shift such as the printing press, too on the order of a century to be widely deployed. Today, major paradigm shifts, suc h as cell phones and the world wide web were widely adopted in only a few years time. A specific paradigm (a method or approach to solving a problem, e.g., shrin ing transistors on an integrated circuit as an approach to ma ing more powerful comp uters) provides exponential growth until the method exhausts its potential. When this happens, a paradigm shift (a fundamental change in the approach) occurs, w hich enables exponential growth to continue. Each paradigm follows an "S-curve," which consists of slow growth (the early pha se of exponential growth), followed by rapid growth (the late, explosive phase o f exponential growth), followed by a leveling off as the particular paradigm mat ures. During this third or maturing phase in the life cycle of a paradigm, pressure bu ilds for the next paradigm shift, and research dollars are invested to create th e next paradigm. We can see this in the enormous investments being made today in the next computing paradigm three-dimensional molecular computing despite the fact that we still have at least a decade left for the paradigm of shrin ing transist ors on a flat integrated circuit using photolithography (Moore s Law). Generally, by the time a paradigm approaches its asymptote (limit) in price-performance, th e next technical paradigm is already wor ing in niche applications. For example, engineers were shrin ing vacuum tubes in the 1950s to provide greater price-per formance for computers, and reached a point where it was no longer feasible to s hrin tubes and maintain a vacuum. At this point, around 1960, transistors had a lready achieved a strong niche mar et in portable radios. When a paradigm shift occurs for a particular type of technology, the process be gins a new S-curve. Thus the acceleration of the overall evolutionary process proceeds as a sequence of S-curves, and the overall exponential growth consists of this cascade of S-c

urves. The resources underlying the exponential growth of an evolutionary process are r elatively unbounded. One resource is the (ever-growing) order of the evolutionary process itself. Eac h stage of evolution provides more powerful tools for the next. In biological ev olution, the advent of DNA allowed more powerful and faster evolutionary "experi ments." Later, setting the "designs" of animal body plans during the Cambrian ex plosion allowed rapid evolutionary development of other body organs, such as the brain. Or to ta e a more recent example, the advent of computer-assisted design tools allows rapid development of the next generation of computers. The other required resource is the "chaos" of the environment in which the evolu tionary process ta es place and which provides the options for further diversity . In biological evolution, diversity enters the process in the form of mutations and ever- changing environmental conditions. In technological evolution, human ingenuity combined with ever-changing mar et conditions eep the process of inno vation going. If we apply these principles at the highest level of evolution on Earth, the fir st step, the creation of cells, introduced the paradigm of biology. The subseque nt emergence of DNA provided a digital method to record the results of evolution ary experiments. Then, the evolution of a species that combined rational thought with an opposable appendage (the thumb) caused a fundamental paradigm shift fro m biology to technology. The upcoming primary paradigm shift will be from biolog ical thin ing to a hybrid combining biological and nonbiological thin ing. This hybrid will include "biologically inspired" processes resulting from the reverse engineering of biological brains. If we examine the timing of these steps, we see that the process has continuousl y accelerated. The evolution of life forms required billions of years for the fi rst steps (e.g., primitive cells); later on progress accelerated. During the Cam brian explosion, major paradigm shifts too only tens of millions of years. Late r on, Humanoids developed over a period of millions of years, and Homo sapiens o ver a period of only hundreds of thousands of years. With the advent of a technology-creating species, the exponential pace became to o fast for evolution through DNA-guided protein synthesis and moved on to humancreated technology. Technology goes beyond mere tool ma ing; it is a process of creating ever more powerful technology using the tools from the previous round o f innovation, and is, thereby, an evolutionary process. As I noted, the first te chnological too tens of thousands of years. For people living in this era, ther e was little noticeable technological change in even a thousand years. By 1000 A D, progress was much faster and a paradigm shift required only a century or two. In the nineteenth century, we saw more technological change than in the nine ce nturies preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, w e saw more advancement than in all of the nineteenth century. Now, paradigm shif ts occur in only a few years time. The paradigm shift rate (i.e., the overall rate of technical progress) is curren tly doubling (approximately) every decade; that is, paradigm shift times are hal ving every decade (and the rate of acceleration is itself growing exponentially) . So, the technological progress in the twenty-first century will be equivalent to what would require (in the linear view) on the order of 200 centuries. In con trast, the twentieth century saw only about 20 years of progress (again at today s rate of progress) since we have been speeding up to current rates. So the twent y-first century will see about a thousand times greater technological change tha n its predecessor.

Bly's Law Adam Bly Founder, Seed Media Group Bly's First Law Science is culture. Bly's Second Law High public interest in science without growing public understanding of science is worse than low public interest in science. Kai's Existential Dilemma Kai Krause Software Pioneer; Philosopher; Author, Frax: The Beauty of Mathematics Visualize d I thin .... there.... 4a.m. Kai's Exactness Dilemma 93.8127 % of all statistics are useless. Kai's Example Dilemma A good analogy is li e a diagonal frog. Evans' laws of the completeness of good old fashioned AI. Dylan Evans Founder and CEO of Projection Point Evans' First Law For every intelligent agent, there is a Turing-machine that provides an exhausti ve description of its mind. Evans' Second Law When the Turing-machine that describes the mind of intelligent agent has been sp ecified, there is nothing more to say about that mind, apart from how it is impl emented in hardware. Pollac 's Law Jordan Pollac Professor and Chairman of Computer Science, Brandeis University Progress requires the Pareto Optimization of Competitiveness and Informativeness The simple idea that Nature is "Red in Tooth and Claw" lends a religious fervor to those promoting Competition as the right organizing principle for open-ended innovation, e.g. in Laissez Faire Capitalism, government procurement, Social Dar winism, personnel review, and even high-sta es educational testing.

Through the use of mathematical and computer models of learning, we discovered t hat competition between learning agents does not lead to open-ended progress. In stead, it leads to boom-bust cycles, winner-ta e-all monopolies, and oligarchic groups who collude to bloc progress. Unfortunately, cooperation (collaborative learning, altruism) fails as well, leading to wea systems easy to invade or cor rupt. The exciting new "law" is that progress can be sustained among self-interested a gents when both competitiveness and informativeness are rewarded. A chess master who wins every game li e one who loses every game - provides no information on the strengths and wea nesses of other agents, while an informative agent, li e a teacher, contributes opportunity and motivation for further progress. We predic t that this law will be found in Nature, and will have ramifications for buildin g new learning organizations.

A measurement of innovation rate. There is no measure of the rate at which processes li e art, evolution, companie s, and computer programs innovate. Consider a blac box that ta es in energy and produces bit-strings. The complexi ty of a bit-string is not simply its length, because a long string of all 1's or all 0's is quite simple. Kolmogorov measures complexity by the size of the smal lest program listing that can generate a string, and Bennet's Logical Depth also accounts for the cost of running the program. But these fail on the Mandelbrot Set, a very beautiful set of patterns arising from a one-line program listing. W hat of life itself, the result of a simple non-equilibrium chemical process ba i ng for quite a long time? Different algorithmic processes (including fractals, n atural evolution, and the human mind) "create" by operating as a "Platonic Scoop ," instantiating "ideals" into physical arrangements or memory states. So to measure innovation rate (in POLLACKS) we divide the P=Product novelty (ass igned by an observer with memory) by the L=program listing size and the C= Cost of runtime/space/energy. Platonic Density = P / LC Pollac 's Law of Robotics Start over with Pinball Machines. Moore's law existed before computers; it is just economics of scale with zero la bor. If enough demand can justify capital investment in fully automated factorie s, then the price of a good approaches the cost of its raw materials, energy dis sipated, and (patent/copyright) monopoly tax. Everyone nows Moore's law has lea d to ultra-small-cheap integrated circuits. But why don't we have ultra-small-ch eap mechanical parts? Pollac 's law of Robotics states that we won't get a Moore's law for electro-mec hanical systems until we return to the age of the Pinball Machine, and bootstrap the manufacture of general purpose integrated mechatronics, reducing scale from macro through mesa and MEMS. Leaping to Nano is li ely to fail. Kauffman's Law Stuart A. Kauffman Professor of Biological Sciences, Physics, Astronomy, University of Calgary; Aut

The Pollac

hor, Reinventing the Sacred The biosphere advances, on average, at the maximum rate it can sustain into the adjacent possible. The adjacent possible, for a chemical reaction graph, is the set of novel molecu les that can be created out of those existing now. The biosphere has advanced in to the chemical adjacent possible over the history of life.The issue is, are the re laws that govern this advance? And so too for technology. I'm very unsure abo ut my candidate law, but at least it points to the reality that we do advance in to the adjacent possible and perhaps some law governs how we do so. Diffrient's Law Niels Diffrient Industrial designer The improvements derived from technological advances have an equal and opposite effect on culture and the environment magnified by time and scale. Holton's Law Gerald Holton Mallinc rodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science, Emeri tus, Harvard University; Author, Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Sc ience, Art, and Modern Culture Holton's First Law The turning points in individual and national life are most probably guided by p robabilism. (Examples: You are one of about a billion possible yous, since only one spermatozoon [or sometimes two] ma e it to the ovum, out of about a billion different competitors, none the same. Or on the national/ international scale, t he availability of a Churchill in 1940.) The Second Law The probability of a right answer or a beneficent outcome is usually much smalle r than that of the wrong or malignant ones. ( This is not pessimism, but realism a n amplified analogue of the Law of Entropy.) The Third Law In the limit of small numbers, the previous two Laws may not rigorously apply. T herefore if you need only one par ing place when driving your car, loo for one first right where you want to go. Sapols y's Three Laws for Doing Science Robert Sapols y Neuroscientist, Stanford University; Author, Mon eyluv Sapols y's First Law Thin logically, but orthogonally. Sapols y's Second Law It's o ay to thin about nonsense, as long as you don't believe in it. Sapols y's Third Law

Often, the biggest impediment to scientific progress is not what we don't now, but what we now. Nesse s Laws for deciding when it is safe to use drugs to bloc evolved protective responses. Randolph Nesse Professor of Psychiatry, UM Medical School; Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan; Co-author, Why We Get Sic Aversive responses, such as pain, fever, vomiting and panic, were shaped by natu ral selection because they gave selective advantages in the face of various dang ers. Optimal decisions about when to use our growing pharmacological powers to b loc these responses will require signal-detection models of how defenses are re gulated. Nesse's First Law An optimal mechanism to regulate an all-or-none defensive response such as vomit ing or panic will express the response whenever CD< ?(pH x CH w/o defense) ?(pH x CH w/defense). That is, expressing a defense is worth it whenever the cost of t he defense (CD) is less than the estimated reduction in harm, based the probabil ity (pH) and cost of various harmful outcomes (CH) with and without the expressi on of the defense. This means that optimal systems that regulate inexpensive def enses against large somewhat unpredictable potential harms will express many fal se alarms and that bloc ing these unnecessary responses can (and does) greatly r elieve human suffering. Bloc ing responses yields a net benefit, however, only i f we can anticipate when a normal response is li ely to be essential to prevent catastrophe. Nesse's Second Law An optimal mechanism to regulate a continuously expressed defense, such as fever or pain, will increase the defensive response up to the point where the sum of CH and CD is minimized. At this point the marginal increase in the cost of the d efense becomes greater than the marginal decrease in harm. This helps to explain why so many defenses, such as those involved in inflammation and the immune res ponses, so often seem excessive. Many will recognize this analysis as a less grand and somewhat more practical va riation on Pascal s Wager. So far, however, few in the pharmaceutical industry see m to recognize the importance of routinely assessing the effects of new drugs on normal defensive responses. Aizu's Law Izumi Aizu

Using is believing. As was the case for the Internet, or the PCs, unless you use it, you cannot unde rstand its real significance. To put it the other way around, if and when you us e it, it will prevail. Instead of "seeing" from afar, you must use it to understand. So many people den ied the potential and the impact of the Net simply because they never tried to u

Research Director of Hyper Networ Aizu's First Law

Society

se it. Aizu's Second Law What changes the world is communication, not information. We are living in a world where we can exchange ideas and emotions freely and ine xpensively, the first time in the history. Information piled up, or disseminated one way down, never ma es people happy or feel compelled to act that much, whil e communication, just a single line or word from your friends or beloved, or eve n from a total stranger, that catches your heart, often results in collective ac tions. Winer's Law of the Internet Dave Winer Founder of UserLand Software Productive open wor will only result in standards as long as the parties involv ed strive to follow prior art in every way possible. Gratuitous innovation is wh en the standardization process ends, and usually that happens quic ly. Thin about the process of arriving at a standard. Someone goes first with somet hing new. Assume it catches on and becomes popular. Because the person did it in an open way, with no patents, or other barriers to competitors using the techno logy, a second developer decides to do the same thing. The innovator supports th is, because he or she wants a standard to develop. At that point the second pers on has the power to decide how strong a standard it will be. If the new implemen tation strives to wor exactly as the original does, then it's more li ely the s tandard will be strong, and there will be a vibrant mar et around it. But if the second party decides to use the concept but not be technically compatible, it w ill be a wea standard. One would assume that the second mover would ma e every effort to do it exactly the same way as the first, but over the years, but this has not been the case. A s soon as a standard becomes popular, mar et forces lead to multiple incompatibl e ways forward. Microsoft called this Embrace & Extend, but all technology vendo rs are driven to brea standards. Standards can only go a short distance before for ing defeats the standardization process. This is an extension to Postel's Law (the late Jon Postel was one of the ey pla yers of the development of the Internet), which says you should be liberal in wh at you accept and conservative in what you send. It goes further by saying that we should all collectively be conservative in what we send. This eeps the techn ology small and the mar et approachable by developers of all sizes. The large co mpanies always try to ma e the technology complicated to reduce competition to o ther organizations with large research and development budgets. Sheldra e's Principle Rupert Sheldra e Biologist and author The "laws" of nature are more li e habits. Sheldra e's Reformulation of a Traditional Theory of Vision Vision involves a movement of light into the eyes, changes in the brain, and the outward projection of images to where they seem to be.

Amato's Law of Awe Ivan Amato Freelance print and radio writer; editor of the Pathways of Discovery essay seri es for Science Magazine Amato's First Law of Awe Awe begins in the eye of the beholder. Limited as it is, biology's homegrown sensory physiology is sufficient in our ca se to ignite wonder and curiosity about just where it is we find ourselves throw n, how we got there, and how we can even now anything at all. Therein lies the beginning of science. Amato's Second Law of Awe Transcending our own sensory limitations with technological tools of observation , a relentless theme of the history of science, enhances the experience of awe i tself because it expands the variety of attributes of the universe that we can now about. Therein lies one of the most underrated values of science. (For example, we used to see the world in only a rainbow of colors. Our tools ha ve shown us that the rainbow is a mere sliver of electromagnetic wavelengths san dwiched between an infinitude of previously invisible ones.) Harris's Law Judith Rich Harris Independent Investigator and Theoretician; Author, The Nurture Assumption; No Tw o Ali e: Human Nature and Human Individuality Harris's First Law Good things go together. Miller's Iron Law of Iniquity " in practice, every good t rait correlates positively with every other good trait" is true, and follows from Harris's First Law. Harris's Second Law Bad things go together, too. Harris's Third Law People thin they now why good things go together, and why bad things go togeth er, but they are wrong. Strogatz's Law of Doing Math Steven Strogatz Jacob Gould Schurman r, The Joy of X; The aos in the Universe, Strogatz's First Law Professor of Applied Mathematics, Cornell University; autho Calculus of Friendship; and Sync: How Order Emerges from Ch Nature, and Daily Life of Doing Math

When you're trying to prove something, it helps to now it's true. Strogatz's Second Law of Doing Math

To figure out if something is true, chec it on the computer. If the machine agr ees with your own calculations, you're probably right. Tur le's Law of Evocative Objects Sherry Tur le Psychologist, MIT; Internet Culture Researcher; Author, Alone Together Every technology has an instrumental side, what the technology does for us and a subjective side, what the technology does to us, to our ways of seeing the worl d, including to our ways of thin ing about ourselves. So the Internet both facilitates communication and changes our sense of identity , privacy, and sexual possibility; gene sequencing both gives us new ways of dia gnosing and treating disease and new ways of thin ing about human nature and hum an history. On an instrumental level, interactive, "sociable" robotics offers ne w opportunities for education, childcare, and eldercare; on a subjective level, it offers new challenges to our view of human nature, and to our moral sense of what inds of creatures are deserving of relationship. Tur le's Law of Human Vulnerability to An Active Gaze If a creature, computational or biological, ma es eye contact with a person, tra c s her gaze, and gestures with interest toward her, that person will experience the creature as sentient, even capable of understanding her inner state. The human has evolved to anthropomorphize. We are on the brin of creating machi nes so "sociable" in appearance that they will push our evolutionary buttons to treat them as indred. Yet they will not have shared our human biological and so cial experience and will thus not have our means of access to the meanings of mo ments in the human life cycle: a child's first step, an adolescent's strut, a pa rent's pride. Yet we will not be in complete control of our feelings for these o bjects because our feelings will not be based on what they now or understand, b ut on what we "experience" them as nowing, a very different thing. We don't now what people and animals are "really" thin ing but grant them a "sp ecies pass" in which we ma e assumptions about their inner states. It is a socia l and moral contract. Contemporary technology has put us close to the moment whe n we shall be called upon to ma e this ind of contract (or some other ind) abo ut creatures of our own devising. We are called upon to answer the question: Wha t inds of relationships are appropriate to have with a machine? Our answer will not only affect the instrumental roles that we allow technology to play but the way technology will co-create the human psyche and sensibility of the future. Suss ind's Rule of Thumb Leonard Suss ind Felix Bloch Professor in Theoretical Physics, Stanford; Author, The Cosmic Lands cape; The Blac Hole Wars Don't as what they thin . As what they do. My rule has to do with paradigm shifts yes, I do believe in them. I've been throug h a few myself. It is useful if you want to be the first on your bloc to now t hat the shift has ta en place. I formulated the rule in 1974. I was visiting the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) for a wee s to give a couple of semin ars on particle physics. The subject was QCD. It doesn't matter what this stands for. The point is that it was a new theory of sub-nuclear particles and it was absolutely clear that it was the right theory. There was no critical experiment

but the place was littered with smo ing guns. Anyway, at the end of my first lec ture I too a poll of the audience. "What probability would you assign to the pr oposition 'QCD is the right theory of hadrons.'?" My soc s were noc ed off by t he answers. They ranged from .01 percent to 5 percent. As I said, by this time i t was a clear no-brainer. The answer should have been close too 100 percent. The next day I gave my second seminar and too another poll. "What are you wor i ng on?" was the question. Answers: QCD, QCD, QCD, QCD, QCD,........ Everyone was wor ing on QCD. That's when I learned to as "What are you doing?" instead of " what do you thin ?" I saw exactly the same phenomenon more recently when I was wor ing on blac hole s. This time it was after a string theory seminar, I thin in Santa Barbara. I a s ed the audience to vote whether they agreed with me and Gerard 't Hooft or if they thought Haw ings ideas were correct. This time I got a 50-50 response. By t his time I new what was going on so I wasn't so surprised. Anyway I later as ed if anyone was wor ing on Haw ing's theory of information loss. Not a single han d went up. Don't as what they thin . As what they do. Finn's Law Christine Finn Archaeologist, Journalist; Author, Artifacts Uncertainty is the final test of innovation. That is, new concepts are tested best by a sudden faltering confidence on the pa rt of the innovator operating in an almost-liminal, almost-sure intellectual sta te. Does not the palpable quiver preceding the sudden rush of certainty give that final ic to real innovation? This is especially good for interdisciplinary areas, where unusual conjunctions generally involve more maveric trip-wire than usual. Baron-Cohen's Law of Sex differences in the Mind Simon Baron - Cohen Psychologist, Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University; Author, The Science of Evil In any random population, of those who score in the above-average range on tests of empathizing, females will significantly outnumber males. And of those who sc ore in the above-average range on tests of systemizing, males will significantly outnumber females. Baron-Cohen's Law of Autism What unites individuals on the autistic spectrum is impaired empathizing in the presence of intact or even superior systemizing, relative to non-autistic indivi duals of the same mental age. Warwic 's Law Henry Warwic Artist, composer, and scientist Warwic 's First Law

Art ta es you out of town, and gives you a destination. Science builds the bus t hat ta es you there. Art, at its best, ta es you out of your town, your home, your living room, your armchair, your mind, and brings you some place a destination, a wonderful place, a new way of loo ing at things, a deep shift in your understanding of what it mea ns to be human with a sense of profundity and awe at the Creation, pointing towa rd a new and better environment for living, smiling a new smile all by altering yo ur consciousness in some useful and insightful way. Coo ing up the better paint or programming didn't ma e the better paintma er a b etter painter, or the better word processor-ma er a better writer, but the great painter required the s ills of the better paint ma ers and the great writer nee ds the tool of the trade. If we are to go to these grand destinations, artists n eed the insights and tools provided by science the " bus" to ta e us there. And we need to heed Art. Warwic 's Second Law Art tells the jo es that science insists on explaining. Segre s Law Gino Segre Professor of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania; Author, Ordinary G eniuses Segre s First Law Numbers are everything. This is just a rephrasing of the Pythagorean credo, proclaimed 2500 years ago, t hat All things are numbers . Science began with it, but it s still worth remembering that measurements are at the base of all science. Segre s Second Law Understand what the numbers mean. One has to eep loo ing for a theory that will explain the numbers. Our galaxy h as a hundred billion stars and our brain has a hundred billion neurons. Understa nding our galaxy and our brain are great challenges, but two different theories are required. Gershenfeld's Law on Research Neil Gershenfeld Physicist, Director, MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; Author, FAB Experiments ta e pi times longer than planned (no matter how many factors of pi you account for). Gershenfeld's Law on Writing Good [theses, papers, boo s] are never finished, just abandoned. Gershenfeld's Goal Function from form.

"Form follows function" implies that they're separable; the most profound scient ific and technological insights that I now follow from abstracting logical func tions from physical forms. Levy's Law Steven Levy Senior Editor for Newswee The truth is always more interesting that your preconception of what it might be . In journalism, this means that the best practitioners should not have the storie s written out in their heads before they report them. Preconceptions can blind y ou to the full, rich human reality that awaits you when you actually listen to y our subjects and approach the material with an open mind. It wouldn't surprise m e if the same tabula rasa principle applies when scientists try to answer the bi g questions. Ryan's Law Paul Ryan Author of Cybernetics of the Sacred) and Video Mind, Earth Mind Once the mind is freed to thin positionally without orientation, a logic of rel ationships naturally ensues. Hameroff's Law Stuart Hameroff Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology Associate Director, Center for Consciou sness Studies The University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona The sub-conscious mind is to consciousness what the quantum world is to the clas sical world. The vast majority of brain activity is non-conscious; consciousness is "the tip of an iceberg" of neural activity. Yet the threshold for transition from pre-, n on-, or sub-conscious processes into conscious awareness is un nown. The sub-con scious mind as revealed in dreams has been described by Matte Blanco as a place where "paradox reigns, and opposites merge to sameness". Reality is seemingly de scribed by two separate sets of laws. In our everyday classical world, Newton's laws and Maxwell's equations accurately portray reality. However at small scales , the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics rule: particles are distorted in space a nd time (uncertainty), exist in multiple states or locations simultaneously (sup erposition) and remain connected in opposite states over distance (nonlocal enta nglement). In the quantum world "paradox reigns and opposites merge to sameness" . The boundary, or threshold between the quantum and classical worlds (i.e. quantu m state reduction, collapse of the wave function, measurement, decoherence) rema ins mysterious. Early quantum theorists attributed reduction/collapse to observa tion: "consciousness collapses the wave function". Modern physics attributes red uction/collapse to any interaction with the classical environment ("decoherence" ). Neither solves the problem of isolated quantum superpositions which are nonet heless useful in quantum computation. In quantum computation, information may be represented as isolated superposition s (e.g. as quantum bits "qubits" of both 1 AND 0) which interact/compute by nonlocal entanglement, and eventually reduce/collapse to classical solutions.

Based on a 1989 suggestion by Sir Roger Penrose, he and I have put forth a speci fic model of consciousness involving quantum computation in microtubules within the brain's neurons. Superpositions of multiple possible pre-/sub-conscious perc eptions or choices reach threshold for self-collapse (by Roger's "objective redu ction" due to properties of fundamental spacetime geometry), and select/reduce t o particular classical perceptions or choices. Each reduction is a conscious eve nt, a series of which gives a "stream of consciousness". The main scientific objection to our proposal has been that the brain is too war m for quantum computation which in the technological realm seems to require ultr a cold temperatures to avoid thermal decoherence. However recent evidence shows that quantum processes in biological molecules are enhanced by increased tempera ture. Evolution has had billion of years to solve the problem of decoherence. Co nsciousness may be a particular form of quantum state reduction: a process on th e edge between the quantum and classical worlds. Chalupa's Law Leo M. Chalupa Ophthalmologist and Neurobiologist, George Washington University Chalupa's First Law No matter how good or bad things are at any given point in time (in science as i n life), remember that "this too shall pass." This is ey for attaining longevity in this business... people who "violate" or are unaware of this rule are doomed to failure. In other words, it is vitally im portant how one deals with success and failure in doing cutting edge science. Fa ilure is the rule even among the most successful wor ing scientists (since 90% o f grant application are typically rejected and the top journals reject even a hi gher percentage); and with respect to success, in all but a few exceptional case s, institutional memory is exceedingly fleeting (i.e., yesterday's superstars ar e unrecognized by today's grad students, postdocs, junior faculty). So you've go t to eep pitching if you want to stay in the science game. Chalupa's Second Law Don't underestimate the importance of fashion in doing science. Another ey for success in science...if you're too far ahead of the herd (with v ery few exception) you're not going to get funded by NIH/NSF or published in the premier journals. This is in spite of the fact that they claim that they fund i nnovative research. Anyone who has spend as much time on grant review committees as I have will recognize the power of this rule. In other words, there is a pri ce to pay for originality and every wor ing scientist nows this is the case. Sejnows i's Law Terrence J. Sejnows i Computational Neuroscientist; Francis Cric Professor, the Sal Institute; Coaut hor, The Computational Brain For every important function that a cell needs to carry out Nature has created a gadget to ma e it more efficient. (Gadgets are macromolecular complexes made from proteins, RNA, and DNA and often have hundreds of parts.)

Punset's Law Eduardo Punset Scientist; Spanish Television Presenter; Author, The Happiness Trip Punset's First Law If fully conscious, dont trust your brain. The brain is very good at managing automated, unconscious processes such as brea thing, digesting or transpiring. But so far neuroscience has not produced the sl ightest evidence that flipping a coin to decide on important matters such as mar riage, ta ing up a job, or traveling is any worst than a formal, conscious, disc riminatory decision made by the brain. This should not surprise anybody. If we l eave aside the individual brain, and loo at the evolution of social primates as a whole, few would question that the history of civilization equals the history of successive and cumulative automatization in fields such as agriculture, indu stry or information. Why should it be different for the individual brain? Punset's Second Law When in doubt, please as Nature, not people. After all, this is the stuff scien tists are made of. This Law has to do with Darwinian Theory and Business Practice. There is a huge amount of money to be made by just applying basic science to ordinary business. In the Universe as a whole according to Physics 95% of reality is invisible. Most bu sinessmen, however, are convinced that 95% of what is going on in their firms, w or shops or projects can be seen at first sight. No wonder that it ta es on aver age over three failures for an innovation to succeed. Steinhardt's Law Paul Steinhardt Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Departments of Physics and Astrophysical S ciences, Princeton University; coauthor: Endless Universe Good science creates two challenging puzzles for each puzzle it resolves. Corollary 1 Contrary to some prognostications, science is not coming to an end. Good science is growing every day. Corollary 2 The Anthropic Principle does not resolve any puzzles and creates no new ones. He nce, ... (Exercise left for the reader fill in the blan . For hint, see Steinhardt's Law.) Delta's Law Delta Willis Paleontologist; Author, Hominid Gang There are three sides to every story. The Gree letter delta is a symbol for change in formulas. This triangle can be ta en personally to create a philosophy that can be used as laws. For example, t

he 3 points of a triangle create a possibility space for change. Two points in a debate provide nothing more than a tyranny of dichotomies, whereas adding a thi rd possibility is always more interesting, and closer to the true complexity of life. This rule of favoring 3s instead of 2s also wor s in any design to please the eye, such as three pictures on a wall instead of two. A couple become more i nteresting when they go beyond their own twosome to create a third focal point, whether a child, a boo or a business. As Yale paleontologist Dolf Seilacher put it, Symmetry is boring. The next time you are confronted with only two choices, create a third, and see the possibility space expand. Ruc er's Law of Morphogenesis Rudy Ruc er Mathematician, Computer Scientist; CyberPun Pioneer; Novelist; Author, Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Re ality, the Meaning of Life, and How to be Happy Most biological, social, and psychological systems are based on interactions bet ween an activator and an inhibitor. The patterns which emerge depend upon the re lative rates at which the activator and inhibitor spread. Three main cases occur , depending on whether the activator's diffusion rate is much less than, roughly equal to, or greater than the rate at which the inhibition spreads. In these th ree cases we observe, respectively, isolated patches li e zebra stripes or leopa rd spots, moving complex patterns li e Belusov-Zhabontins y scrolls, or seething chaos. Applying this to the activator-inhibitor patterns in the human brain, if you inhibit new thoughts, you are left with a few highly stimulated patches: ob sessions and fixed ideas. If you manage to create new thought associations at ab out the same rate you inhibit them, you develop creative complexity. And too hig h a rate of activation leads to unproductive mania. Exercise: apply this notion to spread of good and bad news in society. Sec el's Law Al Sec el Cognitive neuroscientist; Author, Optical Illusions: The Science of Visual Perce ption Sec el's First Law Visual Perception is Essentially an Ambiguity Solving Process. Most of us ta e vision for granted. After all, it comes to us so easily. With no rmal vision we are able to navigate quic ly and efficiently through a visually r ich three-dimensional world of light, shading, texture, and color a complex world in motion, with objects of different sizes at differing distances. Loo ing about we have a definite sense of the "real world". In fact, our visual system is so successful at building an accurate representati on of the real world (our perception) that most of us do not realize what a diff icult tas our brain is performing. Without conscious thought, our visual system gathers and interprets complex information, providing us with a seamless percep tion of our environment. The complexities of how we perceive are cleverly concea led by a successful visual system. It might seem reasonable for us to assume that there is a one-to-one mapping bet ween the real world and what you perceive that your visual system "sees" the retin al image, in much the way that a digital camera records what it "sees." Although it seems li e a useful analogy, there is no real comparison between our visual system and a camera beyond a strictly surface level. Furthermore, this c

Our perceptions are not always perfect. Sometimes our brain will interpret a sta tic image on the retina in more than one way. A s eleton cube, nown as a Nec er cube, is a classic example of a single image that is interpreted in more than o ne way. If you fixate on this cube for any length of time, it will spontaneously reverse in depth, even though the image on the retina remains constant. Our bra in interprets this image differently because of conflicting depth cues. The great 19th century German physicist and physiologist Hermann Von Helmholtz f irst discovered the basic problem of perception over one hundred years ago. He c orrectly reasoned that the visual information from our world that is projected o nto the bac of the retina is spatially ambiguous. Helmholtz reasoned that there can be an infinite variety of shapes that can give rise to the same retinal ima ge, as long as they subtend the same visual angle to the eye. However, the concept of visual ambiguity is far deeper than what Helmholtz origi nally proposed, because it turns out that any one aspect of visual information, such as brightness, color, motion, etc, could have arisen from infinitely many d ifferent conditions. It is very hard to appreciate this fact at first, because w hat we perceive in a normal viewing environment is not at all ambiguous. If all visual stimuli are inherently ambiguous, how does our visual/perceptual s ystem discard the infinite variety of possible conditions to settle on the corre ct interpretation almost all the time, and in such a quic and efficient manner? The problem basically stated is, how does the visual system "retrieve" all of t he visual information about the 3D world from the very limited information conta ined in the 2D retinal image? This is a basic and central question of perception . Studying the visual system only at one level will never result in a full underst anding of visual perception. Many of the underlying mechanisms that mediate visi on may be even "messier" than previously thought, with cross-feedbac from more than one level of visual processing contributing to processing at another level. UCSD vision scientist V.S. Ramachandran is correct when he believes that it is time to "open the blac box in order to study the responses of nerve cells," but he is also probably right to promote his Utilitarian Theory of Perception, whic h argues for a clever "bag of tric s" that the human visual system has evolved o ver millions of years of evolution to resolve the inherent ambiguities in the vi sual image. Visual perception is largely an ambiguity-solving process. The tas of vision scientists, therefore, is to uncover these hidden and underly ing constraints, rather than to attribute to the visual system a degree of simpl icity that it simply does not possess. Sec el's Second Law Our Visual/Perceptual System is Highly Constrained. Sometimes our perceptions are wrong. Often these errors have been classified as illusions, dismissed by many as failures of the visual system, quir y exceptions to normal vision. If illusions are not failures of the visual system, then, what are they? After a ll, we do categorize a number of different perceptual experiences as "illusions"

omparison trivializes the accomplishments of our visual system. a camera records incoming information, but our brain interprets tion. Furthermore, it feels to us as if a photograph reproduces nal world, but it doesn't. It onlysuggests one. The same visual rprets the world around us also interprets the photograph to ma three-dimensional scene.

This is because incoming informa a three-dimensio system that inte e it appear as a

. What ma es them fundamentally different than those we perceive as normal? One difference is a noticeable split between your perception and conception. Wit h an illusion, your perception is fooled but your conception is correct you're see ing something wrong (your mis perception), but you now it's wrong (your correct conception). Initially, your conception may be fooled too, but at that point you are unaware that you are encountering an illusion. It is only when your concept ion is at odds with your perception that you are aware that you have encountered an illusion. Furthermore, in almost all pictorial illusions (where the meaning of the image i s not ambiguous), your perceptions will continue to be fooled, even though your conception is fine, no matter how many times you view the illusion. It does not matter how old you are, how smart you are, how cultured you are, or how artistic you are, you will continue to be fooled by these illusions over and over again. In fact, you cannot "undo" your incorrect perceptions, even with extended exper iences, worldly nowledge, or training. It is more important for your visual sys tem to adhere to these constraints than to violate them because it has encounter ed something unusual, inconsistent, or paradoxical. This indicates that your vis ual/perceptual system is highly constrained on how it interprets the world. It is not my intention to cause the reader to thin that visual perception is un reliable and untrustworthy. This would be a mista e as, for the most part, our p erceptions of the world are veridical. However, how we perceive the world is not a mirror image of reality, but an actively and intelligently constructed one th at allows us to have the best chances for survival in a complicated environment. Morgan's Law Howard Lee Morgan Vice Chairman of idealab! the Pasadena Morgan's First Law To a first approximation, no deals close. Morgan's Second Law To a first approximation all appointments are canceled. Morgan's Third Law Events of probability zero happen they are the ones that change the world. These laws are actually the engineering approximations to life. Pic over 's Law of Mutating Conjectures Clifford Pic over Author, The Physics Boo : From the Big Bang to Quantum Resurrection I am having difficulty formulating a law to give you. Through the millennia, eve n the most brilliant minds rarely generated great and profound "laws." Probably every "law" ever made had been bro en or will crumble after a time. Perhaps Edge is as ing the wrong question. Knowledge moves in an ever-expanding, upward-poin ting funnel. From the rim, we loo down and see previous nowledge from a new pe rspective as new theories are formed. Today's conjectures mutate, new theories e volve, and yesterday's impossibilities become part of everyday life.

Golomb 's Law Beatrice Golomb

Drexler's Law K. Eric Drexler Researcher; Policy Advocate; Author, Engines of Creation Drexler's First Law Physical technology evolves toward limits set by physical law. Drexler's Second Law A technology approaching the limits set by physical law must build with atomic p recision. Hurst's Law Mar Hurst Founder of Internet consulting firm Creative Good Any unbounded bitstream tends to irrelevance. Bits are so easy to create, copy, and send that without some filtering process, the worth of the entire bitstream decays rapidly. A good example is the e-mail inbox. Many e-mail users have no disciplin e about deleting or filtering their mail, and thus the bits that flow in spam and legitimate mail together clutter the inbox to an extent that the worth of the inbo x overall tends to zero. Stated another way, the worth of a bitstream is proportional to the accuracy and usage of the filters and meta-bits applied to the bitstream. Kleiner's Law Art Kleiner Co-author (with Pete Senge et al.) of the best-selling Fifth Discipline Fieldboo , The Dance of Change, and Schools That Learn; and author of Who Really Matters : The Core Group Theory of Power, Priviledge, and Success Every organization always operates on behalf of the perceived needs and prioriti es of some core group of ey people. This purpose will trump every other organiz ational loyalty, including those to shareholders, employees, customers, and othe r constituents. Vardi's Law Joseph Vardi Chairman of International Technologies Experts predictions are always correct.

1. A certain portion of all predictions made by experts will be correct.

Professor of Medicine at UCSD Everything in biology is more complicated than you thin account Golomb's Law.

it is, even ta ing into

2. Human memory is short. 3. Ma e lot of forecasts, most of the people will remember the correct ones. 4. A good hedge: ma e contradictory predictions with intervals between them. Humphrey's Law of the Efficacy of Prayer Nicholas Humphrey Emeritus School Professor, The London School of Economics; Author, Soul Dust In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for t heir own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not. [Thin about it.] Rees's Law Martin Rees Former President, The Royal Society; Emeritus Professor of Cosmology & Astrophys ics, University of Cambridge; Master, Trinity College; author, Our Final Hour an d Our Final Century As cosmological theories advance, they will draw more concepts from biology. The part of the universe astronomers can observe is probably only a tiny part of the aftermath of 'our' big bang, which in turn may be one of an infinity of 'ba ngs' in which the physics may be very different from in ours. To analyze how our own cosmic habitat relates to this ensemble, we'll need to draw on concepts fro m ecology and evolutionary biology ('fitness landscapes', etc). So we'll need biological ideas to understand the beginning. But biology may cont rol the far future too. In some 'universes' (ours perhaps among them) life can e ventually become pervasive and powerful enough to renders the dynamics of the co smic future as unpredictable as that of an organism or mind. Mar off's Law of Inversion John Mar off Science Journalist; Covers cyber-security for The New Yor Times; Author, What t he Dormouse Said; Co-author, Ta edown. Technology once tric led down from supercomputers to PCs. Now new computing tech nology comes to game machines first. Corollary The companies who ma e the fastest computers are the ones that ma e things that go under Xmas trees. Gigerenzer's Law of Indispensable Ignorance Gerd Gigerenzer Psychologist; Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planc Institute for Human Development in Berlin; Author, Gut Feelings The world cannot function without partially ignorant people. The ideal of omniscience fuels the many disciplines and theories that envision g odli e humans. Much of cognitive science, and Homo economics as well, assume the superiority of a mind with complete, veridical representations of the outside w orld that remain stable and available throughout a lifetime. The Law of Indispen

sable Ignorance, in contrast, says that complete information is neither realisti c nor generally desirable. What is desirable are partially (not totally) ignoran t people. Justice is blindfolded; jurors are not supposed to now the criminal record of t he defendant; trial consultants hunt for "virgin minds" rather than academics as jurors. Academics in turn review papers anonymously under the veil of ignorance about the authors; trust in experiments demands double-blind procedures; econom ic fairness encourages sealed bids. The efficient mar et hypothesis implies that nowledge of future stoc prices is impossible, and the Gree s eptics taught t heir students that they new nothing. When watching a pre-recorded football game, we do not want to now the result in advance; nowledge would destroy suspense. The estimated 5 to 10% of children a nd their fathers who falsely believe that they are related might not lead a happ ier life by becoming less ignorant; nowledge can destroy families. And few of u s would want to now the day we will die; nowledge can destroy hope. Zero-intelligence traders who submitted random bids and offers in double auction s were as good as experts. Pedestrians who chose stoc s by mere name recognition outperformed mar et experts and the Fidelity Growth Fund--and even more success fully when they were from abroad and more ignorant of the stoc names. Expert ba ll players made better decisions about where to pass the ball when they had less time. Recreational tennis players who had only heard of half of the professiona l players in Wimbledon 2003 and simply bet that those they had not heard of woul d lose predicted the outcomes of the matches better than the official ATP-ran in gs and the seeding. Adam Smith's invisible hand is a metaphor for how collective wisdom emerges from the uninformed masses. We can prove that situations exist in which a group does best by following its m ost ignorant member rather than the consensus of their informed majority, and we can prove that a heuristic that ignores all information except for one reason w ill ma e better predictions than a multiple regression with a dozen reasons. Mne monists, who have virtually unlimited memory, are swamped by details and find it difficult to abstract and reason, while ordinary people's wor ing memory limita tions maximize the ability to detect correlations in the world. Limited memory f acilitates acquisition of language, in infants and computers ali e; the more com plex the species, the longer the period of infancy. Theories that respect the Law of Indispensable Ignorance incorporate a more real istic picture of people as being partially ignorant. Omniscience is dispensable. Lohr's Law Steve Lohr Senior writer and technology reporter for The New Yor Times The future is merely the past with a twist and better tools. Berreby's Law David Berreby Author of Us and Them Berreby's First Law Human inds exist only in human minds. Human differences and human similarities are infinite, therefore any assortment of people can be grouped together according to a shared trait or divided accordi

ng to unshared traits. Our borders of race, ethnicity, nation, religion, class e tc. are not, then, facts about the world. They are facts about belief. We should loo at minds, not inds, if we want to understand this phenomenon. Berreby's Second Law Science which seems to confirm human- ind beliefs is always welcome; science tha t undermines human- ind belief is always unpopular. To put it more cynically, if your wor lets people believe there are "Jewish gen es'" (never mind that the same genes are found in Palestinians) or that criminal s have different inds of brains from regular people (never mind that regular pe ople get arrested all the time), or that your ancestors 5,000 years ago lived in the same nec of the woods as you (never mind the whereabouts of all your other ancestors), well then, good press will be yours. On the other hand, if your wor shows how thoroughly perceptions of race, ethnicity, and other traits change w ith circumstances, well, good luc . Common sense will defend itself against scie nce. Poundstone's Law William Poundstone Journalist and author; nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize Poundstone's First Law Independent discoverers of great ideas emerge in proportion to the time spent lo o ing for them. The history of science is a fractal, with co-discoverers emergin g li e crin les in the Norwegian coastline. Poundstone's Second Law The fractal dimension of scientific discovery increases with time. Where people once marveled at the simultaneous discovery of calculus, we now marvel when a No bel science prize goes to one person. Overbye's Law Dennis Overbye Deputy Science Editor of The New Yor Times "There's always a faster gun." Lippincott's Law Sara Lippincott Editor at the now defunct Los Angeles Times Boo Review God is evolving. So if you're an atheist, you'd better hope that the arrow of ti me only goes in one direction. Barabsi's Law of Programming Albert-lszl Barabsi Complex Networ Scientist; Distinguished Professor and Director of Northeastern University's Center for Complex Networ Research; Author, Bursts: The Hidden Pat tern Behind Everything We Do Program development ends when the program does what you expect it to do whether it is correct or not.

Gelernter's Law David Gelernter Computer Scientist, Yale University; Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds Technologies ; Author, Mirror Worlds; Machine Beauty Gelernter's First Law Computers ma e people stupid. Gelernter's Second Law One expert is worth a million intellectuals. (This law is only approximate.) Gelernter's Third Law

Hillis' Law W. Daniel Hillis Physicist, Computer Scientist, Chairman of Applied Minds, Inc.; author, The Patt ern on the Stone The representation becomes the reality. Or more precisely: Successful representations of reality become more important t han the reality they represent. Examples: Dollars become more important than gold. The brand becomes more important than the company. The painting becomes more important than the landscape. The new medium (which begins as a representation of the old medium) eclipses the old. The prize becomes more important than the achievement. The genes become more important than the organism. Hearst's Law Marti Hearst Computer Scientist, UC Ber eley, School of Information; Author, Search User Inte rfaces A public figure is often condemned for an action that is ta en unfairly out of c ontext but nevertheless reflects, in a compelling and encapsulated manner, an un derlying truth about that person. Pin er's Law Steven Pin er Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Author , The Better Angles of Our Nature Pin er's First Law Human intelligence is a product of analogy and combinatorics. Analogy allows the mind to use a few innate ideas space, force, essence, goal to understand more abstr

Scientists

now all the right answers and none of the right questions.

act domains. Combinatorics allows an a finite set of simple ideas to give rise t o an infinite set of complex ones. Pin er's Second Law Human sociality is a product of conflicts and confluences of genetic interests. Our relationships with our parents, siblings, spouses, friends, trading partners , allies, rivals, and selves have different forms because they instantiate diffe rent patterns of overlap of ultimate interests. History, fiction, news, and goss ip are endlessly fascinating because the overlap is never 0% or 100%. Randall's Law Lisa Randall Physicist, Harvard University; Author, Warped Passages; Knoc ing On Heaven's Doo r Randall's First Law Non-existence "theorems", which state something cannot happen, are untrustworthy ; they are only statements about what we have seen or thought of so far. Non-exi stence theorems often appear in physics. They are useful guidelines, but there a re often loopholes. Sometimes you find those loopholes by loo ing and sometimes yo u find them by accident through superficially unrelated research Randall's Second Law Studies confirming Baron-Cohen's First Law will always reflect the bias of the i nvestigator. Benford's Modified Clar e Law Gregory Benford Professor of Physics and Astronomy, UC-Irvine; Novelist, Cosm; Timescape Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently advanced. Snyder's Law Allan Snyder Director of The Centre for the Minds Snyder's First Law The most creative science is wrong, but the deception ultimately leads to the be nefit of man ind. Thin Freud! Snyder's Second Law Everyone steals ideas from everyone else, but they do so unconsciously. This has evolved for our very survival. It maximizes the innovative power of society. Godwin 's Law Mi e Godwin Contributing editor at Reason As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Sperber's Shudder Dan Sperber Social and Cognitive Scientist; Directeur, de Recherche au CNRS Paris; Author, E xplaining Culture Than s for the invitation, but this time I will pass: I am too much of an anarch ist: the only laws I li e are scientific ones, and the idea of some normative st atement being labeled, even if just for fun, "Sperber's Law", ma es me shudder. Sorry! (But I will enjoy reading the "laws" of other people). Tipler's Law of Unlimited Progress Fran Tipler Professor of Mathematical Physics, Tulane University; Coauthor, The Anthropic Co smological Principle; Author, The Physics of Christianity The laws of physics place no limits on progress, be it scientific, economic, cul tural, or intellectual. In fact, the laws of physics require the nowledge and w ealth possessed by intelligent beings in the universe to increase without limit, this nowledge and wealth becoming literally infinite by the the end of time. I ntelligent life forms must inevitably expand out from their planets of origin, a nd convert the entire universe into a biosphere. If the laws of physics be for u s, who can be against us? Kreye's Law of Literalism Andrian Kreye Editor, The Feuilleton (Arts and Essays), of the German Daily Newspaper, Sueddeu tsche Zeitung, Munich When devaluated information ma es opinion an added value, the law of literalism is permanently questioned, while remaining the last resort of reason. The inflation of available information has devaluated word and image to mere con tent. The resulting perception fatigue is increasingly met with the overused rhe torical tool of polarizing opinion. It s based on an old tric used by street vend ors. In the intellectual food court of mass media, opinion appeals to reflexes j ust as the fried fat and sugar smells of snac food outlets activate age-old inst incts of hunting and gathering. In the average consumer opinion triggers an illu sion of enlightenment and understanding that ultimately clouds the reason of lit eralism. Literalism is freedom from credo, dogma and philosophical pessimism. It s the proc ess of finding reality driven by an optimistic faith in its existence. It tries to transcend the limits of the word, by permanently questioning any perception o f reality. Belief and ideology, the strongest purveyors of opinion, have long nown the lan guage of science and reason. Creationists use secular reasoning to demand that s chools stop teaching the laws of evolution. Right-wing radicals and religious fu ndamentalists of all creeds tone down their world visions to fit into an opinion ated consensus. Economic and political forces use selective findings to present their interests as fact. Literalism can become an exhausting effort to defend the principles of fact and reason in a polarized world. The complex and often boring nature of factual real ity ma es it an unglamorous voice amid a choir of spar ling witticisms and provo cations. Devoid of the ecstasies and spiritual cushioning of religion it denies age old longings. It can be decried as heresy or simultaneously accused of treas

on by all sides. It must sustain the insecurities brought on by the absence of u ltimate truth. Having been the gravitational center of enlightenment, it must be defended as the last resort of reason. Raymond's Law of Software Eric S. Raymond Observer-participant anthropologist in the Internet hac er culture Raymond's Law of Software Given a sufficiently large number of eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Raymond's Second Law Any sufficiently advanced system of magic would be indistinguishable from a tech nology. The first one is sometimes called "Raymond's Law" now, though I originally calle d it "Linus's Law" when I formulated it. Second one. Hmmm. Several people have s ince invented this one independently, but I came up with it more than twenty yea rs ago. It's a reply to Arthur C. Clar e's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Raymond's Law of Consequences The road to hell has often been paved with good intentions. Therefore, evil is b est recognized not by its motives but by its methods. Eno's Law Brian Eno Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Coldplay, Tal ing Heads, Paul Simon; R ecording Artist Eno's First Law Culture is everything we don't have to do We have to eat, but we didn't have to invent Ba ed Alas as and Beef Wellington. We have to clothe ourselves, but we didn't have to invent platform shoes and pol a-dot bi inis. We have to communicate, but we didn't have to invent sonnets and sonatas. Everything we do beyond simply eeping ourselves alive we do because we li e ma ing and experiencing art and culture.

Eno's Second Law Science is the conversation about how the world is. Culture is the conversation about how else the world could be, and how else we could experience it. Science wants to now what can be said about the world, what can be predicted ab out it. Art li es to see which other worlds are possible, to see how it would fe el if it were this way instead of that way. As such art can give us the practice and agility to thin and experience in new ways - preparing us for the new unde rstandings of things that science supplies. Damasio's Law Antonio Damasio

Body and Emotion Damasio's First Law The body precedes the mind. Damasio's Second Law Emotions precede feelings. Damasio's Third Law Concepts precede words. Cronin's law of dual information storage Helena Cronin Co-Director of LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science; Author , The Ant and the Peacoc : Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today Adaptations stoc pile information in environments as well as in genes. The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos used to describe himself as a "machine fo r turning coffee into theorems". In much the same way, genes are machines for tu rning stars into a bird's compass; carotenoids into males of dazzling beauty; sm ells into love-potions; facial muscles into signals of friendship; a glance into uncertainty of paternity; and oxygen, water, light, zinc, calcium and iron into bears, beetles, bacteria or bluebells. More strictly, genes are machines for tu rning stars into birds and thereby into more genes. This reminds us that adaptations weld together two information-storage systems. They build up a store of information in genes, meticulously accumulated, elabora ted and honed down evolutionary time. And, to match that store, they also stoc p ile information in the environment. For genes need resources to build and run or ganisms; and adaptations furnish genes (or organisms) with the information to pl uc those resources from the environment. So stars and carotenoids and glances n eed to be there generation after generation no less reliably than the informatio n carried by genes. Thus genes and environments are not in opposition; not zero-sum; not parallel bu t separate. Rather, they are designed to wor in tandem. Their interconnection i s highly intricate, minutely structured; and it becomes ever more so over evolut ionary time. And thus, without environments to provide resources, genes would not be viable; and without genes to specify what constitutes an environment, environments would not exist. So how could biology not be an environmental issue? And, conversely, how could environments not be necessarily a biological issue? Cronin's law of adaptations and environments What constitutes an organism's environment depends on the species' adaptations. What constitutes an organism's environment? The answer is that it is the organis m's adaptations that sta e out which are the relevant aspects of the world. An e nvironment is not simply a given. It is the typical characteristics of a species , its adaptations, that specify what constitutes the environment for that specie s. Thin of it this way. Adaptations are eys to unloc ing the world's resources. T hey are the means by which organisms harness features of the world for their own

use, transforming them from part of the indifferent world-out-there into the or ganism's own tailor-made, species-specific environment, an environment brimming with materials and information for the organism's own distinctive adaptive needs . And so to understand how any species interacts with its environment, we need to start by exploring that species' adaptations. Only through adaptations was that environment constructed and only through understanding adaptations can we recons truct it. And, similarly, within a sexually reproducing species, differences between the s exes should be the default assumption. In particular, the female's adaptations s hould not be treated as mere adumbrations of the male's. On the contrary, if a r ule-of-thumb default is needed, turn to the female. After all, the 'little brown bird' is what the entire species males, females and juveniles loo s li e before sex ual selection distorts her mate into a showy explosion of colour and song. When it comes to environments, males perceive them as platforms for status games. Fem ales most certainly do not. Ewald's Law Paul W. Ewald Professor of Biology, Amherst College; Author, Plague Time Ewald's First Law The defining characteristic of science the one that gives sciences its extraordina ry explanatory power is the objective use of evidence to distinguish between alter native guesses. Corollary 1 Most of religion is antithetical to science. Corollary 2 Much of Western Medicine is antithetical to science. . Corollary 3 Quite a bit of Science is antithetical to science. Ewald's Second Law When the practice of medicine finally obtains a balanced perspective, Medicine a nd Evolutionary Medicine will be one and the same. Simonyi's Law of Guaranteed Evolution Charles Simonyi Software Engineer, Computer Scientist, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist Simonyi's Law of Guaranteed Evolution Anything that can be done, could be done "meta". Rennie's Law of Credibility John Rennie

Editor in chief of Scientific American Rennie's Law of Credibility Scientists don't always now best about matters of science-but they're more li e ly to be right than the critics who ma e that argument. 1st Corollary to the Law of Credibility The first job of any scientific fraud is to persuade the public that science is itself unscientific. 2nd Corollary to the Law of Credibility Any iconoclast with a scientifically unorthodox view who reminds you that Galile o was persecuted too ain't Galileo. Rennie's Law of Evolutionary Biology The most important environmental influences on any organism are always the other organisms around it. Corollary to the Law of Evolutionary Biology Species do not occupy ecological niches; they define them. Anderson's Law (of the Experienced Science Journalist) Alun Anderson Senior Consultant (& former Ed-in-Chief & Publishing Director) at New Scientist; Author, After the Ice: Life, Death, and Geopolitics in the New Arctic Anderson's First Law (of the Experienced Science Journalist) Science may be objective but scientists are not. Anderson's Second Law (of the Experienced Science Journalist) A scientist who can spea without jargon is either an idiot or a genius. Anderson's Third Law (on Subjectivity and Objectivity from the Interface of Neur oscience and Computers) The bigger the brain, the better the stories it fabricates for us. Corollary The more technology gives us the power to record and store everything, the less it captures reality. laws on subjectivity and objectivity from the interface of Neuroscience and Comp uters Anderson's Fourth Law (for ordinary fol ) Science can produce nowledge but it cannot produce wisdom.

If you can tell the false from the true you are already a scientist.

Anderson's Fifth Law (Based on An Ancient Zen Saying to An Untutored Mon g Wisdom)

See in