# Empirical Laws

### Gall's Law

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

Wikipedia

### Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Wikipedia

### Gervais Principle

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

Note: "The Losers are not social losers (as in the opposite of “cool”), but people who have struck bad bargains economically – giving up capitalist striving for steady paychecks."

Source

### Gilder's Law

Bandwidth grows at least three times faster than computer power

Source

### Koomey's Law

The number of computations per joule of energy dissipated doubled about every 1.57 years.

Note: The scaling looks to have slowed to about 2.6 years as of 2000.

Wikipedia

### Metcalfe's Law

The effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.

Wikipedia

### Moore's Law

The number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years.

Wikipedia

### Norton's Law

All data, over time, approaches deleted, or public.

(tweet, archive)

### Occam's Razor

Simpler solutions are more likely to be correct than complex ones.

Wikipedia

### Pareto's Principle

For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Wikipedia

### Peter Principle

People in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence".

Wikipedia

### Planck's Principle

Scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their mind, but rather that successive generations of scientists have different views.

Wikipedia

### Reed's Law

The utility of a group forming network of $n$ members scales as $O(2^n)$.

There are $2^n$ subgroups of a set of $n$ members.

Whereas Sarnoff's law is one to many, thus linear. Metcalf's law is many to many, but only on an individual connection basis, like a telephone network. Reed's law considers subgroup formation as an added factor to the utility and points out that Metcalf's law might undervalue network effects significantly.

Wikipedia

### Sarnoff's Law

The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers.

That is, the value of a network, in this above case a broadcast network, scales as $O(n)$.

Wikipedia

### Spolsky's Observation

Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements.

Note: In this context, there are 'substitutes' and 'compliments', where a substitute is a product you buy that replaces the core product and a compliment is a product you buy with the core product.

Source

#### Ucaetano's Addendum to Spolsky's Observation

Create a desert of profitability around you.

Source

### Swanson's Law

The price of solar photovoltaic modules tends to drop 20 percent for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume.

Note: at present, costs halve at every 10 years.

Wikipedia

### Wagner's Law

The advent of modern industrial society will result in increasing political pressure for social progress and increased allowance for social consideration by industry.

Wikipedia

### Wright's Law

Production doubling leads to a constant percent decrease in cost.

aka Experience curve effects.

The above is paraphrased. Wright noticed that every time total aircraft production doubled, the required labor cost fell 20%.

For unit number $n$, cost $P_n$ is approximately:

$$P_n = P_1 n^{ \lg(\beta) } = P_1 n^{-\alpha}$$

Where $(1-\beta)$ is the reduction proportion and $\alpha$ is the "elasticity of cost" ($\alpha = -\lg(\beta)$). Note that $\frac{ P_{2n} }{P_n} = 2^{-\alpha}$

It appears that $(1-\beta)$ estimates can typically range from $0.1$ to $0.25$.

Also note that economies of scale might be intertwined with with the experience curve effects and that it might be hard to separate the two.

Wikipedia

### Wu's Razor

For sufficiently powerful actors, Hanlon's Razor is invoked to give malice plausible deniability.

The above is paraphrased from the original:

I've come to the conclusion Hanlon's Razor isn't particularly useful. It's catchy, popular- but as a cognitive tool it's almost never applicable and it's usually invoked not to aid the determination of truth, but as rhetorical squid ink to give malice plausible deniability.

(tweet, archive)