Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Eponymous Laws: The Stories Behind Laws Named After People

Episode Date: August 29, 2020

Everyone is probably familiar with Murphy’s Law which says that “Anything which can go wrong will go wrong.” However, there are many such laws, known as eponymous laws, which are sayings, adages, or truisms, which have been attributed to people over the years. These are not hard and fast mathematical or physical laws, but rather are general truths which can help you see and understand the world better...and they are usually named after someone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone is probably familiar with Murphy's law, which states that anything which can go wrong will go wrong. However, there are many such laws, known as eponymous laws, which are sayings, adages, or truisms, which have been attributed to people over the years. These are not hard and fast mathematical or physical laws, but rather are general truths which can help you see and understand the world better, and they're usually named after someone. Get to know the world of eponymous laws on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison.

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Audible.com. If you're interested in the snippets of wisdom from great minds, the audiobook I would recommend is 600 quotes of ancient philosophy. It contains thoughts from such minds as Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, and the Buddha. If you're new to ancient history or philosophy, it's a great way to get introduced. You can get a free one-month trial to Audible and two free audiobooks by going to audibletrial.com slash everything everywhere, or by clicking on the link in the show notes. There are many truisms that we all know which are less than mathematical or scientific laws, but are still helpful rules for living life. These are often referred to as laws, razors, dictums, or rules. The most famous, of course, is Murphy's law, which holds that

anything which can go wrong will go wrong. This law is attributed to a man called Edward Murphy, who was an American aerospace engineer. The earliest known use of the phrase was in 1951, and it was attributed to Murphy by Dr. John Stapp, who was an Air Force flight surgeon. The phrase became really popular with the development of the space program. Oddly enough, most people use it incorrectly. They assume it's just a pessimistic outlook on life, when in reality it was supposed to be an approach to engineering. An engineer should assume that anything which can go wrong eventually will

and plan for that eventuality. Of course, there's evidence that Murphy didn't, in fact, invent the law, of which there has been some form floating around engineering circles since the late 19th century. The misattribution of laws is in and of itself a law, known as Stigler's Law, which states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. This law is attributed to statistician Stephen Stigler, who claims that he didn't think of it, but rather should be attributed to sociologist Robert K. Merton. This misattribution really just adds support for the validity of the law.

One of the oldest known attributed laws is Occam's Razor, which is attributed to 14th century English monk William of Occam. It dictates that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is most likely the right one. This can be applied to many things, but especially something like a grand world-dominating conspiracy, which would require millions of conspirators and trillions of dollars per year, to explain something as simple as the earth being round. Adler's Razor is attributed to mathematician Mike Adler. who came up with the dictum which we should all probably take to heart. It states, what cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating. It's incredible how much time is spent by people arguing about things that can never be conclusively resolved.

This is also known as Newton's flaming laser sword, which is to give it a bit more oomph than just a normal razor. Sayer's law, which is attributed to political scientist Wallace Stanley Sayer, says, in any dispute, the intensity of feelings is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue. The law highlights the fact that oftentimes the most bitter fights are over the most trivial things. Academic departments often have heated battles, even though the stakes are very low. Likewise, many of the fiercest religious battles are fought not between totally different religions, but between different sects or denominations within a religion. Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto is credited with the Pareto Principle,

which is also known as the 80-20 rule. This dictates that 20% of the inputs in any system are responsible for 80% of the outputs. This is normally applied to something like sales and marketing, where 20% of your customers will be responsible for 80% of your revenue. Professor and author Lawrence J. Peter is credited with the Peter principle, which states that, in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence. We've probably all seen this in action. A good computer programmer is rewarded with a computer programmer.

the raise to a promotion where they have to manage other programmers, but their skill is in writing code, not in managing people. Alternatively, a good teacher might be promoted to become an administrator, which requires a completely different set of skills than the ones which got them the job. Parkinson's law comes from a 1955 essay by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in the Economist magazine, which notes that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. I know this myself, almost every day when working on this podcast. No matter how much or little time I give myself to get a show at the door, I will use all of it. The Shirky principle was named after technology pundant Clay Shirky by Wired Magazine Editor Kevin Kelly. It states that institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

Many institutions are founded with the best intentions. Over time, they develop their own bureaucracy and institutional inertia, which seeks to protect its own existence more than solving the problem that they were originally created for. Case in point, the Rural Electrification Administration, which was created during the New Deal to bring electricity to rural areas, still exists, even though the problem of rural electrification was solved decades ago. The Rosenthal effect, also known as the Pygmillian effect, dictates that higher expectations lead to an increase in performance, or low expectations lead to a decrease in performance. Psychologist Robert Rosenfall stipulated that expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you expect a student to get A's, there's a good chance they will get A's.

And if you only expect a student to pass, they will do the minimum amount of work just to pass. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clark has three laws named after him, two of which are worth mentioning. Clark's first law states that when a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they state that something is impossible, they are very probably wrong. There is a conservatism in scientists where established scientists are wedded to the current framework and resistant to new ideas. There are numerous examples of scientists who have said things are impossible, but turned out not to be. I can distinctly remember some scientists saying you couldn't transmit digital information over analog radio waves. If you are listening to me now, it's proof that they were wrong.

Clark's third law states, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And we've probably all experienced this ourselves if we can think back to the first time we saw a GPS device or a smartphone. We had no idea how it worked, and we were just amazed that it did. Goodhart's law is attributed to British economist Charles Goodhart, and it notes that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure.

This can be seen when you teach for a particular standardized test. The SAT was designed as a general measure of aptitude, but now it's just a measure of how good you are at taking the SAT. The Streisand effect was named after Barbara Streisand. It states that any attempt to hide, remove, or sensory piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing that information more widely. This came about when she attempted to suppress aerial photos of her home in Malibu, which only ensured that the photos were widely spread during the ensuing controversy. And the fact that I'm talking about it now, and she has a lot of her. law named after really proves it to be true. Astronomer Carl Sagan has the Sagan standard named after him, which simply states that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

This is often used against people who claim that there are aliens who have visited Earth without any real hard evidence to back up their claims. Our final law is my personal favorite, Stein's law. It was set down in 1976 by economist Herbert Stein. In its simplest form, it notes that if something can't go on forever, it won't. Back in the 1990s, the dot-com bubble was inflating the price of stocks, and everyone knew that the values weren't sustainable. And they were right. The prices couldn't stay inflated forever, and they didn't.

Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackle. Today's review comes from Lars Head Supernormal in Great Britain. They write, Bravo. As a curious person in both senses, this appeals. pretty much covers the things I like, very informative and entertaining. Good job. Thank you, Lars Head's Supernormal, and thank all of you who've left reviews over at Apple Podcast, and for those of you who support the show over at patreon.com, where I'll be uploading a new desktop and smartphone wallpaper for the month of September.