Subscribe
Edwards's Laws

Edwards's Laws

on matters grave and trivial

This page is periodically updated

Edwards's Law of Hamburgers

The mass comprising a large hamburger would be better formed to comprise two smaller hamburgers.

Edwards's Law of Pressing Concerns

If something must be done, it must be done well; a poor solution inoculates a problem against any eventual satisfactory solution.

Niven's 16th Law (of Social Movements)

"There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it"

Edwards's corollary to Niven's 16th Law

The key to evaluating a given social movement (which is something different than evaluating a social movement's stated aims) is thus not to test for the presence of fools, but to determine their prominence; "fools" may be substituted with "malefactors" in many cases.

Edwards's Razor for Franchise Media

An upcoming work for which a fanbase is not eagerly asking is presumed better than an upcoming work for which a fanbase is eagerly asking.

Comment: this is most clearly illustrated in comparing the three Star Wars series released in 2022.

Edwards's Law of Bigotry

If your best argument that you are not racist, sexist, antisemitic, xenophobic, vel similia, is a semantic argument about the exact definition of racism, sexism, antisemitism, xenophobia, vel similia, you do not have a strong such argument.

Edwards's Law of French Linguistics

Anglophones will find that French has both a surplus of consonants when written and a deficit of consonants when spoken.

Edwards's Law of Armed Uprisings

An armed uprising will always first replace the existing status quo with a status quo wherein might makes right before any desired status quo can come into place.

Edwards's Law of Pranking

A prank carried out, in detail, in one's imagination, is 75% as funny as a prank carried out in reality, while having a 100% success rate, taking 0.5% the effort, and carrying 0% the risk.

Edwards's Law of Good

Competence if not morality, nor is it intrinsically correlated, positively or negatively, with morality; being good at something does not make you good, nor vice versa.

Edwards's Dietary Criteria

Food should satisfy at least two, and ideally all three, of the following:

  • Economical
  • Nutritious
  • Tasty

Edwards's Laws of Birding

  1. Any duck not positively identified is a mallard, unless it is seen to be diving.
  2. Any single wild bird which is an hour of travel or more away will be gone when you get there.
  3. Using better optics will extend the range at which you cannot quite make a bird out.
  4. A field guide which is an interesting read or a good coffee-table book will be little use when you're trying to identify a bird.