My Top 10 in The Independent on Sunday’s New Review yesterday was Laws, including Godwin’s, Conquest’s Third, Murphy’s, Muphry’s and Parkinson’s. I cheated to get an 11th into the introduction, Twyman’s Law (“If a statistic looks interesting or unusual it is probably wrong”).
But I had to leave other good ones out.
Quinlan’s Law was suggested by Philip Cowley, whose own law (“There is an inverse relationship between the importance of any election campaign technique and the amount of media coverage devoted to it”) made the list: “In matters of military contingency, the expected, precisely because it is expected, is not to be expected.”
He got it from Peter Hennessy’s book, Distilling the Frenzy. The rationale is that what you expect, you plan for, and thus deter. And so all that is left is what you did not deter because you did not expect it.
It was also expounded, in multiple bluff form, by Stephen Fry as General Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth:
Melchett: Now, Field Marshal Haig has formulated a brilliant tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.
Blackadder: Would this brilliant plan involve us climbing over the top of our trenches and walking, very slowly, towards the enemy?
Darling: How did you know that Blackadder? It’s classified information.
Blackadder: It’s the same plan we used last time, and the seventeen times before that.
Melchett: Exactly! And that is what is so brilliant about it. It will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard. Doing exactly what we’ve done eighteen times before will be the last thing they expect us to do this time.
Poe’s Law was compiled by Tom Chivers, whose own law (“If you can go online and call your government a fascist regime, then you are not living under a fascist regime”) also featured in my list, when he did 10 rules and laws of the internet: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.”
Chivers reported:
It was originally formulated by Nathan Poe in 2005 during a debate on christianforums.com about evolution, and referred to creationism rather than all fundamentalism, but has since been expanded. Poe’s Law also has an inverse meaning, stating that non-fundamentalists will often mistake sincere expressions of fundamentalist beliefs for parody. Examples abound – one particularly difficult-to-judge site claims that “Heliocentrism [the belief that the Earth orbits the Sun, rather than the other way around] is an Atheist Doctrine”.
Chivers also mentioned Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law): “If you have to insist that you’ve won an internet argument, you’ve probably lost badly.” Danth was, apparently, a user on the role-playing gamers’ forum, RPG.net.
As Lord Chief Justice of Twitter, I announce that the penalty for breaking any of these laws is to have people make up new laws without telling you about them.
Eagle Eye 