Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 10 “ Stupidity is causing harm to others without benefiting oneself, even potentially incurring losses in the process.” ―  Carlo M. Cipolla  (3rd Law of Human Stupidity) Triggered by a reference to the law by Prof. Gunter Dueck in a recent interview (@22:27 mins): “ Dummheit ist die Attitüde, anderen zu schaden, ohne sich selbst zu nutzen.” This is the essence of stupidity : actions that are not merely self-destructive but harm others irrationally. The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity is an essay by Italian economist Carlo M. Cipolla, originally published in 1976. It humorously yet incisively outlines five "laws" that describe human stupidity and its impact on society.  Here's a summary (created by X/Grok3): Law 1: Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. Stupidity is more widespread than people assume, and it catches us off guard because we tend to overestimate rational behavior. Law 2: The probabi...

Quote of the Week 8 “ Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ' no.' ” ―  Ian Betteridge ( Betteridge's Law of Headline )

Quote of the Week 19 " I know it when I see it." ―  Potter Stewart The phrase appears in Justice Potter Stewart's concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio , a pornography case decided by the Court in 1964. Also referred to as Steve Jobs ' Credo  by Malcolm Gladwell in a New Yorker book review of the Steve Jobs biography (authored by Walter Isaacson) : " I’ll know it when I see it.  That was Jobs’s credo, and until he saw it his perfectionism kept him on edge. "

Quote of the Week 35 " We can know more than we can tell. " ―  Michael Polanyi  ( Polanyi's paradox ) Triggered by a reference to the paradox in a recent presentation at ICML 2023 by Prof. Subbarao Kambhampati :  Avenging Polanyi's Revenge: Exploiting the Approximate Omniscience of LLMs in Planning without Deluding Yourself In the Process

Quote of the Week 29 " What goes up must come down. " ― Old adage  (sometimes attributed to Isaac Newton )   Triggered by a report on the declining interest in ChatGPT.    

Quote of the Week 23 " Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic . " ― Arthur C. Clarke   ( Clarke's 3rd Law ) Adapted by Grey's Law : " Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice ."

Quote of the Week 11 " The amount of hype around AI doubles every 18 months. " ― Gary Marcus   Triggered by Gary's recent  tweet (a variation of Moore's law ) in reply to Sam Altman (CEO OpenAI):   a new version of moore’s law that has arguably already started: the amount of hype around AI doubles every 18 months https://t.co/aZOlvSKtOP — Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus) February 27, 2023

Quote of the Week 9 "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." ― C. Northcote Parkinson ( Parkinson's Law ) Triggered by the reference in a recent blog post  on Google's decline by Stephen E. Arnold. [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 51 "B e conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept . " ― Jon Postel (Postel's Law) Triggered by the reference to Postel's law in a presentation on " API Definition and Test with Consumer Driven Contracts (CDC) " by Werner Eberling last week. A variation of the Robustness Principle : "Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others." See also: "Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself." — Marcus Aurelius — Daily Stoic (@dailystoic) December 15, 2022 [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 48 " Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations . " ―  Melvin Conway ( Conway's Law ) In short :    " The product of any group reflects the structure of the group. " Even shorter:           " Architecture follows Organization " Triggered by the reference to a variant of Conway's Law in Fred Brooks's renowned book " T he Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering " (see quote of last week for a reference to Brooks's Law ). The original quote was used by Martin Fowler in his noteworthy October 2022 article   on the same subject:  " Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure . " Fowler states: "Important enough to affect every system I've come across, and powerful enough that you...

Quote of the Week 47 " Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later . " ― Fred Brooks  ( Brooks's Law ) Frederick P. Brooks, the author of the renowned book " T he Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering " that introduces this law, passed away last week (November 17, 2022) at the age of 91. [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 26 " The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it." ― Brandolini's Law (aka Bullshit Asymmetry Principle ) Triggered by the u se of the quote in Tony Fadell's recent book " Build ".

Quote of the Week 8 "50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work." ― Price's Square Root Law (adapted) Triggered by Brian Burns ' use of the law in the context of sales organizations. Note that  Price 's well-known square root law originally states that "half of the literature on a subject will be contributed by the square root of the total number of authors publishing in that area". ( Price's square root law: Empirical validity and relation to Lotka's law - ScienceDirect ) One should be careful applying the law to different organizational contexts. It  does not necessarily apply to performance management in general. ( Kienbaum Blog - Price’s Law and the Trouble of Operationalizing Performance ) See also:  Price's Law: What It Is And Why You Should Care - Darius Foroux

Quote of the Week 50 " All complex systems that work, evolved from simpler systems that worked. " ―  Gall's Law Referenced by Werner Vogels in his recent AWS re:Invent 2021 keynote . Full quote according to Wikipedia : " 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. "

Quote of the Week 30 " One cannot not communicate." ― Paul Watzlawick One of the five Axioms of Communication ; also quoted as: "You  cannot not communicate. " Paul Watzlawick was born 100 years ago on July 25, 1921. Triggered by Ursula Moonen's LinkedIn post .   Poster by Erik Spiekermann  on p98a

2nd Quote of the Week 22 " Everyone is conservative about what he knows best . " ―  Robert Conquest Originally stated as "Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands." Related to Clarke's 1st Law . Triggered by a comment on Ethan Mollick's tweet . Source: Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics  and Tracking down Conquest’s law on organisations .

2nd Quote of the Week 12 " Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. " ―  Grey's Law A variant of Hanlon's Razor: "Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice." Influenced by the third law of Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Quote of the Week 8 " I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. " ―  Abraham Maslow 'Law of the instrument' || "Law of the hammer" || "Maslow's hammer" Source:   Q uote Investigator  and  W ikipedia .

Quote of the Week 5 " Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan . " ―   Cited by John F. Kennedy   Background information:  He said "There's an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan. ...". "While John F. Kennedy gets credit for saying, victory has a thousand fathers, people forget that he called it an old saying. It is actually during World War II that Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's foreign minister and his son-in-law as well, wrote in his diary: victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan. " Source:  Origin of 'No Jack Kennedy' Comment Disputed (NPR) Ciano's statement was probably influenced by Tacitus. Tacitus’s law:  “Inquissima haec bellorum condicio est: prospera omnes sibi indicant; aduersa uni imputantur” (Agricola 27:1 - 98 AD) which roughly translates to " This is an unfair thing about war: victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone. ...