“Law” can have several different meanings in the modern world. On the one hand, there is the kind of law that is enforced by the authorities, which can be long-armed, laid down, and fought (although a few singers have taught that the latter is not usually a good idea). People choose and apply the consequences themselves, but provided that they always do, then they form rules that will always hold.

On the other hand, there are scientific laws. These are rules that should hold true even without human intervention. However, people also apply the word to rules that seem to often be true, even if they have not been rigorously tested. These are usually named after the first or most famous person who notices them. Technologists like Bill Gates, writers like Arthur C. Clarke, and many others outside of the legal system and the hard sciences have all had so-called laws named after them. Read on to find out what they observed and how people use these laws to make predictions and decisions.

Related: Top 10 Outdated Laws You Didn’t Know You Were Breaking

10 Betteridge’s Law of Headlines

“Do Pineapples Make Great iPhone Cases?” was a question that the website Popular Science once asked its readers in a headline. Everyone can probably guess the answer. (No, just in case anyone was wondering.) But while this example was particularly obvious, not all polar-question headlines have such easy answers. Or do they?

According to British technology journalist Ian Betteridge, assuming the answer is “no” in every case would actually give people the right answer almost every time. The maxim has become known as “Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.” He believes that the reason it works is because such headlines are used to allow journalists to publish stories that they know are probably not true or that are lacking in facts and sources.

Betteridge first mentioned it in a 2009 article criticizing a technology news website that had helped spread a false rumor about another site by using a question headline. However, he was not the first to spot this useful rule. The veteran British journalist Andrew Marr also advised people to “try answering ‘no’” to question headlines back in 2004.^[1]

9 Clarke’s First Law

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines is useful, but most people today know that misinformation and fake news are out there. However, even though people are somewhat skeptical of journalists, it is hard not to take a distinguished and elderly scientist at his or her word.

However, the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke believed that when it came to predicting what scientific developments lay in the future, such scientists were often wrong. In fact, they were very consistent in what they got wrong. This was explained in the first of Clarke’s three laws, which says that “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

This appeared in a 1962 essay he wrote, which blamed failure of imagination for poor predictions about the future. In 1977, another famous science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, proposed an exception to Clarke’s law. He thought that when the general public passionately supports an idea denounced by elderly scientists, the scientists are more likely to be correct.^[2]

8 Cunningham’s Law

Betteridge’s and Clarke’s laws give people an indication of when they can trust the information they are being told and when they ought not to rely on it. Cunningham’s law is similar but more practical and proactive. It can be used to help people get information they would like to know from others online, and it is said to be even more effective than simply asking.

According to Cunningham’s law, a false statement is more likely to be corrected than a straightforward question to be answered. So when there is something that people need to know, the best thing to do is basically to log on and make an authoritative but completely false declaration about their desired topic. Then, they can sit back and watch the corrections roll in.

The so-called law takes its name from Ward Cunningham, who knows a thing or two about gathering information as one of the most important developers of user-edited “wiki” websites. He was not, however, the first to put this law to use. Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, used to open some of his famous dialogues with arguments that he knew were wrong.^[3]

7 Andy and Bill’s Law

Computers have inspired many other so-called laws besides Cunningham’s. Probably the most famous is Moore’s law, which predicts that the number of transistors on computer chips will double roughly every two years. What this really means is that computers get more efficient—processing faster and costing less—very quickly. It is named after Gordon Moore, who co-founded Intel, but he would not be the only executive of that company to have his own law.

Intel’s former CEO Andy Grove also has one, although he shares it with another tech visionary—Microsoft founder Bill Gates. “Andy and Bill’s Law” predicts that the gains achieved by chip manufacturers like Intel will be wiped out by developers like Microsoft, who expand their software to use up the available power.

As an old computer conference joke puts it, “What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away.” In some variations, it is Gordon Moore who “giveth,” but the joke disguises the astounding impact Bill and Andy’s law has had on the world. Continual innovation on both sides is the reason today’s smartphones have more computing power than the spacecraft that took men to the Moon in 1969.^[4]

6 Eroom’s Law

Moore’s Law has held up pretty well since it was first described in 1965. It has led to great advances in technology, which should theoretically benefit other areas, helping them improve exponentially, too. However, when a 2012 study looked into whether gains in technology had benefited the development of new drugs, they found that the opposite had happened. The number of approved new drugs for every billion dollars spent on research has halved around every nine years since 1950.

That means that the cost of developing a new drug effectively doubles every nine years. The researchers called this “Eroom’s law,” Eroom being Moore spelled backward. One of the reasons they thought this happened was the “better than the Beatles problem.” This means that the amount of improvement required for approval is too high, like how there probably would not be much music today if every musician had to be much better than the Beatles and was forced to quit if they were not.^[5]

5 Goodhart’s Law

Goodhart’s Law states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Actually, that is how the anthropologist Marilyn Strathern rephrased the less concise original. Named after the British economist Charles Goodhart, a good example of this law comes from the attempt to solve a rat infestation in Vietnam in the early 20th century.

Rat catchers were hired to go down into Hanoi’s sewers, and to make sure that they were doing their jobs, they had to bring the tails of the rats they killed to the officials. This was a measure; the officials could count the tails to know how many rats were being killed. But then they decided to pay the rat catchers based on how many tails they brought in.

From then on, it was a target. The catchers stopped killing the rats and instead just removed the tails. That way, they could get paid, and the rats could reproduce so the catchers could get paid again the next day. Counting the tails was no longer an accurate measure of the rat-catchers’ effectiveness.^[6]

4 Segal’s Law

Some laws are not really laws at all and would probably be better described as adages or proverbs. Segal’s law is an example of this. It states that “a man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two is never sure.” On the surface, it points out the pitfalls of having too many sources of information. If they conflict with each other, people are unable to use either of them because they do not know which one is correct. It is, therefore, easier to have only one source, but wise people will note that it is then hard to tell if it is wrong.

Surprisingly, the earliest record of the saying comes from a San Diego newspaper in 1930, where it was a quip used to fill space. It takes the name “Segal” from a radio broadcaster in Texas called Lee Segall, to whom the quote was wrongly attributed in a popular book called Murphy’s Law. The author also misspelled his name. Segal’s Law has also been attributed to Mark Twain and Einstein. However, there is no evidence that it came from either.^[7]

3 Benford’s Law

Imagine taking a stack of newspapers and noting down the first digit of every number reported in them. It would be reasonable to expect that each possible first digit appears roughly the same number of times. But according to Benford’s law, that is very unlikely. Lower first digits actually appear far more often than higher ones.

The phenomenon was first recorded by the astronomer Simon Newcomb in 1881. While flicking through a book of mathematical tables in the library, he noticed that the pages near the beginning were dirtier than those near the end. It seemed his colleagues preferred numbers that started with 1.

In 1938, the American physicist Frank Benford tested this further, using thousands of pieces of data. He found that smaller first digits really did appear more often, and Benford’s law has since been observed in all kinds of things, from electricity bills and street addresses to stock prices and population numbers. Today, Benford’s law is even used to help spot fraud. People making up numbers that they want to look random often try to use each digit equally so their figures will not obey Benford’s Law.^[8]

2 Benford’s Law of Controversy

Even though it is also named after a man called Benford, who also happens to be a physicist, “Benford’s Law of Controversy” is not at all related to Benford’s Law. The Benford of the former is an astrophysicist called Gregory Benford, and his law teaches that “passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.” When solid facts are in short supply, people tend to fill in the gaps with theories or rumors. They often choose what they would like to be true or what fits with their tribal identity.

This is why people can get so passionate about things that they do not really know about. This affects some people more than others, but it can happen to anyone. The reason the gaps are filled in in the first place is that uncertainty is an unpleasant feeling. Coming up with a narrative that explains everything, even if it is wrong, makes people feel better.^[9]

1 Hofstadter’s Law

The causes of Benford’s Law of Controversy might be unconscious, but if people are aware of it, then they might be able to introspect and spot where their emotions are filling in the gaps. But trying to work around this final law promises to be a futile endeavor. That is because, according to Hofstadter’s Law itself, even knowing it will not help somebody to break it.

The self-referential law, which was thought up by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, posits that planned tasks will always take longer than people expect—even if they take Hofstadter’s law into account. People already know that things take longer than they predict, so they adjust their estimate to give themselves even longer. But according to Hofstadter, they are doomed to be surprised once again.

Probably the most famous example of this law in action is the decade-long disaster of a project that was the Sydney Opera House. Similarly, London’s Wembley Stadium was expected to open in 2003, 2005, and 2006 before it eventually opened in 2007.^[10]

How much do you like your name? Have you ever thought your life would have gone a different way if your parents named you Maverick or Uppercut? It’s too late to know for sure, but it’s never too late to try your hand at something new if you really want to try it. Many places in the world allow their citizens to legally change their names if they want, so nothing is stopping you from being the next RoboCop St. Fightmaster if that’s your desire. If that sounds like too much for you, then check out these real, over-the-top tales of name changes.

10. A New Zealand Judge Took Custody Away From Parents Who Had Given Their Child a Stupid Name

No kid wants to be embarrassed by a parent but some parents seem like embarrassment is in their genetics. If you’re lucky, it only happens once in a blue moon and ends quickly so you can slink away to forget it ever happened. But not everyone gets lucky like 9-year-old Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii.

The girl was made a ward of the court in Australia after a judge deemed her parents were essentially idiots. The parents were in the middle of a custody battle when the judge learned the girl had been going by the name K, just that single letter because she was embarrassed by her name. It looks like Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii was literally her first name, just the whole silly sentence.

The judge stripped custody from both parents to legally allow the child to be renamed. He criticized the poor judgment of the parents pointing out how the name set their daughter up for ridicule and her refusal to use it proved his point. Her new name was not revealed to protect her identity and presumably, the custody was fixed afterward.

9. French Courts Forcibly Named a Girl Ella

Some people really like Nutella, which is basically cake frosting masquerading as food that once even claimed to be healthy until a lawsuit forced them to stop saying that. Nevertheless, being a chocolate and hazelnut spread, many people still like it. A couple in France liked it so much they decided to name their baby Nutella. That was the plan, anyway.

The French courts had to step in and deny the parents the ability to slap the dessert-themed moniker on their new baby. Some countries will not allow names for various reasons, and this one was denied because they felt the child would be made fun of. And, let’s be honest, she probably would have been. 

The judge said it was contrary to the child’s interest to have a name that can lead to teasing. Instead, he forced the parents to name her Ella, which is at least in the ballpark. Interestingly, this didn’t seem to be the parents’ second choice. In fact, the parents didn’t even show up to the hearing, so the judge selected the name and made it so.

8. A Man Legally Named Himself After Every James Bond Movie

James Bond is a cool name thanks to the entire James Bond series of novels and movies. Everyone knows James Bond. He’s cool, he’s smart, he’s deadly. Women seem to enjoy his company. Good guy. And the name itself isn’t bizarre or anything, it’s just what it represents that has appeal, so much so that at least one man renamed himself James Bond and then took it a step further. Or a lot of steps further, actually.

In the UK you can legally change your name by basically just saying you changed your name. To make it official, you have to fill out a deed poll but that’s only a way of letting the government know you changed your name. You write down your new name on a form and give it to the government so they can change it for your ID and whatever else. It’s very easy. 

A deed poll is how 23-year-old David Fearn changed his name to James Bond. But that’s just his first and last name. He gave himself a middle name, too. His full, legal name is James Dr No From Russia with Love Goldfinger Thunderball You Only Live Twice On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Diamonds Are Forever Live and Let Die The Man with the Golden Gun The Spy Who Loved Me Moonraker For Your Eyes Only Octopussy A View to a Kill The Living Daylights Licence to Kill Golden Eye Tomorrow Never Dies The World Is Not Enough Die Another Day Casino Royale Bond.

7. The Ultimate Warrior Legally Changed His Name to Warrior

If you were a fan of old-school ’80s wrestling, then you know the name Ultimate Warrior. With an explosive personality and a vascular, terrifying physique, the Ultimate Warrior became one of the biggest stars alongside Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage.  Part of the Warrior’s gimmick was that he was a little off-balanced and mentally not altogether. Turns out that wasn‘t all gimmick.

The real-life Warrior, Jim Hellwig, was known to be a petty, bigoted, angry man.  He once wished manager Bobby Heenan would die of cancer. He made racist and homophobic blog posts, insulted Hurricane Katrina victims, and even celebrated the death of Heath Ledger.

At some point, Hellwig decided life would be better for him if he left Jim behind and just became Warrior full-time, so he legally changed his name. He has two daughters and though Warrior passed away in 2014, the daughters still use Warrior as their last name.

6. A Dentist Legally Changed his Name to Painless

If you were a semi-crooked dentist working in 1892, how would you go about enticing customers into your business? Dentistry was not nearly so advanced back then and you can only imagine the pain someone had to be in before they’d go to some stranger and let them use pliers and other tools to yank rotten teeth out of their heads.

Pain was the name of the game for dentistry and Edgar Parker knew it. Word is he only graduated dentistry school because he begged the dean and he was just a terrible dentist overall. He began advertising painless dentistry, and he’d inject patients with diluted cocaine before pulling their teeth. Sometimes he’d just give them booze. He was one of the first dentists to actively advertise and solicit patients, which was deemed unethical at the time.

In order to reach a broader audience, Parker teamed up with a carny and made a dental circus. He traveled from town to town and had a plant in the audience he’d call up then pretend to work on, pulling a molar quickly and painlessly.  When real customers got on stage, he had a band play to cover their screams. Within two years he legally changed his first name to Painless so it wouldn’t technically be false advertising to advertise “Painless dentistry.”

5. Tutankhamun Changed His Name As a Nod to Old Gods

Of all the Egyptian pharaohs, Tutankhamun is probably the most well-known in the modern world. It’s kind of ironic then that Tutankhamun wasn’t the name he started life with. Originally he was Tutankhaten which means “living image of the Aten.” This was because his parents worshiped a god named Aten who was a sun god.

Aten was part of a pantheon of gods that are less familiar to us in the modern world. When he became king, Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun because he was embracing the older gods and thus Aten was replaced with the god Amun. Amun later merged with the sun god Ra to become Amun Ra, which is what most of us in the West know today about Egyptian mythology. But in Tutankhamun’s time, the name change was part of a process to restore the glory of the old gods. 

4. Anne Rice’s Parents Changed Her Name To Anne Because She Introduced Herself as Such

Anne Rice was one of the most popular fiction writers in modern history and her series of vampire novels have sold millions not to mention being the basis for movies and a TV series. Less well-known is that Rice was born Howard Allen O’Brien which you may recognize as an extremely traditionally male name. Her father was also Howard and her mother thought it was a great name so, despite the fact Anne was the second of five daughters, she drew the unlucky lot of being named after her dad.

As you might expect, as a girl Rice hated her name and refused to use it. She went to a Catholic school and introduced herself to the nuns there as Anne in the first grade. She stuck with it and since everyone knew her as Anne her parents changed her name in 1947 when she was six.

3. An Angry Bank Customer Changed his Name to “Yorkshire Bank are Fascist Bastards”

There is no shortage of stories throughout history of people getting angry at banks. Sometimes they have happy endings but more often than not they’re just tales about the banks screwing some average person and ruining their life. So how do you fight back? Most people can’t, but some people choose to do anything they can, no matter how hilariously petty.

Michael Howard was a customer of Yorkshire Bank when they sent him notice that he’d gone into a £10 overdraft. The notice came with a £20 fee. Angered by this, Howard did one of those simply British deed polls to change his name to Yorkshire Bank are Fascist Bastards. 

The bank was not happy with Mr. Bastards’s change of name and requested that he close his account. He replied that he would be happy to if they refunded his 69p balance by writing him a check using his legal name.

2. Macaulay Culkin Changed his Middle Name to Macaulay Culkin

You’re probably familiar with Macaulay Culkin, star of the original Home Alone movie and its sequel. He made it big as a child actor and Home Alone has become a classic. Culkin is an adult now and doesn’t do as much acting but still pops up now and then, including in some holiday-themed commercials in 2023 that parodied his iconic role.

What most people don’t know is that Culkin has a middle name, and he chose it after an online vote from fans. In 2018, he asked the internet to give him a new middle name for Christmas. His old middle name was Carson. After 100,000 votes came in on his website, the public had spoken and Culkin followed through by legally changing his name to what the people had chosen. Today, his legal name is Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin. 

1. Dr. Loki Skylizard Chose His Legal Name When He Was 8

In what may be one of the greatest name-change stories ever we have Dr. Loki Skylizard. Dr. Skylizard isn’t just a real doctor, a thoracic surgical oncologist who works in Missouri. He has a real MD and specializes in robot-assisted surgery for cancer patients. If you get Dr. Skylizard, you’re in good hands. 

Skylizard, who is Puerto Rican if the name didn’t tip you off, was raised by some unusual parents. When he was a child, his parents allowed him and his siblings to simply choose their own names. At 8-years-old he picked Loki Skylizard and his parents legally changed it for him. He’s stuck with it ever since.

Most of us are familiar with the dangers of illegal drugs. According to a report by Philadelphia drug rehab centers, along with the risk of addiction, severe health problems and other unwanted side effects, there is also the danger that a drug user will face punishment if caught. Depending on the drug and area, this punishment can involve anything from a warning to a lengthy jail sentence. But things weren’t always that way. Many drugs that are severely restricted today were once commonplace and completely legal. In fact, not only were these drugs available, they were actually recommended and promoted by healthcare professionals, often with unfortunate results. Here are ten of them:

10. Opium

Its usage is much older, but this form of dried juice from the opium poppy became popular in the United States during the 19^th Century. Back then, it was freely prescribed by doctors and even available at grocery stores. Chinese laborers had brought the practice of opium smoking to the West during the mid-nineteenth century, and laudanum, a solution of opium and alcohol, was also popular. Opium was often given to women to treat menstrual cramps and to infants to help with teething pain. Around the turn of the 20^th Century, most opium addicts were older women.

San Francisco first banned opium dens in 1875, and California restricted opium possession in 1907.  The 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act effectively outlawed the drug throughout America. Today, drugs derived from the opium poppy, such as morphine and codeine, are legal but heavily restricted.

9. Marijuana

Usage of the cannabis plant, from which the psychoactive drug marijuana is derived, was unrestricted in America until the early twentieth century. In fact, in 1619 a Virginia law required farmers to grow native hemp on their plantations in order to produce textiles! Ironically, given its later reputation, the earliest state to ban the plant was California in 1913. Federal laws passed in 1937 restricted marijuana usage to the medicinal, and later laws in the 1950s introduced mandatory sentencing for possession, with the justification that marijuana was a ‘gateway drug’ into heavier narcotics. However, that hadn’t deterred researchers from finding the middle ground between the addictive nature of the drug and its medicinal properties. Not long after that did researchers discover that a derivative of marijuana, CBD, was not addictive and also had medicinal properties. Today, you can easily get a CBD flower for sale from many stores online.

Medical marijuana is now legal in over a dozen states, although still prohibited by federal law. The current administration has indicated that federal laws involving medical marijuana will not be enforced in these states. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/13/national/main5154550.shtml)

8. Methamphetamine

Nowadays a popular target for public service announcements, methamphetamine was first created by a Japanese chemist in 1893. In 1944, it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the US to treat a selection of medical conditions including narcolepsy, alcoholism, mild depression, and even seasonal allergies. By the 1950s, this legal medication had become popular under the name of Methedrine, but abuse had also become common. Passed in 1970, the Controlled Substances Act severely restricted its usage, although meth is still available under the name of Desoxyn for very limited uses.

Bad news for the congested: since the 1980s, there have also been strict crackdowns on several legal cold-and-flu drugs that can be used to produce methamphetamine, like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. These previously over-the-counter medications now often require ID to purchase.

7. Peyote

Mescaline, a hallucinogenic chemical derived from the peyote cactus, has been used by Native American religious ceremonies for thousands of years. Peyote use was outlawed in several US states in the 1920s and 30s, but remained legal in most of the US throughout the 1960s and was often shipped interstate to interested parties.

Mescaline was restricted by Congress under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. Currently, members of the federally-recognized Native American Church are exempt from criminal penalties for peyote use, as long as further state restrictions do not apply.

6. Cocaine

Many famous people of the early 20^th century, including Sigmund Freud and the Pope, were cocaine users. Although cocaine is derived from the coca plant, which has been in use for at least 3000 years, its modern incarnation only appeared around the 1860s. Available in many forms, including dissolved into wine, it was prescribed by doctors to treat depression and morphine addiction.

In America, it was popular as a treatment for coughs and pain, and was famously included in early versions of Coca-Cola. Although technically restricted by the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act in 1914, prosecution for cocaine usage was rare, and only became common after it was listed a controlled substance in 1970.

5. LSD

The psychedelic effects of LSD, or ‘acid’, were discovered by accident in 1943, after the Swiss scientist who invented the chemical accidentally absorbed some through his skin. During the 1950s the US Army, along with the CIA, researched the uses of LSD as a potential ‘truth drug’ for use in brainwashing. Their experiments involved giving LSD to everyone from CIA agents to prostitutes, and recording the results. Soon, psychiatrists also became interested in its potential therapeutic benefits. Although LSD was still being imported from Switzerland at this time, the drug’s formula could be purchased for a small sum from the US patent office, after which a user could synthesize LSD himself.

In 1966, after widespread abuse and ill-effects caused in part by people making the drug incorrectly, LSD was outlawed in California. In 1970, it was listed by Congress as a Schedule I substance, meaning it has no recognized medicinal or therapeutic uses.

4. GHB

Famous these days as a ‘date rape’ drug, GHB is a naturally-occurring neurochemical that produces a depressant, pain-relieving effect. A lab-made version was synthesized in the 1960s and was used widely in Europe as an anesthetic, particularly in childbirth. In the 1980s, it became popular among body builders as a legal sleep aid, and eventually as a legal recreational drug. After GHB became associated with abuse and accidental deaths, the FDA cracked down on its sale in 1990. It was not listed federally as a controlled substance (illegal to possess as well as to sell) until 2000 when, like LSD, it became a Schedule 1 drug. However, GHB has recently been approved as a heavily-controlled treatment for narcolepsy.

3. Magic Mushrooms

Also known as shrooms, magic mushrooms are fungi native to Asia and the Americas that contain psilocybin, a compound that produces an LSD-like effect in users. Magic mushrooms have been in use for millennia, but as recently as the early 20^th century Western academics were still arguing whether or not they existed. Use among Westerners was popularized in the 1950s after an article on the subject appeared in Life Magazine. In the 1960s, psychologist Timothy Leary and many others promoted these mushrooms for psychological use.

Possession of psilocybin-containing mushrooms was outlawed in 1968. However, since the mushroom spores do not contain psilocybin, spores are still legal in most states.

2. Ecstasy

MDMA, or ecstasy, was legal in the United States as recently as 1984. Synthesized and patented in 1912 by a chemist working for pharmaceutical company Merck, it was largely forgotten until the mid 1970s, when Berkeley professor Alexander Shulgin popularized it for use in psychotherapy. Shulgin claimed that it could help psychiatric patients achieve greater introspection and more openness with their therapists. Ecstasy also became popular in non-therapeutic settings, particularly nightclubs, and in 1985 was put under an ‘emergency ban’ and became a Schedule I controlled drug.

1. Heroin

First synthesized in 1874, heroin was first created as a non-addictive alternative to morphine. The word ‘heroin’ is actually a brand name created by the pharmaceutical company that invented it, Bayer. In the early 20^th century, it was also marketed in the US as a treatment for coughs and as a kind of old-fashioned methadone program for morphine users.

Unfortunately, the drug turned out to be more addictive than morphine. Heroin used to be legal, until it became apparent that it is more addictive than morphine, and can cause opiate withdrawal symptoms when its use is abruptly stopped. After hundreds of thousands of Americans saw their sore throats relieved only to be replaced with crippling addiction and long-term stays at a drug rehab program; heroin usage was severely restricted in the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, and outlawed altogether in 1924.