

Five laws of human nature - robg
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18301-five-laws-of-human-nature.html

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jacobolus
How are these relevant to each-other? What's the purpose of this article? If
we’re just making an arbitrary list, there are hundreds of similar phenomena
we could include. These five certainly aren’t exhaustive, and they don’t
strike me as representative either.

This article seems more like: “We have _x_ column inches to fill about human
behavior. Here are _n_ unrelated phenomena which we noticed some not-so-recent
papers about before our deadline rolled around, and we managed to fill that
space with them.”

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hegemonicon
I guess 'five behaviors that people sometimes exhibit, some of the time'
wasn't a punchy enough title.

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msg
Funniest line:

"First proposed by Bruce Salem on the discussion site Usenet..."

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aneil
I think we can safely toss out Sayres Law (the "intensity" of academic
squabbles [is] a function of the "triviality" of the issue at hand):

[http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/18/nyregion/education-
lessons...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/18/nyregion/education-lessons.html)
"In government, people know how to disagree gracefully, and you never scorch
the earth because you know that today's opponent is someone with whom you may
have to make common agreement tomorrow," said Donald Kennedy, the president of
Stanford and a former Commmissioner of the Federal Food and Drug
Administration. "Academics find it difficult to have disagreement without
alienation."

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Psyonic
I have a feeling that graceful disagreement isn't working so well in politics
lately. Shouting "Liar!" at the President is just one of many examples.

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slackerIII
Is the combination of Parkinson's Law with Maes-Garreau Law the reason we
don't have AI yet?

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jpwagner
No actually, it's all student syndrome :P

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blhack
Did anyone else get the notification that newscientist is about to start
charing for articles?

This was one of my favorite websites, but I doubt I'll actually subscribe to
it. I might pick up a dead-tree copy at barnes and noble every once in a
while; maybe that was their intention?

/sorry for the threadjack.

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sliceghost
Odd: "engineers are more likely to be religious than other graduates"

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jamesbritt
Do they pray more before final exams?

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timwiseman
I tend to.

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dkberktas
most of my friends tend to, maybe this is why I fail most of the courses and
afterwards go to internet and learn about the topics on my time, just for fun

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est
> Salem hypothesis

As a non-western culture person, why is so important to be ranked as one of
the five laws of _human_ nature ?

\----------------------------------

About the whole article:

I was expecting some universal and fundamental laws, but at last I think this
article covers only a minor aspect of predictable human nature in a modern
society.

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fnid
I don't know why that's in there. I see no evidence for it, either _in_ the
article or anecdotally around me in the real world.

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rauljara
More like five tendencies of human nature. The author even points out
exceptions to some of the "laws" he's righting about.

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zackattack
Am I the only one who actually liked the article, and feels no need to nitpick
semantics?

Parkinson's Law and Student Syndrome are especially valuable.. if you want to
be productive, work within the constraints of human nature to optimize your
productivity and happiness.

