The Edge, a science/philosophy site, asked a bunch of smart, interesting people to come up with new universal laws. Some are interesting; some are funny; and some are just lame.

I thought these were interesting:

Gilbert' Law

Happy people are those who do not pass up an opportunity to laugh at themselves or to make love with someone else. Unhappy people are those who get this backwards.

Does this mean masturbatory mockers aren't happy people...?

Sterling's Corollary to Clarke's Law

Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic.

I thought this one was pretty funny. It makes fun of pseudoscience and Clarke's Law (which I've always thought was really stupid) at the same time.

Dyson's Law of Artificial Intelligence

Anything simple enough to be understandable will not be complicated enough to behave intelligently, while anything complicated enough to behave intelligently will not be simple enough to understand.

Well, duh.

Rushkoff's Law

A religion will increase in social value until a majority of its members actually believe in it—at which point the social damage it causes will increase exponentially as long as it is in existence.

Umm. Look, I'm no fan of religion, but this just seems really stupid. This means the social damage of the Catholic Church has increased exponentially since the Crusades? Um, whatever dude.

Devlin's First Law

Buyer beware: in the hands of a charlatan, mathematics can be used to make a vacuous argument look impressive.

Devlin's Second Law

So can PowerPoint.

:)

Esther Dyson's Law

Do ask; don't lie.

This is more of a motto than a law, but it's still a pretty good motto.

Blakemore's First Law

People are never more honest than you think they are.

Heh.

Anyway, feel free to have a look at the site. There are dozens of laws listed so far, though most people just took the opportunity to ramble. Which leads to:

James' Law of Brevity

Good laws are short.

So there.