Talk:Sturgeon's law

There is a science fiction story called 90% of Everything by ???. --Anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mav (moved from article) (talk • contribs) 23:11, 22 May 2002

I heard once of a supposed corollary: 99% [sic] of everything on the internet is crud... —Preceding unsigned comment added by MartinHarper (talk • contribs) 10:03, 6 December 2002

That should be 99.999999679998654% of everything on the internet....87.194.30.174 (talk) 00:23, 18 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

If memory serves me correctly, Harlan Ellison wrote in Again, Dangerous Visions that Sturgeon's original quote contained the word "crap:" a reporter asked him, "Mr. Sturgeon, isn't it true that 90 per cent of science fiction is crap?" "Sure, 90 per cent of science fiction is crap. But then, 90 per cent of everything is crap." (Perhaps someone who owns the book could confirm this?) -- HarmonicSphere 00:43, 22 September 2003 (UTC)Reply

When Theodore Sturgeon and his wife Jayne stayed at my house in 1978, he was adamant about the point that the word is "crud," not "crap." Gregory R. Bennett (talk) 19:43, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

The contents of the entry seem to be a word for word copy of the definition in the Jargon File (http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/Sturgeons-Law.html) Is this ok? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anirvan (talk • contribs) 04:37, 1 July 2004

Not only is 90% of everything crap, 90% of the applications of Sturgeon's Law are crap. "Know Sturgeon's Law. Apply it recursively." DS 17:29, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

DS is on to something I myself have noticed. Sturgeon's Law/Revelation, if true, leads to paradox. It only applies in 10 percent of cases!Smiloid 09:41, 4 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That's stretching the law too far. By that standard 100% of everything would be crap. Even if I had, say, a car that was one of the 10% of cars that was good, 90% of journeys in it would be crap, so the car would also be crap. "90% of everything is crap" can only apply to individual entities, not actions or applications.

There is therefore no paradox. Sturgeon's Law is one of the 10% of theories / laws that is not crap. The fact that Sturgeon's Law is in the 10% has been extensively verified by empirical testing.

(Yes, I know this discussion is 12 years dead, I still thought it was an interesting point that needed countering.) --83.218.138.8 (talk) 10:56, 24 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

This article begins by stating "[Sturgeon's law] is sometimes confused with Sturgeon's Revelation: 'Ninety percent of everything is crud.'" then goes on to mainly discuss the revelation, and confuse it with the law. Maybe the page should be re-named? (I'm not sure how to go about doing that myself.) -- AliasXIII 21:58, 28 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Most modern uses of the term "Sturgeon's Law" are definitely referring to the statement that "90% of everything is (crud|crap)". The OED lists that definition now, too: "A humorous aphorism which maintains that most of any body of published material, knowledge, etc., or (more generally) of everything is worthless: based on a statement by Sturgeon (see quot. 1958), usually later cited as ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’." (OED as of 2005-12-14, notated as "draft entry June 2004").

I've quickly noted this at the top of the article, but some further restructuring is probably in order. Perhaps a section talking about the origins of the term in the Revelation but the bulk of the article using it unambiguously?

--Dyfrgi 22:15, 14 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

There's clearly some controversy as to whether the name Sturgeon's Law should be used for the "90% ..." observation. Equally clearly, this article as it stood was taking the side that it shouldn't.

I've rephrased it to be less outspoken. While the distinction between Sturgeon's Law and Revelation is an important one, and it is important to have a separate name for each, the fact that what most people who have heard the term understand as Sturgeon's Law is actually the Revelation is an important one that we shouldn't just dismiss out of hand. To do so violates NPOV.

I've changed it to say that it is 'more correct' to call this observation the Revelation. The article then continues discussing it using that name. I think this statement is justified, as this is clearly the name Sturgeon himself used to refer to it. But to imply that it is wrong to call it Sturgeon's Law flies in the face of the common usage, which in questions of language and naming is generally the wrong thing to do. JulesH 15:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

So the author's description is no more valid than any random moron's? Descriptivism over reason again. The problem is that the title of the article and the redirect are reversed. --Ampwright (talk) 05:36, 31 December 2014 (UTC)Reply

This article is named "Sturgeon's law" (lower-case l), but the article text consistently uses "Sturgeon's Law" (upper-case l) as well as "Sturgeon's Revelation" (upper-case r). Which is it? Should the article be renamed or the text changed? By the way, Sturgeon's Law already redirects to Sturgeon's law. Ehn 11:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

It should Sturgeon's Law.

Knowing that common nouns should not be capitalised in article titles, some Wikipedians will hypercorrect by failing to capitalise those nouns in article titles that generally are common nouns but in this instance are proper nouns. It looks to me like that's what's happened here. Binabik80 17:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

On the other hand, the list of scientific laws named after people consistently uses lower-case l. Why should this be different? Ehn 14:44, 25 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Some have suggested that Sturgeon's Law applies well to the featured article process on Wikipedia, as 90% of articles don't make it. Is this notable for inclusion in the article? — Scm83x ^talk   03:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

That would probably be a violation of Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, specifically "While we're often inclined to mention the Wikipedia community that we are all part of, as well as the website features we use in creating the articles, these confuse readers of derivative works. In particular, do not refer to the fact that the page can be edited, do not refer to any Wikipedia project page or process, do not use specialized Wikipedia jargon (e.g. "POV" in place of "biased"), and do not refer to any link in the sidebar or along the top of the screen, such as the talk page, What links here, or history. Remember, articles are part of an encyclopedia, not part of the Wikipedia project being used to create them." The 'Featured Article' process wouldn't mean much to a non-Wikipedian. Ziggurat 03:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. A "no" and link would have sufficed. We're not all newbies ;-) at least not anymore... — Scm83x ^talk   04:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Heh, sorry. I do tend to overexplain things. It all dates back to that time twelve years ago when... ;) Ziggurat 19:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't say this is an over-explanation. While not everyone is a newbie, there are plenty of newbies, or near-newbies like myself, who read these pages. I'm glad to learn there has been a decision to discourage self-referential commentary. The great majority of readers would not be interested, I would suppose.Star-lists (talk) 01:43, 18 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

"If there is any difference in "desirability", the bell curve of a normal distribution predicts that most experiences will involve average desirability, with roughly equal occurrences of excellence and gross inadequacy." I disagree: I think it would tend to follow a Pareto distribution with 20% of the books in a genre accounting for 80% of the worthiness of the genre as a whole. I think this is probably closer to what Sturgeon had in mind. NeonMerlin 15:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

Came here to say this. I think that's exactly what Sturgeon was implying, and it's odd we don't see any discussion about its application in the article. Viriditas (talk) 22:43, 27 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Some years ago I heard Mr. Sturgeon speak at the local library. A fan in the audience asked him what the “official” percentage should be. He confessed that over the years he had used 90%, 95%, and 99%. He said that he no longer remembered the percentage he used when he first coined the phrase. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.170.48.252 (talk • contribs) 10:46, 25 July 2006

Even if there is no redirect, an explanation of the Law as opposed to the Revelation should be present. Notably, does "nothing" mean "there does not exist such an entity" or "the entity of nothingness"?

I went and checked the story in which the Law first appeared, which was republished in the 2003 book "And Now the News...", the relevant pages of which (97-99) are in turn archived on Google Books. Reading through the source, it seems very clear to me that the intended meaning of the phrase is that, "There does not exist an entity which is always absolutely so." I'm not sure exactly how to move this into the article, or even whether it belongs in the article in the first place (though the section on this original quote does seem remarkably sparse). But hopefully it answered your question, in any case.--Philomory (talk) 03:09, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Is it worth writing nine crap novels to force some-one to write a good one?

I went ahead and rewrote parts of the article from the point of view that it is almost always the "90%" meaning that is intended nowadays when people use "Sturgeon's Law". I left in the information about Sturgeon saying that originally the phrase meant "Nothing is always absolutely so", but that hasn't gained any traction as an adage and I think that it is now of historical interest only. Mike Christie (talk) 10:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I deleted the following text from the article, as it lacked references, states speculation as fact and reeks of original research. If anyone disagrees please tell me why. Pyreforge 09:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

If there is any difference in "desirability", the bell curve of a normal distribution predicts that most experiences will involve average desirability, with roughly equal occurrences of excellence and gross inadequacy. Sturgeon's Law is an observation that once humans are exposed to excellence, mere average desirability is disappointing.^{[citation needed]} The more proper formulation might be something like "80% of everything is crud, and 10% of everything is crap." If one either defines crud to include crap, or else defines excellence and crap to each be about 5% of all experiences, then "90% of everything is crud" would be true.^{[citation needed]}

However, most human affair involving individual participation do not follow a normal curve, but rather a Pareto distribution, where 20% of the individuals are responsible for 80% of the activity--however defined.

Yes, this point was made above. I'm thinking of putting all these related topics together. Viriditas (talk) 22:44, 27 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sturgeon's Law is often cited using crap or shit instead of crud but "shit" is more commonly used.

• "crap" - 18,700 hits
• "crud" - 10,600 hits
• "shit" - 5 hits

Conclusion: Approximately 41.8 percent of the above sentence is crap. —phh (^t/_c) 17:39, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sturgeon himself used the word "crud" and no other. He brought this up several times when he was speaking as the Guest of Honor at Norwescon 1 and Toastmaster at Norwescon 3. Gregory R. Bennett (talk) 19:47, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

The second corollary ("Except crap. One hundred percent of crap is crap.") is an exception, not a corollary. I'm not sure if the first one needs to be there either, but the second one is just incorrect. --206.248.165.237 (talk) 03:57, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

On second thought, since the first "corollary" is described in the interpretation section, I've removed the section altogether. Here is the edit if this needs to be un-done: [1]. --206.248.165.237 (talk) 04:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

I was introduced to this rule of thumb under the name "DeCamp's Law", after L. Sprague De Camp, the author. Might I suggest there be a cross-reference to that name? Jimwelch4 (talk) 23:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC) --Jimwelch4 (talk) 23:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

If we have a reliable source for that name, sure, we can add it. Where did you see it under that name? Mike Christie (talk) 23:28, 13 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

I just cut this: " For the more cynically inclined, there's also Smith's corollary to Sturgeon's Law -- Sturgeon was an optimist" as unsourced; it can be readded if we find a source. Mike Christie (talk) 11:36, 27 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I've seen this referenced once or twice elsewhere:

STURGEON'S THIRD LAW: It is not possible to assemble a device containing small parts without dropping one of those parts in a deep pile carpet.

But I have no idea if there's any real validity to it or if it's something someone tacked on along the way. Can anyone source this quote any earlier than the collection "Science Fictionalisms" (1992) referenced here: http://unfutz.blogspot.com/2007/04/3089898-life-among-1s-and-0s.html ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.112.84.40 (talk) 21:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law)

Sturgeon’s Law Prime: “90% of all laws are crap.”

Surgeon’s Law Prime-prime: “90% of all laws about laws are crap.”

Surgeon’s Law Prime-prime-prime: “90% of all crappy laws about laws are crap.” —Preceding unsigned comment added by MikeRozak (talk • contribs) 08:37, 8 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Should be "meta-law"... AnonMoos (talk) 10:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Good, concise article. In this spirit I suggest removing the link to the "Long tail" article, which appears to describe a interesting concept, yet still finding its contemporary acceptance (per its end-Dec 2010 version). Nrlsouza (talk) 07:06, 29 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. I removed it, and also removed Pareto principle, which was already linked in the main article. Mike Christie (talk – library) 12:00, 29 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

In the body of the article, the extended quotation from Sturgeon is attributed to the March 1958 issue of Venture. But the footnote cites the September 1957 issue. The link in the footnote isn't much help, as it just takes you to the Wikipedia article about the magazine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hand of Tyr (talk • contribs) 18:45, 6 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

The article says:

The inverse is obviously also true: if ninety percent of everything is crap, then [...] there must be ten percent that may be worth something.

but only "may". The fact that 90% is crap does not preclude the possibility that the other 10% is crap too. Jordan Brown (talk) 19:22, 18 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

I prefer Disraeli's forumulation. "Nine- tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense." Might be worth fitting in the article in the Discussion section. 2001:56A:FB4D:5200:B62E:99FF:FEA3:D19A (talk) 03:53, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

I thought I remembered reading that crud refers to products of average, genuinely mediocre quality, not particularly low quality and not completely worthless, but apparently I'm mistaken and crud is synonymous with crap and feces.

Still, I feel that there's a relevant distinction to be made between products of merely average, "middle of the road" quality, which are typically at least technically competent and can still be at least mildly enjoyable (and some might even class them as decent), and those which are offensively bad. In TV Tropes speak, that would be the difference between "So Okay, It's Average" and "So Bad, It's Horrible" (not to be confused with "So Bad, It's Good", which can actually rise to a level of enjoyability that such works might not even be classed among the crud).

You would not exactly give a product of the first type a glowing recommendation, but you would probably also not warn anyone of it the way you'd warn someone of a product of the second type. In short, it's likely that you wouldn't go out of your way to advise anyone on a product of the first type at all.

That both classes tend to be popularly conflated into a single class is evident in the fact that expressions like mediocre and meh, which properly only apply to the first type, are widely understood to be scathing criticisms of a severeness that products like that arguably do not deserve. You might still feel that products like those are a waste of your precious time, but at least they will probably not feel like torture, just forgettable. Like they deserve a single consumption, but exactly no more than that, no repeated readings or viewings or listenings or anything like that – but also not necessarily regret of the type that you desperately want your time back, or wish you'd never even consumed the product in the first place (or stopped earlier). Like the product should definitely come with a warning label. It doesn't just bore you, but it actively makes you angry.

It makes sense that most products by far, perhaps 80% of the whole, are actually of the first, "middle of the road" type, while only the bottom 10% genuinely deserve being called feces (at least that's how I view it). Therefore, a 10 – 80 – 10 distribution: good – average – bad. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:14, 25 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

While minding that the talk page is not a forum, I'll point out that human perception is largely that mediocre works are actually worse than bad ones, because the genuinely bad works are enjoyable by mockery, but the mediocre works are neither good enough to be enjoyable in their own right or bad enough to be worth mocking. The phenomenon where three-star movies are unpopular because audiences selectively watch only the best movies is commonly noted, but I'm unsure if any notable source describe this in a way Wikipedia could cite. 2001:56A:FB4D:5200:B62E:99FF:FEA3:D19A (talk) 04:12, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

An additional complication though: in an environment with little if any (at least basic) quality control, it's more probable that Sturgeon's law will be literally true – in that 90% of the content or products will be utterly worthless, enragingly bad, and not even competent or with any other redeeming qualities ... or simply too amateurish. (That said, I'm aware that Sturgeon's observation was probably meant in a deliberately exaggerated or cynical way, to point out that only a small minority of products of a certain type – if any at all – are actually good.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:21, 25 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

"Sturgeon deemed Sturgeon's law to mean "nothing is always absolutely so" in the story "The Claustrophile" in a 1956 issue of Galaxy."

The citation is simply the story in Galaxy magazine, but Sturgeon's deeming that "Sturgeon's Law" is not in that story (or anywhere else in the same issue of the magazine, that I can find). I also couldn't find a source for that elsewhere online, but haven't dug deeply yet.

From the short story (p. 128):

"The nearest I can get to it," he said when he was ready, "is this: I've found out something that's at the root of everything anyone can think about, something that all thinking gets to sooner or later, and starts from, too. One simple sentence . . . Now wait." He put his simple sentence in front of his mind and looked at it for a long studious time. Then he spoke it. "Nothing is always absolutely so."

– Spida-tarbell (talk) 22:56, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

SF Dictionary entry on Sturgeon's Law quotes Venture Science Fiction July 1957. Checked source, found it as part of his "On Hand: A Book" column, page 78, so I'll add that as a citation. Arcorann (talk) 12:53, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Pareto distribution and the pareto principle have been in the see also for far too long. As can be seen from the talk page, there's a general consensus that this is what Sturgeon was trying to point at. There should be an attempt to explain this in the article. We have almost 20 years of discussion saying this, so it's time. Viriditas (talk) 22:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)Reply