Sturgeon's Law
E578396
Sturgeon's Law is an adage stating that "ninety percent of everything is crap," highlighting the prevalence of low-quality work in any field.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Sturgeon's Law canonical | 4 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T6231142 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Sturgeon's Law Context triple: [Cunningham's Law, oftenMentionedWith, Sturgeon's Law]
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A.
Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a proposed sound law in Proto-Germanic historical linguistics that explains the development of certain geminate consonants from earlier consonant clusters.
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B.
Aitken’s Law
Aitken’s Law is a phonological rule in Scots and Scottish English that governs when vowels are pronounced long or short depending on their phonetic and morphological environment.
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C.
Cunningham's Law
Cunningham's Law is an internet adage stating that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
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D.
Murphy's Law
"Murphy's Law" is the debut studio album by American rapper Murphy Lee, showcasing his St. Louis hip hop style and featuring collaborations with prominent artists from the St. Lunatics and beyond.
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E.
Linus’s Law
Linus’s Law is the open-source software development principle that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” emphasizing the power of many reviewers to quickly find and fix defects.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Sturgeon's Law Target entity description: Sturgeon's Law is an adage stating that "ninety percent of everything is crap," highlighting the prevalence of low-quality work in any field.
-
A.
Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a proposed sound law in Proto-Germanic historical linguistics that explains the development of certain geminate consonants from earlier consonant clusters.
-
B.
Aitken’s Law
Aitken’s Law is a phonological rule in Scots and Scottish English that governs when vowels are pronounced long or short depending on their phonetic and morphological environment.
-
C.
Cunningham's Law
Cunningham's Law is an internet adage stating that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
-
D.
Murphy's Law
"Murphy's Law" is the debut studio album by American rapper Murphy Lee, showcasing his St. Louis hip hop style and featuring collaborations with prominent artists from the St. Lunatics and beyond.
-
E.
Linus’s Law
Linus’s Law is the open-source software development principle that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” emphasizing the power of many reviewers to quickly find and fix defects.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
adage
ⓘ
aphorism ⓘ epigram ⓘ informal principle ⓘ |
| appliesTo |
academic work
ⓘ
art ⓘ cultural production ⓘ entertainment ⓘ literature ⓘ media ⓘ popular culture ⓘ science fiction ⓘ technology ⓘ |
| clarifies | low quality is pervasive across all fields, not just one ⓘ |
| fieldOfUse |
cultural studies
ⓘ
informal logic ⓘ media studies ⓘ philosophy of art ⓘ |
| hasAbbreviation |
90–10 rule
ⓘ
linked to:
Pareto principle
|
| hasAlternativeForm |
90 percent of everything is crud
ⓘ
90% of everything is crap ⓘ 90% of everything is crud ⓘ |
| hasApproximateProportion |
10 percent high quality
ⓘ
90 percent low quality ⓘ |
| hasCanonicalForm | Ninety percent of everything is crap ⓘ |
| hasKeyConcept |
critical evaluation
ⓘ
cultural criticism ⓘ mediocrity ⓘ quality distribution ⓘ selection bias ⓘ |
| hasOriginField | science fiction criticism ⓘ |
| hasProposer | Theodore Sturgeon ⓘ |
| hasRhetoricalFunction |
critique of generalizations about a field
ⓘ
emphasis on the value of the best works in a field ⓘ encouragement of critical filtering ⓘ |
| implies |
a small minority of works in any field are of high quality
ⓘ
most work in any field is of low quality ⓘ |
| isOftenMisinterpretedAs | claim that a specific field is uniquely bad ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| namedAfter | Theodore Sturgeon ⓘ |
| relatedTo |
Brandolini's law
ⓘ
Gresham's law (informal analogy) ⓘ Pareto principle ⓘ Sturgeon's Revelation ⓘ |
| usedInContext |
defense of science fiction as a genre
ⓘ
discussion of artistic canons ⓘ discussion of internet content quality ⓘ discussion of popular culture quality ⓘ evaluation of mass media ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Sturgeon's Law Description of subject: Sturgeon's Law is an adage stating that "ninety percent of everything is crap," highlighting the prevalence of low-quality work in any field.
Referenced by (4)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.