Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong

"Why the Murphy's Law is SO true"

You've Heard it countless times. You've probably experienced this. Ever wondered why anything that can go wrong, does? Blame Murphy's Law.

After giving you some examples, you will begin to appreciate it. Have you ever arrived at the railway station in time to see the last train depart? Has your printer run out of ink just when you want to print something important? Have you ever forgot to carry a tool/important thing with you and it haunts you for the rest of your time? Have you noticed that the furthest parking lot is the closest one? And why does the queue you are standing in go the slowest? A more common experience is that one bad thing leads to another, which ruins the first task you were doing.

If you have ever wondered why bad luck keeps on haunting you and not all goes the way you planned, then that is a result of Murphy's Law. It is an eponymous law named after Edward Murphy Junior, an aerospace engineer who worked on safety systems. One day, after finding that machinery was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and quoted, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it." There are Murphy laws also on Love, War, Photography, Politics e.t.c. Well, laws like these have explanations, but they are what thinkers call 'preposterous.' If you browse through some explanations on the internet, you will find that mathematics agrees with this law.

But why is this law so true? OK, its NOT perfectly accurate but it holds. It is very true that the first 90% of a job takes 10% of the time, and the next 10% of the job takes 90% of the time. Personally, I do not think this has anything to do with 'God' or his 'Free Will.' This is just a natural human tendency. Widely regarded explanations on the law are based on Human Tendencies and Mathematics/Statistics.

We humans basically tend to look at the negative side of things and ignore the good that is happening out of it. I quote three examples to support this.

1. I tried making a Van De Graff Generator with my friend Raj and ended up learning that it won't work due to Goa's high humidity. Well, I was disappointed and blamed the Murphy's Law. But I also failed to extract the knowledge and satisfaction I had gained from this.

2. Also, while in a traffic jam, you tend to think that the other queue of cars always goes faster than yours. Well, you don't notice simple things, for eg. that there are double the cars in the other queue than yours, or that you are moving relative to the other cars.

Also, I have noticed that while focusing a telescope on a celestial object, the clouds seem to hit that PARTICULAR region of the sky. There are forecasts and ways to predict the movements of clouds. Well, the next point is Statistics. Probablility. There are various logical justifications, axioms and postulates in Statistics which may conjure up something. Well, I am no Statistician, but anyways, here goes:

1. Appeal to Probability states that when an assumption says that something will happen because it does, then the odds of occurrence are in favour of that assumption.

2. Confirmation Bias is a proven tendency for people to favour information that confirms their hypotheses rather than finding out whether that is the case.

3. There is also a saying that "If you lose a sock, its from the complete pair". Well, consider this. Start with 10 pairs. Remove one sock out. 19 socks are thus left, 18 of them which belong to pairs. Now, there is a 94.4% chance that the next sock you remove is from a complete pair.

4. Consider the above statements, and you get many versions of the Murphy's Law. Famous ones are Finagle's Law and the Cutout Syndrome (the topic for my next post).

Well, Murphy's Law or No Murphy's Law, this fact is something we HAVE to live with. Call it a logical fallacy or the work of nature, the chances are that next time you start doing some work, it will end up the wrong way! Just give it an ironic smile and MOVE ON, that's all that you can do!

Till Then, Later!

Atharv Joshi

Any comments in form of praise or criticism are welcome, so are logical debates and further experiences, also do share your experiences of this law. The article is part sourced from the internet, part original writing.