What is Murphy's law and how is it useful

Imagine: a person is going to the airport to go on an important trip. He thinks about when it is better to leave, because you can’t be late, but you don’t want to arrive early either. The hero knows this road well, there are never traffic jams on it. So he calls a taxi back to back. And what? It was on this day that the accident paralyzed traffic on the highway. And the traveler sits in the car and is nervous: he should have left the house earlier.

Or maybe it was the other way around? A person remembers that at the right time they fill the road summer residents, and therefore the route is worth it. So he leaves for 6 hours to make sure to catch the flight. But on this particular day there are no cars, a taxi reaches the place in half an hour. And our hero can't even get into the clean area of ​​the airport, because check-in hasn't opened yet. And now the sufferer thinks: of course, it was necessary to leave later.

Here we see the law of meanness, also known as Murphy's law, in action.

What is Murphy's law

Murphy's Law is a humorous philosophical concept that says that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

Not to say that this idea is quite fresh. For example, in the report of Alfred Holt on the meeting of the engineering society in 1877, there is such lines: "It has been found that anything that can go wrong at sea usually goes wrong sooner or later, so it's no surprise that owners prefer safe over scientific."

However, in the end, the law was named after the soldier Edward Murphy, who was an engineer at one of the US Air Force air bases. According to legend, they investigated why the planes get into accidents. Once it turned out that when starting the engine, the screw began to rotate in the opposite direction - the mechanics installed it incorrectly. And Murphy at that moment said: "If there are two ways to do something, and one of them leads to disaster, then someone will choose this way." Later, colleagues of the specialist began to call such incidents Murphy's law, and this went to the people.

At the same time, it was not Murphy's quote that became the canonical formulation of the concept, but the aforementioned simpler phrase. However, since this principle is semi-humorous, many have put their hands (and head) to its development. For example, there are consequences from Murphy's law:

• Everything is not as easy as it seems.
• Every job takes more time than you think.
• Of all the possible troubles, the one that causes the most damage will occur.
• If four causes of possible troubles are eliminated in advance, then there will always be a fifth.
• Events left to themselves tend to go from bad to worse.
• As soon as you take on some work, there is another that needs to be done even earlier.
• Anything solution creates new problems.

In addition, there are hundreds of more specific consequences for different situations. Some of them have separate names, but not always. Basically, these theses make you nod in understanding. So, among them:

• The next queue always moves faster.
• The probability of a sandwich falling butter-side down is directly proportional to the value of the carpet.
• The time spent discussing a problem is inversely proportional to its importance.

Does Murphy's Law have a scientific basis?

No, and that's good news. After all, otherwise everything would always happen according to the worst scenario.

For example, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Senior Fellow at Imperial College London David Hand notesthat the events predicted by Murphy's concept will indeed occur periodically according to the law of large numbers. And it is cases with a bad outcome will be remembered.

Physicist Atanu Chatterjee pushed off from the idea that Murphy's law is compared to the second law of thermodynamics. According to the latter, the entropy of the universe is always with time increases. And Murphy's law implies that the situation, left unattended, will develop towards more chaos, and the bad will become even worse. The scientist presented the concept in the form of a mathematical formula and tried to check whether if something negative can really happen, then it will happen. And it turned out that no, there is always a possibility that events can develop differently even when conditions change. So Murphy's law is not a law, but just a humorous statement.

And we find confirmation of it everywhere only because failures are upsetting. Especially if we expected trouble - and they happened. People can chalk it up to different things - the gift of foresight, an unsuccessful horoscope for Capricorns, or Murphy's law. And bad things often just happen.

Why is Murphy's law useful?

We’ll make a reservation right away: you shouldn’t take it literally, because he essentially says that everything will end as badly as possible. And you don't have to look far to see that these pessimistic forecasts do not always come true. For example, millions of people pay online for purchases on the Internet every day. But only dozens, maybe hundreds fall on phishing sites and lose money. Millions return home at night, but few become victims of attacks.

However, Murphy's law motivates us to look where we can fall in order to lay straws there. Let's say we know that card details cannot be entered anywhere, so we check whether we can trust the online store. Or we take a taxi instead of walking at night through the unlit territory of the garage cooperative. Or we go to the airport in advance, because being late is worse than waiting on the spot.

At the same time, it is worth remembering that if a person tries to insure against everything bad, then this makes him not prudent, but anxious. Proven: optimists solve problems more effectively and get out of stressful situations.