Murphy’s Law

“Anything That Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong”

T. G. George

YOU BEGRUDGINGLY ROLL OUT OF BED and hurriedly pack up your bag, soon making your way to early morning training. After enduring a gruelling session whilst drifting asleep between rotations, you are stunned to life when you rip open your bag in the changing rooms. Tie, shirt, shorts, belt, socks, school sho… No, this can’t be. You forgot your school shoes. A day of rocking your bright red runners awaits you. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”.

There are a plethora of examples that encompass this idiom. The line you’re in at the supermarket is the slowest. You wait for hours in the lobby just for your friend to hop on when you get off. You like their post from 2 years ago.

Or…. you install the G force sensors to a rocket sled incorrectly. Well, that is what Captain Edward A. Murphy Jr did in 1949 at the Air Force Base in California. Here, officers were conducting tests to find out how many Gs (the force of gravity) a human could withstand. Murphy was recruited to attend one of these tests, with him a set of sensors capable of measuring the exact G-force applied when the rocket sled halted. There were 16 of these trusty sensors, with only two ways that each sensor could be installed. If you ask Mr Styles, he would tell you that there is a 99.99847412% likelihood of at least one of the sensors displaying a reading. And yet, when the human test, Colonel Stapp, winced from the rocket sled with bloodshot eyes and broken bones, he looked at the results to see all sensors registered zero. 

Colonel Stapp

The remainder of the story is highly contested, but Murphy exclaimed something along the lines of, “If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way”. The key word in this idiom that is often overlooked is “If”. For example, if you can only install the sensor in one way, then it will work, but if there are multiple ways of doing so and one ends in disaster, it will end in disaster. Upon this reflection, Murphy’s Law can be categorised as a syntax of optimism or caution. That is, to not overlook quality control, and by taking effective action, catastrophe can be avoided. With this outlook, we are encouraged to prepare for life’s unexpected challenges.

And yet, this old adage has been skewed to satisfy our pessimistic outlook on life. “Murphy’s Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG” by Arthur Bloch, presents us with “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong”. Even further iterations of this law have been constructed. Murphy’s Third Law says, “Everything takes longer than you think it will”, Murphy’s Seventh Law says “Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse”, and Murphy’s Tenth Law puts it bluntly “Mother nature is a b*tch”. Of course, these laws were not crafted by Murphy himself. Most of them are humorous comments on the universal nature of ineptitude that may create unfavourable outcomes. They almost all, including Murphy’s Law, lack scientific backing, their legitimacy unable to be proven.

Whether comedic or informative, proven or false, these idioms reveal the innate pessimism in our lives. For example, when life is going well, we don’t take much interest. It is expected. If we pack our entire uniform for the day, we don’t parade about this fortunate event. But when our shoes are forgotten, or when other bad things happen, we look for reasons. We have gone to the extent of creating and modifying laws that explain our misfortune. These laws capture our tendency to fixate over the negative, and overlook the positive. It may be difficult, but if Murphy’s Law has taught us anything, it is to appreciate the good things in our lives, and to prepare for the potential troubles ahead.