I was doing some research on a story I wanted to do and the theme revolved around Murphy’s Law. Murphy’s Law is an adage about if something can go wrong, it will. I don’t hear the term much in today’s world but it still applies.
I wondered where Murphy’s Law all started. There are quite a few stories surrounding this with some citing other laws like Sod’s Law or Finagle’s law of dynamic negatives. There’s one book called, A History of Murphy’s Law by Nick T. Spark.
Without getting stuck in a quagmire or running down a lot of rabbit holes, the one story I liked was at Edwards Air Force base and the aeronautical projects that went on there. Seems an engineer named Edward Murphy found a technical error made by one of his junior technicians saying, “If there was more than one way of doing a job, and one of those was the wrong way, he would do it the wrong way.”
Later on in a press conference when reporters asked Dr. John Paul Stapp, a U.S. Air Force colonel, about avoiding accidents. Dr. Stapp said, “We do all our work in consideration of Murphy’s Law.”
There’s the pessimistic view of Murphy’s Law which no matter what you do, you will still get a bad outcome. Over time you start to expect bad outcomes which sort of attracts bad outcomes revolving into a never-ending circle of failure.
Instead, look at it a different way. Dr. Stapp further explained to reporters about avoiding accidents that it was important to consider all the possibilities before doing a test and act to counter them. He turned Murphy’s Law into a positive.
I like to look at it as whatever can go right, will go right. Because whether you believe it will go wrong or right, you are most likely going to get what you perceive.
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