Want to know more about this infamous author of misfortunes?
Last week we talked about Murphy’s Law and its relation to the game of bingo. But we’d like to explore this strange law a little further. Who was Murphy? What is the law’s philosophy? And what does that mean for us in the bingo world?
Only few individuals haven’t invoked this law at some point, accusing it of being the infamous author of misfortunes and forgetting that their own incompetence could be the main cause of mistakes. Those who act this way have seen it operate against them with irrefutable truthfulness and forcefulness in multiple occasions. With discouragement, they observe how, right after a failure, everything seems to fall down in a painful chain reaction that is developed along a series of unhappy and consecutive events, a domino effect, whose explanation they find in a law: the devastating and very well-known Murphy's Law.
Who was Murphy?
As in any mystery, several versions are known in regards to the origin and details of how Murphy's Law was initially formulated. It is known for certain that Edward A. Murphy Jr. voiced it for the first time around the year 1949, when he worked as development engineer of rockets and rails in the United States Air Force.
At that time, the scientists made experiments dedicated to prove the human resistance to the G forces, during a quick deceleration, inside a centrifugal machine. For the tests, the technicians used a rocket on rails with a complex brake’s system at the end of the rails. Initially, the experiment was tested with humanoid crash test dummy, strapped to a seat on the sled. When Captain John Paul Stapp replaced the test dummy, he had serious doubts about the precision of the instruments used to measure those forces. Then Murphy realized that some of the instruments had been installed incorrectly by his assistant who, by mistake, had wired each sensor in the other way around.
It was at that time when, Murphy frustrated, enunciated his famous sentence against the assistant: “If that person has a form of making an error, he’ll make it.” A witness of the scene coined the sentence and condensed it in this way:
“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
From that time on, this sentence was used to make fun of Murphy, whose arrogance was well known within his crew.
Later, Murphy's Law was mentioned in several books about different topics. Finally, the law was defined this way: “Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.” This definition served as epigraph to the 1952 book The Butcher: The Ascent of Yerupaja by John Sack.
The Law's philosophy
When it comes down to it, it's really not important to know the exact circumstances of how the law was born. The spirit of this law leans on the so-called principle of defensive design - to anticipate the mistakes that an individual probably will commit, and its consequences.
Because these things really do happen, and have happened to us all, this philosophy quickly became popular as an answer to all calamities. It spread to all areas of the popular domain with some changes.
What is the reason why it became so famous?
The reason is simple: when a sequence of unfortunate events sets in danger the confidence that others have in our capacity to solve problems, we need a supernatural explanation that excuses ourselves. In this way, we blame Destiny for successive miseries, a way to conceal our incompetence and liberate ourselves of any responsibility.
Conditions of possibility of Murphy's Law
Previously we had said that one of the interpretations of the law was: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” And of course there are a million things that can go wrong if we don't carefully handle the diverse elements of a project. In this matter, logic can give us some light. If we undertake a project in disagreement with the laws of logic, the project will come out bad. There cannot be square circles or round triangles, not in this world nor in all possible worlds. However, something still can go wrong, not because it is opposed to the laws of the logic, but because the appropriate technology to develop that project is not at hand. In this case, the law could be formulated in this way: All that can go wrong, for lack of technological, human resources or specific knowledge for its development, will go wrong, which becomes a nonsense. Even a child knows it - if you don't have a pencil to write, you can’t write with a pencil. If you don't have the money to buy an ice cream, you won't buy the ice cream.
The Law and its Psychological Aspects
The definition If it can happen, it will happen, refers to natural phenomenon. If a geological fault is a probable cause of an earthquake, the earthquake will take place some time in the future; if a boiler increases the pressure beyond its capacity, it will explode.
Murphy's Law, as it has been formulated, determines an event (or several), locates it outside of our will, lays aside our intelligence and relegates to Destiny all human participation in its development. If an individual can make a mistake (and all of us, without exception, are susceptible to all kinds of mistakes) he will make it. Considering it this way, Murphy's law is another natural law we can know, but whose execution is not impossible to avoid.
But, is this true? Let us outline the law from another angle: If we believe that an unfortunate event is the beginning of a chain of events of the same type, they will probably occur. Notice that we have added two new elements: “if we believe” and “probably”.
The difference is that the last definition includes the individual as one of the motors that influences the result of the events. If somebody believes that he is unable to carry out a task, the task probably comes out bad. Why? Because he faces the job with fear and distrust, hesitates, feels insecure in his knowledge and skills and the attention that he should dedicate to the work is diluted in a series of suppositions, albeit perhaps groundless. If these factors converge, the task will come out badly and there won't be better justification than to attribute the failure to a strange creature in the form of a law to justify our failures: an implacable and ferocious Destiny.
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