You know Murphy’s Law, right? Or at least you know the way most people remember it: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” It’s a fairly depressing way of summarising life, but we all recognise a large portion of truth within it. Things go wrong. All the time.

There’s actually contention over whether this is the original form of the law, which is named after aerospace engineer Capt. Edward A. Murphy, and there are several differing accounts of how the saying came about. My preferred account is that relayed by Australia’s Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, whose record of Captain Murphy’s original exclamation is:

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.

I like this version because it’s easier to see the qualified optimism that Murphy juxtaposed with his frustration. As Dr Karl explains, there is a hope embedded in this form of the law because it starts with a proposition: “IF there are two or more ways to do something…” Continue reading →