A Summary of ‘Murphy’s Law’ from Sketchplanations

This article re-examines the common interpretation of Murphy’s Law, arguing that it is not a pessimistic view of fate but an optimistic principle for proactive design and risk management.\n\n

Key Points and Arguments

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• Challenging the Common View: The author contrasts the popular, pessimistic interpretation of Murphy’s Law (“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”) as an excuse for bad luck with its more optimistic, original meaning.

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• The Origin Story: The law originated from an engineering problem where components were installed incorrectly. The lesson wasn’t about fate conspiring against you, but that if a system allows for human error, that error will eventually occur.

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• A Principle for Design: The true spirit of the law is a call to anticipate potential failures and design systems to be foolproof or mistake-proof (poka-yoke). This is illustrated by John Paul Stapp’s work, which focused on improving car safety to mitigate harm in inevitable crashes.

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• Cognitive Biases: Our perception that things always go wrong is amplified by cognitive biases like the frequency illusion and salience bias, which make us notice and remember negative events more than uneventful successes.

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Conclusion and Takeaway

\nThe article concludes that Murphy’s Law should be viewed as an optimistic tool. Rather than resigning to failure, it encourages us to thoughtfully consider what can go wrong and proactively plan and design to prevent those negative outcomes.

Mentoring question

Where in your work or personal projects can you apply the optimistic version of Murphy’s Law to anticipate potential failures and design a more robust plan?

Source: https://sketchplanations.substack.com/p/murphys-law