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The Origin of Murphy's Law
LauraW writes "HotAIR, the web site of the Annals of Improbable Research , is publishing a fascinating series on the Origin of Murphy's Law. It turns out there really was a Murphy, and the story of his law involves rocket sleds, Chuck Yeager, and Edwards Air Force Base. The article covers all these topics and more, and includes interviews with Yeager, the son of Murphy (really), and several surviving members of the project that inspired the law."
Initially, it was "if the damn idiot can get it wrong, he will", which was an indictment of poor design assuming that the user was smart, when we all know that a smart design assumes the user is stoned and half-asleep on a muggy Monday morning.
The victims of Murphy's Law then turned around and said "if the system can go wrong, it will", which was around the same period we invented the notion of "computer error".
Finally, Murphy's Law made the leap to non-technological domains, "if something can break, it will, in the worst possible way".
So Murphy's Law today delegates responsibility for our fuck-ups to the hostile hand of fate, whereas Murphy's original comment was all about our own responsibility for making systems that actually work.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The moderators are on crack. To understand this joke, take a good look at the parent post and turn your monitor upside down, or go stand on your head. And yeah, it pretty much murphy-related.
Well, no.
Murphy was an Engineer. His original formulation "'if there is any way to do it wrong, he will", has some value in ergonomic design. Controls should be designed so as to eliminate chance accidents. For instance, in computers, most connectors are shaped, or keyed, so as to reduce the chances of someone plugging in wires the wrong way.
Some accidents are avoidable. Some are not. The adage "Shit Happens", while perhaps emotionally comforting, may lead some to confuse an entirely avoidable situation with the truly unpredictable.
Busted.
If you'd actually read the article, you'd see that the writers covers the story in the preface of the book and researches it in much greater detail. Apparently everyone involved at the time has their own version of the story, and some of them have rather strong feelings about it. It's really an interesting read. it's too bad the link is posted before all 4 parts of the article are finished.
- sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
I've noticed that, in terms of direct consequences, there isn't much difference between the actions of deliberately evil people and the hopelessly oblivious and ignorant.
Most of the people cutting you off on the freeway belong to the latter category, as much as we tend to think of them in the former.
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