1
00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:02,840
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

2
00:00:03,160 --> 00:00:07,320
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know

3
00:00:07,880 --> 00:00:10,680
Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works dot Com? Brought to you by

4
00:00:10,840 --> 00:00:15,400
Speaker 1: Consumer Guide Automotive We make Garbine Easier. I am welcome

5
00:00:15,440 --> 00:00:18,080
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here

6
00:00:18,079 --> 00:00:20,160
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot Com, and with me, as

7
00:00:20,239 --> 00:00:25,680
Speaker 1: always is my trustee Edit Tricks, Candice Gibson. How's it going, Candice? Okay, Josh,

8
00:00:25,760 --> 00:00:28,000
Speaker 1: it's going okay. Oh yeah, you're a little down in

9
00:00:28,040 --> 00:00:31,400
Speaker 1: the mouth. I am. Yeah, just everything today, it's just

10
00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:33,360
Speaker 1: it's not going to way I planned. Well, you know,

11
00:00:33,520 --> 00:00:35,559
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. You you kind

12
00:00:35,560 --> 00:00:38,760
Speaker 1: of have the feeling that the entire universe is against you,

13
00:00:38,880 --> 00:00:41,760
Speaker 1: being kicked around a little bit by the powers that beat. Yeah,

14
00:00:41,840 --> 00:00:44,879
Speaker 1: what you're talking about is Murphy's Law. You know about this?

15
00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:49,120
Speaker 1: I do. I do. Murphy's Law. It says that anything

16
00:00:49,159 --> 00:00:51,840
Speaker 1: that can go wrong. Well, yeah, and you know where

17
00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:55,120
Speaker 1: it came from. I do. Actually, Um, it all originated

18
00:00:55,120 --> 00:00:58,480
Speaker 1: back in nine so this is an ancient history. This

19
00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:02,520
Speaker 1: is pretty recent and essentially the Air Force was doing

20
00:01:02,560 --> 00:01:05,720
Speaker 1: a couple of tests on g forces and trying to

21
00:01:05,720 --> 00:01:08,959
Speaker 1: figure out how much a human being could handle. And

22
00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:12,040
Speaker 1: what it all boiled down to was some people who

23
00:01:12,080 --> 00:01:15,360
Speaker 1: worked for a Captain Edward A. Murphy weren't really doing

24
00:01:15,360 --> 00:01:18,720
Speaker 1: their jobs exactly right. They were messing up the little things.

25
00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:22,280
Speaker 1: And he said, pretty exasperated, there are two ways to

26
00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:24,680
Speaker 1: do something. They're always going to pick the one that

27
00:01:24,800 --> 00:01:28,200
Speaker 1: results in catastrophe. But it's kind of a mouthful, and

28
00:01:28,280 --> 00:01:31,720
Speaker 1: yet it really is. And so um Colonel John Paul

29
00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:34,920
Speaker 1: stepped later on exactly he was sort of being the

30
00:01:34,959 --> 00:01:37,280
Speaker 1: mouthpiece with these experiments that they were doing, and he

31
00:01:37,440 --> 00:01:40,800
Speaker 1: essentially said that, you know, well, the experiments aren't going

32
00:01:40,840 --> 00:01:44,119
Speaker 1: exactly as planned. It's all, you know, following Murphy's law, Well,

33
00:01:44,120 --> 00:01:47,240
Speaker 1: what's that? And he explained that anything that can go

34
00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:50,400
Speaker 1: wrong will so he started silver tune it. Well, you know,

35
00:01:50,440 --> 00:01:52,760
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of confusion. A lot

36
00:01:52,760 --> 00:01:55,520
Speaker 1: of people slept Murphy's Law into just about anything that

37
00:01:55,600 --> 00:01:59,200
Speaker 1: goes wrong, right, But there's actually a lot of corollary

38
00:01:59,320 --> 00:02:01,440
Speaker 1: laws that have come about. Some of them are even

39
00:02:01,440 --> 00:02:04,120
Speaker 1: older than Murphy's Law, which, by the way, Murphy's Law

40
00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:06,240
Speaker 1: is a take off on Sod's law. You heard of

41
00:02:06,280 --> 00:02:09,799
Speaker 1: that it's an old English saying that any bad thing

42
00:02:09,840 --> 00:02:11,920
Speaker 1: that can happen to some poor side will So it's

43
00:02:11,960 --> 00:02:14,399
Speaker 1: pretty much the English version, and in England they still

44
00:02:14,440 --> 00:02:17,520
Speaker 1: call it Sod's law. But there's plenty of corollary laws

45
00:02:17,560 --> 00:02:20,560
Speaker 1: to Murphy's raw law that whatever can go wrong will

46
00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:23,720
Speaker 1: go wrong. Uh Like, take a tours observation. You ever

47
00:02:23,760 --> 00:02:27,560
Speaker 1: been in traffic and the other lane always moves faster? Exactly?

48
00:02:27,960 --> 00:02:31,359
Speaker 1: That's any tours observation. But actually that's kind of based

49
00:02:31,400 --> 00:02:35,000
Speaker 1: on a little bit of psychology. You know that. Yeah,

50
00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:38,760
Speaker 1: it's true. You ready, okay, So so you're standing in

51
00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:41,880
Speaker 1: traffic and either side of you, both lanes are moving,

52
00:02:41,919 --> 00:02:44,919
Speaker 1: and you're standing stock still. Of course you're gonna notice

53
00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:47,679
Speaker 1: you're in traffic. You want to get home, but your

54
00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:50,280
Speaker 1: lane starts moving again. You're paying attention to the car

55
00:02:50,320 --> 00:02:52,080
Speaker 1: in front of you, and behind you, you're no longer

56
00:02:52,120 --> 00:02:54,720
Speaker 1: paying to the paying attention to the lanes on either side,

57
00:02:54,919 --> 00:02:57,680
Speaker 1: so they're most likely stopped or at least going slower

58
00:02:57,720 --> 00:02:59,880
Speaker 1: than you are. You never noticed. The only time we

59
00:03:00,040 --> 00:03:03,120
Speaker 1: notice something is when it's not going our way. So

60
00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:04,880
Speaker 1: are you saying that we want to feel victimized by

61
00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:06,800
Speaker 1: the universe. I don't know that we want to feel

62
00:03:06,880 --> 00:03:09,120
Speaker 1: victimized so much, but I think we have a sense

63
00:03:09,160 --> 00:03:11,600
Speaker 1: of fatalism. You know that we're all kind of powerless

64
00:03:11,639 --> 00:03:14,800
Speaker 1: at the hands of faith. We're not actively making our

65
00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:17,840
Speaker 1: own choices. It depends, you know. I think that there's

66
00:03:17,840 --> 00:03:21,720
Speaker 1: a whole mindset surrounding Murphy's law that that people adopt

67
00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:24,919
Speaker 1: that you know, everything goes wrong, and that's when they

68
00:03:24,919 --> 00:03:27,960
Speaker 1: pay the most attention. I use an example in the article, like,

69
00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:30,120
Speaker 1: so you're walking along and you make it to the

70
00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:33,679
Speaker 1: place you're trying to get to, uh, and you have

71
00:03:33,720 --> 00:03:36,440
Speaker 1: no problems. You don't stop and think, wow, you know,

72
00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:38,920
Speaker 1: I really am a good walker. But if on the

73
00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:41,840
Speaker 1: way you stop and or you fall in skin your knee,

74
00:03:42,040 --> 00:03:43,800
Speaker 1: you're gonna sit there and see, why does this happen

75
00:03:43,840 --> 00:03:45,920
Speaker 1: to me? That's the thing you pay attention to. We

76
00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:48,880
Speaker 1: humans are almost programmed to pay attention to all the

77
00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:51,200
Speaker 1: terrible things that can happen to us and ignore all

78
00:03:51,200 --> 00:03:54,680
Speaker 1: the great things. Ah. It's sort of a whiny attitude.

79
00:03:55,400 --> 00:03:57,240
Speaker 1: If you were a little bit more careful, or maybe

80
00:03:57,280 --> 00:03:59,920
Speaker 1: even a little bit more optimistic, you can avoid Murphy's law.

81
00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:02,440
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's entirely true. I think that

82
00:04:02,520 --> 00:04:05,440
Speaker 1: the key is optimism. And I know you're not much

83
00:04:05,480 --> 00:04:08,480
Speaker 1: on fate, right, not so much. Well, I I kind

84
00:04:08,480 --> 00:04:10,760
Speaker 1: of tend to believe in Murphy's law just because I'm

85
00:04:10,800 --> 00:04:13,760
Speaker 1: you know, clinically paranoid. But you know there's a certain

86
00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:16,400
Speaker 1: amount of science to Murphy's law. Did you know that

87
00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:19,520
Speaker 1: I did. We're talking about Pell's equation, right, Yes, Pell's

88
00:04:19,520 --> 00:04:24,360
Speaker 1: Pell's equation of Murphy. Well, no, it's Joel Pell's Murphy's equation. Uh.

89
00:04:24,360 --> 00:04:26,919
Speaker 1: And Joel Pell's this guy out of the University of

90
00:04:26,960 --> 00:04:31,560
Speaker 1: British Columbia, and he basically quantified Murphy's law. He took

91
00:04:31,600 --> 00:04:35,680
Speaker 1: all these factors like um that surrounding event, like how

92
00:04:35,720 --> 00:04:37,880
Speaker 1: badly you want it to happen in a certain way,

93
00:04:37,960 --> 00:04:41,000
Speaker 1: or the complexity of the system involves, or the urgency

94
00:04:41,040 --> 00:04:43,320
Speaker 1: of it going a certain way, and he plugged him

95
00:04:43,320 --> 00:04:46,479
Speaker 1: into an equation and he used his eighty nine ter

96
00:04:46,600 --> 00:04:50,720
Speaker 1: cell as an example. You know about that. That's a toyota, Yes,

97
00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:53,160
Speaker 1: it is in toyota and eighty nine one at that.

98
00:04:53,600 --> 00:04:58,400
Speaker 1: But Pell calculated the probability of his nine toyota Chursell's

99
00:04:58,440 --> 00:05:00,640
Speaker 1: clutch going out in a rain storm when he was

100
00:05:00,680 --> 00:05:03,120
Speaker 1: sixty miles from home, and he came up with a

101
00:05:03,200 --> 00:05:06,160
Speaker 1: factor of one, which means it would definitely happen. Well,

102
00:05:06,200 --> 00:05:08,160
Speaker 1: you know, Josh, that could actually be attributed to the

103
00:05:08,200 --> 00:05:11,279
Speaker 1: fact that Toya no longer makes it yourself, So who

104
00:05:11,279 --> 00:05:14,080
Speaker 1: knows how sturdy and automobile it wasn't the first place?

105
00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:16,039
Speaker 1: That is it is a good argument. Or it could

106
00:05:16,040 --> 00:05:18,040
Speaker 1: mean that Murphy's Law is real and we should all

107
00:05:18,080 --> 00:05:20,839
Speaker 1: fear it. Uh. If you do fear Murphy's Law and

108
00:05:20,880 --> 00:05:23,360
Speaker 1: want to know your enemy, go read how Murphy's Law

109
00:05:23,440 --> 00:05:27,320
Speaker 1: works on how stuff works dot com for moral this

110
00:05:27,520 --> 00:05:30,000
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works

111
00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:33,200
Speaker 1: dot com? Let us know what you think. Send an

112
00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:39,039
Speaker 1: email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought

113
00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:42,279
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready,

114
00:05:42,480 --> 00:05:42,920
Speaker 1: are you