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How Murphy's Law Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works dot Com? Brought to you by
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Speaker 1: Consumer Guide Automotive We make Garbine Easier. I am welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here
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Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot Com, and with me, as
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Speaker 1: always is my trustee Edit Tricks, Candice Gibson. How's it going, Candice? Okay, Josh,
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Speaker 1: it's going okay. Oh yeah, you're a little down in
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Speaker 1: the mouth. I am. Yeah, just everything today, it's just
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Speaker 1: it's not going to way I planned. Well, you know,
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Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. You you kind
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Speaker 1: of have the feeling that the entire universe is against you,
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Speaker 1: being kicked around a little bit by the powers that beat. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: what you're talking about is Murphy's Law. You know about this?
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Speaker 1: I do. I do. Murphy's Law. It says that anything
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Speaker 1: that can go wrong. Well, yeah, and you know where
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Speaker 1: it came from. I do. Actually, Um, it all originated
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Speaker 1: back in nine so this is an ancient history. This
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Speaker 1: is pretty recent and essentially the Air Force was doing
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Speaker 1: a couple of tests on g forces and trying to
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Speaker 1: figure out how much a human being could handle. And
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Speaker 1: what it all boiled down to was some people who
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Speaker 1: worked for a Captain Edward A. Murphy weren't really doing
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Speaker 1: their jobs exactly right. They were messing up the little things.
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Speaker 1: And he said, pretty exasperated, there are two ways to
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Speaker 1: do something. They're always going to pick the one that
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Speaker 1: results in catastrophe. But it's kind of a mouthful, and
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Speaker 1: yet it really is. And so um Colonel John Paul
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Speaker 1: stepped later on exactly he was sort of being the
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Speaker 1: mouthpiece with these experiments that they were doing, and he
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Speaker 1: essentially said that, you know, well, the experiments aren't going
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Speaker 1: exactly as planned. It's all, you know, following Murphy's law, Well,
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Speaker 1: what's that? And he explained that anything that can go
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Speaker 1: wrong will so he started silver tune it. Well, you know,
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Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of confusion. A lot
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Speaker 1: of people slept Murphy's Law into just about anything that
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Speaker 1: goes wrong, right, But there's actually a lot of corollary
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Speaker 1: laws that have come about. Some of them are even
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Speaker 1: older than Murphy's Law, which, by the way, Murphy's Law
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Speaker 1: is a take off on Sod's law. You heard of
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Speaker 1: that it's an old English saying that any bad thing
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Speaker 1: that can happen to some poor side will So it's
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Speaker 1: pretty much the English version, and in England they still
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Speaker 1: call it Sod's law. But there's plenty of corollary laws
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Speaker 1: to Murphy's raw law that whatever can go wrong will
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Speaker 1: go wrong. Uh Like, take a tours observation. You ever
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Speaker 1: been in traffic and the other lane always moves faster? Exactly?
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Speaker 1: That's any tours observation. But actually that's kind of based
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Speaker 1: on a little bit of psychology. You know that. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's true. You ready, okay, So so you're standing in
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Speaker 1: traffic and either side of you, both lanes are moving,
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Speaker 1: and you're standing stock still. Of course you're gonna notice
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Speaker 1: you're in traffic. You want to get home, but your
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Speaker 1: lane starts moving again. You're paying attention to the car
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Speaker 1: in front of you, and behind you, you're no longer
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Speaker 1: paying to the paying attention to the lanes on either side,
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Speaker 1: so they're most likely stopped or at least going slower
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Speaker 1: than you are. You never noticed. The only time we
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Speaker 1: notice something is when it's not going our way. So
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Speaker 1: are you saying that we want to feel victimized by
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Speaker 1: the universe. I don't know that we want to feel
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Speaker 1: victimized so much, but I think we have a sense
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Speaker 1: of fatalism. You know that we're all kind of powerless
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Speaker 1: at the hands of faith. We're not actively making our
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Speaker 1: own choices. It depends, you know. I think that there's
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Speaker 1: a whole mindset surrounding Murphy's law that that people adopt
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Speaker 1: that you know, everything goes wrong, and that's when they
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Speaker 1: pay the most attention. I use an example in the article, like,
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Speaker 1: so you're walking along and you make it to the
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Speaker 1: place you're trying to get to, uh, and you have
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Speaker 1: no problems. You don't stop and think, wow, you know,
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Speaker 1: I really am a good walker. But if on the
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Speaker 1: way you stop and or you fall in skin your knee,
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Speaker 1: you're gonna sit there and see, why does this happen
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Speaker 1: to me? That's the thing you pay attention to. We
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Speaker 1: humans are almost programmed to pay attention to all the
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Speaker 1: terrible things that can happen to us and ignore all
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Speaker 1: the great things. Ah. It's sort of a whiny attitude.
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Speaker 1: If you were a little bit more careful, or maybe
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Speaker 1: even a little bit more optimistic, you can avoid Murphy's law.
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Speaker 1: I don't know that that's entirely true. I think that
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Speaker 1: the key is optimism. And I know you're not much
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Speaker 1: on fate, right, not so much. Well, I I kind
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Speaker 1: of tend to believe in Murphy's law just because I'm
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Speaker 1: you know, clinically paranoid. But you know there's a certain
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Speaker 1: amount of science to Murphy's law. Did you know that
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Speaker 1: I did. We're talking about Pell's equation, right, Yes, Pell's
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Speaker 1: Pell's equation of Murphy. Well, no, it's Joel Pell's Murphy's equation. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And Joel Pell's this guy out of the University of
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Speaker 1: British Columbia, and he basically quantified Murphy's law. He took
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Speaker 1: all these factors like um that surrounding event, like how
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Speaker 1: badly you want it to happen in a certain way,
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Speaker 1: or the complexity of the system involves, or the urgency
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Speaker 1: of it going a certain way, and he plugged him
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Speaker 1: into an equation and he used his eighty nine ter
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Speaker 1: cell as an example. You know about that. That's a toyota, Yes,
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Speaker 1: it is in toyota and eighty nine one at that.
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Speaker 1: But Pell calculated the probability of his nine toyota Chursell's
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Speaker 1: clutch going out in a rain storm when he was
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Speaker 1: sixty miles from home, and he came up with a
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Speaker 1: factor of one, which means it would definitely happen. Well,
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Speaker 1: you know, Josh, that could actually be attributed to the
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Speaker 1: fact that Toya no longer makes it yourself, So who
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Speaker 1: knows how sturdy and automobile it wasn't the first place?
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Speaker 1: That is it is a good argument. Or it could
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Speaker 1: mean that Murphy's Law is real and we should all
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Speaker 1: fear it. Uh. If you do fear Murphy's Law and
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Speaker 1: want to know your enemy, go read how Murphy's Law
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