h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Murphy's law is proven to be false.
Even things that can not possibly, ever, at all go wrong in any possible way, will do so.

Murphy's law states something along the lines of anything that _can_ go wrong will do so at the _worst_ possible moment

Murphy's law does not cover things that _cannot_ possibly ever go wrong. This is not disproof. If however you find a situation that something that _can_ go wrong does not go wrong at the _worst_ possible moment then this would disprove the theory.

Does Murphy's law cover future possibilities. How do we know that when something hasn't gone wrong that it didn't not go wrong at the _worst_ possible moment. It might have been a particularly bad moment to pick for it to go wrong if it had gone wrong, but as it didn't can this be disproof of the theory as we don't know that it was the absolute _worst_ moment for it to not go wrong.

Please excuse the excessive use of underscores. A friend of mine does it and it appears to be catching.

You are right, this is not disproof. Forgive my mistake. However, if my theory is true, and Murphy knew about it, he is partly covering the truth. I hold it for more possible that Murphy didn't know that even things that can not possibly go wrong will do so. And as he lived happily unaware of this, I think we can agree that he was at least a big optimist.
However, this reasoning only fits if my theory is true.

Yes you are right, if we ask murphy why something did not go wrong, he would probably just tell us to wait and see. Or perhaps he could say that this thing that didn't go wrong was never able to go wrong. It was not one of the things included in the law in the first place.
This makes it very hard to actualy disprove the law...

Consider Apollo 13. During a 'stir' of the oxygen tanks a spark from an electrical component caused a massive explosion, leaving the astronauts with insufficient power to land on the moon, and both insufficient power and oxygen to get back home. This took place just under 56 hours into the trip, but was this the worst possible moment for things to go wrong? Something going wrong during take-off or re-entry could have been fatal, which would definitely have been worse for the crew.

BTW I think it says a great deal for everyone on Apollo 13 and back on Earth that the astronauts were brought home safely.

The problem is to determin when a thing beguinnes or ends. What if a member of the crew, once safe back on earth and out of the spacecraft, had slipped on a dogshsit and died from breaking his neck while rapidly diminishing the distans to the arms of his crying wife.
Would that not be the worst possible moment at least for him to pass away?

You cannot determine anything about murphies law until whatever it is you're looking at has finished. Only then can you look back and analyse the whole thing in minute detail so that you can think "Ah yes, that was the worst moment for something bad to happen and it did/did not happen. Therefore Murphy's law did/did not apply here."

But when does an event beguin or end? An event can be very long or very short, its not up to you to decide, its up to Murphy. Murphy doesn't have a law, Murphy is the law.

Keep it simple. Murphy's law does not mention worst possible times. It simply says "whatever can go wrong, will".

Now, if you want to save the life of a cat thrown from a high window, do you strap some toast to its chest with the buttered side away from the cat? And would it stay there if the strap was not so tight as to damage the cat anyway?

Mund

More to the point would you kill the cat and confuse the toast by placing the two between a pair of large gravitational sources.

"whatever can go wrong, will" ??? Immediately disproved. The PC that I am typing this on did not crash. The keyboard did not mysteriously spontaneously combust, neither did I for that matter. The monitor did not explode in my face. No-one has placed a bomb under my seat and detonated it at the critical moment. Therefore the posting of this message did not go wrong despite that fact that it could have done in so many ways. QED.
If you wish to use this shortened version of Murphy's law then you are welcome. I have always known it as 'if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, and at the worst possible time' and this I am unable to disprove.

To disprove it, you don't have to discover the worst possible time for something to go wrong. You just have to identify a time at which it did not go wrong which would have been "worse" than the time at which it did go wrong.

Mund

For Murphy himself, everything must have gone wrong. He couldn't even write a law that made sense. If everything goes wrong in the worst possible moment, then the writing of the law must have gone wrong as well. Maybe that is what the law really is, a mistake, a misunderstanding. Therefore it's possible, even likely that Murphy really was trying to say something else. Hey this is wierd, the law wrote it self because of itself.

I wonder what Murphy really had to say... Must have been really important.

Now that I like.

Murphys is a good beer.

That is SO my line : Murphy was an optimist, you bunch of theives.

What did I steal?

Seems like Murphy likes Jenny.

isn't it the point that he didn't?

I don't know about that

Whatever happened to pure, good old fachioned bad luck? Why do we have to mix Murphy into everything? Perhaps we are treating this Myrphy unfair. I certainly wouldn't like always beeing associated with carcrashes and failed suicideatempts.

i offer myself as a substitute, blame everything on me.