X-posted from my blog: http://verbatim.baywords.com/index.php/2008/12/everything-will-not-be-alright/
Will X-post to Verwirrung if and when I get a contributor account.
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Murphy's Law holds always: "if anything can go wrong, it will". Internalizing this principle is the key to happiness and success; telling yourself everything will be alright is a mind-numbing escape from reality. If you expect the worst, you can prepare for it. Even if Murphy's Law is a mere matter of chance, of cognitive bias, "Law of Fives", it is dangerous to underestimate the probability that things will go wrong. If you focus on the probability that things may turn out okay, you will be left vulnerable to disaster.
Internalizing Murphy's Law does not imply helplessness or despair – quite the contrary. "If anything can go wrong, it will"... Reverse the Law and you see hope: "sufficient preparation averts disaster" – only that which can go wrong, will go wrong. Allow no plan the possibility to go wrong, and you'll be much better off than you would just hoping and praying. Murphy's Law does not leave you helpless – it is ignoring this Law that will. If things go wrong when you refuse to expect it, you have nobody to blame but your own dumb self – this is the epitome of helplessness.
To get the upper hand on Fate, acknowledge that things will go wrong. It will allow you to do whatever is necessary to prepare – to leave no room for failure.
There is no defensible alternative to Murphy's Law. To examine the alternatives, let us first clarify the Law. The Law implies: "one should expect all disasters to manifest in such a situation where they are possible". The opposite position would be "one should expect no disasters to manifest". Barring absurdist positions, any other alternative would boil down to "in such situations where disaster is possible, one should expect some disasters to manifest".
"One should expect no disasters to manifest" - this is quite a dangerous position. Disasters do occur; if one expects that they never do, one will not prepare for unfortunate eventualities, remaining entirely vulnerable to whatever Fate (or Eris?) throws his way. Sure, you'll feel all nice and cushy expecting the best...until you're proven wrong. Painfully. One must only think of the many unexpected disasters of history to refute this position. Of course, no reasonable person would hold this position in the first place – it is more of an oblivious emotional attempt to feel good about things than anything else. Most children learn at a young age that this position is false, and they learn it the hard way.
Halfway positions are far more seductive: "in such situations where disaster is possible, one should expect some disasters to manifest". This position is, first and foremost, deceptively reasonable. It is, strictly speaking, true – some disasters, possible and unprepared-for, fail to manifest (remember the bird-flu pandemic scare? The Y2K bug?). It is a fact of probability that some things will not go wrong. This does not, however, imply that one would know the difference. Disasters tend to happen when they are not expected – especially when they are not expected. But for whatever reason, we like to think we can tell that things will be alright. Understand this: when things go wrong, it is invariably the result of an unknown. If all the factors were clear and known, there would be no room for disaster. If you presume to know when things will go wrong for you, you presume to know the unknown. Snap out of it, you don't know the unknown. Some things may fail to go wrong, but one should not presume to know which things those will be.
The halfway position tends to collapse into meaninglessness. Despite our ability to reason, it is a rare quality, amongst humans, to see the bigger picture while tackling smaller issues. When it actually matters, we will rarely have the detachment necessary to make sense of the halfway position. This detachment, this ability to think reasonably and strategically while still catching all the details, is a mark of genius and responsible for making many of history's greats so great. Do not presume to possess this ability. Regardless of our reasoning, a halfway position will inevitably seduce us, in the moment of truth, into the comfortable complacency of the belief that everything will be just fine. Even those geniuses endowed with that amazing reasoning ability, such greats as Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte succumbed to complacency in the end, and it was the end of them. It is a comfortable mental space to be in, thinking things will be okay – like a cocoon; like a womb. It will seduce you again and again. But the human brain is not designed to deal with probabilities. If you operate on the assumption that some things will not go wrong, you are likely to misjudge situations and neglect to prepare for the risks involved, at least some of the time – and it often takes only one good disaster to ruin things for a long, long time.
The events in my life this past fall really drove the point home for me. I had accumulated several months' debt in wishful thinking, and suddenly found collectors at my door. Again, and again, and again. I had told myself all kinds of things would work out just fine. One by one, they fell apart and failed to work out, in a glorious variety of different ways I had not entirely foreseen. I was left dazed and confused. Certainly, some things worked out just as I had hoped. I've had pleasant surprises. Some things worked out far better than I had dreaded. But always there were unknowns in play – I never really knew which thing could still go wrong. In almost every case, being more cautious and proactive, accepting the possibility of failure and preparing for it, could have saved me nasty surprises, stressful days and sleepless nights.
Instead, to appease my lazy side, I just told myself things would work out without my intervention. They did not.
But there is a lesson to be learned in such times. One must live with Murphy's law in mind always. One must prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Stop letting yourself get caught with your pance down, expect the worst, prepare for it – and everything will be alright.
But... if you prepare sufficiently, everything will turn out all right in the end, yeah?
Quote from: LMNO on December 08, 2008, 08:36:07 PM
But... if you prepare sufficiently, everything will turn out all right in the end, yeah?
No, fortunately your preparations will only complicate if not accelerate the magnificent failure.
Quote from: All Rights Reserved on December 08, 2008, 09:18:27 PM
No, fortunately your preparations will only complicate if not accelerate the magnificent failure.
Shhh, you're ruining the fun!
Quote from: NIGEL` on December 08, 2008, 08:33:17 PM
Murphy's Law holds always: "if anything can go wrong, it will". Internalizing this principle is the key to happiness and success; telling yourself everything will be alright is a mind-numbing escape from reality. If you expect the worst, you can prepare for it. Even if Murphy's Law is a mere matter of chance, of cognitive bias, "Law of Fives", it is dangerous to underestimate the probability that things will go wrong. If you focus on the probability that things may turn out okay, you will be left vulnerable to disaster.
Yeah, Murphy's Law is BS. However if we look at a situation's set of possible outcomes and only deem certain outcomes satisfactory, failure may be the more likely result.
QuoteInternalizing Murphy's Law does not imply helplessness or despair – quite the contrary. "If anything can go wrong, it will"... Reverse the Law and you see hope: "sufficient preparation averts disaster" – only that which can go wrong, will go wrong. Allow no plan the possibility to go wrong, and you'll be much better off than you would just hoping and praying. Murphy's Law does not leave you helpless – it is ignoring this Law that will. If things go wrong when you refuse to expect it, you have nobody to blame but your own dumb self – this is the epitome of helplessness.
While I agree preparation is important, too much prep will prevent you from ever getting started in an endeavor.
QuoteThe events in my life this past fall really drove the point home for me. I had accumulated several months' debt in wishful thinking, and suddenly found collectors at my door. Again, and again, and again. I had told myself all kinds of things would work out just fine. One by one, they fell apart and failed to work out, in a glorious variety of different ways I had not entirely foreseen. I was left dazed and confused. Certainly, some things worked out just as I had hoped. I've had pleasant surprises. Some things worked out far better than I had dreaded. But always there were unknowns in play – I never really knew which thing could still go wrong. In almost every case, being more cautious and proactive, accepting the possibility of failure and preparing for it, could have saved me nasty surprises, stressful days and sleepless nights.
Instead, to appease my lazy side, I just told myself things would work out without my intervention. They did not.
But there is a lesson to be learned in such times. One must live with Murphy's law in mind always. One must prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Stop letting yourself get caught with your pance down, expect the worst, prepare for it – and everything will be alright.
Or, you know, you could accept getting caught with your pants down as a part of life.
I like it, Verb. It actually reminds me a lot of my epiphany that life can suddenly take a terrible turn for the worse at any moment.
For example, if that guy with the glass jar had anticipated the worst, he might not have ended up with a broken jar in his ass.
A really cool way of expressing this thought is occasionalism--the idea that there's no such thing as laws of physics passively put into place, that every instance of the so-called laws of physics is really a divine act.
Quote from: NIGEL` on December 08, 2008, 08:33:17 PM
the human brain is not designed to deal with probabilities.
I disagree, you can (for example) train yourself to assume that there is a 1% chance that the unexpected will happen.
For those to lazy to read the whole thing here is the TL:DR version:
the worst shit happens unexpectedly, so prepare yourself.
Quote from: Regret on January 05, 2009, 08:37:46 PM
Quote from: NIGEL` on December 08, 2008, 08:33:17 PM
the human brain is not designed to deal with probabilities.
I disagree, you can (for example) train yourself to assume that there is a 1% chance that the unexpected will happen.
Regret, please find yourself a copy of "Fooled by Randomness", or, failing that, "The Black Swan". But you being a bit more of an exact mind, I think you'd appreciate FBR more, like I did.
It may change your mind on how the human brain is not designed to deal with probabilities. Because it isn't. The human brain isn't evolved for Truth, it's evolved for "fitness" (quotes added for Kai).
Also, it's a really really good read (IMO).
Will do.
:mittens:
Insufficient attention is given to Murphy and Finagle. They pretty much explain why the humans are so fucked up.