# Murphy's Law Murphy's Law states the following: > [[Anything that can go wrong will go wrong]] While pretty pessimistic and depressing, Murphy's Law is valuable, because it often proves to be true. Any system/process/individual/group/team/organization will, *at some point*, make mistakes, make bad decisions, malfunction or, break. This law originated from Captain Edward A. Murphy Jr., an aerospace engineer working on rocket sled experiments at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949. During these tests, designed to measure human tolerance to G-forces, Murphy observed that if there were multiple ways to connect a sensor and only one correct way, someone would inevitably choose the wrong method. His frustration with recurring equipment failures led to the formulation of what is now known as Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law highlights the fact that we need to plan and prepare for the worst, without necessarily being pessimistic. The goal is not to prevent all the possible problems from occurring, but rather to make those less likely, less frequent, less impactful. Murphy's Law is a key principle for [[Defensive Design]], used in many fields such as engineering, project management, software development, IT infrastructure, and many other fields. ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law - "Murphy's Law: The 26th Anniversary Edition.", Arthur Bloch - "To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design.", Henry Petroski