Everyone is familiar with the law of meanness, according to which a sandwich will always land face down. And almost everyone was convinced that this law works - if not even in relation to sandwiches, then for sure with other things. In fact, there are many “laws of meanness”, and the meaning of most of them is precisely that if something in theory can go wrong, then it will definitely go wrong.
“Murphy's law” or the same “law of the sandwich”. It was formulated in 1949 by the American military man Edward Murphy. He was working on a project to determine the maximum g-force that a person can endure. Once he noticed that the airplane’s propeller was spinning in the direction opposite to the design. It turned out that the technicians installed the propeller backwards. Murphy said that technicians are capable of ruining everything that, in principle, can be ruined.
“Hanlon's razor”. “Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity”. That is, if something bad, incomprehensible or tragic happens, it is not necessarily someone’s conspiracy or intrigue - most often the reason is ordinary stupidity, incompetence or sloppiness. It is especially appropriate to refer to the law of “Hanlon’s razor” in a conversation with a fan of conspiracy theories who explains any negative circumstance as “the machinations of the enemy”. The British formulate this law more briefly and much more accurately: “It’s not a conspiracy, but a screw-up”.
Law “Visit effect”. “If a perfectly working system is tested in front of the customer, it will inevitably fail”. This law also works in the opposite direction - when a technician visits, the equipment, which the day before showed all the signs of failure, suddenly begins to work flawlessly. And as soon as the master leaves, all the problems return.
“The law of the band-aid”. According to him, medical plasters are divided into two types: those that do not stick, and those that are almost impossible to tear off. The meaning of this law is that it is very difficult to find a “golden mean”.
“The law of umbrella”. This law is extremely simple: if you take an umbrella with you when expecting rain, the weather will be clear. If you leave it at home, hoping that the weather will not let you down, you will certainly get caught in the rain. In other words, if you prepare as much as possible for any test, everything will go perfectly smoothly and it will turn out that all the preparation was unnecessary. One has only to relax and rely on the power of luck, and troubles will begin to pile up one after another.
“Godwin's law”. According to him, any heated political debate ends with one of the parties descending into comparing its opponent with Hitler and the Nazis.
“The law of queue”. The queue next to you always moves faster. As soon as you move to this, more successful queue, it immediately “freezes”, and now another queue begins to move faster.
“The law of the bus”. 99 percent of the population is familiar with this law. An unnecessary bus number will arrive at the stop every 5 minutes, but as soon as it becomes necessary, you will have to wait for it for half an hour.
“The Peter principle”. It was formulated by teacher Lawrence Peter, who worked on studying the principles of hierarchy. This law goes like this: “In a hierarchical system, any employee rises to the level of his incompetence”. That is, an employee within the hierarchical system of the organization will climb the career ladder until he no longer understands what is happening and how he needs to act. Simply put, he will reach a career “ceiling”, above which his growth within the framework of this organization is impossible.
Resources: theoryandpractice.ru; adme.media
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