Murphy’s Law vs Positive Thinking

(Half-written by Github copilot, so the tone is a bit weird)

You might have heard of Murphy’s law. It is generally stated as such: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

It has been applied to many different situations, but it is most commonly used in engineering and technology. It is to some extent an empirical statement that things tend to go wrong, and it is also a rather uncontroversial observation of the simple fact that the more complex a system is, the chances of something going wrong increases as the scale of the operations increases.

Obviously nobody really believes that thinking positively about large scale industrial operations will make bad things go away.

However, there is also a more esoteric interpretation of Murphy’s law, i.e. things will actually go wrong even more often than what might be expected from a simple frequentist probabilistic analysis. In short, “I have really bad luck.”

There are many possible ways one might try to avoid Murphy’s law. The first is to minimize the chances of things going wrong by making sure that the system is as simple as possible, and that all possible failure modes are dealt with. This is the approach taken by most engineers and scientists, and it probably the most effective way to avoid Murphy’s law.

However, those who believe in mind over matter might also try to avoid negative outcomes from Murphy’s law by simply thinking positively and expecting things to go right. This is the approach might be preferred by some people who believe in the power of positive thinking.

But does positive thinking really work? Can you really avoid negative outcomes by simply thinking positively and expecting things to go right? If you believe in the power of positive thinking, then you might want to say the answer is yes. But in practice, obviously it doesn’t. Why doesn’t it work? Why do things still go wrong even when you think positively?

Note that I do not reject the idea that the mind can somehow influence reality. Quite the opposite. It is obvious that most if not all of our actions begin from a thought in the mind. All our actions are living proof that mind can influence reality.

Right. So, why do things still go wrong even when you think positively?

The answer is that the very idea of “positive thinking” is flawed. If you need to think “positively” to avoid negative outcomes, then you are already assuming that things will go wrong. In other words, you are already expecting things to go wrong, and you are trying to counteract that expectation by thinking positively. But this is a self-defeating strategy, because you are still expecting things to go wrong, and you are still giving power to the idea that things will go wrong.

What can we do then? Remember that free will is a universal law, and that we have the power to choose our own destiny. (It starts from the mind, of course.) If you want to avoid negative outcomes, then you need to take physical action to make sure that things go right. You need to take responsibility for your own actions, and you need to make sure that you are doing everything in your power to make sure that things go right. Unsurprisingly, this approach converges with the boring materialist approach described in the beginning.

Those who insist on “positive thinking” generally forget that we live in a physical universe, and there is a reason for that. Minds can move matter, but the accepted law here is that we interact with the physical world through our physical bodies. If you want to avoid negative outcomes, then you need to take physical action. As they say, “actions speak louder than words.”

In a sense, Murphy’s law is a device that gives us a choice. We can either accept that things will go wrong, and take physical action to make sure that they don’t.

As a rule of thumb, while it is obviously a good idea to maintain a generally positive vibe (this is where “positive thinking” works to a substantial extent), but once you consider a negative outcome as a possibility, it is on you to take action to minimize the possibility of it eventually happening.

We generally have some ability to see our futures, whether it be positive or negative, and if we are in denial about the negative outcomes, it will just diminish our ability to see, and we will feel as if we are walking into our future blindfolded. This lack of foresight might make one even more worried about negative outcomes, and to even lean more heavily on “positive thinking”, creating a vicious cycle.

The proper way is just to see possibilities as they are, and believe in your own power to take action to shape the future.