Bad things will always happen, so humanity will eventually be destroyed by nuclear war? How to correctly understand Murphy's Law?

"If a bad thing can happen, it will happen, no matter how low the probability of it happening is." This is Murphy's Law.

Some people think that Murphy's Law is nonsense, while others regard it as a god. It is undeniable that Murphy's Law seems to be always in effect around us. As long as we wash the car, it will rain; when buying tickets and checking out, no matter which queue we choose, we are never the fastest; for example, when waiting for a bus at a bus stop, the bus will not come no matter how long you wait, but as long as you try to light a cigarette or buy a popsicle, the bus will come immediately, while if you don't do this, the bus will still disappear.

So, is this just our illusion, or is it true? To clarify one thing, we must first start from the source of this matter. The source of Murphy's Law is Murphy. Murphy was an engineer in the US Air Force. Once, the US Air Force wanted to conduct a series of experiments on the human body's ability to withstand acceleration. During this experiment, an accelerometer was needed to measure the acceleration of the experimental object.

Murphy sent a batch of accelerometers to his assistant and asked him to install them. Soon, the assistant told Murphy that all the accelerometers did not work. Murphy rushed to take a look and could not help but laugh and cry. All the accelerometers were installed incorrectly by the assistant. At this time, he uttered the famous saying: If a bad thing can happen, then no matter how low the probability of it happening is, it will definitely happen. This is the origin of Murphy's Law.

Theoretically, Murphy's Law seems to have no scientific basis, but in reality, it has repeatedly played a role. How should we correctly understand Murphy's Law? Some people say that Murphy's Law has no scientific basis, but in fact it has a scientific basis, and it is very scientific. In order to make this problem simple and clear, we will use an example to illustrate, and this example is "choking to death while eating." Choking to death while eating is a bad thing, and it is an extremely low probability event, which completely meets the definition of Murphy's Law, so is "choking to death while eating" bound to happen?

What is the probability of choking to death? An informal statistic shows that it is about one in 200,000. I don't think it is that high, so let's assume it is one in a million, because the number of people who choke to death is indeed higher than the number of people who die in plane crashes, and the probability of a plane crash is about one in two million.

The probability of choking to death while eating is 1/1000000, let's set it as P, then the probability of eating safely is 1-P=P1. Assuming a person can live to 80 years old, that is 365 times 80, which is equal to 29200 days, 3 meals a day, a total of 87600 meals, so the probability that a person can eat safely throughout his life is P1 to the power of 87600, which is approximately equal to 91.6%. It can be seen that the probability of a person choking to death while eating is very small, but what if the life span continues to increase? For example, if you live to 800 years old, then the probability of eating safely throughout your life will drop to about 41.6%. Now choking to death while eating has become a high-probability event.

Murphy's Law is actually a simple probability problem. As long as there is a probability that something will happen, it will definitely happen as long as there is enough time and samples. Moreover, the probability of occurrence will increase as time goes by and the number of samples increases.

So from this perspective, we can draw a conclusion, that is, anything that is likely to happen will eventually have a probability of 100%, which means it will inevitably happen. In fact, it is not only bad things, but also good things. It’s just that when good things happen, we don’t think about it this way. Many people fantasize about achieving financial freedom through lottery. In fact, winning the first prize is also inevitable. As long as you keep buying and your descendants keep doing it, it’s only a matter of time before you win. So, since Murphy’s Law is in line with science, it means that bad things will eventually happen. Will mankind eventually be destroyed by nuclear war?

Humanity is destroyed by nuclear war, which is a favorite story background of many science fiction works, and Murphy's Law seems to provide theoretical support for this idea, but this is not necessarily the case.

Murphy's Law states that if something is possible, it will eventually happen, but there is nothing you can do about something that is impossible. The possibility of a nuclear war can be reduced to zero. We all know the famous Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the closest time for humanity to extinction. But in the end, humanity did not end up in a nuclear war. It seemed lucky, but it was inevitable.

The reason why mankind has not entered a nuclear war is not because of luck, but because of "deterrence and checks and balances". Once deterrence and checks and balances are achieved, a situation will be created in which the losses of launching a nuclear war will exceed the losses of not launching a nuclear war, which makes the occurrence of a nuclear war impossible. This is also the original intention of my country to develop nuclear weapons. Under the situation of deterrence and checks and balances, unless the decision-makers lose their basic rational decision-making ability, the probability of bad things happening is 0%, and Murphy's Law cannot play a role.

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