murphy’s law is freaking me the fuck out

It's a saying, not an actual law?

Also hey just because I believe VERY strongly that science education is important for all of us, I just want to explain something really briefly... It seemed like you have this idea that things can be both clearly untrue in daily reality, and also 'correct' as far as science is concerned, and this is quite a common misinterpretation of what science really is and does. Science is all about coming up with ideas, and wanting to know whether they're true or not- not wanting the idea to be true and trying to gather evidence to support it like our brains do- just genuinely wanting to know whether the idea is true or false. We then try to find out by doing experiments which give different answers if different things are true, and we always aim to try to DISPROVE our idea by coming up with experiments which could do so. For example, if I have a theory that the sky is brown, I *could* find people who agree with me and talk about why I think it ought to be true and probably is, and settle with that. But that's not science- science would be performing the experimental test, of going outside and looking up at the sky to find out, and getting other people to also look at the sky, to confirm that there's not just something wrong with my eyes. If everyone agrees that the sky looks blue to them, that's very strong and direct evidence for the sky being blue, and suggests that something is probably wrong with my reasoning or justifications for thinking it would be brown. Or black, or green. So our NEW hypothesis is that the sky is blue, and we call that a theory, because as far as we currently know, it's very likely to be the truth. In science, we never say that something is correct, or even proven, because there is ALWAYS the open possibility that a test will come along which strongly disproves the idea, like it turning out that there is something wrong with EVERYBODY'S eyes, or there is a big tinted dome placed over the planet by aliens this morning making the sky appear blue to us, but it really is *actually* brown, or black, or green. However, as you can see, that's a very unlikely scenario. The bigger the body of evidence there is for the sky being blue, and the more implausible anything which would contradict that would be (like aliens), the more confident we are in our determination that the sky is blue. There is no such thing as scientific ultimate proof or scientific correctness, there is only a high or low level of confidence in our current best guess. We continue to test our NEW hypothesis and our confidence level gets higher the more times we try to prove that the sky isn't blue. Eventually, it's accepted that we have tried our best and have no more reasons to doubt it being true, and it becomes established as a Scientific Theory. Gravity, for example, is a scientific theory. Although the word says theory, it means something much more serious than the common use of the word "theory", but also less concrete than the word "fact". My point is, science is always about interrogating the world around us, and performing tests, to find out what is REALLY the TRUTH. Science isn't an alternate reality. Something can't be obviously untrue in real life but "scientifically true". If science current knowledge says that the sky it's blue, it's because it has *already been tested*, that we have already tried to prove it wrong, and every test result has indicated that it's true. So, in this case, with Murphy's law, starting from the beginning, the hypothesis is that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. So the way to test this hypothesis is by attempting to prove it wrong. A simple test is to imagine something that could go wrong, and seeing if it does go wrong. I'm imagining that the ceiling above me and the ones above everyone else on this app, are about to fall on us because the builders were negligent. My experimental test result? It didn't happen. Another test would be that my cat will be hit by a car tonight, and I'll report back on that tomorrow. If you're starting to think that these are only time dependent and could still happen eventually, another test would be the idea that I will flunk out of my *current* degree, as that opportunity only arises once, and another would be to come up with two different ideas for different bad outcomes for a scenario. I might get hit by lightning and die, and I might get hit by a car and die, and I might starve to death due to the collapse of civilisation. Only one of those things can actually kill me, so I just have to wait and see which one happens. Or I can just not wait at all, because logically, it doesn't matter which thing happens, as I can only die from one thing. All three can go wrong, not all three will go wrong, therefore not all things which "can go wrong, will go wrong". It seems silly, but those are scientific tests, designed to genuinely test the hypothesis, and I accept whatever outcome the testing indicates. That is all that science does. It's not magic. It's not a parallel reality where things are true which aren't true in the daily life we live, it's not just a world of maybes and "alternative facts". Whilst an accepted scientific theory can always be proved wrong, the thing that it would be proved wrong by is observations *in reality*. There is no such thing as an idea which is not actually true, but is "scientifically correct". If there is a big difference between something which is actually true, and a scientific theory, then it's the THEORY which is wrong, not reality. If you actually have two eyes and science wisdom says that you have three, the wisdom is wrong. If your observation is that you didn't get struck by lightning during the last time you experienced a storm, and 'murphy's law' says that you did, because "everything that can go wrong, will go wrong", then murphy's law is wrong. Murphy's law isn't a scientific theory, it's a saying, but even if it actually was a genuine scientific theory which everyone believed in and there was lots of evidence for it, and yet you didn't get struck by lightning, then the theory doesn't match up with reality and therefore the theory is wrong. Not reality. Maybe the correct theory is actually that "everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, except for MakeAChange". We could find ways to test that, too. Science is ABOUT reality. Its sole purpose is investigating to find out *what is really true*. Whilst any scientific theory can be wrong, including gravity, there is no such thing as a fact which overrides and invalidates *observed reality*. If my phone suddenly starts to float, it's not my phone which is wrong, it's whatever theories claimed that this is not possible, which are wrong, and the correct thing to do would be to investigate and find out whether it means gravity is malarkey or that there are magnets on my ceiling or that the earth has suddenly started spinning a bit faster so there's more centripetal force and everything is now floating a bit, etc. Science isn't an alternate universe and it isn't our enemy. It's our tool. What we consider to be truth as far as we know = our best guesses from doing investigations (science). They're identical, they're one and the same thing, unless we are ignorant of the evidence and therefore have an idea about what's true which doesn't line up with reality (e.g. that the sky is brown), or the scientific evidence itself has a big hole in it and the scientific theory is wrong. What we observe is absolutely fundamental.