Editing Sod's law

{{Short description|British culture axiom}}
{{For|the album by British rock band Spear of Destiny|Sod's Law (album)}}
'''Sod's law''', a British culture [[axiom]], states that "if something ''can'' go wrong, it will". The law sometimes has a [[corollary]]: that the misfortune will happen at "the worst possible time" ([[Finagle's law]]). The term is commonly used in the [[United Kingdom]] (while in many parts of [[North America]] the phrase "[[Murphy's law]]" is more popular).<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-true.html|title= Murphy's laws origin|work= The Desert Wings|date= March 3, 1978 |publisher=Murphy's laws site}}</ref>

The phrase seems to derive, at least in part, from the [[colloquialism]] an "unlucky [[wikt:sod|sod]]"; a term for someone who has had some bad (unlucky) experience, and is usually used as a sympathetic reference to the person.<ref>Compare what has become the even more common phrase: "lucky sod" - [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lucky+sod%2Cunlucky+sod&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Clucky%20sod%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cunlucky%20sod%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Clucky%20sod%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cunlucky%20sod%3B%2Cc0 comparative graph of usage frequency].</ref>

A slightly different form of Sod's law states that "the degree of failure is in direct proportion to the effort expended and to the need for success."<ref>{{cite book |author=Dickson |first=Paul |url=https://archive.org/details/officialrules00dick/page/170/mode/2up |title=The Official Rules |publisher=Delacorte Press |year=1978 |isbn=9780385287432 |language=en |via=[[Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

An alternative expression, again in British culture, is "hope for the best, expect the worst".<ref>
{{cite book |author=Partridge |first=Eric |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofcatc00eric |title=Dictionary of Catch Phrases |publisher=Scarborough House |year=1992 |isbn=9781461660408 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofcatc00eric/page/278 278] |url-access=registration}}
</ref>

== Comparison with Murphy's law ==
Sod's law is a more extreme version of Murphy's law. While Murphy's law says that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong (eventually), Sod's law requires that it will ''always'' go wrong with the worst possible outcome or at the worst time. Belief in Sod's law can be viewed as a combination of the [[law of truly large numbers]] and the psychological effect of the [[law of selection]]. The former says we should expect things to go wrong now and then, and the latter says the exceptional events where something went wrong stand out in memory, but the great number of mundane events where nothing exceptional happened fall into obscurity.<ref name=Hand>{{cite book|last=Hand|first=David J.|title=The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e1iNAgAAQBAg|date=11 February 2014|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux|isbn=978-0-374-17534-4|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=e1iNAgAAQBAg&pg=PA197 197–198]}}</ref> Sod’s law is also explained as a form of the natural human [[negativity bias]], the survival trait of being extra alert to negative events.<ref name="whatculture">{{cite web |last=Shephard |first=Stevie |date=18 July 2015 |title=5 Sod's Law Annoyances That Have Scientific Explanations |url=https://whatculture.com/offbeat/5-sods-law-annoyances-that-have-scientific-explanations?page=5 |website=whatculture.com}}</ref>

== Examples ==

Some examples are [[traffic lights]] turning red when a driver is in a hurry, or email software crashing at the exact moment the user attempts to send an important message.<ref name=Hand/> Sod's law has also been applied to individuals, such as the composer [[Beethoven]] losing his hearing or [[Def Leppard]] drummer [[Rick Allen (drummer)|Rick Allen]] losing an arm in a car crash.<ref name=Hand/>

Other examples are [[Buttered toast phenomenon|dropped bread always landing butter side down]], or it raining just after one has washed the car and on the weekend one goes to the beach.<ref name=whatculture/>

A discrediting example is a [[coin toss]] resulting in tails the more strongly that one wishes the result to be heads. [[Richard Dawkins]] said that this shows the idea of Sod's law is "nonsense", as the coin is unaware of the person's wish and has no desire to thwart it.<ref name="Dawkins">{{cite book |author=Dawkins |first=Richard |title=The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True |publisher=Simon and Schuster |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-4516-9013-2 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Kxv9qbdqnj4C&pg=PA222 222] |author-link=Richard Dawkins}}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Finagle's law]]
* [[Buttered toast phenomenon]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{wiktionary | Sod's law}}
* {{Cite web |last=Scannel |first=Michael |date=August 2002 |title=The basic laws (Murphy's and Sod's) |url=https://www.michael-scannell.com/jottings/journ2.html |website=michael-scannell.com}} Gives an explanation of the difference between them.

[[Category:Adages]]
[[Category:Culture of the United Kingdom]]