94:. 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. Sod’s law is also explained as a form of the natural human
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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. Sod's law has also been applied to individuals, such as the composer
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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
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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."
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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.
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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
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An alternative expression, again in
British culture, is "hope for the best, expect the worst".
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The
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resulting in tails the more strongly that one wishes the result to be heads.
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Compare what has become the even more common phrase: "lucky sod" -
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41:: that the misfortune will happen at "the worst possible time" (
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311:"5 Sod's Law Annoyances That Have Scientific Explanations"
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For the album by
British rock band Spear of Destiny, see
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The phrase seems to derive, at least in part, from the
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Gives an explanation of the difference between them.
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The Magic of
Reality: How We Know What's Really True
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128:dropped bread always landing butter side down
37:go wrong, it will". The law sometimes has a
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281:. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp.
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366:"The basic laws (Murphy's and Sod's)"
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194:comparative graph of usage frequency
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90:and the psychological effect of the
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245:. Scarborough House. pp.
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123:losing an arm in a car crash.
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88:law of truly large numbers
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156:Buttered toast phenomenon
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49:(while in many parts of
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115:losing his hearing or
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57:" is more popular).
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126:Other examples are
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106:Some examples are
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331:(2012).
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102:Examples
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