McIntosh's Law

Everybody knows about Murphy's Law and its hundreds of derivatives, corollaries, etc.

    Murphy's Law:
        If something can go wrong, it will.
                (the most common variation?)

Later came Hofstadter's Law, not as well known.

    Hofstadter's Law:
        It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
                ("Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" page 152)

Both laws are clearly correct, as far as they go (and that's a long ways), and were inspiring, but . . .

• Murphy's Law goes wrong right from the first word: "If". Of course something can go wrong! There's no if about it!

• Hofstadter's Law is infinitely complete, about time, but there's more dimensions in the universe than just time.

Eventually (about 1985), after longer than you would expect, and after lots of things going wrong, McIntosh's Law became obvious, as the unification and generalization of the two.

    McIntosh's Law:
        Whatever goes wrong will be worse than you expect, even when you take into account McIntosh's Law.

Later I realized that's too mild. Better, stronger versions would be:

    McIntosh's Law (stronger form):
        Whatever goes wrong will be worse than anybody expects, even when they take into account McIntosh's Law.

    McIntosh's Law (even stronger form):
        Whatever goes wrong will be worse than anybody could possibly expect, even when they take into account McIntosh's Law.

Both more complete, but I still prefer the original.

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