title: fortune
date: 2025-07-20 22:59:02 -06:00
date modified: 2025-07-21 23:46:22 -06:00

fortune

Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power

off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot

fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what

is going wrong."

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

--- The Jargon File; "Some AI Koans"

If anything can go wrong, it will.
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the first one to go wrong.
If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
Mother Nature is a bitch.