Things are not as they appear

This post is probably going to be more or less random as I have no idea what I am going to think of in the next few minutes. The general idea I would like to explore is some of the basic principles that hide beneath some of our day to day activities and thought processes.

1) Murphy's Law:
In its crudest formulation it states that "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". I find this to be one of the widely quoted adages and have come across this in the context of many things. This is inherently a pessimistic approach at heart but I have known many who have interpreted this positively to try and counter as many problems as they could think of. Being an optimist (most of the time :-)) here is how I look at it from an analytical point of view.
This "law" in itself is just an adage with no mathematical or theoretical backdrop. This means that there is a finite probability that this may not be valid and may in fact be wrong. Thus as stated by this law itself, if it can go wrong, it will. This is a contradiction in itself and leads me to believe that this in fact does not hold good.

2) Short and sweet:
I think that the growing popularity of T20 in cricket, Youtube and Facebook etc are all linked to the same phenomena namely dwindling attention spans. As modern life gets more and more complicated, we are being bombarded with information every instant and our brains are not capable of handling the volume. In fact, our brains do not even process most of the information that our senses normally send it. It acts on what it thinks is important and saves the rest to our subconscious mind. This is one of the reasons why people under hypnosis can recall vivid details about an encounter while their conscious minds cannot.
I think that the way the brain tries to handle this information overload is by time slicing (a scheduling method) where it allots a small time frame for processing an event before moving on to the next.
The result of this is that we are becoming incapable of sustained thought which is essential for creative thinking. This is going to become a challenge in the future and I already see it happening on the job. The focus in any training be it for toddlers or engineers seems to be in keeping them engaged which is a good thing but I dont think it gets at the root cause.

3) Codes of Conduct:
Shall I be kind or turn a blind eye? A question that springs to mind every time I see a beggar or some shady character peddling something. Actually, the question is bigger than that. Most of us are faced with situations where we have to decide whether we should take a chance and help someone out and risk being taken for a ride. The response is usually dependent on non quantitative data like how kind (gullible) the person is or some other emotional response. Interestingly, this social interaction was modeled using a computer game a long time ago and many different strategies came to the table.
The biggest surprise was that out of all the models the most successful strategy that emerged was the simplest and something that we have always heard of: "Tit for tat".
This strategy comprises of a few simple rules:

1. Make your first move nice and co operate
2. Be in a position where it is possible to retaliate
3. Forgive past transgressions

If you think about it, these simple rules have been at the heart of even the Cold War ( Mutually Assured destruction). In essence, the best strategy is to help people but only if you have the capacity to retaliate if needed. Dr.Richard Dawkins has some wonderful thoughts on this in his book "The Selfish Gene". Simple rules for a complex world, just the way I like it :)

Thoughts welcome!