One of my most esteemed former co-workers used to say that whenever you succeed in making something idiot-proof, the universe will create a better idiot, undoing any progress you made.

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vidarh 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm very curious where that saying comes from now. I haven't found anything conclusive, like [1]'s friend I thought it might have been Douglas Adams, but a few references refers to it as "Grave's Law". After a few searches, I can't find any references to that which I can date further back than '99. But variants of the saying is at least as old as '89 (Rick Cook's version in [1]), but it's the kind of thing that sounds like a sufficiently "obvious" extension of the far older view that human stupidity has no bounds that it feels surprising if it is that recent.

[1] https://www.samyoung.co.nz/2025/03/building-better-idiot.htm...

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episodeiv 12 hours ago | parent [-]

The form I know is attributed to Douglas Adams[1]:

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6711-a-common-mistake-that-...

	▲	vidarh 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's from Mostly Harmless, 1992, so newer than Rick Cook's version. But also sufficiently different that I have no doubt a lot of people have independently coined some variant or other. There's also the decades older (sometimes attributed to Einstein, but there appears to be no evidence that he said it) "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." It seems sayings about the extent of human stupidity are quite widespread in many variations.

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IndySun 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This side note (a better idiot)is the best part of this post.