The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago
Communication usually fails, except by accident.
The fundamental Wiio's law states that "Communication usually fails, except by accident". The full set of laws is as follows:
Communication usually fails, except by accident. If communication can fail, it will.If communication cannot fail, it still most usually fails.If communication seems to succeed in the intended way, there's a misunderstanding.
If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails.If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage.There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message.The more we communicate, the worse communication succeeds. The more we communicate, the faster misunderstandings propagate.In mass communication, the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be.
The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago.
If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage
This Murphyistic remark is a warning about the very real possibility that ambiguities will be resolved in just the way you did not mean. Notice that this does not mean the worst misunderstanding you can imagine; rather, something worse - an interpretation you could not have imagined when you formulated your message.
There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message
People who understand you can be a real nuisance. It might take some time before you see that they completely failed to see what you meant, but that does not prevent them for propagating their ideas as yours.
The more we communicate, the worse communication succeeds in mass communication
There's a widespread superstition that the more you communicate the better. In reality, increasing the amount of communication most probably just causes more misunderstandings.
There are people who keep repeating that there can't be too much information. Whether that's literally true is debatable. What what they mean (cf. to law 3) is just plain wrong. There can be, and there is, too large a volume of messaging. Data does not equal information.
The important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be
This law is just remotely related to the basic law. It is however more and more important: mass communication creates a world of its own, and people orient themselves in that virtual world rather than the real one. After all, reality is boring.
The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance
Even more remote to our main topic, this simply states that events close to us look much more important to us than remote events. When there is an aircraft accident, its importance in Finnish newspapers basically depends on whether there were any Finns on board, not on the number of people that died.
It is however relevant to law 1 in the sense that it illustrates one of the reasons why communication fails. No matter what you say, people who receive your message will interpret and emphasize in their own reference framework.
The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago
Similarly to law 6, this illustrates one of the causes of failures in communication. It applies both to senders and recipients. The recipient tends to forget relevant things, such as items which have been emphatically presented in the message as necessary requirements for understanding the rest of it. And the sender, upon receiving a request for clarification, such as a question during a lecture, will certainly be able to formulate an adequate, easy to understand answer - afterwards, when the situation is over.