i found this piece on the pcguide forum.

Why is it that if someone tells you there are a billion stars in the universe you will believe them, but if someone tells you a wall has wet paint you will have to touch it to be sure?

what do you think?


bye!

When people say "a billion", they basically mean "a hell of a lot".
In ancient times, they used "40" instead. So when some man went out into the desert for 40 days, that meant he went into the desert for a hell of a long time. :D

I don't touch wet walls.

Because you have the wall right in front of you to touch to see if it had dried or not but you can't count the stars in the sky so you just have to take their word on it. :D

Sure, why not. The thing about the billion stars is that it is untestable. It is such an abstract thing that you will either have to accept it or deny it or have no opinion. Nothing you can do (within reason) will verify or deny this fact.

The wet paint statement, however, is something that you can test. Something that you can verify. In fact, you don't need to necessarily touch the paint to verify it if you are experienced with such things (depending on the type of paint). You might tell from the smell, by the way it shines and glistens. Etc. But regardless of the means, the testing is something that we can do. Something which gives a yes or no answer.

Frankly, I would wonder about someone who didn't touch the wall.


Edit: Yeah, what Cosmic said. With a few words added for icing. ;)

most people touch the wall to see if it has dried yet, it is our inquisitive nature as humans, but as skippy said: when someone says "a billion" they mean "a hell of a lot"

and from what i have heard it is in excess of 44 trillion

or was that 44 million planets, i forget

First of all there are not a billion stars in the universe, and nobody in their right mind would believe that.

As for the wet paint, I don't know anybody that has touched a wall to make sure the paint is wet.
If somebody says it's wet, most people don't touch it.

First of all there is not a billion stars in the universe, and nobody in their right mind would believe that.



Yeah...retard scientists :rolleyes:

the number of stars is taken on in faith. With the wall, it is infront of you, so therfore, it is much easier to test, and see if the statement is true.

It's fun to touch wet paint!

First of all there is not a billion stars in the universe, and nobody in their right mind would believe that.

... oh, I can't resist. :(

First of all there are not a billion stars in the universe, and nobody in his right mind would believe that.

Grammar patrol. :D

Actually, there are roughly 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

Oh. BTW, Rappaccini, there is nothing wrong with ‘nobody in their right mind...’. It's a bit archaic but grammatically correct.

~Raithere

ok, lets have a show of hands, who are the wet paint touchers?
ill start by saying ME

Zion because we can. If the sign said wet paint taste like chocolate some of the population might test it with their tounge too. (don't get any funny ideas about wet paint signs buddy).

With the billion stars statement, we can't even see that many and their is no way to really use any of our senses to validify the statement so we go on faith (if we concur) from the indivdual whom informed us. With the paint we are able to validify it by touch.

Having this curiousity aspect to our personality has given us advances in technology and in part lead us to where we are today.

I read an article long time ago (meaning I can't post link sorry) where someone took the wet paint sign idea and replaced it with an unloaded gun in a junior high school. The gun had a sign on it saying dangerous and a camcorder recording it.

A number of students walked by the gun that was laying out picked it up pointed and played with it. One kid picked it up over 10 times in a 4 hour period. When they pulled the kid aside --and he was maybe 10ish years old and asked why he picked up the gun ..he said he could not help himself.

Sounds like a cool experiment. More entertaining than the wet paint sign experiement.

Paint doesn't stay "wet" very long. Latex based especially dries very quickly. Most "wet paint" signs stay on a lot longer than it takes for the paint to dry. Everyone knows this. People need to validate their assumptions.

one time i painted my toe nails