jayen aitch and a poster

Jun 23, 2004 22:23

The Yorkshire Post have in their offices a poster saying 70 people died on the roads last week and encouraging people to take care ( Read more... )

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little_ekern June 23 2004, 18:26:20 UTC
I find this interesting... Have you considered that the reason why it doesn't change is because the 70 people who die each week aren't people who read that poster? If more people went inside the Yorkshire Post's offices then perhaps we would live in a safer world.

We must also consider that this is not a magic poster that counts how many people die during the week and then displays the relevant information. We know this because such things only exist in stories like Harry Potter which is full of such nonsensical lies and gibberish. It is possible that the poster is not magic but someone does have to change it each week based on how many people have died on the road. I'm not ruling this out but I would guess that this is not the case because according to unarguable laws of mathematics and probability it is highly unlikely that the same number of people die on the roads every week (unless it's a really massive conspiracy (but this isn't very likely either)).

Therefore the poster is a liar. But I'm not going to blame the poster because that would be silly for obvious reasons which I won't bother explaining here. Although it doesn't realise what it's saying, it makes the same assumption every week so I think you've got the right idea... the wording should be different. It could say "Well done, you're still alive! but don't let complacency lead to carelessness because you might die." This could cover almost anything although I don't know what effect it would have on someone with a terminal illness.

I've just realised that this is more complicated than it first appears. I suggest you destroy the poster.

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