Interesting thought about the half full/empty water glass

[Kilgamayan]

You all know the phrase about how "The optimist says the glass is half full, the pessimist says it's half empty, and the engineer says it's a good thing he put half his water in a redundant glass".

I was lying in bed thinking about this, and I realized that when I'm thirsty, I want a lot of liquid in the glass to make sure I'm not thristy anymore when I'm done. If I come across my glass and find it's half empty/full, I'm going to be unhappy. I could say "Damn, it's only half full." But that sounds pessimistic to me. If I were an optimist, I'd probably say "Well, at least it's only *half* empty."

Suddenly the roles are reversed. Pessimism says half-full, optimism says half-empty.

Discuss.

[dontcareaboutmyid]

I don't think along those lines. I think either I need to finish my drink or get a refill. Either way it leads to more drinking

Anything can be switched around its all in the wording

[User6773]

Neutral responses:
1) The glass is twice as large as it needs to be.
2) The liquid in the glass occupies 50% of the glass's maximum capacity.

[evilbutterfly]

what i say depends on how the glass got that way. when filling, i will say to fill it half full, and a fresh glass with only half in it will be referred to as half full by me (my wording sucks, oh well). however, if the glass was completely filled, and i drink it down halfway, i say it's half empty. does that make any sense at all??

[IronMonk]

direction of change dictates wordage, makes sence to me.

The liquid in the glass fails to occupy 50% of the glass's maximum capacity.

then again if you were a pyrrhonist the glass doesnt exis, the water doesnt exist, you only appear to be thirsty, you dont exist, i dont exist, and there is no way you can prove any of it.

[Auranceus]

Well, even if it is half full/empty doesnt that mean that the other half is full of something? air maybe? maybe even WATER vapor? did you ever think of that?

[evilbutterfly]

what's to say that anything can be empty?? is empty space empty, or is it just some undiscovered building block of life? people once thought that air was nothing, but we know now that they were wrong. u never know...

[Laharl]

It depends on whether the glass is being filled or being emptied. If it's being filled, it's half-full. If it's being emptied, it's half-empty.

Therefore, when someone stumbles upon a drinking glass that is at 50% capacity, they think "half-empty" because most likely, it was full at one point and was drunk to that level.

[evilbutterfly]

unless of course it's next to the fridge or the sink or some place where it would have been filled. kinda like if the car is going into the station u would say the tank is half-empty, and if they're leaving you'd say it's half-full

[RobbyZero]

Depends who you are and how you were brought up to say it.

Half Empty would = After someone has drank half of it from being full.
Half Full would = Someone poured it only half way.

[talisman]

indeed, the phrasings should be changed to half-emptied and half-filled to clarify things.

[evilbutterfly]

hey, that makes sense. i always thought the half-full half-empty question was poop, and it seems we all agree that it's no way to see if some1 is an optimist or not.

[DracIV]

Well, it is possible that it might measure optimist or pessimist. Given no extra information, the assumption could be that an optimist will always see things as going up, or getting better, while the pessimist would always see things going down, or getting worse. So the optimist would automatically think it was filling (half-full) and the pessimist would automatically think it was emptying (half-empty). I don't think it works, but there is some logic behind it.

[fusi0n]

you know when i was in korea, we drank out of bowls a lot.

[evilbutterfly]

man, i'd waste all my drink doing that...