Tap for context
Some woman on the internet said she would feel safer spending a night in the woods with a random bear rather than with a random man
well, after having thought about it for hours. And i really mean hours (please help me, also don’t mind me, i’m just autistic as fuck and think about these sorts of things a lot)
I have finally put together my ultimate conclusion on this topic. And it is as follows:
For starters, why am i in the woods? Presumably in this example i was just teleported out there at random, with one other entity, either a human or a bear. Now idk much about bear psychology, but if i were a bear, and a human popped up out of nowhere in front of me, i would lose my shit. So chances are im probably going to die.
As for a human, assuming a statistically random sample from the world, lets assume for the sake of this example, someone from within the same geographical area that i am in, because it makes logical sense for the statement here. The chances of them being 1. significant deviant enough that the second they see me, and decide they want to be a problem, is low enough that i’m willing to take it. Paired with the fact that often times abusers and rapists tend to be people you already know (it’s just a basic fun fact about being around people) and in this case, it’s probably someone i’ve never seen before, much less interacted with. I’m assuming the chances of me getting my shit fucked up are probably between 0-5% i feel like that’s pretty reasonable. i can’t imagine much more than like 10% of any given western population are active rapists. So we’ll go with that. And like i said the bear? Probably going to flip it’s shit. And even if it doesn’t it’s still gotta be higher than 10% i would assume.
Now, moving on to the secondary factors, we’re lost in a forest. The very obvious factor here is that being there with another individual greatly increases your odds of being found/getting out, both due to collective knowledge accumulation between the two of you, and the likelihood that other people realize you’re gone being twice as high (roughly) but we won’t consider that aspect significant. So moving back to the productive aspects of having two people. Assuming we’re the female in this case, and the other person is a male, as per the statement rules. That means we have someone who is more likely to be stronger, and more capable of exerting themselves, which could prove useful in a situation like this. However more people is still more better, so we’ll say about a 100% productivity bonus just to be safe here. As aforementioned, we have a secondary source of knowledge here, so we can collectively decide on things, as well as think about them, which often leads to more correct/better solutions/outcomes. As well as the obvious benefit of having someone to socialize with, this is a natural morale booster. Humans are social creatures. Nuff said.
One more thing though, since we’ve established that there are potential benefits to this situation, we must now compare those benefits to the downsides of the other situation, so let’s do that
- being alone (having no additional help, assuming we aren’t immediately mauled and eaten by the bear)
- not being alone (the likely potential that you DO get help, and quite significant amounts of it, with the small additional chance of being raped and killed) Ok i think that pretty much sums it up.
Alright, now moving on to the tertiary aspects of this, let’s modify the original statement. And say that we didn’t just randomly teleport, and that we walked into the woods with someone else (we aren’t counting kidnapping because then this statement wouldn’t really apply would it?) Anyway, now that we’ve pulled foul play off of the table. You’re walking into the forest with someone you probably already know, or someone who you’ve gotten to know thus far. They aren’t a stranger or at the very least, not a complete stranger, presumably you don’t just wander into the forest randomly for no reason, so lets assume you’re going on a hike or something. It’s good exercise after all, so for one thing, you’ve got some level of equipment with you. Probably some level of self defense capability (depending on where you are and how much you care) you did not come into this with the intent of being lost, and you are with someone that you know.
I feel like i don’t have to expand on why picking the bear in this option would be a bad choice…
alright, that concludes my lengthy essay on my opinion of this “thought experiment” feel free to yell at me or whatever, or engage with this, i probably missed something. New information always adds to the fun :) The whole point of a thought experiment is trying out new thoughts and weird ideas after all. Also just for the record, since some of you are probably curious. I have no opinion about these sorts of situations what so ever, because they aren’t real, and don’t exist, so the only valuable thing i can glean from them is through stats and situational analysis.
I’m incredibly bear pilled ngl, as long as I stay a decent distance from it and don’t do anything dumb I’ll be fine, with a random guy idk what might happen, there’s no certain set of rules to follow to get me out of the situation safely - I’ll probably be with a perfectly normal well adjusted guy or I might be with some super transphobe who sees a small visibly trans girl alone in the woods away from all civilisation with no witnesses or some incel who sees his opportunity to get some, regardless of consent. In the bear scenario, all of the power is in my hands to just make sure that I don’t do anything dumb and as long as I don’t I’ll be fine, in the man scenario I just have to trust the luck of the draw to give me a decent man to be alone in the woods with.
Are we talking brown bears or black bears?
Brown bears are violently territorial and will attack you for being in eyeshot.
Black bears are basically giant racoons and will move away from people - especially if you’re making loud noises and making yourself look big - because they don’t want that smoke. They’ll only get aggressive if you surprise them or get anywhere near their younglings.
I’d probably take a black bear over a lot of dudes. As long as we got a good hundred feet or so of distance, Mr Bear and I ain’t gonna bother each other.
Totally agreed, the question is so vague it’s absurd. Are we talking a panda or a grizzly? Is the man a locked-in paraplegic or an violent ex con?
Regardless how you answer there’s always another possibility that makes your decision look stupid.
Yeah but that’s a different scenario all togther. Not all men are dangerous rapists, obviously. But enough are prone to assault and SA that it’s statistically safer to have some random bear (possibly grizzly or teddy) than some random man. If you don’t feel like the random guy walking down the street is dangerous, that’s probably because random men on the street don’t regularly harass you, which is unfortunately still a very common occurance to most women.
While I understand and respect your viewpoint, I’m not quite sure you understand what I’m saying here… The question is designed to be a no win scenario, it’s phrased in such a vague way that no matter how you answer someone else can chime in and say oh no, your not imagining the terrible scenario I’m imagining. There’s literally no way of answering it in a way that someone is going to chime in and tell your wrong.
It’s literally designed to be a test designed to gauge your reaction more than it is to be answered seriously.
Without more info one can’t possibly respond in a legitimate manner. And any responses without additional information is more of a mirror to your own personal disposition and fears than it is a legitimate response to the question.
I am unironically bearpilled in this context. Men can be fucking scary with women. At least I’m unlikely to be SA’d before I die, with the bear.
You’re right. A bear wouldn’t sexually assault you, he would simply kill you.
Yes! As opposed to the man, who would SA me and then kill me!
And also possibly eat you.
Look canonically the worst a bear will ever do is two out of three, only men have hit the hat trick
or eat you alive.
Oh my fucking god. I think it can’t get any worse for a mother.
Why by default man is a serial killer and sa? What are the odds that dude is a psycho? What are the odds that bear is a killer? Do you understand how hard it is psychologically to murder someone if you are a normal person?
According to science, logical and rational thinking, meeting a random man in the Woods is much better option than meeting a random bear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aOOuMQkIzU
The thing these arguments never take into account is a fate worse than death.
That’s the point you’re missing.
Think about why someone would prefer the much more likely bear mauling to the much less likely worst case scenario with a man. If you can wrap your head around that, then consider why these women had that answer ready to go with very little thought. Considerations of a fate worse than death is something that women live with from the age where they first notice grown men noticing them. That averages 11 or 12 years old by the way. Maybe younger if their parents were a little more candid with them than the generic “stranger danger.”
I knew I had to have the talk about men when my girls turned nine. They were playing basketball and one of the dads made a comment about a girl and said “she is going to grow up and look like Mia Kalif (I don’t know how to spell her name, the porn star) and be a hot piece of ass.”
Oh, yeah…you mean that nine year old? The fuck is wrong with you.
I’d rather do neither but at least I know all the safety guidelines for how to not get a bear to tear my ass apart
Right, this is what folks aren’t understanding.
Yes a big ass bear is clearly more dangerous but like in reality the random man is much more variable and there are WAY more examples of what we’re capable of as opposed to what a bear does.
A bears nature is understood.
That post frustrated the fuck out of me. Like I get and agree with the point you’re trying to make. But no, if you were actually given that choice no reasonable person is actually going to pick the bear.
The bear isn’t likely to want to screw with you.
Why wouldn’t a reasonable person pick the bear? Plenty of people have just ordinary, totally safe experiences with bears in their normal lives. Meanwhile, they have ordinary SV committed against them by men in their normal lives. Why shouldn’t they pick the group that hasn’t been a constant threat to them? Its not asking you to try to pick a fight with the bear.
Why wouldn’t a reasonable person pick the bear?
Because you’re comparing a wild animal that can easily kill you with a single swipe, with a random normal person?
Plenty of people have just ordinary, totally safe experiences with bears in their normal lives.
I can, with 10,000,000,000% certainty tell you that way more people have vastly more ordinary, totally safe experiences with random men in their normal lives than with bears.
Because you’re comparing a wild animal that can easily kill you with a single swipe, with a random normal person?
Can easily kill is different than likely to. Plus, the same is true of any human, but they’re also much more likely to have outcomes far worse than quickly being just being killed. Its a random person in the woods, not just a *normal *person (whatever “normal” is supposed to mean). But honestly, I don’t think I’d put it past many “normal” humans (men and women) to commit at least minor SV in the “right” circumstances.
I can, with 10,000,000,000% certainty tell you that way more people have vastly more ordinary, totally safe experiences with random men in their normal lives than with bears.
Sure, but I’m just as certain that women have far more experiences with SV from humans than any violence from bears. Even if they’re actual survivors of bear attacks, they’re likely the victim of far more SV by men.
yeah, they would
You share your world with random men you don’t know every single day. How often do you walk through a bear encloser at a zoo?
deleted by creator
Yeah, the bear pick is the sneaky way women try to rob the average man of status by implying that we are mindless beasts willing to do the worst at the first chance we get.
Incel said what?
https://youtu.be/SSVXbgR4JFs here’s my point better explained. You can reply the moment you feel like actually discussing and not dismissing me based on my gender.
gets called an incel
posts incel shit in response
The fact that you think the point of this is your status and not someone else’s safety says so much.
Because it is about insulting men. No one’s actually getting trapped with bears because they’re answering either way. It’s there to prove a view, would you rather be stuck with a bear or a black person? A gay person? A trans person? A jew? A Muslim?
It’s there to rile up people about their prejudices and I’m just sad we’re all getting piled on like this.
Look, I’m a man, I’m not feeling insulted by this at all. If you are, maybe it’s time to ask why.
I have no problem being a man while also acknowledging that sexual assault by men is a problem that is big enough that it has created a “caution culture” where people teach their daughters to be vigilant and women will cross the street if someone is walking behind them to stay safe. It isn’t like this is overblown, studies vary but all agree it’s somewhere more than one in ten women are victims of sexual violence in their lifetime. That’s a non-dismissible statistic.
Sure sexual assault by women is a thing too, but men tend to handle it differently than women do. All we are doing here is acknowledging that in our culture “male stranger danger” is a thing that exists and is pervasive and strong enough that many women would be willing to risk the bear because at least it won’t rape them.
Why would you be taking that personally?
Well, because it’s prejudice being directed and reinforced towards us! I am the average man, and so are you! I am down for all the #metoo movements ya’ll need but it needs to be pointed towards specifics. I won’t allow to be put in the same cage I supportedsome people to get out of.
i’m just trying to figure out why this is becoming a colloquialism, i mean we’ve had would you rather for a while. But this is a very different format from it, and it’s rather, obtuse. Is the most polite way i can think to explain it.
I hate that i enjoy sociology sometimes, this is one of those times. People suck.
Or maybe people don’t like being roped in with terrible people based on a part of them that they have no control over? Just a thought.
In this scenario the woman has limited information. She has no choice but to assume average chances of a man or a bear killing her, regardless of the individual.
When you’re facing down a threat in the woods, how much they enjoy being stereotyped isn’t your problem.
If you believe you’re less likely to be in danger with a bear than a man, you’re just sexist.
That begs quite a few questions.
Which would be?
It’s nonsense. Out of 100 bear encounters about 1 turns violent. Now, how many men does the average women come in contact to daily and how many of them turn violent? I’m pretty sure the numbers are much, much lower than that for a bear encounter.
My Wife walked passed approximately 1’000 just today. No one even talked to her in a weird way. This whole argument is just fear mongering with sociallly acceptable sexism. This doesn’t solve any problems.
Also, statistically, strangers are the last people tk worry about. The overwhelming majority of abuse victims know their abuser or are even related. You should be more afraid to see uncle Frank and aunt Jenny in the woods than any random man.
This is a gish gallop so I’m just going to highlight that the scenario in question is alone in the woods, not walking past men on a busy street.
Please consider that you might be getting defensive, and will misinterpret both the initial premise and any explanations as a result.
Not at all. You said being alone in a forest with a man is more dangerous than a bear, and I said that’s statistically nonsense.
Just because I wrote more than 2 sentences, doesn’t make that a gish gallop.
There are 2 premises:
- Bears are dangerous (I agree)
- A random man in a forest is more dangerous to a woman than that bear (I strongly disagree)
I showed my numbers for that 1 argument and that’s it. I’m happy to be proven wrong, if you have anything more than “it just is”.
I’m not defensive I find this comparison to be simply ridiculous.
I get the sentiment, but realistically I’ll still pick the random man. A man could kill or rape me. A bear is likely to kill me.
Actually a bear is very unlikely to come after you. I come from an extremely rural part of Alberta, Canada, and large bears would sometimes wander in and near town. They wouldn’t run around swiping people up and murdering them, they would just basically wander around eating garbage and looking for food. The reality is that if you were in the woods with a random bear, unless it was starving or you were near its Cubs, it likely wouldn’t see you as important.
I’ll tell you what though. The bodies of indigenous women would get found in the woods sometimes. Bears didn’t put them there, men did.
Statistical error. Unlikely to encounter a bear; but per bear encounter, less likely to survive than per men encounter.
Serial killers and rapists are very clever and because there exist serial killers who want to kill indigenous women in the woods, they will likely succeed. Bears have no such desire, and because indigenous women are clever they will avoid the bears.
But I’m willing to bet that the odds of a random man being a rapist/murderer are much lower than a random bear deciding to kill me.
It’s hard thing to think about because our brains want to rephrase the situation into taking account how likely it is to encounter men vs bears in the first place. That’s why this isn’t very applicable to, say, staying safe at night or in bars.
…except it is. This is why, if you have to take a ride home with a strange man, it’s much safer to go with an arbitrary man of your choosing than the one who offers.
As my wife put it, if the bear kill me, nobody would ask how I was dressed.
Yeah, if I get attacked by a bear the police won’t blame, interrogate, and shame me. I won’t be looked down on as broken or used.
Actually statistics show that an encounter with a bear is orders of magnitude more dangerous than an encounter with a man. Obviously. I encounter 1000s of men as I was down the street and I’m not dead yet.
Yes, it’s very unlikely to run into a bear. But if that’s the point you’re making, you’re missing the predicate of the question where the encounter is already assumed.
Context: Some woman on the internet said she would feel safer spending a night in the woods with a random bear rather than with a random man
Some woman
Not “some woman” — quite a few women. Lots of women.
I’m a man and even I would pick a bear
Really? What people do you usually hang around with?
Bears are incredibly strong and dangerous and will kill you just for fun.
I would honestly prefer a random man to a fucking moose.
Man is more unpredictable than bear. I know A bear can kill me, but I have no idea what a random man has in mind for me.
Bear: Couldn’t tell you what he’s up to even if it wanted to
Men: Can actually listen and talk their intentions.
Why is a man less predictable in this case? You all just claim things without the slightest bit of argument behind it… so please tell my why that would be the case.
Thanks.
The scale is shark > bear > man > moose. Don’t fuck with moose.
Large prey animals in general. I see a hippo im running
Won’t help, those fuckers go 30 mph. Usain bolt only managed 23 dot something for comparison
I mean… on sight doesn’t mean they’re already chasing, the point is to avoid that
Don’t make eye contact, don’t attract attention, get the almighty fuck out.
The irony of men not understanding why women would choose the bear is insane.
Last I checked men killed other men just as much. Ask yourself the same question, and empathize a little bit.
The bear discourse is the true measure of whether a given man is a red or green flag.
I don t think thats right , I think everyone just underestimate the danger of a bear .
Have you spoken to women about it?
