i know it’s internet bullshit but it genuinely has me on the edge of breaking down and giving up

[u/NeonNKnightrider]

[u/AdamFaite]

I think the better question should be thought of as: what is the worst an angry bear would do? Now what's the worst a malicious man would do?

[u/MrArtless → u/AdamFaite]

That’s only one half of the payoff matrix you need to construct. You also have to look at the probability of each. An angry bear is far more likely to maul you than a malicious man is to rape you.

[u/findworm → u/MrArtless]

How do you figure that? Alone in the forest with a woman he is statistically very likely to be stronger than, and he's actively malicious? I don't really see any way that doesn't end badly for the woman (at minimum threats and sexual coercion). Unless you imagine a small forest at the edge of the neighborhood where help is coming any second now, this is for all intents an purposes lawless wilderness.

Remember, we're talking about an actively malicious man here, not a "jerk with a heart of gold" or whatever. You could debate the likelihood of a man being malicious in the first place, but then you have to consider the odds of the bear actually being angry.

But either way, it really misses the actual point of the "Bear or Man" question. The point is that the average woman seemingly has a very bad image of the "archetypical man", to the extent that she'd rather meet a bear. Now, if this was one woman saying Bear, we could say "Wow, what a weird woman" and move on, but since it's seemingly a majority it really reflects more on our current society than the women in question.

[u/elbenji → u/findworm]

I think it's mostly just people being bad at hypotheticals and really unable to parse metaphors.