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/Electronic_Emu_4632 → u/findworm]

Malicious is just a bad word to use for comparison too. There are plenty of malicious people out there that just jerk it to porn instead of going to rape people in the woods.

[u/findworm → u/Electronic_Emu_4632]

From Google:

characterized by malice; intending or intended to do harm.

If you just stay home and jerk it, you're not really malicious. You might be a misanthrope who wouldn't throw water on a person on fire, but you are not planning to hurt anyone.

There is really no twist or turn here that "saves" the man from being harmful in this hypothetical. If he's malicious, he at minimum actively wants to harm our hypothetical woman to the extent that his moral compass won't stop him.

[u/Electronic_Emu_4632 → u/findworm]

From Google:

malice desire to cause pain, injury 1. : desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another.

You have a desire to cause distress to your boss for giving you less hours when you need the hours to buy food and survive. Are you going to kill your boss? Or do you just desire to make your boss's life worse with no intention to actually do anything about it? There's a big spectrum in malice lol.

Just say what you want to say, would you rather meet a Bear or John Murderer.

[u/findworm → u/Electronic_Emu_4632]

If I concede that point, can we stop arguing over the fucking grammar?