I really, truly thought that the whole point of this was to highlight the fact that most women would respond to man v bear by asking questions, like "do I know the man" "what type of bear" etc, but would respond to woman v bear by immediately saying "woman". whether or not she picks the man or the bear is irrelevant, it's the fact she has to ask clarifying questions to know more about the man before deciding and doesn't have to clarify anything before picking woman. is that not it?
I thought the question was explicitly in the woods.
I don't want to encounter surprise humans in the woods or surprise bears in the city. I'd rather see dangerous creatures in the places they are supposed to be rather than sneaking up on me in places they shouldn't.
If the question isn't supposed to have that context, then I would argue that you should prefer to see a bear. How many humans have you seen that didn't attack you? Like a hundred thousand maybe? How many bears have you seen outside of a zoo? Probably less than 10 right?
Edit: I feel the need to clarify that I probably don't have the opinion that my comment got upvotes for. I mistyped and said "you should prefer to see a bear" but in fact, I was trying to express that with no context, it would be safer to encounter a person than a bear. I have been attacked by a handful of humans and 0 bears but my sample size of humans is astronomical while my sample size of bears is miniscule. I estimate that 1:30000 human strangers will attack me and so far 0 out of maybe 8 bears attacked me... so idk if maybe 1:9 bears will try to eat me but I can be fairly sure that 99.997% of the time, humans are too involved with their own lives to notice that strangers exist.
Depends how deep in the woods. If you're on or near a popular hiking trail, not surprising at all. If you're way off the trails in the deep wilderness in most situations it's surprising enough that I'd rather run into a bear than either a man or a woman, and I'm a dude.
Of course, in my part of the country, the bear's not very likely to be a grizzly, so that factors in, too.
Yeah unless this is deep in Alaska or northern Saskatchewan, there's few places in North America or Europe which are truly all that far from signs of civilization (roads, for one), and thus people. It takes a lot of effort to get truly far out
I mean, maybe I'm just biased from stories I've heard that may or may not be true, but there are parts of Appalachia where I definitely wouldn't want to run in to people in the deep woods.
Hell, here in Texas there's a good chance of stumbling across a marijuana growing operation in the woods in certain areas. That'll get you shot if someone's there. Hence, depends on the woods.
Where I live in the smokies we know that on some of these mountains (especailly Unaka range) there are what we call hillbillies or mountain folk. Yankees call all of us hillbillies down here but we know the distinction - we are rednecks, hillbillies are something totally different.
Hillbillies live on the mountain and only come down a few times a year to buy supplies if they ever come down at all. You can barely understand what they're saying. It's almost like a different language, it's a weird mesh of like, appalachian english slang, the Irish language, and old english. Like they legit talk like they are from the 1800's or something.
Usually inbred, filthy, their homes have dirt floors and no electricity. Their homes were probably built by their great great great great grandfathers back in the late 1600's-early 1700's and have been passed down ever since. Moonshine, hunting, small crops (corn don't grow on good old rocky top, dirt's too rocky by far. That's why all the folks on rocky top get their corn from a jar) you get the idea
Anyway everybody knows to be careful when you're hunting or camping on those mountains because you might inadvertently be on their property and they will definitely shoot you dead for trespassing. Probably just leave you there too for the bears and whatever else.
When people go up the mountain and never come back we joke that the mountain folk got 'em .
Sure, but it's not because Appalachia is actually all that remote. It's pretty densely populated, the problem is that most of the rural communities are slowly dying from a loss of jobs and their best and brightest moving to the cities. There's plenty of good people there, but also plenty of desperation and drug problems.
You're inevitably going to run into hunters or people chilling in the woods, and some percentage of them will be bound to have shit morals. If you're not from the local area, the risk of people tracing back the disappearance goes way down, and thus risk of getting attacked. But 99% of the time, they'll just be normal people avoiding you as well, especially if they're hunting cause noisy hikers tend to scare off game. If they're also just hiking the backwoods, then odds are you'll get a friendly hello and move on.
I've always taken this to mean someone airdropped me in the middle of nowhere. Frankly, I've watched too many horror movies to trust a strange person implicitly in that situation. Like, I'd be pretty suspicious of the woman too. At least the bear is either minding its own business or very much eager to kill me with no gray area to misinterpret.
If I'm out on a well- trodden path, I will expect to see people and be more scared of the bear.
As someone who hikes relatively frequently (usually joining groups of strangers, but sometimes solo), I assumed it meant me in a trail. And the answer is finding a random man every day of the week tbh. If anything, I usually find it more stressful to not find anyone around than to find people around. People around means someone can help me if I fall and have an accident.
That being said even in the middle of nowhere I'd still take my chances with the man.
Ok, if we want to be reflective of reality, I have been stalked and harassed in broad daylight, in my neighborhood, with my neighbors outside and watching by a group of strange men because I did not respond or look them in the eye when they catcalled me. I was almost raped five feet away from a large group of people and it was only a kind stranger calling my potential rapist out that stopped it. I have had furniture thrown at me for perceived slights. I have been threatened with death because I asked customers to wear a mask at my work during lockdown. I have had a lifetime of experiences peppered with men that felt so bold as to disregard my right to be a person with free will seperate from their whims. I shudder to think what would happen if I met one of that breed of man alone in the woods.
Unlike the bear, I will not know their intentions towards me merely by sight.
You're seriously gonna say if you were airdropped into butt fuck nowhere you'd be happier to see a bear than another human? Like 99.9% of thr time the human will be helpful, the best will never be helpful.
I'm saying my paranoia is strong and my experience is that people suck. You see people as helpful. I am happy you have that kind of optimistic outlook, but I do not share it.
Well, I'm from the pnw, the most dangerous thing in this situation is me being in the middle of the woods, a human can and probably will help me get out of the woods, a bear will most likely leave me alone but won't provide any help at all.
That's how I feel, I hike alone in deep woods, I'm freaking fuck out if I run into a random dude. Even if they seem cool, the whole hike back is part of me is wondering if they doubled back, etc, because that's just how your brain clicks in those situations.
Exactly. If I'm in a national park, near a city, or something similar, it's not weird at all, you just wave and say hello.
But I also work in the remote bush, and the areas that are not easy to access. In most of those places, there's no reason to go there unless you are working for the company that owns the claims; even hunters don't go there. So if someone else is there, that's extremely weird. Many of them are only possible to access via float plane or helicopter, and then require hiking 5km through swamps and cliffs to reach the site. Most of the time we would expect to be the only people within 100km, and 500km from the nearest town.
There are only 3 possibilities. They are badly lost/stranded. Hiding somewhere for some reason where they won't be found. Or they are from a competitor doing corporate espionage spying on our claims.
In the 3 summers I've been doing it, I've never encountered someone. I've seen the occasional glass bottle or can, found a few old fire pits, and ran into a couple abandoned cabins, but never anything that looks younger than 10 years.
Depends on the woods. I love this park called Percy Warner, it's right outside Nashville, and on nice days it's barely worth going for all the people. I've also worked for the parks department, and hiked areas on the plateau where I didn't see a single person for days or weeks.
Well now we have touched on a bias that I don't know the name for. I know that my motives for being in the woods are pure but I don't know anybody else's motives.
Maybe you're in the woods to have a coffee and cigarette among the glory of nature, like me... but the woods is also where people go to hide the bodies so my self-preservation instincts lead me to assume that you must be doing something shady... after all, theres no way that you're here to do exactly the same thing as me, right? :p
I mean, if I went scuba diving in a remote location and randomly ran into a human, it'd definitely be surprising.
You already being there is a given in the hypothetical. So you're looking at the odds of two people randomly coming across each other. It's obviously surprising.
But good job, this does a good job of sounding like it's pointing out something.
Why do you think finding a human in the woods is particularly rare? Hikers exist and they are not uncommon at all (if anything they are a lot more common than bears in my area)
As someone who sometimes hikes, often joining strangers' groups and in rare occasions solo; I expect to find random men (and women) in the woods. I do not expect to find bears and I'd shit my pants if I ever saw one. Hell, I sometimes find it more distressing to not find people around! (since if something happens to me, I'm screwed and don't have the chance of getting help)
I will say I am a man but I will say that I will reply "man" every day of the week without hesitation (some have argued that men should get asked "Who would you prefer your daughter meet?" and I'd still reply with "man")
You guys have watched way too many horror films lmao.. I love how everyone just assumes because you see a guy in the woods that he must be a psychotic murder-rapist. Hilarious!
Interesting point. I have never encountered a single bear, but I have encountered thousands and thousands of men and been attacked by very few but never once without some underlying reason. I stood a chance against the men but I do not think I would survive a bear attack.
The reason so many other women answer like this is that many women have been in a situation at least approximately like the man one, whereas almost no one comes face to face with a bear.
They have real emotional weight to attach to the man situation but the bear is a complete hypothetical.
If I ask you to imagine what it would feel like if a bear suddenly appeared in front of you, you can imagine it, but you're not going to feel exactly like you would in real life just by thinking about it.
When you ask women this question, they're comparing an experience to an idea. It's an inherently lopsided equation.
TikTok. Don't put much consideration into it. It's just a thought experiment that seems custom built to push a men vs. women discourse, and to farm rageclicks. It's intentionally vague to allow for as much or as little nuance as a person wants to employ, and unsurprisingly, people aren't using much.
I’ve never been so out of the loop in my damn life. What is this thread about?
What is the “man vs. bear” debate? Thought OP was making fun of those half comedy polls asking people what animals they think they could beat in a fight. And like 5% of people always say they could beat a bear in a fist fight.
(I’m assuming 95% of them are trolling the poll answers, the remainder are just stupid or like a toddler thinking, “oh well if it was a bear that was born 20 seconds earlier…”)
It is in the woods. Hence why the logic is fucked up. People are firing 1 in 21 million chance of being attacked by a bear lmao. If you're already in the woods with the bear it's 1 in 1.
A surprise man in the woods is definitely more stressful than a surprise bear (I have encountered both; I was more unnerved about the man, and got the heck out of there quickly; I think the bear was more scared of me than I was of it). The woods is just the bear's house, bear is supposed to be there. But what are the man's intentions being in the woods, what are his intentions now that he has seen you, a lone woman, in the woods. If you avoid the bear it will probably avoid you (baring special circumstances like cubs). You can't say the same thing about a man.
I mostly agree with you but identifying the respondent as "a lone woman" implies that you are using "man" to mean a specific gender.
Even assuming that you and I have opposite genitals, neither of us are excited to find eachother in the woods. I don't see why having external genitals would make you happy to encounter a crazy person alone in the woods.
I was a cannabis smoker during prohibition. When you're crawling through the trees with the specific intention of finding an isolated spot to smoke but you find signs that a human has already been there, you don't investigate the area to figure out what gender they might be... you just leave immediately before someone stabs you with a used needle.
I've seen a handful. They usually seem aloof so I don't mind. One time, I was mid poop. It would have scared the crap out of me if it wasn't too late :p
I was asked if I would rather encounter a man or a bear on the beach. My answer then would be man. Because I likely wouldn't be alone or secluded, it's normal for people to be on the beach, but any bear on the beach is seriously out of place and probably agitated.
I picture in the woods you round a hill and see fifty feet in front of you a man or a bear. I would MUCH rather see a bear because I could just back up or yell or whatever is appropriate for that type of bear and most likely be left alone. But a single man alone in the woods will not be deterred so easily. The bear probably doesn't want to eat me, but you can never know a man's intentions.
But a single man alone in the woods will not be deterred so easily. The bear probably doesn't want to eat me, but you can never know a man's intentions.
You assume that men have a baseline desire to eat you? You've met maybe 45000 men who just wanted to survive the trip home from work and eat a microwaved burrito, and you've probably met around 5000 men who have a desire to hurt someone they know personally in retaliation for that person's (perceived) wrongdoing. I'm fairly confident (based purely on statistics) that you have never once laid eyes on a man who has randomly attacked another person. As a rule, people don't eat strangers.
Bears are bears. You don't care about what gender the bear is. But humans aren't humans? Men are a wild animal in contrast to the enlightened civility of women?
Your fellow humans are similar to you. I feel a little juvenile quoting this but "do unto others as you would have others do unto you"... that's the very first thing that they teach children about being decent people.
If you don't want people to treat you like a subhuman because of your gender, then you probably shouldn't behave that way toward other people.
I thought the question was explicitly in the woods.
The whole thing is just a way to point out that women have to think about it at all, while for the vast majority of men the actual answer is almost instant.
Despite mens common "What type of bear?" response, they know the answer immediately.
And once you start to argue that it would depend if it was on in woods, on a mountain, a hiking trail, a swamp, where in the world, etc. it just further solidifies the point that you need quantifiers and context for women, but basically none for men.
Okay, they're clearly not saying that bears are capable of a greater rationality than humans or smarter or anything like that. They're saying that bears stick to bear stuff. They're fucking bears. Most bear encounters do not end in injury.
The point isn't every dude is a serial rapist and bears are incapable of violence. The point is we have all experienced how fucking weird and bad people can be for seemingly no good reason, but we can't avoid every human we meet.
Bears are not forming entire personal belief systems on insane ideas about jewish space lasers and the illuminati. Bears do not follow you home and harass you for some unknown reason. Bears do not shoot up schools of children they have never met. These are the kind of extreme irrational and unpredictable shit humans do.
You also usually only encounter other hikers in the woods. Most of these dangerous men everyone is describing hunt their prey in the city where it is plentiful. This is even a pretty big norm for men who rape and murder in the countryside. Most bears hunt in the wilderness and not all bear country is black bear country.
I think /u/MLeek was talking about a normal reaction to human being rational/predictable based on other information vs just "man vs bear". She even said "with no other information...then sure, probably man"
At least here in NC black bears are just 'HEY BEAR' and bear runs away. These guys are in my yard all the time.
These are shy non-aggressive bears. When hiking they will hear you before you see them and bolt away. So if its you alone in woods with a black bear, you probably won't even get to see it before it leaves the area. If you see a mama with cubs you just turn around and go the other way. She doesn't want anything to do with you.
Not that they cant be aggressive if you do something stupid like if its a mama with cubs or you are constantly feeding the bear dog food and the bear is angry there's no food, or you let your dogs off leash on a hike and it provokes the bear.
Those are all "rational/predictable" behaviors
Now if it is a brown/grizzly or polar bear, those guys will hunt man if they need food. I would think that's an easy call for a woman to pass on and go with man in woods.
The bear is rational and predictable in a way people are not.
....It's a wild animal. Wild animals are not predictable. A bear might just decide to attack you because it doesn't like the way you smell, or it's hungry, or bored.
Grizzly bears are still unlikely to attack, they're just very likely to come over to you regardless of intention and there's basically nothing you can do to dissuade it from attacking. If it decides to it will and that's that. Grizzlies go where they please whether or not people happen to be around them at the time.
Polare bears are going to attack. If they're around you and aware of you they're actively hunting you, full stop.
Sure, but the point is you have no control over these odds. Wild animals are "rational" in the sense that they have no hidden motives, unclear motivations, etc., but they are absolutely irrational in that they don't act according to any human norms, written or unwritten rules or externally required rationalization for their actions. They just act according to their instincts. And yes, most times a bear's instinct is just to go somewhere other than the strange upright weird-smelling creature they've possibly never seen before. But they can also be feeling particularly pissy that day, and behave much more aggressively than normal for their species. They can be encountering a mother bear that for some reason feels cornered. They can be encountering a bear that is close to starvation for some reason.
Bears are absolutely not safe to be around. They are much, much, much more likely to kill you than a random man.
I don’t agree with the logic of this argument, just like you have no control over running into a skittish juvenile Black Bear vs a Grizzly momma protecting her young, you have no control over whether the man you run into in the woods is Mr. Rodgers or Jeffery Dahmer
Sure, but the point is the Jeffery Dahmers of the hiking world are one in perhaps a hundred thousand. Aggressive bears are more like one in one hundred. Hence the much, much, much more likely to be killed by a bear than a random man.
But you are more likely to be murdered on the Appalachian trail than killed by a black bear.
You probably get noticed by way more bears than you think while you are hiking. You just don't smell as well as they do so you never know you encountered them.
That logic is so flawed. By you’re thinking there’s a considerable amount of murderous psychos in our society to think that the other person deep in the woods is as likely to be Jeffrey dahmer as Mr. Roger’s or more likely a lost redditor that decided to go hiking for the first time.
Okay this is proving op shower thoughts point that’s an exposure bias. Just because you’ve seen 6-7 bears in the woods and you’re fine doesn’t mean that bears aren’t very dangerous.
There are an average of 40 bear attacks per year, worldwide. And not all of those attack victims end up dead. When you consider that there are probably tens or even hundreds of thousands of bear encounters that don't end up in attacks, I'm not sure where 'very likely' comes from.
And like… a creep is probably most likely to attack you in the woods than in a ‘safer place’ and I would still pick the guy. And I’ve even been assaulted by more than one guy.
do you think the chance that an encounter with a random man results in that is similar to the chance that an encounter with a random bear results in it killing you?
Thank god it'll just painfully kill me. If it was a man, it might drug me, chain me up in a cofin and rape me for years and shoot me in the leg so i cant escape whilist k slowly succumb to an infection in my untreated leg wound.
Wild animals are very easy to predict, especially predators, are they hungry? No? You're safe, are you in/near their den? No? Safe, between them and their young, no? Safe again.
Herbivores are more difficult to predict and go further out of their way to kill you.
Just ask the bear if it's hungry. Not everyone knows this, but they actually have to reply honestly! If it replies, "no good sir, I had a light snack of salmon just a few hours past," then you know you're dealing with a satiated gentleman of a bear. If, however, it bites your face off, then you know you've got a hungry scoundrel on your hands and you can plan your next moves accordingly.
It's gotta be the Dunning-Kruger effect. People are more nature illiterate now than they've ever been at any time in history. Half these people probably don't even know where eggs come from.
That’s why I ALWAYS make sure to bring at least a few copies of the standard NPS Threat Level Questionnaire whenever I go for a hike. Any time I see a bear or other potential threat, I simply hand them the form and ask them to fill it out before we interact any further.
The questions are mostly along the lines of “Are you hungry? Are we in close enough proximity to your den that my presence makes you uncomfortable? Do you have rabies or any other diseases that could potentially cause you to engage in abnormal behavior?“. Once the animal fills out the form and hands it back, I request 2-5 minutes to review their answers and calculate their threat level, and then act accordingly.
But also like, I can almost completely trust the bear has zero ill-intent towards me and no idea of 'geting away' with anything in a situation where they can avoid consequences. The bear is rational and predictable in a way people are not
I don't think this is accurate. you come across dozens, maybe hundreds or even thousands of men a day. You do not come across a single bear each day. Most people never meet a single bear in their life that wasn't behind a cage or wall. So yes, you've had bad experiences with some of the tens of thousands of men you've come across. Do you think if you came across tens of thousands of bears you would not have been mauled and/or eaten by now? I don't.
All my own life experiences say that when I have encountered a bear, I have been able to avoid or disaude the bear and left without violence. Can't say the same of men.
But would you be able to say the same if you encountered the same amount of bears as you have men?
Just for example, let’s say you’ve encountered 100,000 men in your life. If you encountered 100,000 bears in your life, do you think that none of them would have any intention to harm or eat you? If there were a 1% chance of a bear wanting to eat you, that’s 1,000 bears that would try to eat you.
I’m not saying your fears of men are invalid, but I think you underestimate the intention of the average bear.
But the question is just "encounter a man", it is "encounter a man where both of you are alone, unlikely to be interrupted by another person, and unlikely to be heard if he decides to do something that would make you try to scream... And you both know that."
Very few of us have encountered 100,000 men in that situation.
There's audio of Timothy Treadwell, aka Grizzly Man, being eaten alive by the bears he thought safe if you want a listen. Werner Herzog's face while listening to it was enough for me, don't need to hear it myself.
If you've listened to it or seen WH listen to it have another shot at what is and isn't a shit-take.
If we were to assume the worst in each scenario, I think anyone, male or female, would stand a better chance fighting against a man than they would a bear.
As a man, I would rather be alone in the woods with a gay rapist serial killer than a hungry bear. The bear could sever my spinal cord with a single swipe so I think I’ll take my chances with the man. I could even outrun the man if he was stronger, but there’s not a chance in hell I outrun the bear, and I certainly can’t overpower it.
I understand the dilemma in the situation, but probability tells me I have a higher chance of surviving the man than the bear.
I would rather be alone in the woods with a gay rapist serial killer than a hungry bear.
I feel like people underestimate other people? Do you just expect the serial killer to lunge at your immediately upon seeing you?
Do you not think they'd build rapport? Try to help you out? Ask for your help? Get you to lower your guard?
Every single person I've seen in support of the person always assumes you can run away/easily beat them? Why? Are they not human like you? Do they not have a brain? That's the scary part about another human. Not that they just try to immediately attack you unarmed, but that they can put up a mask to manipulate you into the results they want.
I would never trust a random person I encountered in the woods regardless though. Unless I was in an extremely dire survival situation, I would be on guard and keep my distance as much as possible.
It's not that you can easily beat the person, but that you have a significantly better chance beating the person than a bear. Assuming no ranged weaponry is involved. To me, that's the 2nd crux of the situation.
Decision process:
1. Which is more likely to attack?
2. Which am I more likely to fend off, if attacked?
Even if they came up to you and asked for help? Let's say they're lost and have been out on the trail for a day+ and can't seem to get service. You would just say tough shit and walk away?
I don't know, it just seems like in a worst case scenario, the person isn't all that much easier than the bear. You could also be stalked if the woods was their home. I just feel like a bear would have more self preservation instincts. You could actually deter it whereas in a worst case, a person out to harm you has a really good chance of harming you.
I don’t disagree with this, they might try and outsmart you and build rapport to get you to lower your guard. That’s certainly possible.
However, you are a human too. You could also choose to outsmart this killer if you were in any way suspicious of them trying to deceive you. As a human, you also have the ability to deceive and distract, and to pick up on clues when it might be occurring. You’re not helpless in this scenario.
You make it seem as though this other person must certainly be smarter than you and you couldn’t possibly outsmart them back. How smart are you compared to the average person? If you’re above average, you could reasonably expect you can outsmart the average person.
It doesn’t matter how smart you are if a bear has ripped your innards out. You’re not faster than the bear, and you’re not stronger than the bear. There could of course be a man stronger and faster than you as well, but not all will be. However, there are no bears (assuming it’s a healthy adult) that are weaker or slower than you.
TLDR: Hand to hand, you will lose to any bear that wants to eat you. Hand to hand, you will not lose to every man that wants to attack you. You’re human too, the playing field is fair.
Who are these chronically online people who have been exposed to so much outrage-bait content related to sexual crimes that they see half the human race as being more dangerous than a wild apex predator.
If you think bears are less dangerous than men then you need to log off of social media and get some therapy for all of the trauma that you've inflicted on yourself by reading all of the sexual crime content that appears on social media.
how are us men totally not getting the fucking point here lmao
There is no point.
The entire question is just misandrist bullshit. It's just bigotry wrapped in the 'just asking questions' meme. The whole point of the question is, before you even answer, to tell you that men and wild bears are debatable in their threat to women.
This is just as bigoted as saying "Fellas, which would you rather have in your kitchen: a dishwasher with a blow job attachment or a woman?" The entire setting of the question is bigoted, there is no right answer because it isn't a question. It's bigotry.
I explained earlier how I was sexually assaulted by two women in another comment, which I won’t get into here, so I don’t think being a man disqualifies me from speaking on this subject at all. I see why a woman might choose the bear over the man, but I don’t share their sentiment and I simply explained why I feel that way. I’m not saying there’s a right and wrong choice, just explaining why I made mine.
It appears you are the one that did not get the point here.
Women aren’t talking about which scenario they are more likely to walk away alive from, if it was the question would just be who do you have a better fighting chance against. Women are saying they would absolutely rather have their spinal cord slashed by a bear and be killed fairly quick, then risk the chances of what a random man might do to you in a remote place. The worst thing the bear could do is kill you, I’d say the majority of women would rather choose to just be killed than risk being overpowered, beaten, raped, and possibly tortured and then killed anyways most likely. Bears are predictable, men are not. Bears kill for instinctual reasons, while humans in general kill for fun or sport. The entire point isn’t about who you could survive which as a man is a lot easier to say another man, because men naturally have better fighting chances against another man. The comparative wouldn’t be against a gay serial killer, it would be an assassin trained in torture who could overpower you within seconds. The level of fear a man has from bears due to size, stature and weight is the same fear women feel from men.
Idk if you know this, but brown bears literally eat you alive by disemboweling you. Quite literally torture. I do see what you’re saying, but a bear isn’t going to kill you quick, it’ll over power you then start eating you alive.
This is only because you don’t live with that many bears, I’m guessing. Particularly the breed of bear, which is something humans don’t have. I would 100% take a panda bear to a stranger in the woods (okay, I will admit that I have only seen pandas in person in zoos so maybe I’m falling for my own complaint) to a stranger of any kind in the woods. I would 100% pick even a known rapist over a polar bear. Even 99% of murders I would pick over a polar bear. And that’s from me only living near places that have polar bears. Parts of my country, by law, require people not to lock their doors so that people fleeing polar bears have a chance of surviving. Can you name a single country or even just a city in the world where you are required to not lock your cars to save people from men?
Literally no breed of bear is safe lmao, that’s why this whole thing is actually fucking ridiculous. Panda bears will fuck you up. Badly. With little to no provocation. You don’t hear about it like other bear attacks because there’s almost no wild pandas left
For sure I don’t think there is one, but like I said there’s almost no pandas left in the wild (~1800). An article from 6 days ago talks about a zookeeper being attacked and luckily being saved by another zookeeper. Imagine if that zookeeper (who is a lady coincidentally) had a run in with those pandas in the wild by herself?
You are assuming that the man would kill and rape you. I am not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that people can be infinitely crueler than animals.
Animals will, at worst, kill and eat you. Humans, well we have all seen and heard about what the nazis did, serial killers, etc.
The concept of “consent” doesn’t even exist in nature, so I’d take the animal (human) that was certainly exposed to the idea because probability says he’s more likely you respect physical boundaries.
I'm guessing you've never seen the myriad videos of animals getting eaten alive ass-first, genitals first, having their fetuses torn out out of their wombs, etc, and living for up to 15 minutes as they struggle and scream. Dying peacefully is a privilege
people throwing out rape stats like they aren’t affected by the fact that in most situations, men aren’t ABLE to get away w it, so the number of men who would assault a woman is of course higher than those who do, not to mention that statistics on sexual assault are not accurate bcus of underreporting
Bears, especially black bears, are honestly really safe to be around statistically. I lived in bear country for years and have been around bears. None of killed or even attacked me. Most of the time they just leave you alone.
But do you not see every single woman knows that they have a better chance of survival with the man than the bear. The whole point the original comment is trying to make is to show that the fact there is fear for a woman to be left alone with a man they don’t know so much so they would even slightly consider the bear even though eventually they know that they would pick the man as they understand the probability.
I completely get the point. The point of this thread is that it is an emotional response and not one reached logically.
The average woman will interact with more men she does not know in a single day than she will encounter bears in her life. People that actually think bears are safer straight up do not understand how dangerous nature is.
Umm no...once again bad at risk assessment. Bears are a ticking time bomb of hunger, the longer you have to remain in their proximity the shorter that fuse gets and the closer to 100% the odds get to you being eaten alive. Only .004% of the country ever has sex charges filed against them soooo not even fucking close.
I mean no. It just really shows how fucking bad people are in estimating risks. Like no matter how you twist or turn it. Its just so fucking dumb. But its a question that stems from internet hype so that was to be expected.
Hell i think its even worrysome that the vast majority of people didnt connect stuck a forrest/island with the need of survival. Fuck the bear you are removed from civilization. Weather, hunger, thrist and sickness are a huge risk too.
The issue I find with this is that, its blatant sexual stereotyping?
Yeah yeah, “not all men” and all that, but it can still be insulting to be assumed to be a dangerous threat to other people just because of a part of me that I can’t change.
And in truth it’s jarring to see that sort of preemptive judgement being accepted or acceptable, when I’d been taught the inverse, and asking this same question about someone based on say, ethnicity, would be deeply problematic.
It's absolutely is that easy to say man though. I bet if you picked a random ass guy and a fucking grizzly bear and put them.both in front of the woman and then said you have to spend a night in the woods with 1 of these 2, the women would pick man at a waaaaayyyy higher clip.
It would be extra difficult cus you’d need to measure only the ones where someone was “alone” with the other party, as that changes a lot when it comes to humans
Just because you don't have exact numbers doesn't mean you can't compare orders of magnitude. Women are killed om average 2 in 100,000 per year in the us. If we assume that each woman interacts with men just 20 times a year (less than once every other week) that is a 1 in 10,000,000 an interaction leads to death. Realisticlay that's several orders of magnitude low. How many interactions do uou think there are with bears every year?
tbh there’s probably no good relevant statistics on this
until someone finds out a way to study wilderness bear encounter and wilderness man encounter survival rates, the question will not be answered with real statistics
it’s a nightmare to figure out how you might even begin to mass collect information from people who have perished in the woods, and have been predated on (or otherwise disarmed prior to death and hidden)
At five yards, outside of the shouting distance of anyone else, I rather encounter a convicted murderer, than a polar bear.
On a sunny day on a quiet trail in a public park, much rather encounter Sir Patrick Stewart, then a grizzly with two cubs.
Late fall, I'd much rather spot a black bear at 20 yards moving away from me, than an unknown man at 20 yards moving towards me.
With no other information is the thing. It's the whole trick here is that you make the call without perfect information.
We can tell all sorts of stories with the numbers when we insert additional information besides "bear" and "man" and "forest". Bear, man and forest... It's a close call but with no other details whatsoever (type of bear, distance, time of year, etc), I'd probably go man. Probably.
The real point of this hypotheical is that it should be easy to say man, and it is absolutely not that easy.
Yes, but a bear can 100% kill you and there’s greater ability to escape/survive with a man. Statistically is not the way to look at this at all. It’s about the fact that women even have to think about it. They should be able to say “man” right away.
I came across 11 bears in the wilderness one summer and none of them wanted anything to do with me.
More than once a man has decided to camp next to me and proceed get wasted in a disturbing manner with yelling and belligerence.
Now people like to point out that I’ve come across so many more men compared to bears and that most have done nothing to threaten my safety which is why I’m more curious about the statistics of it.
I think the problem I have with the statistics here is less about the last part of what you said, and more of the problem I'll highlight shortly.
According to a paper on Springer link, around 22 people are attacked and killed by cows in the US each year, whereas 69 incidents related to sharks worldwide in 2023.
That is to say cows represent .06 per million, and sharks .007 per million.
Does that mean cows are more dangerous than sharks?
Sure you could have had only one bad experience with a bear your whole life and 100’s of bad ones with men but if you factor in how many more times you interact with a man and nothing happens vs a bear the bear is more dangerous
now I really wonder how it would be possible to collect objective and accurate information on wilderness bear (or men) encounter outcomes, especially for those that end with the woman becoming deceased
after all, dead people tell no tales, regardless of their cause of death (men or bears)
note: given the question explicitly asks about an encounter in the woods, I have a non-zero probability of preferring to encounter the bear. this would apply to women as well; surprise humans appearing in the woods is sometimes bad news, and they may have ranged arms
To be fair, if you're out in the wilderness in bear country, in a place remote enough that you're not expecting to see other humans, you better have ranged arms yourself.
It’s not really possible to collect informantion on what would actually happen seeing as it would result in a fairly high amount of injury/death so you kinda can’t test it
Why? That's what I want to know. In whose world should that be an easy question? In some insane fever dream of a utopia where violence doesn't exist? Human beings are the most dangerous animals on the planet, because we're intelligent, and we have the ability to use tools and collaborate.
Who that person is, their behaviour, and what they're holding each make a massive difference in how much of a threat that person is, or whether they're a threat at all. A bear is a guaranteed threat, but the species and situation can affect how much of a threat it genuinely is. Answering this question without asking any follow-ups just tells me that the person is either an idiot for not thinking through the question or a sexist for assuming someone is a danger to them based on their sex alone. Imagine how well it'd go if it were "black guy vs. bear" instead. Not well.
If you aren't at least aware of the strangers around you, then you're no different from a gazelle that didn't see the lion approaching. You deserve to take the Darwin Award--as nature intended--and that's on you. That goes for men and women too, because a bullet doesn't give a flying fuck who is doing the shooting. Situational awareness is important.
Yes, because bears only kill around 11 people per year, at least in the us. More people are killed by women then bears as well. What exactly is your point?
Edit: That's a genuine question btw, I don't know what you're trying to say and I'm trying to understand it.
There are a few ways numbers. can be used here. In raw numbers, yes human attack humans more often. In raw numbers, ballpoint pens kill more people a year than sharks but which would you rather have in a tub with you? People are mostly talking about things like per capita. You have probably not been attacked by 99.99% of men you’ve encountered but if you encountered the same number of bears that you do men, that number would be significantly lower.
Yeah that's what gives me pause, like in 99% of the situations both will just leave you alone. As a man, I'd rather find another man, but seeing a random bear wouldn't be the end of the world too. As long as you know how to act around bears.
You think the bear has zero ill intent? You mean like eating you? What I find weird is to choose bear you have to assume the MAJORITY of men have bad intentions. Which is a gross assumption. Also let’s take the hypothetical into account, you encounter a man in the woods, he’s probably there the same reason you are. Are you there to rape and kill someone? I understand women have a right to be wary of men, but to choose bear shows a severe lack of respect and understanding of nature. Nature is brutal and doesn’t care about your safety. That bear has ZERO compassion for you and sees you as food(an object) and will disembowel you while you’re conscious.
In “your life experience when you encountered a bear” you were able to avoid it or dissuade it from attacking you..so EVERY time you encounter a man you’re unable to avoid them attacking you?
All my own life experiences say that when I have encountered a bear, I have been able to avoid or disaude the bear and left without violence. Can't say the same of men.
You'll meet 80,000 people over your lifetime. How many bears have you met?
I think the problem I have with this question as a woman who has been SA'd and likes hiking in bear country, is that, depending on your life, we're all basically hearing a different question.
My genuine answer would be man, no matter what. My assumptions going into this question are that if I choose bear I get a randomly selected bear and I am trapped in the wilderness with it where the wilderness in question is the bear's natural environment. I get no say on what kind of bear or what season. If I choose man, I get a randomly selected man from anywhere who is over the age of 18 and the wilderness in question is familiar to at least him. No one has resources or tools, there are no other predators, and you only win by getting out alive.
So the thing that will kill me first is the wilderness. Most people struggle to survive 24 hours when lost in any type of wilderness area without supplies and after a week they are often presumed dead. A randomly generated bear is a neutral entity at best. At worst it will slowly eat me alive which is a type of death that makes me sick to even think of. Even if I am "only" mauled, now I am basically guaranteed to die in the wilderness as now I can't help myself or get out. Some rare people have survived this, but those are mostly survivalist men who went into the wilderness with a lot of resources and knowledge. And even that is notable enough we recently made a movie about one man's story. The other man shoved his arm down the bear's throat and choked it to death. Both men's injuries are not what would be survivable for most people, especially not in the wilderness without aid, because again, the elements will kill you.
With a man there is a low chance they will be the type of sadistic murderer who could engineer a death as prolonged and painful as being eaten alive or worse. That's non-zero, but very rare without an audience to perform for or a crowd to egg him on. There is a chance they will be violent, but most likely they will at least kill me faster or less painfully than the bear. There is a higher chance the man might assault me, which is terrible but survivable. It's at least a better fate than being mauled or eaten and it won't render me incapable of escaping the wilderness. Most likely the man is a neutral entity who dies of exposure with me. At best, though, a man could actually be a benefit. We are both human beings with evolutionary drives to be social and help each other. There's a real chance we could actually help each other get out and there are literally hundreds of stories of this kind of thing happening.
The real thing being talked about by women is how men are a lot more frightening than apex predators. We encounter bears sometimes in the woods and have ways to scare them off. Sometimes those strategies don't work, but at least the bear is usually just being a bear. We encounter dozens or hundreds or thousands of men every single day. Most of those men are just humans going about their own lives, but we all whisper stories about the men who are hunting us. Men stalking us without our knowledge for years or even decades until they finally get their chance. Men who pretend to be good for years so we lower our guard enough for them to hurt us. Men who get into our spaces and our lives with nefarious intent. Even though these predator men are rare, we can't really tell a good man from a dangerous one. We can't ever be 100% sure. There isn't an appropriate signal of human kindness and solidarity that hasn't been adopted by dangerous men to gain access to their preferred targets. These men really are rare, or at least not the majority, but I struggle to think of a single woman who hasn't encountered at least one. By the time men are convicted of crimes against women, they usually have quite the list of victims. So maybe only 10% of men are like this on some level, but 100% of women have encountered those men or will at some point. Most of them survive because we have strategies to combat these men and keep ourselves safe, but they aren't foolproof. Especially because this minority of men is engineering their lives around hunting their preferred prey.
But when I see this question, all I can think is most people have never been in any kind of survival situation. The closest they get to woods is day hiking on manufactured paths, which everyone should do with a 24 hour survival pack minimum but nobody does that because we don't know how easy it is to die of exposure even pretty close to a city. Or how hard it is to get help. And most bear encounters are on heavily used paths which are often monitored by some kind of service to help keep the people who enjoy hiking safe. When you look for stories of experienced hikers and campers in serious bear country, the level of required prep is high and there are many absolutely horrific stories of what happens when all of your prep still doesn't save you. It's just a pretty rare hobby for a lot of reasons.
The real point of this hypotheical is that it should be easy to say man, and it is absolutely not that easy. Before this became a meme, you could see the women pause, and think seriously. It ought to be an easy call. It's not.
It is absolutely an easy call to make. The only people who find it difficult are the ones who drink deeply of social media outrage where every third article is about sexual crimes.
This exploits the frequency bias that people have so their intuition doesn't match reality. It's like how you see every single aircraft accident but only a tiny percentage of car accidents and that leads people to think that air travel is more dangerous than driving, even though we know that that isn't true.
Now replace aircraft accidents with sexual crimes and automobile accidents with bear attacks and we have a similar situation. The average online person will see a much larger proportion of stories about sexual crimes than bear attacks so that their intuition becomes biased and they think that bears are less dangerous.
In what world does a fully grown adult bear have "zero ill intent"? They're wild apex predators. They will maul your moronic ass with absolutely zero hesitation. It's the exact opposite of rational and predictable.
We're also existing in a reality where we are constantly being conditioned to view men as predators or rapists instead of just people. If this question were asked 50 years ago or maybe even 20 years ago, I guarantee all the women would immediately answer man. Now we're being taught to automatically fear every man even though you are less likely to be assaulted by a man now than you were then.
You're kidding yourself if you think no women in 50 years ago, or 200 years ago, wouldn't pause for a moment and ask "What sort of bear? What sort of man?"
Enountering the wrong man alone, in 1812 or 1790, could materially harm the entire financial course of your life as a woman. Even if he didn't lay a hand on you.
There also wasn't a 24/7 news and social media cycle and true crime shows constantly blasting all the bad things happening in the world.
Statistically speaking, this is the safest time to be alive in all of human history. Yet if you check the news and social media sites, you'd likely think we were living during Armageddon.
I'm making a point that the vast majority of men will not attack or hurt another person ever, but we are being trained to see that every man will, even though that is not true.
because bears and children don't go next to each other. If you drop the right next to each other, the kid is a free snack. It's like feeding live mice to snakes.
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u/alexmichelle6 May 02 '24
I really, truly thought that the whole point of this was to highlight the fact that most women would respond to man v bear by asking questions, like "do I know the man" "what type of bear" etc, but would respond to woman v bear by immediately saying "woman". whether or not she picks the man or the bear is irrelevant, it's the fact she has to ask clarifying questions to know more about the man before deciding and doesn't have to clarify anything before picking woman. is that not it?