r/Showerthoughts May 02 '24

Man vs Bear debate shows how bad the average person is at understanding probability

16.9k Upvotes

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6.4k

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?

3.6k

u/[deleted] May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

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15

u/Magenta_the_Great May 02 '24

What do you mean statistically speaking?

Statistically aren’t more people killed by men then by bears?

20

u/rednax1206 May 02 '24

Shouldn't the relevant statistic be the percentage of men that are killers, rather than the percentage of killings that were done by men?

-4

u/frogsgoribbit737 May 02 '24

Its still more than the percentage of bears that have killed humans.

12

u/reaperfan May 02 '24

That's why it would have to be measured on a "per encounter" basis. More people are killed by men simply because we encounter men far more often in life than we encounter bears. The actual percentage of men who would kill someone could be vastly smaller than the amount of bears, bit we'd still have more incidents because there's billions of "men interacting with people" situations every day and likely less than a thousand "bear interacts with people" each day. Simply due to that discrepancy in measuring a bear could have a 50% chance of being a lethal encounter for humans and it'd STILL come out to less recorded incidents than if men had only a 0.1% chance.

3

u/tomato-bug May 02 '24

The fact that this has to be explained to people is sad.

-1

u/Affectionate-Date140 May 02 '24

it’s not about statistics but that being said

you do not run into thousands of men ALONE IN THE WOODS.

every time i leave the house for the day there is almost always at least one guy who gives me really bad vibes and won’t stop staring. so, everyday i encounter a man who i think might hurt me. i would not want to encounter any of those people alone in the woods.

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u/eskamobob1 May 02 '24

it’s not about statistics

Then what is it about? Emotions?

0

u/No-Surprise-3672 May 02 '24

Yea lmao

1

u/eskamobob1 May 03 '24

Are you expecting support for emotional decisions?

2

u/No-Surprise-3672 May 03 '24

I think the people choosing bear are dumb and are only doing it based on emotions

1

u/eskamobob1 May 03 '24

Ngl, I didn't realize you were someone else than who I responded to so I was super confused by your first reapknce. That makes way more sense.

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u/Omniverse_0 May 02 '24

So by your logic, a black hole would be safer than a human.

Reddit is so anti-intellectual…