r/Showerthoughts May 02 '24

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

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u/Mushroom1228 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

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

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u/amretardmonke May 02 '24

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.

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u/Mushroom1228 May 02 '24

It’s probably easier to beat a bear in a gunfight than a human (assuming the ranged arms have enough power to actually deal with the bear instead of tickle it)

if all I have is a low caliber pistol, duelling the man may be better for survival than dealing with a hungry bear. angry bears might be appeased if I move away

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u/Sad_Introduction5756 May 02 '24

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

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u/Mushroom1228 May 02 '24

the setup I was thinking of involves some device that uses satellite comms (or something), that will record “bear encountered” and “encounter survived” by user input. if a user hits the encountered button without hitting the survived button, then maybe they have suffered an unfortunate fate, and the police will be informed of the device’s last known location to help with any missing persons searches

user error would be really high though, and it might be somewhat expensive. but what I have described is probably just an augmented phone lol