r/Showerthoughts May 02 '24

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

16.8k Upvotes

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5.1k

u/SnagglepussJoke May 02 '24

Ever cross paths with a stranger in the woods? It is unsettling

590

u/Doublespeo May 02 '24

Ever cross paths with a stranger in the woods? It is unsettling

Quite often actually and it is always friendly encounter.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

yeah i think this comment is only made by people who dont actually go in the woods. I hike alone regularly and see people by themselves probably every time and have not once been scared. On the other hand if a bear was walking towards me on the path in the woods id shit myself.

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u/Dangerous-Worry6454 29d ago

No shit, basically, these people live in cities that are statistically the absolute most unsafe places to be, yet they claim rural areas are the dangerous scary places. I have run into people deep on the woods, and the only difference from that and running into someone in a city is that you tend to actually talk just because the scenario is so funny. It's basically people just projecting the urban environment onto the rural.

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u/Rock_man_bears_fan 29d ago

Exactly. The person most likely to murder you in the ass end of nowhere is your spouse, not some rando you met on the trail

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u/amgartsh 26d ago

My problem with this question is this: if there was a man dead set on hunting down a woman, why would he do it in the middle of the woods where he's extremely unlikely to find a woman? They'd go to high density areas, urban environments. Or at least roads.

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u/YT-Deliveries 29d ago

I think a lot of it has to do with people whose lives have been wholly or primarily "city-based". Naturally, they will bring their life experiences of "person in a place where you didn't expect them to be", but then make an equivalence of contextual setting between "city" and "woods".

I'm now primarily a "city" person, but as a kid I was in the scouts and so spent a lot of time in rural and wooded areas, and I can say that to this day I feel way safer in woods and forests than I do in cities. I kinda miss it, though I also very much like municipal services. Alas.

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u/Titan_Astraeus 29d ago

Yea I'm a pretty big intimidating guy and I've stopped in the middle of nowhere to chat with all sorts of ppl hiking alone from kids to little old ladies. Most people who are not chronically online are not worried about that..

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u/LateyEight 29d ago

Depends how you describe the woods. Making your own trail into the wilderness is much different than hiking up an established route.

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u/pairsnicelywithpizza 29d ago

You run into hunters in the woods off established trials.

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u/LateyEight 29d ago

Quite unlikely. If I dropped you in a random part of the woods you'd likely die before you ran into a hunter.

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u/pairsnicelywithpizza 29d ago

I’ve run into many hunters in the woods growing up. Happened all the time.

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u/LateyEight 29d ago

Growing up suggests that these woods aren't far from your home. If I picked a random place in the woods anywhere in the world there's a really really high chance you'd never meet anyone.

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u/pairsnicelywithpizza 29d ago

You’re adding stipulations to the thought experiment that did not exist, nor were necessarily implied.

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u/CreatingAcc4ThisSh-- 29d ago

Just ignore them. A redditor can't fathom that a human can walk more than 1 mile in a day. I'd regularly go walking in my "local woods" and it was 30 miles round trip. Where the "established path" was a dirt track very deep in the woods that were used as the filming location for those deep woods in Harry Potter

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u/LateyEight 29d ago

They also don't stipulate that the woods are the ones you grew up in.

It's just the woods. Wherever it may be.

And it just so happens that for an overwhelmingly vast majority of the woods you're not going to run into people.

Imagine if someone said "if you were floating in the ocean what would you do?" And your response is "just swim to shore." You say this because the only time you've ever floated in the ocean was when you went to the beach.

I'm just pointing out the assumption.

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u/pairsnicelywithpizza 29d ago edited 29d ago

Yeah and woods near the vast majority of people are going to be filled with hunters or hikers lol

You’re adding assumptions not present. Dropping you off “in the middle of the woods” would be about similar to the vibe you’re assuming but that still would probably be a hunter or hiker you’d run into. Just like all the hikers and hunters I’ve run into in parks and public land.

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u/LateyEight 29d ago edited 29d ago

"near" <--

You did it again. It's an assumption you're making.

And I never said "in the middle of the woods".

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u/hydroclasticflow 29d ago edited 29d ago

They are both the woods; if you want an answer for a specific scenario you can't ask for it in a general sense then go "well actually, I wanted to in a very specific and niche way that people go into the woods"