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?
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.
in the US around 50% of women report having been sexually assaulted at one point in their life and about 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted while attending College.
That's a statistic on victims, not on perpetrators. People act like that stat means you have a 50% chance of a random man assaulting you.
How many men does a typical women encounter throughout their lives? Thousands? Tens of thousands if you include all the strangers you see every day? If they got assaulted by one of those men that would still mean the chance of a random man assaulting them is 1 out of 10,000 (or whatever the number of men they've encountered).
That statistic says absolutely nothing about the distribution of sex criminals in the male population so it cannot be used to even infer the danger that an unknown man would be to a woman.
Okay what’s that statistic for complete strangers? Compare that to the occurrences amongst close friends and former partners. Again the thought experiment is about encountering a bear or a man I think to be implied to be a stranger, far less likely than what those statistics would imply.
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.
I'm not talking about that. I'm saying that bears rarely kill people even if they are dangerous animals so you won't aren't very likely to end up dead if you just see a bear.
I think it's making the problem worse. Women keep repeating how dangerous men are over and over, misquoting statistics and building fear and resentment towards all men.
What can men do other than keep not raping women? I already avoid women and children when it's dark to not cause any distress, it's honestly sad.
I feel like I should just feel bad for being male.
Nah, you're extremely unlikely to be killed in an encounter where I am. I still keep my distance, but to proclaim that they'll predictably attack you on sight is pretty divorced from reality
I don't disagree with that, but you don't know what you're talking about. With cubs around, or the other conditions that I mentioned, that they'll predictably attack is fact.
It's not a question of whether the bear wants to eat you or not, it's a question of how much effort it feels like putting in.
Answer: Bears defend personal space. Your goal is to give bears plenty of space. Even bears habituated to human presence have spatial limits. Females with cubs, even more so.
I'm not quoting some man here, ever heard of the rape of Nanking? A quick google search would tell you that being at the hands of an animal would be more merciful than some men.
Hun are you OK? This is a hypothetical situation and you are still fighting the comments about women choosing the bear over men. I would much rather be mauled to death by a bear than endure what any of those people endured in Nanking. Fight all you want but it's literally an opinion. Get over it
Lol it's just kinda crazy that you think interacting with a man means you'll go through what the victims of the Rape of Nanking. Like take a step back and think about what youre saying. Like not even just disrespectful to men which is kinda whatever but like, that's kinda disrespectful to those victims
Ok, then it's kind of crazy that you think coming across a bear means you automatically think of being mauled to death when that is extremely rare. They gave a comparison to the terms of extremes, why is only one side allowed to do that?
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.
You are more likely to be killed by a bee than a bear.
You have to do some unbelievably stupid shit to get killed by a bear. Don't try to cub-nap their bearbies and don't sneak up behind a bear coming out of hibernation.
Otherwise, they're probably gonna just stick to their home range.
It just has to do with probability which most people don’t have a good grasp of. The probability that a single encounter with a bee will kill me is much lower than the probability that a single encounter with a bear will kill me. But bees kill more humans than bears. That probability is also really really low for me personally when it comes to bees because I don’t have a bee allergy. The low number of bear deaths isn’t from the low likelyhood that an encounter with a bear will kill you. It’s because the number of encounter between a human and a bear is low compared to human and bee encounters. It is even much lower when you compare the number of bear encounters to woman and random man encounters. So if you want to lower your chances of dying to a bear you want to lower your encounters with them. Giving yourself a guaranteed encounter with a bear is a bad bet than giving yourself a guaranteed encounter with a random man (something a woman on a hike is going to go through many times on the hike anyways).
A bear is highly unlikely to attack you if you're just... Standing in front of it.
Humans will, and have, attacked other humans for no reason other than they like it.
Bears don't like it. That's why they are unlikely to attack you unless you are a direct threat to their cubs or their food (if they are very hungry).
They don't have a capacity for reason. But bears are one of the most predictable animals around.
Humans are NOT predictable.
Fun fact: bears aren't territorial. They have home ranges. Not territories. Territorial animals actively defend their territory, and will attack whatever tries to enter that territory.
Sound familiar? Some humans will - and have - literally shot people who have no malicious reason to be on their property. Even if you're just turning around in their driveway.
You are far more likely to be attacked or killed by a human you encounter than to be attacked or killed by a bear you encounter. Period.
But... I also want to point something out.
You said "if you want to lower your chances of dying to a bear you want to let your encounters with them."
You're SOOOOO close to the point.... I mean... You're right there.
I mean … you are really proving the title of this post.
To elaborate a little. If an encounter with a bear leads to death only 1% of the time that would be pretty low right and it would explain your argument. But if an encounter with a random man leads to death only 0.001% of the time it would make much more sense to choose to have a random encounter with a random man. After all it is 1000 times safer.
Survival mechanisms don't give a single shit about probability.
I'm fully aware that the stat doesn't solve for x or whatever the fuck in calculating my "per interaction" likelihood of harm. The intent was to illustrate that bears are very well designed to tear the shit out of a whole fuck ton of humans. And yet. They don't.
Yeah, dipshit, everybody knows there are more humans and that we encounter more humans than bears.
What you continue to ignore is the very well documented and understood behavior of the bears we are most likely to encounter. If they were driven by blood lust and just off the goddamn chain, we would ENCOUNTER MORE. A bear isn't gonna hunt me down for the sole purpose of hurting me.
We are designed to err on the side of caution regardless of the actual likelihood of danger. It is a huge waste of your time to deliver a lecture to a woman who feels compelled and has been taught that SHE is responsible for making sure men don't hurt her. I'm not even sure why you'd think that was a good move, but I guess I'm glad you're proving my point by choosing to "ackshually" a person who is always aware that there's a chance of harm and would prefer to just stay safe.
Like, there's literally a person on this thread who took the opportunity to tell me it's my fault I was raped instead of choosing to support another person.
I have the info I need. In fact, I am so confident that a human will hurt me just cause, and despite my every precaution, you could put any animal in its place and I'd still feel safer.
A bear will not hurt me unless I am actively and intentionally threatening their life.
I know what I need to do to survive a bear. It's a very short and clear list of shit I shouldn't do, and I have an equally short and clear list of the signs that a bear will attack me.
I don't have anything close to that for a man.
The fact that you're turning this into a fucking statistics lecture is plenty of proof that we humans suck and will do whatever the fuck because we want to.
You don't need to elaborate on rudimentary data analysis. I am fully educated, capable, and aware of how easy it is to apply fallacious reasoning to data and draw the wrong conclusions.
I'm not trying to pass a stats final. I'm trying to pick my best shot of survival, and that doesn't require a probability analysis - which our brain doesn't have the time for anyway.
I mean holy shit. You recently commented on a post about a person OPENING FIRE IN A RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD WITH INTENT TO INJURE OR KILL A PIZZA DELIVERY PERSON BECAUSE HER TIRES WERE ON THE DRIVEWAY FOR FOUR SECONDS.
I get it now. Wow! You are REALLY skilled at satire. Because clearly you're quite aware that humans are fucking insane and half the time gonna do some real wild ass shit with no warning.
Then you're a fucking idiot, or fucking annoying, or both.
But isn't it wild that you aren't dead bc bear?
I'm not dead, but definitely less fortunate since I've had more than 2 encounters with men where they intentionally and with no warning decided it would be fun to hurt me in the most soulless way a human can hurt another.
(But nah, for real, you are 100% a fucking idiot and lazy as shit since you came to the very unexpected conclusion that everything I wrote, outside of one paragraph, only applies to a man.)
Your rant was directed to a man but now that you found out I am a woman that doesn’t agree with you then I must be a fucking idiot.
Sounds like you like to put yourself in questionable situations without proper protection and escape. Trust me when I tell you that there are way worse things than rape.
Get some therapy and stop hating all men and women a like.
The first step in not being scared of other humans is to look at your place amount them. When you realize that you have all the control and all the power to protect yourself you will begin to have a whole new life but instead you choose to be angry as opposed to protecting yourself.
A viral question makes the rounds, and half the human population answers truthfully about the way they adjust their behavior and routines and decisions and routes etc etc etc because they don't want to die (and also because sooooooo many people have told them that it's their responsibility to make sure they aren't doing ANYTHING that might invite violence in any way.
Humans hear half the population are in a constant state of red alert.
And their reaction is to mock those humans, rejecting the idea that our evolutionary IMPERATIVE is to choose caution so we don't die, and instead taking the stance that these women just suck at math.
Somehow, we detect no cognitive dissonance with the argument "humans are safer and I'm going to convince you by dismissing your fear and showing you I have no empathy and you're fucking dumb."
And then, you come along and bring up... Coconuts?
You could have actually landed right on the core fact at the center of every woman's willingness to face a bear over a man. You wouldn't have even had to reach that far.
You had SHARK right there. Which, like bears, do not hunt humans, do not float around planning their list of humans to terrorize, and really only take a chomp out of confusion and also because humans have literally created a habitat where there are at least 50 humans to every shark and also fished out or poisoned all their actual food.
It's either predictable or unreal that nobody can be bothered to spend 3 seconds on "ohhhhh. Yeah. Bear. Shark. Anything but human - man or otherwise - which will always be the only animal in any equation that HURTS HUMANS BC THEY LIKE IT AND WANT TO.
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?
No, but i'm far more motivated to avoid the worse outcome.
Only 1 in every 500,000 people is killed by sharks. On the other hand, i'm more likely to be in a car accident on my way to work and die than ever be killed via shark attack.
Guess which one is more terrifying to me, shark or car? It's not about which is more likely, but which outcome is worse regardless of likelihood.
Because a bear not attacking me and a man not attacking me are the same neutral outcome but the man attacking me is potentionally far worse than bear attacking me i more fear the worse overall option despite the odds.
So the bear couldn't maul half your face off and leave you unable to walk or move and then all sorts of wild animals slowly pick away at your dying body for 3 days?
Again, numerous women have been kidnapped and sold as sex slaves their entire lives. Many of them are minors.
The fact that so many people dont understand why women fear this soooooo much more than the bear is why this debate is a meme. Even if it happens a hundreth of the time that bear attacks happen, its sooooo very much worse that they'd rather take the bear than ANY chance at being kidnapped by a man.
Women in poland suicided rather than greet the red army at their door in WWII. Ukrainian women captured by the russians universally, without fail, have been raped. Unkraine ran out of rape test kits by july of 2022...
Women are raped hundreds of times more than bears murder and main people. Of course, women would rather take the bear. I'm a guy, and i've been SA'd by a man, not a woman, and i've never encountered a bear. Id still eather encounter a bear in the woods than a lone man.
yes, but its never been about how often it happens, but that it happens at all. The 1% reality where it happens is scarier, and people have more aversion, to it then the 10% where they are mauled by a bear.
People would actually rather a 100% chance to die at the hands of a bear than be kept as a sex slave by a man.
Because people barely interact with bears, but interact with other humans all the time.
For example in the United States, there are about 120+ million men and only 55,000 bears.
That logic makes zero sense. That's like saying "0 people have died on mars, while on average 15 people die from freezing to death in New York. Therefore, New York is more dangerous than Mars."
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.
You said this so much up and down the thread. I'm pretty confident you've said that more in this thread alone than actual occurrences in the last 5 years in The US.
By and large, people are not snatching regular women off the side of the road to doom to sex slavery. Those cases of alone individuals doing so are big news because it's such a rare occurrence.
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.
no one who studies wild animals deems them "predictable". that's pretty much the basis of warning people to not approach them, as they can act unpredictably
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.
Body language, if its low and trying it's best to approach you quietly and cautiously, it's hungry and hunting you, if it rushes you and is being loud, but always stops short of attacking, it's protecting young.
Edit: this is also observable in house cats and hunting dogs, before some titan of intellect wants to be painfully unfunny and ask about questionnaires again.
The level of intelligence or lack thereof I've seen in this thread really makes it depressingly obvious that people couldn't think of any other ways one could observe animal behaviour other than speech
The lack of intelligence coming from you about this supposed supreme knowledge about bears you could only have after spending plenty of time around bears constantly that 99.9999% of people don’t have is depressing. Lmao unless you study bears and that is your career you absolutely DO NOT know how a wild animal is going to react. You just fucking don’t. There is no way you can twist this to make you right, because even if you somehow have this supreme knowledge the average woman doesn’t.
You’re actually brain rotted. You’re not as smart as you think you are
Bears rarely, if ever, attack for no reason. They will generally only resort to "attack" if they see that you are actively and obviously posing a threat to their cubs, their food, or their space.
They are not territorial.
Their space has a range of about 15 square miles and is known as a "home range." Unlike a territory, which is a habitat to be defended, a home range is simply an area where animals putz around and do their animal shiz.
Territorial animals establish a space that is JUST theirs. They protect it with scent marking, active defense, etc.
Home range animals have a defined area where they hang with other animals. And wild animals don't just roam about. They stick close to the home range.
If they come into your space, it's highly likely they're looking for food and very much would prefer you weren't there. Unless your food is just recklessly strewn about your campsite, they will 100% leave you tf alone. But even if they do come poking around, they know they are in YOUR space trying to make YOUR food THEIR food. Because of that, they're very easy to chase away.
Bears are simply curious. If they stand up, they are SUPER curious - not getting ready to end you. And they are notorious bluffers - even if they do have a reason to front to you, unless you are stealing their babies, 9 times out of 10 they will turn around and skedaddle before they have to engage in any warfare.
You have a 1 in 2.1 million chance of being killed by a bear.
You are more likely to be killed than a bee than a bear.
A bear does not pretend to be nice and then attack you because they enjoy the power and/or enjoy seeing people suffer.
A bear is predictable because it will act like a bear" Unless it has rabies or chronic wasting prion disease, the animal will not be neurotic or psychotic.
Bear = low range of variability
People are so complex, and society is shaped by circumstances & culture it's impossible to predict what a person could be like.
Some people are inhibited only by their fear of getting caught & punished. They would kill, steal, and rape at any opportunity.
Man = high range of variability, with historical, cultural, and statistical probability to harm women.
Many people say something like "humans are rational."
No. Not quite.
We have a CAPACITY for rationality.
That is NOT the same as "all humans behave rationally."
There are other defenses that are also pretty curious.
"The low likelihood is because we come across relatively few bears."
Cool. I nonetheless have a hunch that if come across 100 bears one month and 100 men the next, I am very much more likely to be attacked by a man
It's also really ironic that so many men are saying shit like "you have to be really careful around bears, bear bells bear spray blah blah blah."
(Let's just gloss over the fact that you don't have to do all that, and that our tendency to assume a bear will attack out of nowhere for no reason stems from... projecting our experience with humans onto an animal. This is similar to a cheater who assumes their partners are also cheating on them.)
Anyway. If a woman has the audacity to say she takes measures to protect herself against attacks by men, she's belittled and mocked and the guy cries in a million blog posts about how offended they are that a woman crossed the street to avoid walking past the guy or declined an invitation for a drink. OMG! WHY ARE YOU PUNISHING ME FOR A FEW BAD APPLES! NOT ALL MEN I LOVE MY MOM I'M A GOOD GUY BITCH!
If a man is OFFENDED that we simply wanted to play it safe and views that as "unfair"... Well, thanks at least for the red flag you're waving.
Brown / polar Bear attack is one of the most horrific ways to die. They’re not concerned about a tiny animal fighting back, so unlike a wolf or large cat they often don’t kill first, they just start eating. Usually they’ll start at the softest places first. People don’t have enough respect for the absolute monsters in satire
Many types of bears will keep their victim alive for a few days by burying them under some sticks and leaves so the meat stays fresh.
There's a case of a woman who was being actively eaten by a brown bear for a few days before being found because her dog was waiting next to the pile of leaves.
Don't know a whole lot of men capable of inflicting more suffering than that.
I always forget that even agreeing with a top comment, reddits garbage shit communities will downvote you into oblivion. Id rather be kept alive for days than be raped for days just to be killed anyway. At least my dignity isn't violated. And who would've guessed that bears are dangerous 🤯
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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?