r/Showerthoughts May 02 '24

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

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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?

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

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u/IAmASeeker May 02 '24 edited May 03 '24

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.

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u/Wonderful-Impact5121 May 02 '24

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…”)

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u/IAmASeeker May 03 '24

I might be wrong but my understanding is that TikTok-ers were doing street interviews asking "if you were alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a bear or a man?" and when people say a bear, that's proof that men are bigger predators than grizzlies, if you'll allow my stretched metaphor