• CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    7 months ago

    You’re walking through the woods and at the end of a clearing you see: either a man, or a bear staring right at you.
    Which one makes you more uncomfortable?

    If I slowly leave the area I’m fairly confident the bear will leave me alone and not follow. I’m spending the rest of my time in the woods wondering if that man is following me.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      7 months ago

      i would certainly be more perplexed by a human just existing out there, a bear being out there would definitely make a lot of sense, i suppose it matters if either one of them has spotted me.

      If neither spots me it doesn’t matter. If one spots me, who’s to fucking say what happens. Could be your local mountain man out there just vibin on his own time, could be your local serial killer up to some shit, who knows!

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        i would certainly be more perplexed by a human just existing out there

        In this scenario you are also “just existing out there.”

        Could be your local mountain man out there just vibin on his own time, could be your local serial killer up to some shit, who knows!

        And that is the entire point. The article didn’t say “any man” it said “a random man”. Could go either way, who knows? With the bear it’s far more certain it just wants to leave you alone.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          In this scenario you are also “just existing out there.”

          i mean yeah, but if i was just existing out there alone that would be fucking weird. But only just fucking weird. If i was out there but WITH someone else, i would be REALLY fucking confused.

          And that is the entire point. The article didn’t say “any man” it said “a random man”. Could go either way, who knows? With the bear it’s far more certain it just wants to leave you alone.

          obviously. I wonder what the statistics would be though. Since it’s a “random” person, i wonder how likely you would actually be to get a shitty person. Bear stats are even harder though. So it’s not even like you could compare it.

          people often sight that 1 in 3 woman experience sexual assault (i think that’s the correct phrasing) but that’s a basic collective stat. And given the fact that it’s just a random man. I would have to assume the chances of getting someone who isn’t going to fuck your shit up is pretty good. I’d be surprised if it was less than 50% frankly. Now when it comes to bears, there are a few bears, but assuming black bears, grizzly bears, and brown bears, black bears are pretty chill from what i’ve heard. Grizzly bears tend to be problematic. Brown bears are generally docile, but can be temperamental apparently. So for statistical simplicity we’ll just say you’ve got a 25% chance of getting cocaine bear’d because likewise, the bear doesn’t know why it’s there. I would feel like if you were to select a man at random from society, you’ve probably got equal to marginally better chances. I mean you’d have to get a pretty fucked up individual to just throw them in there and the first thing they decide to do is commit rape, or worse.

          And presumably there aren’t any established rules for how you got there, i like to think of it as if you were just teleported there, and i suppose that’s unrealistic, but the alternative is walking into the forest with a fucking bear lmao. Or just being in a forest while a bear is also in the forest, and at that point, i don’t think it would make a difference anymore. Given that you’re likely to be too far away from each other to be an immediate danger. So i’m presuming we’re just dropped within visual/hearing distance of each other.

          but naturally, that’s not the point of this thought experiment. The whole point is to make a point, because it’s actually a bit of societal quip more than anything. But i like thinking about this shit like a thought experiment because i prefer to not think about being murdered generally.

          Also here’s a fucking nitpick if i’ve ever had one “any” is literally a synonym to “random” Any is quite literally describing “any one of these things that you could possibly select will do the job” and random is quite literally" pick one of them, at random, in a mathematical sense" So from the point of the argument, they mean the same thing.