Hmmm. I read the question like Case 1, and I assumed that’s what other women were doing too.
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Everyone is reading it like case 1. Yet many women still prefer the bear. There are those who can’t believe that’s true and therefore are trying to find other explanations.
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Yeah I don’t know where Case 2 came from. It’s “man or bear” and we are all choosing bear.
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My first question would be, should I believe the male hiker? Because I was under the impression grizzlies don’t just let you pass.
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Case 2 is precisely this sort of logic:
I disagree. Those facts are what women are using to decide that in Case 1, the bear is the obvious choice. Case 2 implies they don’t expect to run into the bear in the first place.
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If so then they aren’t doing the math.
Women meet one of the 160M men in the US an average of say 10 times a day (that’s probably very conservative when you think about walking through towns or cities where most people live). That’s 584B encounters resulting in 4000 deaths per year. About 6.8E-9 probability per encounter (actually lower since most assailants aren’t strangers and those murders aren’t attributable to random encounters).
There are 340,000 bears in the US, which encounter a woman say 1 time a day. That’s 124M encounters resulting in 3 deaths. About 2.4E-8 probability per encounter.
So on these figures the probability of death on a random single encounter would be at least 3 times as high with a bear than a man.
Or you know, conclude that this whole question demonstrates that men are from Mars and women from Venus and they don’t think the same way about these sorts of questions.
Which could equally well have been the point in the first place…because I don’t think those differences are going away
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No, I think you’re missing the whole point. 
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Don’t be so hard on men. Many of them, including all the men in my life, DO in fact understand the assignment. If you don’t, that’s on you. You have lots of company, sadly, but your deliberate misunderstanding is a choice, not your brain wiring.
Ways you get it wrong:
–you said women run into men 10 times a day. But not alone in a deserted place. So your numbers are way off there.
–You are only counting murders–but women have made it clear throughout this thread, and everywhere else, that’s it’s not just actual murder that is feared. Rape and assault – lets compare those men vs bears numbers.
Clearly you picked and chose parameters to fit your thesis and then insulted women in conveying it.
You’ve definitely missed the whole point.
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Perhaps I’m too trusting of hikers (and admittedly I usually am on well travelled National Park trails.). But it seems like I’d rather meet a man during solo hiking in the daylight than meet a man on a desolate dark city street.
I did once regret walking back to my NYC hotel after a Broadway show when taxis were hard to get. Didn’t mind the extra mile(?) of walking, just did not realize I’d be going through some empty dark streets. Got quite stressed when all alone, or almost all alone.
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Add to this that in the hypothetical situation, a grizzly bear was specified. Black bears outnumber grizzly bears by about 10:1, so why was a grizzly bear chosen for the story rather than the black bear that statistics would predict? In almost every hypothetical I’ve seen written by a man, he specifies a grizzly. I mean, it seems like a concession that your argument is weak if a typically encountered bear won’t do.
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Yes, the situation can matter. Another example is meeting a bunch of men, some drunk, at a fraternity party where alcohol in mixed drinks is served.
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So, are men who carry concealed weapons in urban areas doing so because they are fearful of bears?
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I just told DH about this thread, even reading the Facebook item I quoted last night. His response? “I think if women understood the risks of bears, they might answer differently.“ Ha, another guy proving the point…
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When I pasted my post in #308 above on Facebook, a guy I thought wouldn’t get it replied with this meme. Maybe there’s hope.
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Maybe he posted it unironically? Hopefully not but given the online passion that has gone into minimizing women’s caution re: men lately…?
Something about that meme above just grinds me. The girl’s body language (trying to lean away), the little polite smile she is managing to muster while clearly wanting to escape…
At the gym today some dude aggressively started talking to me, asking where I lived, where I worked, what I did for a living, where I grew up (ugh I’m just trying to fit in my workout!). However - I answered all his questions and watched myself laughing and smiling in the gym mirror. Ugh! 
Of course this rarely happens to me at my age but it made me angry for the girls that deal with it all the time (incl my daughter) and how we are socialized to smile, be nice, and accommodate…even as they lecture us, interrogate us, etc…
(sorry for digression from 
!)
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These are the only bears I wouldn’t mind meeting out in the woods.
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