Context: Some woman on the internet said she would feel safer spending a night in the woods with a random bear rather than with a random man

Some woman

Not “some woman” — quite a few women. Lots of women.

I am unironically bearpilled in this context. Men can be fucking scary with women. At least I’m unlikely to be SA’d before I die, with the bear.

Are we talking brown bears or black bears?

Brown bears are violently territorial and will attack you for being in eyeshot.

Black bears are basically giant racoons and will move away from people - especially if you’re making loud noises and making yourself look big - because they don’t want that smoke. They’ll only get aggressive if you surprise them or get anywhere near their younglings.

I’d probably take a black bear over a lot of dudes. As long as we got a good hundred feet or so of distance, Mr Bear and I ain’t gonna bother each other.

I get the sentiment, but realistically I’ll still pick the random man. A man could kill or rape me. A bear is likely to kill me.

The bear discourse is the true measure of whether a given man is a red or green flag.

I m losing faith in humanity any time this conversation resurfaces and I believe it would be a massive benefit to everyone involved if it never happened

This was one of those toxic questions designed to cause people to argue. That’s really its ONLY purpose. It really only has 2 answers, and both can be interpreted as toxic.

My 2 cents though, here in Australia, you’ll occasionally get a question about staying safe when hiking as women.

You’ll have a huge majority of women saying its safe to hike in Australia, and then 1 or 2 women encouraging women to bring knives or weapons. The ones who claim this then get a huge negative response by both women and guys pointing out it makes things more dangerous for everyone and that nobody needs them.

As a male guide also, I’ve actually found it difficult to find other guys to hike with, but it is incredibly trivial for me to find women to join me (in fact, doing one this upcoming weekend).

So, interpret that as you will, but, honestly, the people who are incredibly invested in either of these answers, in my opinion, nobody would want to hike with regardless (bears, other women or men), so the answer doesn’t affect them.

well, after having thought about it for hours. And i really mean hours (please help me, also don’t mind me, i’m just autistic as fuck and think about these sorts of things a lot)

I have finally put together my ultimate conclusion on this topic. And it is as follows:

For starters, why am i in the woods? Presumably in this example i was just teleported out there at random, with one other entity, either a human or a bear. Now idk much about bear psychology, but if i were a bear, and a human popped up out of nowhere in front of me, i would lose my shit. So chances are im probably going to die.

As for a human, assuming a statistically random sample from the world, lets assume for the sake of this example, someone from within the same geographical area that i am in, because it makes logical sense for the statement here. The chances of them being 1. significant deviant enough that the second they see me, and decide they want to be a problem, is low enough that i’m willing to take it. Paired with the fact that often times abusers and rapists tend to be people you already know (it’s just a basic fun fact about being around people) and in this case, it’s probably someone i’ve never seen before, much less interacted with. I’m assuming the chances of me getting my shit fucked up are probably between 0-5% i feel like that’s pretty reasonable. i can’t imagine much more than like 10% of any given western population are active rapists. So we’ll go with that. And like i said the bear? Probably going to flip it’s shit. And even if it doesn’t it’s still gotta be higher than 10% i would assume.

Now, moving on to the secondary factors, we’re lost in a forest. The very obvious factor here is that being there with another individual greatly increases your odds of being found/getting out, both due to collective knowledge accumulation between the two of you, and the likelihood that other people realize you’re gone being twice as high (roughly) but we won’t consider that aspect significant. So moving back to the productive aspects of having two people. Assuming we’re the female in this case, and the other person is a male, as per the statement rules. That means we have someone who is more likely to be stronger, and more capable of exerting themselves, which could prove useful in a situation like this. However more people is still more better, so we’ll say about a 100% productivity bonus just to be safe here. As aforementioned, we have a secondary source of knowledge here, so we can collectively decide on things, as well as think about them, which often leads to more correct/better solutions/outcomes. As well as the obvious benefit of having someone to socialize with, this is a natural morale booster. Humans are social creatures. Nuff said.

One more thing though, since we’ve established that there are potential benefits to this situation, we must now compare those benefits to the downsides of the other situation, so let’s do that

• being alone (having no additional help, assuming we aren’t immediately mauled and eaten by the bear)
• not being alone (the likely potential that you DO get help, and quite significant amounts of it, with the small additional chance of being raped and killed) Ok i think that pretty much sums it up.

Alright, now moving on to the tertiary aspects of this, let’s modify the original statement. And say that we didn’t just randomly teleport, and that we walked into the woods with someone else (we aren’t counting kidnapping because then this statement wouldn’t really apply would it?) Anyway, now that we’ve pulled foul play off of the table. You’re walking into the forest with someone you probably already know, or someone who you’ve gotten to know thus far. They aren’t a stranger or at the very least, not a complete stranger, presumably you don’t just wander into the forest randomly for no reason, so lets assume you’re going on a hike or something. It’s good exercise after all, so for one thing, you’ve got some level of equipment with you. Probably some level of self defense capability (depending on where you are and how much you care) you did not come into this with the intent of being lost, and you are with someone that you know.

I feel like i don’t have to expand on why picking the bear in this option would be a bad choice…

alright, that concludes my lengthy essay on my opinion of this “thought experiment” feel free to yell at me or whatever, or engage with this, i probably missed something. New information always adds to the fun :) The whole point of a thought experiment is trying out new thoughts and weird ideas after all. Also just for the record, since some of you are probably curious. I have no opinion about these sorts of situations what so ever, because they aren’t real, and don’t exist, so the only valuable thing i can glean from them is through stats and situational analysis.

Men seriously feeling the need to convince the world that they are not as dangerous as a wild bear.

According to science, logical and rational thinking, meeting a random man in the Woods is much better option than meeting a random bear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aOOuMQkIzU