• TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    1.2 deaths by black bears a year in the US. 400,000 black bears. So 3.0x10^-6 chance of being murdered by a bear adjusted per capita.

    26,000 homicides a year (2021, I think it’s slightly lower now but these were the first I saw whatever) for 330M puts you at 7.9x10^-5 chance of being murdered by a human adjusted per capita.

    Sorry, bears win. Plus seeing a bear is cool as hell and seeing another human while hiking is annoying at best.

    • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      I’m genuinely curious on what the math works out to, but I think you’d need to account for time spent around each, or a “per encounter” statistic or something.

      Otherwise there could be a scenario where the bear encounter is 100% deadly for example, but if most bears are never encountered it’d make them seem safer.

      Of course, this scenario is specifically an encounter in the woods, so it’d need to be something like: total encounters between women and bears in the woods vs total encounters with women and men in the woods, and then factor in non-deadly encounters, other forms of assault, etc. That probably has next to no useful data though so good luck…

      • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        I mean, yeah I A: have no real fucks to give about this argument. B: Bears are cooler than humans men can get over it. C: used the stats I could get from a quick google, not gonna do an entire scientific study just to tell men to get fucked, as funny as it would be.

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      A lot of homicides happen within an inner circle of family & friends. You’re not that close around bears to the point where they are a threat to you. Also, the US is a terrible example for homicide statistics since it is already such an outlier. But I’m sure you know all those facts already and just try to push an agenda here.

      • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Nah man if I wanted to push an agenda I would’ve adjusted the homicide rates to men instead of just humans. Lol. My only agenda is that bears are objectively cooler than humans and you should probably get over it.

    • Mongostein@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      You also need to adjust for amount of time spent in bear territory vs human territory, or bear encounters vs attacks to get a more accurate statistic.

      • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        But I don’t have to. It’s about perception. Fear is not based in reality. It doesn’t matter what is actually true but what is perceived to be true. People see people being murdered 30x more often by people than by bears per capita. Ignoring per capita, and it’s 23,000x more than bears. It makes plenty of sense to fear humans more than bears based on that alone. Fear is not going to go “oh but actually statistically speaking in order to be afraid I really should do a scientific study to see who in a “alone in the woods at night” scenario is more likely to kill me before I am afraid!” It’s gonna go with the fact that you see and experience humans killing other humans a LOT more than you experience bears killing humans. Also, I’ve conveniently ignored plenty of stats other than literal homicide you have to worry about from men.

        Also, again, none of this matters what does is that bears are objectively cooler than humans, the end.

        • Mongostein@lemmy.ca
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          2 months ago

          I mostly agree, but you’re still trying to use inaccurate statistics to justify fear

          • beardown@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Hm I wonder if any right wing political parties have ever done this to dehumanize outgroups and promote fascism? 🤔

            I wonder if anyone who is Muslim, Black, or Jewish has any thoughts on this history of such dehumanization and inaccurate perceptions 🤔