Someone might have been to the woods several times without encountering a bear but also have been assaulted multiple times. The same person could’ve seen a bear irl and had it move along without incident. Statistics probably aren’t what they think of first in the scenario.

yeah, and this is why i find it weird that people mention stats at all. Because it's not about it. Or when they are mentioned, they're only one sided, because apparently they other side isn't real anymore. It's pretty explicitly some form of inherent bias, which is the point ultimately, but that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about the hypothetical instead. For some reason.

in fact, the funny thing the underlying thought experiment of this statement is intended to prove that people will often choose the thing that they are less familiar with, over the thing that they are more familiar with, because it seems like a better choice, due to lack of information present.

You don’t like that the person you’re replying to didn’t give you the comparison information you desire but instead of doing your own research and bringing the results here you’re suggesting “surely” you’ve already got the answer you want?

i don't like to pull out stats because they're a nightmare, and i'm rather lazy. As are most other people. You'll notice i didn't pull up any stats on bears in my post either. I don't have an answer, if you're taking that to be an answer you aren't interpreting that properly. What i'm saying is that based on my current knowledge of the world, surely statistics would not provide a significant difference between either choice, which is why i find it weird that we mentioned stats about bears, but not about men. Because surely that thought would've gone further?

Also regardless of this, i have a massive post back in my history on one of the now deleted threads? I can't remember, where i was posting about how i conceptualize the hypothetical and what i thought the "statistical likelihood of these things were" from an analytical perspective I.E. i was lining up the hypothetical to a framework in order to analyze it without any form of implicit bias, or at least, trying to minimize it. If you're curious about my end result in that discussion, i determined that choosing the human was more likely a gamble of an outcome, I.E. It has the potential to go very badly, but it also has the significant potential of being extremely beneficial (being lost in a group is arguably better than alone)

question, because i'm curious. Have you considered the likelihood that the stranger help you in a pretty significant capacity? Being lost alone is much worse than being lost alone with someone else, or even multiple people.