I think there might be something important about pointing out “the way you’re handling the evidence here is weird”, but… this just seems false? (And, seems to me to be steering away from the actual most likely area of ‘what sort of things the commenter meant’ or, if the commenter is confused, ‘what sort of ways the commenter might be confused’)
(actually, I started writing this comment thinking you had a reasonable point just worded confusingly, but after thinking about it a bit I think your comment is just kinda ignoring the obvious point and making an unrelated point that doesn’t seem that relevant?)
I think it’s at least a coherent position that:
the likelihood of getting assaulted by a stranger on the street is quite low
the likelihood of getting assaulted by someone you recently met is also low (but, somewhat higher than the likelihood of getting assaulted by someone on the street)
In both cases it’s very unsurprising to not get assaulted, and it shouldn’t affect your baserate models very much. But if Alice wants someone she just met to accompany her home for safety, it’s a coherent position to think that, even if Bailey is quite confident they’re not going to assault Alice, they still thinks Alice is making a cognitive error in thinking that she is statistically more safe with someone in Bailey reference class.
(i.e. the error Bailey thinks Alice is making is not about how dangerous Bailey is, but about the relative danger between Bailey and A-Stranger-On-The-Street)
It’s possible that Bailey is ignoring channels of information that Alice has access to, and maybe Bailey should be attentive to that, but AFAICT there is nothing incoherent about the logic above. Or at least, you haven’t said anything to argue that the above logic isn’t sound, and it seems kinda nonsequitor-ish to bring up your alternate hypothesis without explaining why it’s not sound.
(I think an error Bailey / Sinclair might be making here is that it’s not just about risk of assault, it’s about risk of being harassed, and risk of harassment is actually pretty high even if risk of assault is low, and harassment a) does suck, b) happens noticeably less often when you’re in a group)
Yes, this is a good description of the point I was trying to make.
It’s possible I underestimate the suffering caused by being harassed since I think I don’t mind the milder forms of it (like being cat-called) as much as other people maybe. And more severe forms of harassment have not happened to me (yet?)
“why would you be afraid of walking at night? Doesn’t seem like bad things happen to me”
“I basically believe the narrative that women have more to worry about here than men, that thing are legitimately dangerous for women walking alone at night”
“I believe that, actually, violent crime at night is just quite rare, and I’ve heard [but not checked] that men are actually more likely to be violently attacked than women. And the ‘women have something to be scared about here that male-privilege obviates’ feels a bit off. And it feels impolitic to say, but, actually, it maybe is better for women to become more calibrated about their safety.”
“Women get harassed a lot more than men, and with each harassment instance one of the issues is that they have to model whether the harassment is likely to escalate to a violent conflict, which they’d probably be at a physical disadvantage in (and regardless, having to escalate to ‘be ready to fight’ is really scary). But, I still think people are overestimating this danger – most harassment doesn’t escalate to conflict. In Berkeley I have homeless people come up and yell at me a lot, and I feel an initial jolt of fear, but then try to shrug and move on, and I think this would be correct for women to do too.”
“Hmm, actually, some of the harassment I’m seeing / hearing about actually sounds pretty bad, somewhere in between catcalling and violent conflict, and I’m now not sure what to think about the base rates here.”
(The last update came from hearing from a female friend who described herself living in “a bad neighborhood”, and having a bunch of late-night safety habits that seemed excessive to me. But it turned out they had multiple instances of people following them to their house, masturbating ‘at them’ through their fence, and coming up to their front door and banging on it loudly, which were all more extreme than I had encountered before and updated me more towards a more legit Different Worlds hypothesis)
I think there might be something important about pointing out “the way you’re handling the evidence here is weird”, but… this just seems false? (And, seems to me to be steering away from the actual most likely area of ‘what sort of things the commenter meant’ or, if the commenter is confused, ‘what sort of ways the commenter might be confused’)
(actually, I started writing this comment thinking you had a reasonable point just worded confusingly, but after thinking about it a bit I think your comment is just kinda ignoring the obvious point and making an unrelated point that doesn’t seem that relevant?)
I think it’s at least a coherent position that:
the likelihood of getting assaulted by a stranger on the street is quite low
the likelihood of getting assaulted by someone you recently met is also low (but, somewhat higher than the likelihood of getting assaulted by someone on the street)
In both cases it’s very unsurprising to not get assaulted, and it shouldn’t affect your baserate models very much. But if Alice wants someone she just met to accompany her home for safety, it’s a coherent position to think that, even if Bailey is quite confident they’re not going to assault Alice, they still thinks Alice is making a cognitive error in thinking that she is statistically more safe with someone in Bailey reference class.
(i.e. the error Bailey thinks Alice is making is not about how dangerous Bailey is, but about the relative danger between Bailey and A-Stranger-On-The-Street)
It’s possible that Bailey is ignoring channels of information that Alice has access to, and maybe Bailey should be attentive to that, but AFAICT there is nothing incoherent about the logic above. Or at least, you haven’t said anything to argue that the above logic isn’t sound, and it seems kinda nonsequitor-ish to bring up your alternate hypothesis without explaining why it’s not sound.
(I think an error Bailey / Sinclair might be making here is that it’s not just about risk of assault, it’s about risk of being harassed, and risk of harassment is actually pretty high even if risk of assault is low, and harassment a) does suck, b) happens noticeably less often when you’re in a group)
Yes, this is a good description of the point I was trying to make.
It’s possible I underestimate the suffering caused by being harassed since I think I don’t mind the milder forms of it (like being cat-called) as much as other people maybe. And more severe forms of harassment have not happened to me (yet?)
I’ve gone through a few phases of beliefs here:
“why would you be afraid of walking at night? Doesn’t seem like bad things happen to me”
“I basically believe the narrative that women have more to worry about here than men, that thing are legitimately dangerous for women walking alone at night”
“I believe that, actually, violent crime at night is just quite rare, and I’ve heard [but not checked] that men are actually more likely to be violently attacked than women. And the ‘women have something to be scared about here that male-privilege obviates’ feels a bit off. And it feels impolitic to say, but, actually, it maybe is better for women to become more calibrated about their safety.”
“Women get harassed a lot more than men, and with each harassment instance one of the issues is that they have to model whether the harassment is likely to escalate to a violent conflict, which they’d probably be at a physical disadvantage in (and regardless, having to escalate to ‘be ready to fight’ is really scary). But, I still think people are overestimating this danger – most harassment doesn’t escalate to conflict. In Berkeley I have homeless people come up and yell at me a lot, and I feel an initial jolt of fear, but then try to shrug and move on, and I think this would be correct for women to do too.”
“Hmm, actually, some of the harassment I’m seeing / hearing about actually sounds pretty bad, somewhere in between catcalling and violent conflict, and I’m now not sure what to think about the base rates here.”
(The last update came from hearing from a female friend who described herself living in “a bad neighborhood”, and having a bunch of late-night safety habits that seemed excessive to me. But it turned out they had multiple instances of people following them to their house, masturbating ‘at them’ through their fence, and coming up to their front door and banging on it loudly, which were all more extreme than I had encountered before and updated me more towards a more legit Different Worlds hypothesis)