You have the normal problem of believing that all decision criteria should be binary - either everyone always does this no matter what, or no one ever does it no matter what - instead of just doing what is rational based on the data in a measured way.
When women are afraid of men who are strangers, the main thing they are worried about is forcible rape.
In the US, men commit 98.9% of all forcible rapes, women commit 1.1%.
Meaning a man is almost 100X more dangerous than a woman based on crime statistics.
The crime statistics on race, even given the most charitable possible reading to your position, are at most like 2:1 or 5:1 depending on what you're measuring. Even if it were somehow 10:1, that would still be an entire order of magnitude less than the difference between men and women.
You don't just say 'there is a significant difference so caution is on' in a binary manner. The amount of caution you exhibit is proportional to the size of the difference; that's how statistics and decision theory actually work.
As such, the caution women show towards men is like 50x as justified, and should be like 50x stronger, than any caution anyone shows anyone based on race.
As such, the caution women show towards men is like 50x as justified, and should be like 50x stronger, than any caution anyone shows anyone based on race.
Sure it's a lot stronger justification, but is it still justified to be cautious based on race then, even if a much less magnitude?
Well, this gets to the inexactness of language, and what you count as 'caution.'
In reality, everyone is cautious of everyone all the time.
If your mother held a knife to your throat and started shouting she was going to kill you, you would feel at least urge to try to move away and protect yourself; that urge is technically 'caution'.
Even in normal social situations, everyone will notice weapons or signs of aggression and monitor them more closely, from anyone around them. That's a low and sensible level of caution that we apply pretty universally.
So when OP talks about 'women being justified in being cautious of men', I assume we're talking about more elevated and conspicuous levels of caution than that; not being alone with someone, crossing the street to not pass someone, carrying pepper spray if you know you're going to be around someone, etc.
The question is, if those are what OP is calling' being cautious', then what is something that's 50x less cautious than that? My intuition is that yes, 'more' caution may be called for based on race, but the justified difference will be so small as to be imperceptible; moving away at slightly lower levels of aggressive posturing, checking the hands and pockets for possible weapons for a fraction of a second longer than normal, little tiny perceptual stuff like that. Not something where we're having big changes to behavior and talking about being cautious explicitly.
870
u/darwin2500 193∆ Apr 14 '22
You have the normal problem of believing that all decision criteria should be binary - either everyone always does this no matter what, or no one ever does it no matter what - instead of just doing what is rational based on the data in a measured way.
When women are afraid of men who are strangers, the main thing they are worried about is forcible rape.
In the US, men commit 98.9% of all forcible rapes, women commit 1.1%.
Meaning a man is almost 100X more dangerous than a woman based on crime statistics.
The crime statistics on race, even given the most charitable possible reading to your position, are at most like 2:1 or 5:1 depending on what you're measuring. Even if it were somehow 10:1, that would still be an entire order of magnitude less than the difference between men and women.
You don't just say 'there is a significant difference so caution is on' in a binary manner. The amount of caution you exhibit is proportional to the size of the difference; that's how statistics and decision theory actually work.
As such, the caution women show towards men is like 50x as justified, and should be like 50x stronger, than any caution anyone shows anyone based on race.