= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Stuart_Armstrong comments on Contrarianism and reference class forecasting - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (90)
I would estimate that vast majority of carnivorous predators are tiny insects and such, so the class is even less dangerous than land mammals class. ;-) On the other hand class of "animals bigger than me" tends to be quite dangerous.
"Animals bigger than me" are dangerous once you've encountered them up close, but normally there's no reason to do so unless you're hunting them. The total life risk of "being hurt by a carnivore" is much greater than the total life risk of "being hurt by an animal bigger than me".
This is true both today and in prehistoric environments: most of the predators who tend to tangle with humans aren't much bigger than us - snakes and leopards, mostly. OTOH, predators who are much bigger than humans don't routinely hunt humans (tigers, lions). (Although tigers may have done so long ago??? I don't really know.)
Hippopotamuses are the most dangerous mammals in Africa, and they are much bigger than humans.
Note that its closest competitor is the Cape Buffalo. Also bigger than humans.
To downvoters: It is customary to explain unobvious downvotes. I've just demonstrated with multiple references that both of the top human killers on the second most populated continent in the world are larger than humans, and they are herbivores to boot. This would seem, to me anyway, to argue pretty decisively against Armak's theory that carnivores are more dangerous than large animals.
I didn't downvote you, but the example didn't seem to contradict the claim, which was:
Being hurt =/= being killed. Even in Africa, I'm sure people get scratched by housecats or bitten by dogs sometimes, and I don't think so many people are attacked (fatally or no) by hippos that hippos are more likely to hurt any given person than small carnivores. (Heck, if we count mosquitoes...) DanArmak's point seems to be that large animals are mostly avoidable if you want to avoid them. Small carnivores are not necessarily as easy to avoid.
Literally read, 'hurt' doesn't mean being killed. But look at the examples Dan was using: tigers, snakes, leopards, lions. Is it unreasonable to infer that he was really talking about mortal dangers & hurts?
Good point. I couldn't find any statistics on human deaths or injuries by animal type in a minute's search, and I don't have time to spare right now. But I agree that my hypothesis needs to be fact checked. (Just two animal examples, hippos and buffalos, in a single continent in a couple of decades don't make a theory. And all four of your links don't refer to any actual data, they just state that hippos are the most dangerous.)