gwern comments on Contrarianism and reference class forecasting - Less Wrong

26 Post author: taw 25 November 2009 07:41PM

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Comment author: gwern 06 December 2009 12:28:16AM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Alicorn 06 December 2009 01:02:46AM 0 points [-]

I didn't downvote you, but the example didn't seem to contradict the claim, which was:

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".

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.

Comment author: gwern 06 December 2009 01:25:59AM 3 points [-]

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?