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Notes -
Connotation plays a big role here. “Stuck in a forest with a man” is a phrase that has horror movie connotations, and isn’t going to be analyzed in some dispassionate objective meticulous way (the median forest of median size, with the median man, some random distance away). That’s just not how humans will interpret questions on the fly. The question begs to be understood in terms of conflict: why else would you be stuck? Why else would man be compared to bear? The question would be a lot different if it was: “[points to a random man] would you rather be 200ft from that man in a forest, or 200ft from a bear?” Women also do not want to signal that they are interested in strange men, but they do want to signal that they like animals, which is feminine-coded in America.
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