Luna_the_cat: That’s a complete cop-out, and untrue in the real world. It is entirely possible to notice that someone is not reacting along normal parameters long before they run into traffic.

So everyone who “is not reacting along normal parameters” is doing so because of you jogging and is going to run into traffic? You have some amazing psychic powers, I must say. Talk about saying things that are untrue in the real world.

You don’t want to deal with the question, natch, is what I’m getting from this response.

Luna_the_cat: Let’s say for the sake of argument that you notice someone who is genuinely “crazy” in the clinical-mental-health sense…

If they have already done something crazy, it’s too late. So the question is moot. We can’t psychically predict who will do something crazy when we go jogging.

See, to me, the obvious course of action would be (b), but perhaps not everyone agrees with that. I just don’t entirely get why.

This isn’t being dismissive of your experience or anyone’s, it is a suggestion that in the case described, a rather poor (or contrary) decision was made in the in the interest of self-preservation.

That’s not the point of my argument, here. I didn’t say she wasn’t wrong. The decision to jump into traffic was under most circumstances an incorrect one. But it also wasn’t absolutely crazy, given context. The point of my argument is that it’s massively dismissive and objectionably patronizing to declare her crazy (and note, here Richard did not characterise her action as crazy, he declared *her* “crazy”) for her fear and her reaction, and unfortunately recapitulates many of the more objectionable objections to the whole EG situation.

carlie: Who gets to determine which ones are reasonable and which are unreasonable?

You do (since, in the context of the argument, you are the one deciding how much to accommodate).

The epistemological problems you might be hinting at are no different than in any other situation (e.g. you can shoot someone in self defense by mistake, too; so you should aim to be as objective, rational, and considerate as possible, in order to reduce errors of judgment; but that there will be errors is inevitable in all social choices and therefore is not an argument against making choices, but an argument for getting better at it).

Emil Karlsson: If I have understood the situation correctly, most men are not rapists and most rapes are not stranger rapes. It seems much more likely to be raped by ones intimate partner than by a stranger. So treating men as a group as plausible rapists seems to fit the definition of “irrational perception”?

The only relevant statistic is context-dependent: what is the probability of a bad outcome given the circumstances you are actually in (thus “most rapes are not stranger rapes” even if true, is wholly irrelevant). Risk assessment also does not hinge solely on probability of loss, but the value of the loss put at risk, and also the cost of avoiding that risk (but saying “no” to a proposition costs nothing, so that’s not a major factor here; although this goes into my point, that some behaviors, by costing so much, or being so hugely off the mark on the risk assessment to begin with, are not reasonable, but that isn’t something the original SR argument denied).

The point of the SR argument is that men should be aware that women are running this risk analysis when placed in a situation where they will have to make a choice that could put them at risk. It is not arguing that women should assume all strangers are rapists, but (a) that women can reasonably turn down men when they don’t know them from Adam (therefore men should not be offended by that) and (b) men who don’t take this into account are broadcasting their insensitivity to a woman’s point of view which is pretty much the worst thing you can advertise about yourself if you actually want to win a date. (Read the original argument again.)

Momo Elektra: That woman did not perceive him as jogging but as rushing at her.

And my whole point is that to perceive every jogger heading toward you but still fifty meters away as “rushing at you” is unreasonable. Indeed, it’s insane.

How is your position different than that from those who said Rebecca Watson was crazy because the guy did not, after all, rape her?

She didn’t do anything insane. She just said no. Then told people that’s not how to ask her out on a date. That’s entirely reasonable.

That’s the whole point.

How is your position different than that from those who said Rebecca Watson was crazy because the guy did not, after all, rape her?