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Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

In terms of the kindness of strangers, I’m reminded of a friend who decided she wanted to hitch hike around Mexico when she was 18. She was poor but she wanted adventures. She wanted to get away from the beaten path, away from tourist traps, and go out into the rural areas so she could discover what Mexico was really like.

Everyone who picked her up warned her that what she was doing was very dangerous. She was lucky, they said, to get a ride from them, and not the criminals all around them. She got ride after ride like that. Family after family picked her up and took her along on their trip and all of them said, “You are in danger! You are lucky we are the ones who picked you up!”

In this manner, she traveled around Mexico for a month, and she never had a dangerous ride.

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I frequently walked home from work in Oakland at 1am when I worked a night shift. I always wore headphones too and people would tell me I was being stupid. After about a year and a half of this I was coming up a hill to a four way intersection when someone popped out from behind a fence just before I passed it, grabbed my shirt and stuck a gun in my stomach.

He ended up being not the worst and let me keep my keys and license when I asked.

It only takes once, and the consequences for her would probably have been much worse.

yeah I did a ton of late night walks in Oakland and nothing ever happened, but I figured it was only a matter of time :/

Yikes! How did you get the gun out of your stomach?

He still had the keys.

> the consequences for her would probably have been much worse.

Are you assuming that the mugger you encountered would have raped her? (To be clear, I don't think that's a prima facie invalid assumption. It's a sincere object-level question.)

No, they are assuming it could have been worse.

That includes the possibility of having a gun pulled on them like OP which only happened once.

The problem with hitchhiking is that you don't pick someone at random, someone decides to pick you up.

If you pick a random person, they'll almost certainly be a normal, honest person.

If you advertise yourself with a giant sign "I WILL GET IN YOUR CAR IF YOU STOP", then a small percentage of random strangers, but a large percentage of opportunistic criminals, will stop.

I'd argue she got very lucky.

I have reservations about the explanation that a consistent positive outcome can be chalked up to pure luck.

She may not know what she was "doing right," but I think it more likely she was doing something that helped foster positive outcomes.

You may want to consider the rates of homicide and rape in Mexico before determining that one person's experience of not being hurt is that compelling.

I just looked it up and Mexico city’s homicide rate in 2009 was half that of Atlanta, Georgia. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Mexico#Mexico_City) Mexico has changed considerably in the last 30 years, and the story above sounds like it wasn’t recent. Most murders today are drug related, and crime is heavy in US border towns, but not that bad everywhere else.

Thirty years ago, when I was a kid, my siblings and I wandered around in Mexico sometimes miles from home without an adult, talking to the locals. Everyone was super friendly, we were never threatened. People would sometimes offer us food or toys like little hand carved slingshots. It seemed pretty safe, and we didn’t get hurt during the year we stayed, other than once my little brother went to pet a donkey in a field and got kicked by it. It was a different time then, so I guess my point is you might likewise want to consider how the rates of homicide have changed over the years, where the rates are higher, who’s most likely to be affected, and how it actually compares to other countries, before assuming that everyone’s in equal danger, or that anyone’s in more danger there than here...

Mexico City is one of the safer cities in Mexico and Atlanta one of the more dangerous cities in the US. Tijuana and Acapulco, on the other hand, have a murder ten times higher than Atlanta's. Victoria, Juarez, and Irapuato have five times Atlanta's murder rate.

The parent comment mentioned traveling in rural Mexico, which presumably does not refer to Mexico City.

I agree that homicide rates have changed over the years. I would be surprised if it was ever wise for a young woman to go hitchhiking solo in rural Mexico though. From the story it seems rural Mexicans agree with me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate

When I was in Mexico City (10+ years ago) every single person advised "don't get in random taxis", make sure you know one / have a driver's number.

In Caracas the locals also constantly emphasized the dangers. Random airport workers would tell us to not even leave the airport unless we had a driver outside specifically waiting for us. Even on Isla Margarita locals would look at us in a panic if we were out on the streets after dark "you can't be here!!" and would go out of their way to help us get home safely.

It's a bummer it's gone that far downhill, I'd love to go back and visit someday when it gets better. We used to take random taxis all over the place, back when all the taxis in DF were VW bugs with the front passenger seat ripped out. Never had an issue with any drivers, but I remember distinctly how the driving in the city was total madness, traffic rules and conventions we take for granted mostly ignored. I had fears about being in a crash, but no fears about being randomly mugged or killed.

I did once wonder if I was going to get hurt when I was pulled out of the audience during a circus show in Leon for the clown's knife-throwing act. I was mostly sure it'd be safe and faked and funny, but they blindfolded me and I certainly had a few thoughts run through my head about what I was thinking being in the middle of Mexico having knives thrown at me.

The people being killed in Mexico, by and large, are not foreign travelers, they are Mexicans who are involved in drugs. Looking at the average murder rate is misleading in this context.

It's not particularly wise for a young woman to hitchhike in the US either. I certainly wouldn't recommend someone do it right now in Mexico, and I have no doubt that people here and there all have fears about it, but fears don't necessarily mean it's extraordinarily unsafe.

I'm a woman who was homeless for nearly six years. Homeless women also are at high risk of being raped, which is one of the reasons you see relatively few women on the street compared to men.

I was never raped while on the street.

I also have lived without a car for more than a decade and accepted many rides from strangers. None of those rides ended tragically either.

I get told a lot I'm just lucky. It's a left-handed way of assuming a woman has no idea what she's talking about and can't possibly be competent.

> I get told a lot I'm just lucky. It's a left-handed way of assuming a woman has no idea what she's talking about and can't possibly be competent.

No. It's a straightforward way of assuming that you are not actually in complete control of the universe and it doesn't matter how competent you are, things could have worked out differently. If you'd like to assert that you actually have perfect methods of identifying and avoiding Ted Bundy and any other potential psychopath, then you are going to have to show a lot more evidence than "and I'm ok!" - because it is an extraordinary claim.

I'll give you another extraordinary claim: I appear to be the only openly female member of HN to have ever spent time on the leader board.

The leader board is 100 names long. I've been here over a decade and was not an early adopter, so the site is more than ten years old. There have been, no doubt, quite a lot more than a 100 people who have spent time on the leader board. So one openly female member out of more than a 100 names is less than one percent.

For comparison:

This is a list of Women CEOs of the Fortune 500, based on the magazine's 2019 list. As of the date of publication, women held 6.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEO roles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_women_CEOs_of_Fortune_...

According to historical surveys, HN is an overwhelmingly male space. For example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309

Yet, I continue to be told by people on HN that I somehow need to prove to people that I know how to handle myself when interacting with men and my claims that I know how to deal effectively with men in social settings is bizarre, unfounded, ridiculous and so forth. I find this profoundly baffling.

Please skip the part where multiple men pile on to inform me that my ability to score "useless internet points" on a "stupid forum" is irrelevant to this discussion. To my mind, it is the single strongest piece of evidence that I can present that people here should be able to readily see as real evidence of ability and skill on my part and not just more anecdotal claims that cannot be verified. So that's why I'm bothering to post this, in spite of the very long history of awful, dismissive replies any time I talk about this stuff.

The handle that was briefly on the leader board is here and shows that I joined in July 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Mz

I'm a woman, but I also have absolutely no idea why this would be relevant. If it helps to explain, I would disbelieve any person on that leaderboard who said they would definitely be able to identify any Ted Bundy types. I don't think that skill exists.

The vast majority of rapes are not committed by Ted Bundy types. This is a detail I already addressed elsewhere. Most victims know their assailant socially.

Nowhere have I claimed any ability to "identify Ted Bundy types." Suggesting this is my claim amounts to putting words in my mouth.

-deleted-

Are you claiming that women are in control of whether or not they get raped?

I'm claiming that a long track record of success is probably not pure luck.

Occam's Razor.

One factor in me not being raped while homeless was that I was usually not alone. There is safety in numbers.

The city in the US with the highest rape rate is Anchorage Alaska with 200 rapes per hundred thousand people. Without taking into account any of many relevant complications, that's a 0.2% chance to get raped annually, or a 99.8% chance of not getting raped.

Suppose a woman went 6 years in Anchorage. There's a 99.8% ^ 6 chance of her not getting raped. 98.8% chance in other words.

Would a woman who had not been raped after 6 years in Anchorage persuade you that Anchorage wasn't a more dangerous place than most?

Your comment here is hard to grasp given your previous comment. Mexico has a significantly higher crime rate than the US. As you acknowledge, being by yourself makes you more vulnerable. Being young makes you more vulnerable. A young girl hitchhiking by herself in Mexico is incredibly vulnerable. What are the odds that she will be raped or murdered over a few months of traveling? They may be 10 or 20%. They may be higher!

The fact that a girl had the most likely outcome happen doesn't prove or suggest anything. You can play Russian Roulette and you'll have a 5/6 chance of surviving. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to play. If someone plays three rounds, that doesn't make it safe.

I hope you'd agree that members of vulnerable populations should take extra precautions to mitigate their vulnerability. As per your own example, staying with other people in dangerous times and places.

Your statistical gymnastics is a case of how to lie with statistics.

Most rapes aren't cases of random strangers grabbing you randomly off the street. That's not how that works.

Most rape victims know their rapists. It's usually a social acquaintance of some sort.

Most college campus rapes or date rapes involve alcohol.

There is this narrative that we can't try to talk about what women can effectively do to protect themselves because that would be blaming the victim. But if you tell someone to lock your door to make it harder for someone to rob you, we don't have the same problem with such advice. We don't get all up in arms about how robbers just need to keep their hands to themselves and advice to protect your belongings is somehow victim blaming.

I don't really know what we're arguing about at this point so I'm tapping out.

I agree that it's good and not victim blaming to offer advice to people, regardless of their gender, as to how they can live safer lives.

I agree that, in the US, most victims know their attacker. That doesn't mean it's safe for young women to hitchhiker in Mexico though. Similarly, you are vastly more likely to be killed by your own gun than any random gun out there. That doesn't mean you have nothing to worry about if some random stranger points a gun at you.

That doesn't mean it's safe for young women to hitchhiker in Mexico though.

I never claimed what you are seemingly rebutting at all. I never said anything of the sort whatsoever.

I only suggested that this particular woman probably wasn't simply lucky. She was probably doing some things right that helped keep her safe.

It's an entirely different idea. It's the difference between saying "Lion tamers have lion taming skills and aren't merely lucky that they usually survive their shows." Versus "Because lion tamers exist, random people with zero lion taming skills are equally safe being locked in a cage with a lion."

Lion tamers are also regularly killed and or maimed by their lions.

The word usually in that sentence admits to that outcome.

Nowhere have I claimed any of this is "bullet proof." Just that consistent positive outcomes suggest an element of skill and knowledge that claims of pure luck erroneously dismiss as not existing at all.

Fair enough there is an element of skill. It's still a foolish idea to be a Lion tamer.

Given a long enough time in risky circumstances (vs a few months of single-mode behaviour, hitchhiking, in your example) the experience would start to get pretty compelling. I think the cited six years is probably good enough to get a good feel for the risk level, especially since you presumably hear about other incidents from peers and develop an intuition for risky situations.

edit: data tangent - if your Anchorage stats were about reported cases, the averages would need correcting for underreporting.

I would guess that GP's reasoning is flawed; in this part of the world, the likelihood of a "normal, honest person" picking up a young woman is much higher, due to the knowledge of a high crime rate.

I don't doubt that's a factor. But I also know that I have a very long track record of successfully negotiating circumstances that others deem untenable and I've actually taken college classes in subjects such as Negotiation and Conflict Management.

Nonetheless, I am consistently and insistently told that I am simply lucky as the entire explanation for those outcomes. It doesn't matter how reasonably I engage, I'm outright dismissed in a manner consistent with the idea that no woman is capable of having useful skills that substantially influence the odds that they will remain safe.

No matter how clearly I state that luck is always a factor in all situations and so forth, I get basically this la, la, la not listening! response.

This has been a consistent pattern across various forums for many years. Ergo, my conclusion that it boils down to an assumption that women can't actually be competent that I stated in some other comment here.

It makes sense that competence can look like blind luck to people who are unfamiliar with the environment, if it's an environment that behaves in a subtle way and is rarely experienced by an average person.

I'd guess that some social environments often behave like this, where information is difficult to objectively classify and measure, but someone with great people skills will be able to reliably get an indication of risk and intentions.

Maybe some extreme sports practicioners experience the same type of dismissal.

Funnily, come to think of it, investment/asset management falls into something that looks like a similar situation. In that case, it's very difficult to objectively assess whether great performance is luck or skill. I've always believed that some in the latter category are mistaken for being in the former. But it would be impossible to tell without having very specialized and specific skills, and almost impossible to do so in an objective and repeatable way.

reliably get an indication of risk and intentions.

Best practices don't actually require an assessment of intentions. Just like mountain climbers use safety gear whether the mountain seems like a suspicious character or not, erring on the side of caution socially doesn't actually require a determination of intent to reduce the odds of assault. (Inferring likely intent can be useful, but really shouldn't be a high priority per se when acting to protect yourself.)

You are at least the second person here to say something along these lines. Perhaps it casts light on a detail I need to somehow focus on more when such topics come up and which is a source of the profound disbelief and denial and assertions that a track record of success due to competence is simply not remotely humanly possible.

> I have reservations about the explanation that a consistent positive outcome can be chalked up to pure luck.

It's not even necessarily much luck: if the per-day probability of a violent attack while hitchhiking in Mexico were 1 in 50, which would still be extremely dangerous, it would only be slightly better than average results to go a month straight without an attack.

It seems like hitchhiking works then! In safe areas, and in super dangerous areas when you look vulnerable... All those families stopped because they were afraid for her well-being. But still, super lucky, if a criminal had got on that road ahead of the family, the story might have been different.

I agree. I was forced to hitch-hike in Guatemala after missing the last bus . I also was picked up by a family and sat in the back of their truck for about 100km. When I got off at 9pm they advised to only continue to hitch on mining trucks or oil tankers during the night. I still remember sitting under a huge banana leaf during torrential rain waiting for hours for a truck to stop. The driver later dropped me off in the middle of no where and said a bus would stop there by 5.30am and indeed it did stop, but it was full so I was sitting on the roof of the bus for the next three hours together with 10 other souls.

In a bus traveling south of Mazatlan I met a family and they invited me to stay at their home in Mexico City. This place, as it turned out, was right in the middle of the largest slum and consisted of a metal frame with roofing and side walls made of tarpauline and a mud floor . The first few days there was a queue of people outside just to oogle the foreigner, but it was all good with lots of smiles. The morning teeth brushing and face washing ritual by young and old was fascinating to watch, with everyone awaiting their turn at the single faucet for hundreds of people.Food was simple, mostly made on small kerosene stoves. I stayed for 8 days and at no time did I feel unsafe , despite my host explaining about many pickpockets , expert thieves and robbers living in this area who went to work the tourist spots during the day , like other people would go to an office , but this was home. My host had a real job in the forestry department of the city government , but he said he could not afford to live else where.

Professional thieves are professional enough to not waste time on the foreigner that was probably broke since you were staying in their neighborhood. And professional thieves need a level of anonymity to work, which goes out the door when they rob someone in front of their aunt.

They were picking her up to protect her. I’ve been in Central America and had these types of things happen, never foolish enough to hitchhike. Many times people on buses have explained these types of things to me. Where I need it watch out for my stuff, how to not get ripped off, and which places I should avoid. One example I can remember[1].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/2...

Another woman did that recently(ish) in Europe, not just for adventures but to prove the world was a safe place or something - she was murdered though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippa_Bacca

This reminds me of a story about how a tribe in the amazon jungle picks their camp site. They check the surrounding trees to make sure they are in good health. I imagine you would have to spend 1000 nights next to a tree they would regard as unsafe, before there was even a chance for something to happen to you. When it happens though, your family will remember it.

That's not how it works. People travel around like that the whole time I'm sure. If every one would end up dead after a month, there would not be anyone left. But that one time it happens, be it after 10 years or 20, you are still dead. Sucks to be that tiny percent that it happens to.

This is literally survivorship bias.

Survivor's Bias...

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