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Comment by commandlinefan | Hacker News Reader

> as she was of mistakenly being shot by a police SWAT team

But the study suggests that this fear, while real, is misguided: she's getting this from sensationalized news reporting and hyperbolic movies/television rather than anything based in reality.

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It may be a fear that is not statistically supported, but claiming it is not "based on reality" is, well, not based in reality. This does happen:

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/667252788/police-fatally-shoo...

That's also a completely different circumstance to what she found herself in.

Right, because humans in fear always carefully consider all aspects of a situation under time pressure, with perfect recall of details they read in the news. I'm sure you'll appreciate people splitting hairs to critique your rationality and recall under pressure next time you react to something.

That's a lot of words to concede that it wasn't based on reality, as the other poster said. :)

I conceded no such thing.

You tried to defend the irrationality of someone experiencing fear.

Is assuming you're in a vacuum based on reality for someone on Earth who is experiencing symptoms of hypoxia like astronauts would?

It's quite similar. Don't be black near a police response, it could be fatal.

On the other hand, it may be the case that steps such as those this Google VP was taking are what is reducing the likelihood of a bad outcome.

She was. The reporting had built up an inaccurate view of reality in her mind.

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