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This is a very interesting phenomenon.

1) A child approached by an adult man = everyone is alerted.

2) A helpless child that should be helped = nobody cares.

It seems that in case 1 it's more about getting the bad guy then to help the child. This is all sorts of crazy if there is any truth to it. I'd love to see a study on this.

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> more about getting the bad guy then to help the child.

Another way to look at it is that the worst outcome of one is the child gets lonely and scared for a small period of time, the worst outcome of the other is they get kidnapped and worse.

That said, I'm playing devil's advocate here, not arguing that the above logic should be used by anyone.

> worst outcome of one is the child gets lonely and scared for a small period of time

Actually the outcome could be the exact same thing in both cases.

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