E321,
I thought I was doing everyone a favor by not bothering to respond to your previous post point by point but then you challenge me with "Why not go back and answer my previous post point by point?" and suggest that because I didn't bother to that must mean that I'm conceding everything you say and/or that I don't have counter arguments. You then complain about the length and redundancy of my posts with a post of your own that is equally long and redundant and full of tangential issues. Finally, you conclude that I should "give it a rest". I wish you would make up your mind and try to be a little more consistent.
For those who get irritated by my posts, find them too tedious, "redundant" or boring to read or have simply tired of this whole debate, I invite you just to skip this whole post. For those who do read it, don't complain because you've been warned. For everyone else, or at least E321, here is my point by point response. I apologize in advance for any "redundancies" but since E321 continues to raise issues that I've already addressed, I feel it necessary to repeat them yet again:
1) Sarcasm may not be synonymous with hostility in any reference book (never said it was) but it did appear to be used that way in that particular instance, which was the only point I was trying to make.
2) I won't get into who is actually arrogant or self-righteous here, but I did quite clearly in several places acknowledge my statements as only my personal views, i.e. not the gospel, and I also humbly admitted in the very part of my post you quoted that the tone of my own earlier post could understandably have elicited RR's response.
3) At the same time, in your post you equated the degree of his over-the-top references with my own alleged understatement of risks. And, while I will readily allow that my own remarks may have somewhat understated the risks, I'll still maintain that his reference to a single incident (several years ago and never repeated), which I don't think even ever took place as he described, overstated the risk to a MUCH greater degree. Feel free to disagree with that estimation if you want, but that is the way I see it.
4) Disingenuous? C'mon now, where did I ever accuse you of that in that post? That is your own inference. I'm sure you meant what you posted at the time you posted it. I was merely asking you to reflect on what you posted and admit in retrospect that the exaggeration was much greater on the other side.
5) Exposed my reasoning (or analogies) as clearly ridiculous? I don't think so! I never stated that the risks and rewards of having sex with hookers were exactly the same as foregoing cabs at night. The analogy that I was trying to make was not in the matter of degree or exact percentages but rather that nearly all activities carry some degree of risk, some more, some less, and that we all have our individual tolerances for risk. At the same time there are various benefits to those activities as well as possible penalties/consequences should the activity risk materialize. For many people, the idea of having sex with prostitutes is an unacceptable risk. For them, the perceived risk and possible consequences outweigh the reward. Are they right or wrong in that assessment? Perhaps from our perspective, but that is their individual choice. In a similar way, there are many who feel that ever walking in that area late at night is an unacceptable risk and perhaps it should be, but that is also an individual decision based upon their personal risk tolerance AND their own perception of the degree of risk and reward. And in order to make a proper decision, we all need to have as educated and well-informed understanding of the degree of risk and reward as possible. That is why I say that relaying the absolute worst horror stories as if they're an everyday occurrence doesn't result in the best informed decision. You could argue that even a more moderate reading of the real risk and reward should result in a similar decision and you might be right. But then why not just stick to that depiction of risk rather than telling scare-stories of amputations and traumatic and persistent brain injuries that very rarely if ever actually occur?
6) Never answered your "pointed question"? Looking over your post I'm not sure what that pointed question might be unless you're referring to what the "rewards" of not taking a cab could be. To be honest the "rewards" (if you could call them that) are pretty insignificant. OTOH, the negative consequences of not taking a cab AND getting mugged aren't so significant either when weighted for actual likelihood (just as the truly horrible consequences of contracting AIDS aren't so significant when you consider that you don't get AIDS from every time you have sex with a prostitute). Again, I'm not saying the risks are exactly equivalent between the 2 examples. I'm just saying that while the "rewards" may not be so significant, the real risk of injury (degree of injury weighted by likelihood that degree of injury will occur) is not so significant either. Is that risk of injury significant enough that most people would opt to forego the reward (saving a lousy couple of bucks)? Probably. Did I ever say anyone shouldn't? No. Again all I've been saying is that we should leave hyperbole out of the discussion and present worst case scenarios as just that, worst case scenarios that in actuality really very rarely occur.
Instead of relaying anecdotal stories of the worst that could ever happen. Maybe guys should be answering these questions instead. How many guys here have walked around SJ without getting mugged or even walked that particular route late at night? Of the ones who were mugged in SJ, how many other times had they done the same thing without getting mugged and how many had other factors involved in the time they were (carrying excess cash or valuables, having had enough to drink to cloud their thinking and/or reaction time, or simply being distracted when they should have stayed alert)? Regardless of whatever they might have done or not done to contribute to their risk, of those who did not resist, how many escaped any physical injury other than shaken nerves? How many suffered only relatively minor injuries such as minor bumps or scrapes from being pushed down, or perhaps a black eye or bloody nose from being fist punched or at worst a bad headache or bump from being clomped on the head or a laceration requiring a few stitched? And how many suffered anything more serious that required overnight hospitalization or more than a few days to recover? And, finally, how many had their hands chopped off or suffered permanent brain injury? My guess is that the numbers get progressively smaller with each question to the point that it is probably zero on the final one. This is NOT to say that no one else has ever suffered the more serious injuries that you suggest. But I'm sure we could dig up many stories of people dying in car accidents in CR or suffering serious injuries from some of the adventure sports that many of us participate in like zip-lining or rafting. That doesn't stop us from doing those other things. The important question is not so much whether anyone suffers those horrific results but what are the REAL probabilities of those results happening. And to answer that, simple anecdotes of the worst horror stories simply won't do.
7) My not ever really having been a victim of violent crime and bring ignorant of the possible medical and psychological issues related to being hit on the head? Question, my own experience if you want, but it DID occur and, despite being hit on the head repeatedly while being dragged by a car, I fortunately did NOT suffer anything worse than a black eye and a severe (non-concussive) bump on the head. I also was quite unnerved by it for a while afterwards, but the degree of that diminished fairly rapidly after the incident. Could I have been more seriously hurt by a blow on the head? Absolutely. I suppose I could even have died. But the fact is I didn't and your 32% figure doesn't state at all how serious those injuries typically are either. I'm sorry that in your case back in the US as a young man left you so much more traumatized than mine did, but that doesn't make either your case or mine necessarily typical.
8 ) Roy not addressing probabilities? Indeed he didn't, but he DID cite his story, which again I question as fact, as a reason not to take a cab and but since stories like his are so rare, if they even ever occurred at all, that he SHOULD have also acknowledged its unlikelihood. If his case was weak as straw, it was only EXACTLY because he didn't consider the probabilities.
9) Expecting accounts to match down to exact details setting up a ridiculous and unworkable standard? I don't expect accounts to match down to exact details, at least not if those details are minor or tangential to the story, but I DO expect major details like whether a serious injury like a hand being chopped off did occur. That's my standard. And, if we're talking about the dangers of being mugged on the way from the HDR to the Prez at night, I do think details like an event occurring at an entirely different time of the day, several blocks away from the 1 block walk we're talking about or even some event that happened to you back in the US, are sufficiently different to warrant pointing out. BTW, Barrio Amon is close to but is actually outside the Gulch and IS an entirely different area than the specific 1 block one we've been discussing.
Now I will allow that RECENT stories about crime in general in SJ, such as the one that happened during the daytime in Amon , does have some relevance to what we're discussing even if it occurred at another time and place to the exact route we're discussing to the extent it DOES suggest that the level of crime is on the rise and that things may be getting more dangerous, and if such crimes can occur during daylight hours in areas that are usually thought of as relatively safer, then it is also probably getting more dangerous at night and especially in that particular area. OTOH, it still needs to be noted that the crime RB depicted, if it occurred as he described at all, happened several years ago and to the best of my knowledge nothing quite like it has happened since (at least not to that severity), making its relevance to the current discussion somewhat questionable. And it still deserved to be noted that the victim in your story, who was mugged during the day in Amon had
just left a bank, and thus may have been specially targeted in a way that the average gringo pedestrian in that area usually isn't. These are not minor details.
10) Chokeholds that can break the neck, but so far haven't, punches in the face which can hurt or even leave visible cuts or bruising but which heal, tranqs in drinks which have nothing to do with taking cabs and couldn't be prevented by taking a cab anyway and machetes which are easily obtainable but are not so often seen and even if they are nearly always just used to threaten (usually quite effectively), irrational and jumpy crackhead bandits who could decide to kill you after taking your money but who much more likely will run off like a scared little jackrabbit once they've got what they wanted or else simply push you down to make you less likely to pursue.
11) Serious injury = serious injury, whether it’s a limb severed or a concussion, which can carry protracted and even permanent problems? Absolutely. Again, I NEVER suggested otherwise. So you're misstating what I did say to create your own straw man. What I DID say was that injury does not necessarily = serious injury and, in fact, probably in most cases the injuries resulting from these muggings do not usually result in permanently (or even temporarily) severed limbs or even protracted or permanent brain problems.
12) Safer walks to take on this planet? Of course there are. One could take a walk through the Department of Homeland Security. There are also much more dangerous walks on the planet. So what? None of that has any bearing on how remote the dangers of this particular walk might be. You can challenge my characterization of the risk of serious injury depicted in the most extreme examples as "extremely remote" if you want, but I will defend it. And you can call that being hyper defensive if you want, but I don't think it is any more so than your own defensiveness here of your own position, since you felt compelled to be just as long and just as repetitive as I have been in your last post.
13) Not carrying much money isn’t always going to save you? Again, NEVER said it would. All I was suggesting there was a) if you were mugged, which like I said could eventually happen to any of us if we were to take these chances often enough, the negative consequences in terms of lost property would be much less significant and as a result one would be much less likely to foolishly resist the robber, which in turn would probably make the robber much less inclined to attack and physically injure you than if you were to put up a fight and b) if you don't have items like a fancy watch on your wrist, rings on your fingers, gold chains on your neck, laptop cases and camera bags, big wallet bulges visible in your rear pocket, aren't seen exiting an ATM or collecting your gambling winnings at the HDR cashier window, then you're much less likely to be targeted and followed for robbery.
14) Re: not carrying just peanuts or no money at all betraying my ignorance? Again, you're putting words in my mouth. I never said one should walk around penniless, nor would I even want to. In fact the amount I bandied about was on the order of ~$20, which in SJ should be more than enough to keep any junkie happy and buy him his fix. BTW, I haven't called you ignorant, hyper defensive, self-righteous, arrogant, paranoid, whiny, reactionary, full of shit or deliberately disingenuous or any other form of direct name-calling and have tried to solely address the merits of your statements, so why you feel the need to get personal and insulting with me is beyond me. But perhaps my detection of underlying hostility was not so far off.
15) RE: your discussion of the details of the chokehold incident. I never said any one was "fudging" the evidence, only that they were leaving out relevant and important details (and not even necessarily deliberately). Going to the bank may have been a necessity but not taking a cab home from the bank wasn't. I don't recall the exact amount he had on him either but as I recall it was fairly sizable. And you should have noted that I specifically said the precaution one should take at times when they're forced to have excessive cash (e.g. because of gambling or withdrawing money from the bank) is exactly one of those times where one should definitely take a cab. Of course, simply walking out of the HDR, particularly at night, can "encourage" robbers because most ASSUME that all gringos carry lots of cash, but actually being seen handling lots of cash and ignoring some or all of the precautions which, as you have noted, have been covered many times certainly puts you at a much higher level of risk, perhaps the difference for some between acceptable and unacceptable levels.
16) Last paragraph, covers a lot but I'll try to address some of it. Actually, I think you're the one being reactionary here. I was never bothered simply by anyone sharing a war story, if I was "bothered" by anything it was they're not putting that story into proper context and seeming to suggest that stories like that were so common or likely that it would have much bearing on the question raised by the original poster of this thread. I never questioned their motives? and, in fact, have no idea what their motives would be other than simply to tell a story that they honestly believed had some relevance to the discussion at hand What I questioned was their story's relevance not their motives for telling it. I don't prefer to believe anything about safety, I just believe what I believe and I certainly don't need to say anything here one way or the other to "feel good about it". I don't need to bring any evidence that the purported story is false. How am I supposed to prove a negative? Isn't the real burden of proof upon the one who brings in the unsubstantiated story? And whatever the intent of the robbers, to slice off the guys arm or simply to scare him, the relevant fact is NOT whatever they MIGHT have tried to do but that the guy wasn't really seriously hurt (as I've been saying is the far most common outcome in these cases if the victim is even hurt at all). Again you mention recent cases of druggings as examples of violent crimes and, indeed you could classify them as violent crimes, but however you classify them, they really have no or very little obvious bearing at all on the issue of taking a cab back to the Prez. Taking a cab in no way prevents you from being drugged and, again in fact, when one is feeling drunk OR drugged is exactly one of the circumstances in which I said one should always take a cab. You maintain I failed to overturn the "semantical objection" whatever that is. I beg to differ. If by "semantical" you mean my choice of the terms "very" or "extremely" remote to refer to the odds of being SERIOUSLY injured in a mugging, you should have noted that in each case I was ONLY referring to muggings that result in the sort of SERIOUS injury that you and RB respectively CLAIM occurred or else say COULD have occurred and NOT to the every day but relatively benign muggings which I never claimed were so rare. So I'd actually suggest that it is you who have failed to make that case.
The part in that paragraph about all these anecdotal stories proving anything about the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime other than that the risk is probably increasing deserves special mention. Sure, there are many stories of crime, some more or less severe than others, some first person accounts and some accounts of things that happened to friends or acquaintances or even some 3rd hand accounts about people the story-teller doesn't even know. And, sure, that is from just a very small core group of posters (albeit ones who either live in CR fulltime or travel there frequently over many years and who therefore know many people in CR). But it is not at all surprising that there would be many accounts of crime, even from such a small group. Naturally those are the stories that people would tell. Most people are not going to post a story that they walked from the HDR to the Prez dozens or even hundreds of times over the last several years and never got mugged or maybe had only one incident that they survived, because where is the story or the drama in that? So, while these anecdotal accounts might be indicative of something, they really tell you very little about what your actual odds of becoming a victim might be, particularly if many of those anecdotal stories included other contributory factors (beyond simply place and time) such as failing to follow some or all of the many other precautions that have been suggested short of taking a cab. Again, I've never said that there was absolutely no risk at all or that there weren't "safer walks on the planet". I never even said that the risks of walking in that area weren't considerable. What I said was that a) much of this risk is greatly REDUCIBLE (even short of taking a cab) albeit never totally eliminable b) PERHAPS, while still risky, the level of risk can be lowered enough to be acceptable for SOME people in SOME circumstances and c) for most guys they would probably still consider that risk unacceptable and would always opt for a cab. And if you fall into the latter category, good for you, don't be defensive cuz no one is telling you what you should or shouldn't do, just don't expect absolutely everyone else to share your view.
Lastly, and not to be redundant or anything (cuz I know how much that upsets you
(nonhostile sarcasm)), I've substantially agreed with virtually everyone here has said about it being ADVISABLE for guys to take a cab from the HDR late at night. What I've been disagreeing with is what I consider the often over-the-top (panic-mongering) examples given by some to justify something that really doesn't need such stories to be sold.
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Though you`ll be hard pressed to find any reference works that consider the two words synonyms. But at this point that`s about the only sort of comeback available to you.
What has been challenged is your "extremely remote" characteriztion given that there are many much safer walks to take on this planet. That and your hyper defensiveness because someone shared a war story. 
