Another downside of bear spray is that you cannot buy it at a good price on Amazon and bring it with you when you fly to a national park because it is not permitted in either carry-on or checked luggage. And if you buy it at your destination and do not use it, you cannot bring it home with you on the plane for your next outing. When we did buy bear spray on location, it was pretty expensive. When we were leaving the park, we held it up and asked, "Does anyone want free bear spray?" We had a taker within 30 seconds.
I did not buy bear spray when my family visited the Grand Tetons. And then when out hiking a bear suddenly walked into the path just ten or so yards ahead of us, stopped, and turned to look at us! We panicked, since we had several small children, then we all walked away at a normal pace, and that's the end of the story.
One caveat: most of the people who go to the national parks rarely venture on the trails. Thus, the denominator needs to be way smaller. When I’ve hiked at Yellowstone, I just made sure to be noisy. Bears don’t like being surprised.
I think you are pretty much correct here, with one caveat: bears are not smart enough to do the math on deterrence, but they do learn from each other and avoid potential problems. Cubs spend a lot of time with their mothers learning what is and is not worth trying to eat, and the mother getting sprayed, or her mother getting sprayed, will be passed down to future generations for some time. Plus, predators have a tendency to not bother with prey that tends to be more trouble than it is worth, unlike prey animals who will often decide dangerous things need to just die, just in case. (Hence why buffalo are so dangerous.) However, humans are almost always in the "too much trouble" category for most predators that interact with them, so chances are really good a bear in a state park doesn't want anything to do with you in any case, unless people have been feeding them.
I had similar thoughts. Bears don't need to be smart enough to understand exact cause and effect from bear spray and other preventive measures. Humans just need to send signals that says we aren't worth it, and the mothers will teach the cubs to stay away from us.
People worry about bears more than they do other risks with similar probabilities. I live in California, where black bears pose almost zero risk. And yet people are still shocked that I'm out in the wilderness for days without bear spray. I will often see one bear a day and it's clear that they are simply looking for food in the woods and doing things we all do, such as scratching itches and swimming in lakes.
If the risk is "1-in-8M risk for attacks" for grizzly bears, it's likely that even a small amount of common sense and being aware of your surroundings will put you in the 7,999,999 group that doesn't get attacked.
A bear attack is a systemic, terminal risk for the individual.
If you get attacked by a bear and die, your personal probability of death becomes 100%.
Bear spray costs roughly $40 and weighs a few ounces. The downside of carrying it is minor inconvenience. The downside of not carrying it if you hit the 1-in-8-million lottery is irreversible ruin (death). Optimizing for a tiny financial saving at the expense of exposed total ruin is irrational.
Caplan’s 1-in-8-million figure is a backward-looking aggregate statistic. Probabilities are not static or homogeneous:
• The aggregate risk includes millions of people who live in high-rise apartments in Manhattan or only hike paved trails in suburban parks.
• If you are deep in the backcountry of Wyoming or Alaska, your local, real-time risk profile changes exponentially.
• Relying on a smoothed-out global average to make a hyper-local life-or-death decision is what Nassim Taleb calls being a "sucker" or an "intellectual yet idiot" (IYI) who confuses the textbook (the ludic setup) with the highly contingent real world.
In risk management, survival always trumps expected value. You cannot calculate "expected return" on an activity if an outcome of that activity eliminates your ability to play the game further.
• Caplan views the choice through a rigid, linear economic utility lens: 40 > (1/8,000,000 × value of life).
• Taleb’s rule is simple: Never compare a finite gain (saving $40) with a ruinous tail risk, no matter how small the probability appears to be, because your estimation of that small probability is almost certainly flawed or prone to error.
The Bottom Line
Taleb would argue that buying bear spray is not about predicting a bear attack; it is about insuring against your own ignorance of the future. He would classify Caplan's advice as a reckless over-optimization that picks up pennies in front of a steamroller.
But you could categorically say the same thing about insurance. It’s “peace of mind” for a price, and the question is whether that is worth it to you, on a personal level.
The number of houses which burn down relative to the number of people with house insurance is miniscule. Etc etc.
And yes actuaries and insurance companies know this, which is how they stay in business.
I agree with you that bear spray is of no deterrent effect. Bears have not done that risk/benefit calculation. And I also agree it’s unproven that bear spray will actually save your live in the event that it’s use is required. The numbers are likely so small as to make any attempt to show statistical significance impossible.
Another downside of bear spray is that you cannot buy it at a good price on Amazon and bring it with you when you fly to a national park because it is not permitted in either carry-on or checked luggage. And if you buy it at your destination and do not use it, you cannot bring it home with you on the plane for your next outing. When we did buy bear spray on location, it was pretty expensive. When we were leaving the park, we held it up and asked, "Does anyone want free bear spray?" We had a taker within 30 seconds.
I would get the bear spray as protection against violent people.
I did not buy bear spray when my family visited the Grand Tetons. And then when out hiking a bear suddenly walked into the path just ten or so yards ahead of us, stopped, and turned to look at us! We panicked, since we had several small children, then we all walked away at a normal pace, and that's the end of the story.
One caveat: most of the people who go to the national parks rarely venture on the trails. Thus, the denominator needs to be way smaller. When I’ve hiked at Yellowstone, I just made sure to be noisy. Bears don’t like being surprised.
Here is the classic hiker and bear warning joke:
A park ranger is giving a group of hikers safety tips for walking in bear country:
• Wear little bells on your clothes so the noise alerts bears of your presence and keeps you from startling them.
• Carry pepper spray to ward off a bear if an encounter happens.
• Learn to identify bear scat so you know what kind of bears are around:
• Black bear scat is smaller and usually contains berries, leaves, or fur.
• Grizzly bear scat? You can easily tell that it smells like pepper and has little bells in it!
I think you are pretty much correct here, with one caveat: bears are not smart enough to do the math on deterrence, but they do learn from each other and avoid potential problems. Cubs spend a lot of time with their mothers learning what is and is not worth trying to eat, and the mother getting sprayed, or her mother getting sprayed, will be passed down to future generations for some time. Plus, predators have a tendency to not bother with prey that tends to be more trouble than it is worth, unlike prey animals who will often decide dangerous things need to just die, just in case. (Hence why buffalo are so dangerous.) However, humans are almost always in the "too much trouble" category for most predators that interact with them, so chances are really good a bear in a state park doesn't want anything to do with you in any case, unless people have been feeding them.
I had similar thoughts. Bears don't need to be smart enough to understand exact cause and effect from bear spray and other preventive measures. Humans just need to send signals that says we aren't worth it, and the mothers will teach the cubs to stay away from us.
People worry about bears more than they do other risks with similar probabilities. I live in California, where black bears pose almost zero risk. And yet people are still shocked that I'm out in the wilderness for days without bear spray. I will often see one bear a day and it's clear that they are simply looking for food in the woods and doing things we all do, such as scratching itches and swimming in lakes.
If the risk is "1-in-8M risk for attacks" for grizzly bears, it's likely that even a small amount of common sense and being aware of your surroundings will put you in the 7,999,999 group that doesn't get attacked.
A bear attack is a systemic, terminal risk for the individual.
If you get attacked by a bear and die, your personal probability of death becomes 100%.
Bear spray costs roughly $40 and weighs a few ounces. The downside of carrying it is minor inconvenience. The downside of not carrying it if you hit the 1-in-8-million lottery is irreversible ruin (death). Optimizing for a tiny financial saving at the expense of exposed total ruin is irrational.
Caplan’s 1-in-8-million figure is a backward-looking aggregate statistic. Probabilities are not static or homogeneous:
• The aggregate risk includes millions of people who live in high-rise apartments in Manhattan or only hike paved trails in suburban parks.
• If you are deep in the backcountry of Wyoming or Alaska, your local, real-time risk profile changes exponentially.
• Relying on a smoothed-out global average to make a hyper-local life-or-death decision is what Nassim Taleb calls being a "sucker" or an "intellectual yet idiot" (IYI) who confuses the textbook (the ludic setup) with the highly contingent real world.
In risk management, survival always trumps expected value. You cannot calculate "expected return" on an activity if an outcome of that activity eliminates your ability to play the game further.
• Caplan views the choice through a rigid, linear economic utility lens: 40 > (1/8,000,000 × value of life).
• Taleb’s rule is simple: Never compare a finite gain (saving $40) with a ruinous tail risk, no matter how small the probability appears to be, because your estimation of that small probability is almost certainly flawed or prone to error.
The Bottom Line
Taleb would argue that buying bear spray is not about predicting a bear attack; it is about insuring against your own ignorance of the future. He would classify Caplan's advice as a reckless over-optimization that picks up pennies in front of a steamroller.
But you could categorically say the same thing about insurance. It’s “peace of mind” for a price, and the question is whether that is worth it to you, on a personal level.
The number of houses which burn down relative to the number of people with house insurance is miniscule. Etc etc.
And yes actuaries and insurance companies know this, which is how they stay in business.
I agree with you that bear spray is of no deterrent effect. Bears have not done that risk/benefit calculation. And I also agree it’s unproven that bear spray will actually save your live in the event that it’s use is required. The numbers are likely so small as to make any attempt to show statistical significance impossible.
“And I also agree it’s unproven that bear spray will actually save your live in the event that it’s use is required” - When people use bear spray, it is proven to work (though use being required vs actually used won’t completely match up): https://web.archive.org/web/20111226005837/http://wdfw.wa.gov/hunting/bear_cougar/bear/files/JWM_BearSprayAlaska.pdf
Brown bears think of humans with bear spray as "Cajun Food".