As someone living right in recluse territory, I'm constantly terrified when going into a closet to get clothes...etc, even though I see black widows all the time. Any time you're at the gas pump or in your garage, look around and you can probably find one.
Yeah, I was hoping that this article would talk about how Brown Recluse aren't actually dangerous (as I live in Texas), but instead it talked about California, and it appears Brown Recluse are still quite dangerous. I see them a lot.
Could we change the title to "Myth of the Brown Recluse in California" or something?
It puts it more in the range of plane crashes. They're not good, but they are rare, even if you're flying on a plane regularly.
And then you have California, which is terrified of plane crashes, either that they might be in one or that they're in the middle of one right now, even though they never fly and have no need or intention of ever flying.
In GA, I am wary for the black widow and the brown recluse, the former when indoors and the latter outdoors. I've not spotted either in months honestly, but I never stop being wary.
As far as CA natives being super freaked out about it...meh? I don't blame you. Fiddler spiders are scary looking and after seeing some of the wounds online, it's quite the eye opener.
I have never personally met someone in either GA or AR that had been bitten by either of these spiders, so if you lean towards the uncharitable side of things, I have a somewhat irrational fear caused by reading things in HTML docs downloaded from a remote server in cyberspace.
Both the widow and the recluse are quite timid. Widow bites are generally not dangerous unless you're elderly, very young, or immunocompromised. They'll swell and be red for a while, but it's not life-threatening. Get near a widow, poke it, and it cowers in fear.
The recluse's bite isn't itself dangerous - it's the necrotic bacteria that they carry that can get into your bite, which IIRC happens in about 20-25% of bites. If they bite at all - they're more likely to run away terrified than bite, but it's definitely something to be worried about.
However, if you find them, do not kill them because they are cannibals. If other recluses smell a dead one, they'll come to eat it. A recluse infestation is a very difficult job for exterminators for this reason.
I was more worried about the (biting!) gnats in GA. And the snakes. And the mosquitoes.
How interesting! Ive known several people with brown recluse bites and I always assumed the (rather unpalatable) necrosis was from the venom, not some cofactor like bacteria.
Upon reflection, it makes total sense. The presentations they had would be identical to serious infection, ie visible red marks on the skin tracing blood vessels and following the blood flow.
A solitary male spider will run and take cover, but a mother will stand their position and will not hesitate to bite to defend its eggsac or spiderlings.
I would see black widows around when I was living in Sacramento 7 or 8 years ago. One set up shop in our laundry room window, another in the car port. No real bother.
However one time I found one in the bathtub and had to get rid of it -- not only because it had decided the bathtub was a good stop to hang out but because if my cat had found it first it wouldn't have ended well.
My sis-in-law had a necrotic bite from a brown recluse that nearly required surgery to stop the decay. This was in the Midwest. One of the happiest points of moving to CA is not finding them on my pillow. Creepy little creatures. I haven’t met anyone in 16y of life in CA that has heard of them.
> One of the happiest points of moving to CA is not finding them on my pillow.
Christ this thread is seriously nightmare fuel for someone who grew up in a country where literally no dangerous wildlife exists. I cannot imagine dealing with deadly animals on my pillow.
We have bees and wasps, which cause several deaths per year:
"Estimates of the prevalence of anaphylaxis vary widely. In 2000, it was estimated that 25% of all UK deaths from anaphylaxis were due to reactions to hymenoptera stings. Every year in the UK there are 2–9 deaths due to anaphylaxis from bee or wasp stings."
UK is not entirely safe to people with arachnophobia, as a lad in Sommerset could explain you when in 2005 had a brief but painful encounter with the so called most venomous species of Spider in the world, inside his kitchen.
Ladies, Gentlemen, specially for you, vegan organic food lovers: the wonderful, strong and always elegant Brazilian Wandering Spider.
The mid-Atlantic is pretty good about nature not killing you. I grew up in suburban Philly — the only wildlife really to worry about were deer (and deer ticks). Every few years there would be a bear sighting, or a tree branch falling on someone’s head while out for a run, but if you’re inland, hurricanes aren’t a problem, you don’t really get snow that can’t be dealt with, no earthquakes, volcanos, wildfires, etc.
Central Minnesota is basicaly dangerous wildlife free if you except disease-carrying ticks (and now maybe the mosquitos?) and don't consider non-predators dangerous. I imagine vast swaths of Iowa and eastern Nebraska are similar. Maybe the Dakotas too although I suspect there are a ton of coyotes there. Minnesota has two venomous snakes, black beers, grey wolves, coyotes, and the northern black widow, but none of these were part of my experience growing up. The snakes are confined to the south-eastern tip of the state. Most of the other predators are found in the north. Only one person I knew had ever even claimed to see a black widow, and it was a child and it was at her parents cabin in who-knows-where. Even when we went camping, Dad warned us about 'kitties' (read: skunks), not dangerous predators.
(Northern) Minnesotan here. Don't forget moose! I'd much rather see a black bear in the woods (and I have, several times, even a mama with her cub) than a moose. They will stomp you to death, sometimes just for fun.
Oh yeah. I forgot the smaller wild cats too. I think moose are probably the scariest animal Minnesota has outside the zoos. Maybe deer or cows if you're driving...
> How hard is that Arkansas guy laughing who was sleeping on top of 6 brown recluses?
I get the point and I second the sentiment and intent of the article. But then again that Arkansas guy must be very brave nonetheless when he isn't worried about six brown recluses living next to him while sleeping - considering that the spider definitely is venomous and a bite can trigger necrosis.
I was born and raised in Arkansas, and I still live in deep brown recluse territory. It's a "out of sight, out of mind" deal with the 8-legged friends. Subconsciously you know they're around -- I could find several in my garage if I wanted to, and probably some in the closets of my house -- but they're reclusive by nature, hence the name, and tend to stay out of the way. My uncle got bit on the arm by one while bringing some firewood inside one winter. A course of oral and local antibiotics from a veterinarian friend and all he had to show after a week was a small scar.
We don't laugh that hard, I have been bit twice, and both left sizable scars. Although, if you know you have been bit and get treatment within in a day or two it shouldn't be that bad. --Arkansan
It is better now that we have running water and don't have to use the outhouse. That was a bad scene for brown recluse bites, in particular with respect to the typical bite location.
As a kid, we once visited a cabin and my mom sat down on the toilet and was surprised by a spider. Ever since then, I always check for spiders under the seat before I'll sit. If I had had to use an outhouse, I probably would have squated over the seat like they squat in some countries...
As a native-born Californian, I’m glad to hear it.
As a long-term, transplanted resident of Virginia, however, I’m keenly aware of the statistically small, but non-zero chance of running afoul with a (suspected) brown recluse. In 2014 I spent six days in the hospital after being being bitten on the ankle.
Extensive courses of I.V. antibiotics were used to combat the necrotizing aspects of the venom. Along with a number of different topical anti-bactrials.
Unfortunately, because I did not capture the spider which bit me, it was impossible to definitively point to Loxosceles as the culprit, thus complicating treatment.
Recluse spider bites can be (relatively) painless, initially, and it could have happened while I was out hiking in the woods and stopped for a rest, or earlier, while at my home.
Not that I don't believe you (the word 'necrotizing' sends shivers up my spine) but since you didn't catch the spider itself, are there any other species of spider that may have been the biter?
Anything is possible, but here's the rationale the doctors who were treating me used to reach their conclusion:
In Virginia there are only two known populations of venomous spiders, the black widow and the brown recluse. A black widow bite was ruled out because I did not exhibit any of the "typical" symptoms that they'd had experience with. I didn't have any pain outside of the bit marks (until later when my lymphatic system started to show signs of blood poisoning and an ache set in). From what I understand black widow bites start off as a "bee sting" type pain and then progress to abdominal pain and full-body muscle spasms.
But as you alluded to, without a specimen, it was an educated guess on their part based on my memory of where I'd been during the week prior to the bite.
I live in the Bay Area in a warmer microclimate. We've got widows, sizable orb weavers, and supposedly tarantulas (although I've never seen one and have my doubts). I've twice been bitten by something while either under my house or in my basically wild yard and gotten nasty infection. One bite was on my elbow and become necrotic. It was treated only with antibiotics. It now looks like I took a bullet. The other was on my neck and required surgery. Although I had some mild symptoms suggestiong a black widow bite, they were also symptoms of infection, so the doctor concluded it was not a widow that bit me. Anything that can pierce the skin can give you a nasty infection.
I take it your never been to Mt Diablo during mating season then? The place is filthy with tarantulas. Just a random YouTube but at certain times of the year, the road is covered in them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g4w5UbvaYy0
Cool vid. Nope, never been there, but I want to go now. I'm in the hills of the peninsula. I've done a ton of hiking near my house but I've never found one.
Yeah, as far as I've found they stay in the East Bay. I've seen one in the Oakland Hills, but my friends that are big bikers have relayed disgusting (to me) stories about all of the tarantulas they encounter near Mt. Diablo and out that way.
The tarantulas are out in the hills around the bay for the most part, especially the East Bay hills and down around the Santa Cruz mountains.
My experience with BW bites was my dad getting bit a couple times growing up out in the Central Valley. He had bad flu like symptoms for a few days from the bites. FWIW
Small typo. Is Dysdera crocata, not crocota. I used to play with those things annoying it with a little stick in a mix of fear and admiration. Children love predators so It was like finding a lion under a rock. A terrific brick-red and cream animal with impressive extra big fangs. Very "pokemonesque".
I read a similar article to this a while back about lack of Brown Recluse populations in Michigan despite a healthy fear and misreporting of sightings.
What happens when you mix a brown recluse and a black widow? You get a brown widow. (Not really).
These http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/URBAN/SPIDERS/brown_wido... things are all over SW Florida insofar as I can tell from the egg sacs littering my lanai. There's more to say about them - but not now, I feel bad about passive/aggressive threadjacking. I'll just leave that link here for my fellow Floriduhuns.
I live in So California, and people around here always talk about black widows, and are always surprised to learn of the existence of brown widows.
I find this odd because I never see black widows around my house, but there are easily a dozen brown widows coming out at night around the base of the outside of my house. Pointy egg-sacks everywhere...
The media cynicism in this article is problematic. The implication that the media spreads FUD about brown recluses in an effort to make more money sounds an awful lot like the things Trump says. I highly doubt there is a conspiracy to lie about brown recluses by the media, for any reason.
I think it’s less suggesting a conspiracy and more suggesting media hysteria and lack of fact checking. It relates to the Gell-Mann: a lot of the media, and especially local TV news, is really terrible and careless about their coverage of technical subjects
With something like this, brown recluses in California. Where a lot of people believe it, because it's a "known fact". Well local media is populated by a lot of those people. They're probably not knowingly lying or creating a conspiracy. Just talking about something "everybody knows", and it just happens that that fact is mostly wrong.
There isn't a problem with saying the media is wrong, misinformed, or lying, if you have hard evidence to support that claim.
Trump's problem is he just claims any negative news are malicious lies, and rarely has anything to support his claims even a little bit. And that he, the undisciplined lair, is the only reputable source of information anyone should listen to, if they were smart anyway.
> I repeatedly have seen the media in their "quest to seek out the truth" write completely speculative stories about the existence of the brown recluse in California. Unfortunately, the truth is not nearly good enough to sell news and therefore, a speculative story is fabricated based upon faulty assumptions.
He's strongly and cynically implying that the media doesn't sincerely seek the truth and runs stories based on whether the story sells. Promoting distruse in the media like this is dangerous for our society, we've see what happens when Trump does it.
He then goes about spending his entire article (and in fact, a whole ass book!: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=8014010049221...) talking about the spider in question and why it's misunderstood by laymen. The man is an expert in his field lobbing a (valid) criticism about media representation of one specific matter.
Criticizing the media with proper rationale is fair, but he's going a step further. He's strongly implying they are doing this for the money. No need for him to imply that or even assign any motive to why the media is wrong on this topic. It suffices for him to say they are wrong and to show how. He's putting forth a bad faith theory and this is also what Trump does. This sort of cynicism / assumption of poor motives towards the media is bad for society.
There's no evidence to suggest they intentionally write brown recluse stories because it sells more. It's just as likely the media also gets innocently wrapped up in the myth. I'm not sure how you're defending that quote.
Biologists have complained for years about fear-mongering by the media when it comes to certain scary animals (sharks probably being the #1 victims). It's not that the media is lying per se, it's just an overstatement of the danger presented by these types of animals. It's not a conspiracy to lie, just sensationalist journalism (a problem, but much less sinister)
I'm not sure if you're just being sarcastic at this point or not...Let's just assume you're not because hey, good faith and all that.
There is a wide gap between "the media sometimes sensationalizes things that are traumatic and scary which causes people to believe that these events/things are more common than they actually are" and "this person is systematically sewing distrust in the media as a means of properly moving information from one location to the other, thus destroying the media's credibility and undermining our free society".
The whole "fake news" problem, wherein people just attempt to discredit factual information they disagree with by claiming it isn't real or important, is not the same as a person pointing out a well documented (and discussed) trend in certain segments of the media to go for "click-bait".
You're not arguing that click-bait style writing isn't real, right? You're not going to try and tell me that a research associate somehow knows less about his field of study than some random member of the media, are you?
On the flip side, increased awareness of the little buggers is probably better for bite victims.
The mother of one of my childhood friends in chilly New Hampshire went to the hospital with a rash a few years back and several visits emerged missing a chunk of her back about the size of a tennis ball. Having never seen one, the doctors never even considered she might have a dangerous spider bite.
My father in law developed a nasty necrotic wound that everyone assumed was a brown recluse bite. But it kept getting worse and worse no matter what treatment options they tried. Turned out he had leishmaniasis. Of course no one considered that because they were blinded by the common explanation.
Now, you could argue that maybe had the doctors known more about leishmaniasis he would have received a diagnosis faster. However, I imagine the situation played out about as well as one should hope. Certainly in Bolivia (where he picked up the disease) they should be more aware of the common causes of things than the uncommon. They should not be inspecting for brown recluse bites when there are rarely any just as we should not look at every necrotizing wound and investigate it as an uncommon case of leishmaniasis.
The article doesn't mention how long you have after the bite until the antivenom must be administered, so it's feasible that people living in remote or undeveloped areas would still want to be wary. I also imagine that children are more susceptible to the venom, so it still makes sense to teach them about the danger.
Most people don’t need to be. What the article fails to mention is that Black Widow bites are only life-threatening to the ‘feeble’ (children, elderly, sick, etc). Otherwise you’re in for a very bad time, but the chance of dying is insignificant.
“In the United States each year, about 2,200 people report being bitten .. each year 12 bites are considered serious but no deaths have been reported in 100 years ..
.. Contrary to popular belief, most people who are bitten suffer no serious damage, let alone death ..
.. Since the venom is not likely to be life-threatening, antivenom has been used as pain relief and not to save lives .. a study demonstrated that standardized pain medication, when combined with either antivenom or a placebo, had similar improvements in pain and resolution of symptoms.”
Both are very different creatures. Lets say broadly that Recluse has an acid attak, will melt tissue. Recluse will not kill you normally but can leave a scar.
Black widows instead have an attack of, lets say, electric type. Will 'electrocute' you. Black widow will not kill you normally. But if you collaborate with the black widow work, you will kill yourself instead
Black widows are not aggressive. They won't bite you unless you crush them or threaten their eggs. You can even pick them up and play with them without a bite. (Not that I would recommend testing their limits).
That being said, I do wear gloves when picking up firewood or moving stuff around my property, because if I grab one accidentally, that does crush them, which is exactly when they bite.
One of my parents friends had two black widows living in this small enclosed area of their backyard. The wife was a photographer and let them live their so she could take pictures. You could get within inches of them with a camera or whatever else, and they wouldn't even move
I have a couple black widows living in my basement. They each chose to live in a small crevice in a concrete wall. I can go watch them, but if my shadow accidentally falls on them, they hide as fast as they can.
Some people thinks it’s crazy that I don’t kill them, but they certainly aren’t trying to hurt me, so I don’t see why I would.
I like how aggressive the tone of this was "Although people are free to disagree, this opinion has come about after more than two decades of constant research".
DRTS; (For those of you who didn't read, because... font too small) - Brown recluse spiders, in general, don't bite people unless you have less than 20/20 vision. In that case, you should run for the hills, esp. if you don't know how to zoom in the browser. A+ for content, but accessibility less so.
Am I the only one who read the headline and thought this was about the personality scores given out to South-Asians as part of the Harvard admissions case?
Yep, tons of spider in Missouri... I used to be somewhat freaked out about brown recluse spiders as a child but now as an adult I could care less. There is one with a web setup in my basement that I walk by every day, I just let it be since there is a pile of dead bugs under the web.
I remember one kid in high school got bit and had a nasty necrotized spot on his ankle, other than that I have only heard of a few people who have been bit.
As far as black widows go, I have only seen/caught a couple of them and never heard of anyone being bit by one.
The first was on my upper lip, sent me to the hospital, before the necrosis it swelled up closing off my mouth and nose so I couldn't breath. The "core" was extracted and I was left with minimal scarring, but I keep a mustache to cover it.
The second bite was on my big toe. Woke up one morning with my toe swollen to the size of a small orange. When I went to the hospital for that one, some rotting had already started. My 350 pound father and two nurses held my leg down as the doctor cut into it. They were no match, I knocked them all to the ground when I felt the blade. I now have a dime-sized spot on my big toe.
I still don't fear them, and recognize the good they do. I try to avoid spiders now though ;).
How do you know that it was a brown recluse? I'm not disputing, I'm just wondering if it was assumed based on the injury or if you were able to find the actual spider.
A friend later told me that MRSA sometimes mimics the same symptoms, but both occurred during summer, and not around other kids or in a hospital setting.
Funny. 10 years ago, I lived at the northern edge of the brown recluse zone. I saw many spiders in my apartment building that looked like them - can't say for sure. Then one day I developed sudden swelling on my thigh. It went from nothing to fairly swollen in about 2 hours.
I went to the doctor and he said "Could be a spider bite, or could be a staph infection. No way to know - just take these antibiotics and pray."
Then earlier this year it happened again - at a similar spot. Doctor said the same thing. No brown recluses in this area, but he said it could be a different spider.
Unfortunately doctors tend to over diagnose a lot of things as brown recluse bites[1]. So, unless he specifically tested for it, there's a really good chance it wasn't a brown recluse bite.
I think Black Widows are more common in the American South West than anywhere else. I'm in Tennessee and brown recluse spiders are very common, but I've only ever seen one black widow, ever. Black Widows are less aggressive afiak and are usually outdoors. Brown recluse love cardboard boxes and storage areas, indoors...so their bite is more common.
I'm in Tennessee and brown recluse spiders are very common, but I've only ever seen one black widow, ever.
Could be just NC, too, dunno. It's the only place I've seen black widows, and though not common, I saw more than a few. OTOH, I was surprised to find out NC has scorpions, too, so who knows what goes on up in those mountains. :-)
NC native here -- I've found black widows in nearly every apartment and house I've lived in, which is saying something. Only one of those locations was outside a city.
Redbacks can be fairly common but if you encourage daddy long legs and leave the house spiders alone you'll rarely find one.
House spiders though can make you quite sick if you get bitten.
Sydney funnel web spiders are dangerous and aggressive - enough said.
White-tailed spiders that also get blamed for necrotic lesions but is likely bacterial are fast and tend to wander. They'll sidestep a shoe and jump at you before disappearing. I've spent hours upending a room after losing sight of one.
Most people though are more scared of huntsman spiders and they can get pretty big and move fast. There's a certain type that are thicker in body and will come at you. You think you have it pinned under the broom head and the next second it's racing up the handle jumping at you.
Growing up in TX my sisters and I were sufficiently scared to death of "fiddlebacks". I've never known anyone to be bitten but my wife got a nasty bite from something about a week ago. Big red swollen spot on her ankle and it immediately made me think of the Brown Recluse bite stories i was told as a kid. I asked my wife to keep an eye on it and if it looked any worse in 24 hours we're going to the doc. Fortunately, the swelling went down and things turned out fine.
I was likely bitten on the ankle by one when I was 12 after walking around in ivy. It's hard to tell exactly what it was, but it swelled up like half a baseball, the doctor removed a chunk of skin/flesh an inch across (it mostly fell off) and I couldn't walk for a couple of weeks.
I hated spiders for years after that... they don't bug me much now, but windows and recluses will spread (if fed)
and can be dangeous. It's best to keep them out of your house and garage area. Seen lots of widows, but never a recluse in California.
I've had people tell me that brown recluse don't live in Washington, and that it's a similar "myth", but one of my friends got bit by one in high school and ended up with a hole in his leg the size of a marble
Did people here read the whole thing? This is some good reading! "The whole state would be evacuated" if even one live spider, as opposed to an "ex-spider" were found. That is good stuff! This made my day.
There’s this concept that any time you see a new story where the topic is your area of expertise, it’s baffling how completely inaccurate the story is.
And then we all keep reading stories about areas in which we aren’t experts, and it doesn’t occur to us that are likely equally misleading.
Because if we all factored that in, we wouldn’t believe any news.
And I guess we feel better thinking we know what’s going on, rather than acknowledging we are in the dark.
I really wish I could tell some system who I designate as authorities for given subjects.
And then I could see the news annotated by the authorities I chose. Or by the people they acknowledge have authority over those subjects.
Linus Torvalds is an expert on Linux.
John Carmack is an expert on computer graphics.
Tiger Woods is an expert on Golf.
Al Gore is an expert on Climate Change.
I don't care what Tiger Woods thinks about computer graphics. I don't care what Linus Torvalds thinks about Golf. I don't care what John Carmack thinks about Climate Change.
But if those people that I've identified acknowledge that other people or groups get it "mostly right," and those people have annotated some news article, I desperately want to see their commentary!
And I'd also be curious to learn who I think anti-experts are. When the people I think are authorities endorse an article on that subject, I want to see who condemns that article. And I want to read their commentary for myself. If I think they're loopy, I can flag them as anti-authorities.
And yes, when there's dispute among the people I consider authorities on a given topic, I'll be especially interested to read the debate.
I want to say that I probably trust people who work at the Washington Post to cover world news. I probably trust people at MIT, Cornell, Stanford to cover science. Eventually I'll discover which economic school most agrees with my take.
Yes, this may re-enforce the bubble that I'm in. But like I said, I really do want to read the BEST arguments from people who disagree with my school of experts, too. Flame wars are a giant waste of time. I want to flag a comment, "I disagree, but this is the most persuasive point someone has made." Highlight THOSE comments. Even better are the comments where I can say, "You really turned me around on this one."
I want to flag a comment from either side as, "Hey, can people from both sides please comment on this? This seems like it's interesting."
I want to have Line Item Veto. To comment on specific parts of an article, highlighting them, to say they are for sure true, or they're for sure false, etc.
Let the media have the chance to revise and correct their article. Hell, even fixing spelling and grammar mistakes is valuable.
Note that I desperately want this same kind of annotation for research papers on arXiv, etc.
I think I'd want it to work something like Google SideWiki, or maybe Disqus?
Won't someone please implement this?
The democracy of upvotes and downvotes on Reddit and Hacker News is a signal, but it can be gamed by bots, and NOT ALL OPINIONS ARE EQUAL.
I don't want the system to TELL me who experts are. Maybe it can suggest experts. But it should damn well include Alex Jones (even though I detest him), and Fox News (even though I think they're the most incorrect major news source).
If Jon Stewart or Dan Rather have something to say about an article?! You can bet your ass I want to read it!
Hell, even linking me to a video of when Stephen Colbert talked about this topic last night adds some value.
I read a blog post from a pediatrician once that I thought was excellent. He lamented roughly, "If you don't trust me to be an authority on vaccines for your child, then I don't know what kind of relationship you think we have." I agree with that. It's not that I think my pediatrician is RIGHT. It's that I grant that they have more authority on the subject than I do, and my world view is to trust scientific authority / consensus. Even though that's ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEE OF CORRECTNESS. I get that. But of the ways to try to understand the world, I prefer to view the world through the lens of scientists. And since we have divisions of labor, and I do not have enough time to become an expert myself, I want help in understanding how the experts I place trust in, how they view the world, a...
Sorry couldn't help but LOL and sorry for getting off-topic.
>Al Gore is an expert on Climate Change.
Might need to rethink that. He's a fundraiser and tv personality. Think 'evangelist'. It's not evident that he understands complex systems or probabilities better than say, Taleb. AFAIK, so far all his historic projections have been incorrect. This is the danger of 'celebrity'. Similar with Neil DeGasse.
That said, I do think it's interesting, what Taleb said about "you should go to a surgeon that doesn't look like a surgeon"...if one can be successful in a field without succumbing to stereotype-aligned but inconsequential norms, they might just know what they are saying, other wise, they'd be the first ones thrown out of the boat by colleagues.
Do be careful about reinforcing your own bubble. Much of what you said would have you doing that, vis-a-vie media-based indication of what is 'an expert'.
Taleb isn't arguing that someone who doesn't look like a surgeon will necessarily be a good one, just that they are more likely to be good, relative to a surgeon who got there with fewer obstacles.
I am a human with limited time and resources. If you want me to name right now one human being that I trust to guide me in the right direction on Climate Change, it's Al Gore.
Al Gore would then, as I have seen him do, put actual scientists up on a pedestal. His most important role would be to help me find the REAL, underlying authorities.
I would as likely be to say, "I would likely trust any of the authors of the IPCC."
And again, yes, I would trust Neil deGrasse Tyson to help me find authorities. I would have trusted Carl Sagan to help me find authorities. I would trust Bill Nye to help me find authorities.
If you picture the world in some kind of N-Dimensional space of authority and ignorance, I think Al Gore, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, and Bill Nye are pointed in the right direction. And I think they're aware (or were aware) that they were not themselves the sources of that authority, but merely spokespeople for it. I'd start with them. Because I don't honestly know who to REALLY listen to.
After I've started on my path, I'd hope to find out the differences within the schools of thought on any given subject. And I'd hope I'd be open to having my mind changed, on anything.
I am completely aware of the problem of the bubble. Another thing I want to do is to specifically find people who share ALMOST ALL of my views, but differ with me on some important subject. Because I think a discussion between me and them would be based on shared views, and would be very fruitful.
I'd also like people to volunteer information about themselves (aggregated and anonymized), so that I can find out, "Out of US Citizen, Christian, college-educated people earning more than $100k per year, how many of them believe in anthropogenic climate change?" And other questions like that. Yes, huge bias, because of self-reported people, etc. But still. Being able to even sample HN or Reddit on those kinds of questions would be super interesting.
And I'd desperately want to keep bots out of this, and I'd often want to filter out people who aren't KNOWN to be from the US or living in the US. Often I'd care what people in other countries think, but often I just don't.
> It's not evident that he understands complex systems
It's not evident that he understand evangelizing either.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Al Gore. The world wold be a much better place if he had won the 2000 election. But the one image that sticks with me is the scene in "An Inconvenient Truth" where Al is being driven around in the back seat of a plush town car. A more tone-deaf image in that context is hard to imagine.
Russell Brand, of all people, caught my attention one time. He said when he criticized the flaws of capitalism when he was poor, people called him jealous. When he criticized the flaws of capitalism when he was wealthy, people called him a hypocrite.
They're all ad hominem attacks. But when he's criticized for being both too poor, and for being too rich, and his message didn't change, it's particularly obvious that people just don't want to hear his position, and will do anything to discredit him.
I agree with your sentiment and like your example, but in fairness to "the people" criticizing him, it's probably different people in each instance of criticism. We personify groups of people, and then treat them as fungible units of a universal (if hypocritical) collective. Individuals will criticize everything, if given enough time and resources.
I've seen people call Gore a hypocrite for flying around.
He believes in carbon offsets.
He's also not opposed to capitalism.
So, spending money on luxury goods, and spending money to buy carbon offsets, is entirely in line with what he's stated are his views.
You're welcome to your opinion on the matter, of course, but I wanted to highlight that I don't perceive riding in a plush town car is being out of line with his message of acting on Climate Change.
I'm not criticizing Al Gore for riding in a limo. I'm criticizing him for choosing to put a scene of himself riding in a limo in a movie about climate change.
I want to flag a comment, "I disagree, but this is the most persuasive point someone has made."
In theory, that is my understanding of the voting system on HN. Based on the downvotes I have received over the years, it's obviously not perfect in that respect. But upvote the comments that contribute positively to the conversation, and you might rarely downvote a comment that detracts. I click the up button for plenty of comments with which I have strong disagreement. But if it's a well-thought comment that makes me have to think about a good counter if I disagree, then it's worth an up click.
But what is most interesting to me is, "I disagree with your conclusion (or the assumptions you are starting from), but I think your argument is well said."
I'd often like to de-emphasize the people that I agree with. I don't need my own opinion echoed back to me so much, thanks. That's what FB, Reddit, HN seem to tend to do.
Or, they find "engaging" content. Which is normally obnoxious, offensive, and flat-out wrong in uninteresting ways. They feed on my pugnacious attitude for clicks.
I'd rather spend more time talking with people who accept the "Principle of Charity" as sacrosanct, than talking with people who will quibble about minor points.
157 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] threadCould we change the title to "Myth of the Brown Recluse in California" or something?
It does to some degree, with anecdotes of interactions with no ill effects.
Clearly it can cause severe health issues, but the vast majority if the time it doesn't.
And then you have California, which is terrified of plane crashes, either that they might be in one or that they're in the middle of one right now, even though they never fly and have no need or intention of ever flying.
As far as CA natives being super freaked out about it...meh? I don't blame you. Fiddler spiders are scary looking and after seeing some of the wounds online, it's quite the eye opener.
I have never personally met someone in either GA or AR that had been bitten by either of these spiders, so if you lean towards the uncharitable side of things, I have a somewhat irrational fear caused by reading things in HTML docs downloaded from a remote server in cyberspace.
Edit: grammar
The recluse's bite isn't itself dangerous - it's the necrotic bacteria that they carry that can get into your bite, which IIRC happens in about 20-25% of bites. If they bite at all - they're more likely to run away terrified than bite, but it's definitely something to be worried about.
However, if you find them, do not kill them because they are cannibals. If other recluses smell a dead one, they'll come to eat it. A recluse infestation is a very difficult job for exterminators for this reason.
I was more worried about the (biting!) gnats in GA. And the snakes. And the mosquitoes.
Upon reflection, it makes total sense. The presentations they had would be identical to serious infection, ie visible red marks on the skin tracing blood vessels and following the blood flow.
Sphingomyelinase D
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loxoscelism
However one time I found one in the bathtub and had to get rid of it -- not only because it had decided the bathtub was a good stop to hang out but because if my cat had found it first it wouldn't have ended well.
Christ this thread is seriously nightmare fuel for someone who grew up in a country where literally no dangerous wildlife exists. I cannot imagine dealing with deadly animals on my pillow.
"Estimates of the prevalence of anaphylaxis vary widely. In 2000, it was estimated that 25% of all UK deaths from anaphylaxis were due to reactions to hymenoptera stings. Every year in the UK there are 2–9 deaths due to anaphylaxis from bee or wasp stings."
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta246/documents/venom-anaph...
Ladies, Gentlemen, specially for you, vegan organic food lovers: the wonderful, strong and always elegant Brazilian Wandering Spider.
Peekaboo!: https://www.visitemosmisiones.com/noticias/wp-content/upload...
I get the point and I second the sentiment and intent of the article. But then again that Arkansas guy must be very brave nonetheless when he isn't worried about six brown recluses living next to him while sleeping - considering that the spider definitely is venomous and a bite can trigger necrosis.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-recluse/
As a long-term, transplanted resident of Virginia, however, I’m keenly aware of the statistically small, but non-zero chance of running afoul with a (suspected) brown recluse. In 2014 I spent six days in the hospital after being being bitten on the ankle.
Extensive courses of I.V. antibiotics were used to combat the necrotizing aspects of the venom. Along with a number of different topical anti-bactrials.
Unfortunately, because I did not capture the spider which bit me, it was impossible to definitively point to Loxosceles as the culprit, thus complicating treatment.
Recluse spider bites can be (relatively) painless, initially, and it could have happened while I was out hiking in the woods and stopped for a rest, or earlier, while at my home.
In Virginia there are only two known populations of venomous spiders, the black widow and the brown recluse. A black widow bite was ruled out because I did not exhibit any of the "typical" symptoms that they'd had experience with. I didn't have any pain outside of the bit marks (until later when my lymphatic system started to show signs of blood poisoning and an ache set in). From what I understand black widow bites start off as a "bee sting" type pain and then progress to abdominal pain and full-body muscle spasms.
But as you alluded to, without a specimen, it was an educated guess on their part based on my memory of where I'd been during the week prior to the bite.
I take it your never been to Mt Diablo during mating season then? The place is filthy with tarantulas. Just a random YouTube but at certain times of the year, the road is covered in them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g4w5UbvaYy0
My experience with BW bites was my dad getting bit a couple times growing up out in the Central Valley. He had bad flu like symptoms for a few days from the bites. FWIW
Small typo. Is Dysdera crocata, not crocota. I used to play with those things annoying it with a little stick in a mix of fear and admiration. Children love predators so It was like finding a lion under a rock. A terrific brick-red and cream animal with impressive extra big fangs. Very "pokemonesque".
These http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/URBAN/SPIDERS/brown_wido... things are all over SW Florida insofar as I can tell from the egg sacs littering my lanai. There's more to say about them - but not now, I feel bad about passive/aggressive threadjacking. I'll just leave that link here for my fellow Floriduhuns.
(sincerest apologies, I just couldn't resist) :D
I find this odd because I never see black widows around my house, but there are easily a dozen brown widows coming out at night around the base of the outside of my house. Pointy egg-sacks everywhere...
There isn't a problem with saying the media is wrong, misinformed, or lying, if you have hard evidence to support that claim.
Trump's problem is he just claims any negative news are malicious lies, and rarely has anything to support his claims even a little bit. And that he, the undisciplined lair, is the only reputable source of information anyone should listen to, if they were smart anyway.
Big difference.
> I repeatedly have seen the media in their "quest to seek out the truth" write completely speculative stories about the existence of the brown recluse in California. Unfortunately, the truth is not nearly good enough to sell news and therefore, a speculative story is fabricated based upon faulty assumptions.
He's strongly and cynically implying that the media doesn't sincerely seek the truth and runs stories based on whether the story sells. Promoting distruse in the media like this is dangerous for our society, we've see what happens when Trump does it.
There's no evidence to suggest they intentionally write brown recluse stories because it sells more. It's just as likely the media also gets innocently wrapped up in the myth. I'm not sure how you're defending that quote.
There is a wide gap between "the media sometimes sensationalizes things that are traumatic and scary which causes people to believe that these events/things are more common than they actually are" and "this person is systematically sewing distrust in the media as a means of properly moving information from one location to the other, thus destroying the media's credibility and undermining our free society".
The whole "fake news" problem, wherein people just attempt to discredit factual information they disagree with by claiming it isn't real or important, is not the same as a person pointing out a well documented (and discussed) trend in certain segments of the media to go for "click-bait".
You're not arguing that click-bait style writing isn't real, right? You're not going to try and tell me that a research associate somehow knows less about his field of study than some random member of the media, are you?
The mother of one of my childhood friends in chilly New Hampshire went to the hospital with a rash a few years back and several visits emerged missing a chunk of her back about the size of a tennis ball. Having never seen one, the doctors never even considered she might have a dangerous spider bite.
Now, you could argue that maybe had the doctors known more about leishmaniasis he would have received a diagnosis faster. However, I imagine the situation played out about as well as one should hope. Certainly in Bolivia (where he picked up the disease) they should be more aware of the common causes of things than the uncommon. They should not be inspecting for brown recluse bites when there are rarely any just as we should not look at every necrotizing wound and investigate it as an uncommon case of leishmaniasis.
“In the United States each year, about 2,200 people report being bitten .. each year 12 bites are considered serious but no deaths have been reported in 100 years ..
.. Contrary to popular belief, most people who are bitten suffer no serious damage, let alone death ..
.. Since the venom is not likely to be life-threatening, antivenom has been used as pain relief and not to save lives .. a study demonstrated that standardized pain medication, when combined with either antivenom or a placebo, had similar improvements in pain and resolution of symptoms.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latrodectus#Bite
Black widows instead have an attack of, lets say, electric type. Will 'electrocute' you. Black widow will not kill you normally. But if you collaborate with the black widow work, you will kill yourself instead
That being said, I do wear gloves when picking up firewood or moving stuff around my property, because if I grab one accidentally, that does crush them, which is exactly when they bite.
Some people thinks it’s crazy that I don’t kill them, but they certainly aren’t trying to hurt me, so I don’t see why I would.
But, in case you are serious: CTRL++ to zoom in. CTRL+0 to reset to normal.
The Fresno Fire Department said a man who was house-sitting for his parents set the home on fire after he used a blowtorch to kill black widows...
I remember one kid in high school got bit and had a nasty necrotized spot on his ankle, other than that I have only heard of a few people who have been bit.
As far as black widows go, I have only seen/caught a couple of them and never heard of anyone being bit by one.
The first was on my upper lip, sent me to the hospital, before the necrosis it swelled up closing off my mouth and nose so I couldn't breath. The "core" was extracted and I was left with minimal scarring, but I keep a mustache to cover it.
The second bite was on my big toe. Woke up one morning with my toe swollen to the size of a small orange. When I went to the hospital for that one, some rotting had already started. My 350 pound father and two nurses held my leg down as the doctor cut into it. They were no match, I knocked them all to the ground when I felt the blade. I now have a dime-sized spot on my big toe.
I still don't fear them, and recognize the good they do. I try to avoid spiders now though ;).
A friend later told me that MRSA sometimes mimics the same symptoms, but both occurred during summer, and not around other kids or in a hospital setting.
I went to the doctor and he said "Could be a spider bite, or could be a staph infection. No way to know - just take these antibiotics and pray."
Then earlier this year it happened again - at a similar spot. Doctor said the same thing. No brown recluses in this area, but he said it could be a different spider.
[1]http://spiders.ucr.edu/necrotic.html
You need to get a bit east, say, North Carolina. You'll want to look carefully when pulling up those old pieces of wood out by the shed. Wear gloves.
Could be just NC, too, dunno. It's the only place I've seen black widows, and though not common, I saw more than a few. OTOH, I was surprised to find out NC has scorpions, too, so who knows what goes on up in those mountains. :-)
I always thought there were brown recluses around too - but I guess this research is saying they aren't in NC?
Redbacks can be fairly common but if you encourage daddy long legs and leave the house spiders alone you'll rarely find one. House spiders though can make you quite sick if you get bitten.
Sydney funnel web spiders are dangerous and aggressive - enough said.
White-tailed spiders that also get blamed for necrotic lesions but is likely bacterial are fast and tend to wander. They'll sidestep a shoe and jump at you before disappearing. I've spent hours upending a room after losing sight of one.
Most people though are more scared of huntsman spiders and they can get pretty big and move fast. There's a certain type that are thicker in body and will come at you. You think you have it pinned under the broom head and the next second it's racing up the handle jumping at you.
I hated spiders for years after that... they don't bug me much now, but windows and recluses will spread (if fed) and can be dangeous. It's best to keep them out of your house and garage area. Seen lots of widows, but never a recluse in California.
And then we all keep reading stories about areas in which we aren’t experts, and it doesn’t occur to us that are likely equally misleading.
Because if we all factored that in, we wouldn’t believe any news.
And I guess we feel better thinking we know what’s going on, rather than acknowledging we are in the dark.
And then I could see the news annotated by the authorities I chose. Or by the people they acknowledge have authority over those subjects.
Linus Torvalds is an expert on Linux.
John Carmack is an expert on computer graphics.
Tiger Woods is an expert on Golf.
Al Gore is an expert on Climate Change.
I don't care what Tiger Woods thinks about computer graphics. I don't care what Linus Torvalds thinks about Golf. I don't care what John Carmack thinks about Climate Change.
But if those people that I've identified acknowledge that other people or groups get it "mostly right," and those people have annotated some news article, I desperately want to see their commentary!
And I'd also be curious to learn who I think anti-experts are. When the people I think are authorities endorse an article on that subject, I want to see who condemns that article. And I want to read their commentary for myself. If I think they're loopy, I can flag them as anti-authorities.
And yes, when there's dispute among the people I consider authorities on a given topic, I'll be especially interested to read the debate.
I want to say that I probably trust people who work at the Washington Post to cover world news. I probably trust people at MIT, Cornell, Stanford to cover science. Eventually I'll discover which economic school most agrees with my take.
Yes, this may re-enforce the bubble that I'm in. But like I said, I really do want to read the BEST arguments from people who disagree with my school of experts, too. Flame wars are a giant waste of time. I want to flag a comment, "I disagree, but this is the most persuasive point someone has made." Highlight THOSE comments. Even better are the comments where I can say, "You really turned me around on this one."
I want to flag a comment from either side as, "Hey, can people from both sides please comment on this? This seems like it's interesting."
I want to have Line Item Veto. To comment on specific parts of an article, highlighting them, to say they are for sure true, or they're for sure false, etc.
Let the media have the chance to revise and correct their article. Hell, even fixing spelling and grammar mistakes is valuable.
Note that I desperately want this same kind of annotation for research papers on arXiv, etc.
I think I'd want it to work something like Google SideWiki, or maybe Disqus?
Won't someone please implement this?
The democracy of upvotes and downvotes on Reddit and Hacker News is a signal, but it can be gamed by bots, and NOT ALL OPINIONS ARE EQUAL.
I don't want the system to TELL me who experts are. Maybe it can suggest experts. But it should damn well include Alex Jones (even though I detest him), and Fox News (even though I think they're the most incorrect major news source).
If Jon Stewart or Dan Rather have something to say about an article?! You can bet your ass I want to read it!
Hell, even linking me to a video of when Stephen Colbert talked about this topic last night adds some value.
I read a blog post from a pediatrician once that I thought was excellent. He lamented roughly, "If you don't trust me to be an authority on vaccines for your child, then I don't know what kind of relationship you think we have." I agree with that. It's not that I think my pediatrician is RIGHT. It's that I grant that they have more authority on the subject than I do, and my world view is to trust scientific authority / consensus. Even though that's ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEE OF CORRECTNESS. I get that. But of the ways to try to understand the world, I prefer to view the world through the lens of scientists. And since we have divisions of labor, and I do not have enough time to become an expert myself, I want help in understanding how the experts I place trust in, how they view the world, a...
>Al Gore is an expert on Climate Change.
Might need to rethink that. He's a fundraiser and tv personality. Think 'evangelist'. It's not evident that he understands complex systems or probabilities better than say, Taleb. AFAIK, so far all his historic projections have been incorrect. This is the danger of 'celebrity'. Similar with Neil DeGasse.
That said, I do think it's interesting, what Taleb said about "you should go to a surgeon that doesn't look like a surgeon"...if one can be successful in a field without succumbing to stereotype-aligned but inconsequential norms, they might just know what they are saying, other wise, they'd be the first ones thrown out of the boat by colleagues.
Do be careful about reinforcing your own bubble. Much of what you said would have you doing that, vis-a-vie media-based indication of what is 'an expert'.
I bet bad surgeons harm patients at a higher rate than good surgeons throw bad suregons out of the boat.
https://forbetterscience.com/2016/02/21/macchiarini-and-karo...
Al Gore would then, as I have seen him do, put actual scientists up on a pedestal. His most important role would be to help me find the REAL, underlying authorities.
I would as likely be to say, "I would likely trust any of the authors of the IPCC."
And again, yes, I would trust Neil deGrasse Tyson to help me find authorities. I would have trusted Carl Sagan to help me find authorities. I would trust Bill Nye to help me find authorities.
If you picture the world in some kind of N-Dimensional space of authority and ignorance, I think Al Gore, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, and Bill Nye are pointed in the right direction. And I think they're aware (or were aware) that they were not themselves the sources of that authority, but merely spokespeople for it. I'd start with them. Because I don't honestly know who to REALLY listen to.
After I've started on my path, I'd hope to find out the differences within the schools of thought on any given subject. And I'd hope I'd be open to having my mind changed, on anything.
I am completely aware of the problem of the bubble. Another thing I want to do is to specifically find people who share ALMOST ALL of my views, but differ with me on some important subject. Because I think a discussion between me and them would be based on shared views, and would be very fruitful.
I'd also like people to volunteer information about themselves (aggregated and anonymized), so that I can find out, "Out of US Citizen, Christian, college-educated people earning more than $100k per year, how many of them believe in anthropogenic climate change?" And other questions like that. Yes, huge bias, because of self-reported people, etc. But still. Being able to even sample HN or Reddit on those kinds of questions would be super interesting.
And I'd desperately want to keep bots out of this, and I'd often want to filter out people who aren't KNOWN to be from the US or living in the US. Often I'd care what people in other countries think, but often I just don't.
It's not evident that he understand evangelizing either.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Al Gore. The world wold be a much better place if he had won the 2000 election. But the one image that sticks with me is the scene in "An Inconvenient Truth" where Al is being driven around in the back seat of a plush town car. A more tone-deaf image in that context is hard to imagine.
They're all ad hominem attacks. But when he's criticized for being both too poor, and for being too rich, and his message didn't change, it's particularly obvious that people just don't want to hear his position, and will do anything to discredit him.
He believes in carbon offsets.
He's also not opposed to capitalism.
So, spending money on luxury goods, and spending money to buy carbon offsets, is entirely in line with what he's stated are his views.
You're welcome to your opinion on the matter, of course, but I wanted to highlight that I don't perceive riding in a plush town car is being out of line with his message of acting on Climate Change.
In theory, that is my understanding of the voting system on HN. Based on the downvotes I have received over the years, it's obviously not perfect in that respect. But upvote the comments that contribute positively to the conversation, and you might rarely downvote a comment that detracts. I click the up button for plenty of comments with which I have strong disagreement. But if it's a well-thought comment that makes me have to think about a good counter if I disagree, then it's worth an up click.
Far more often I see it as "I agree."
But what is most interesting to me is, "I disagree with your conclusion (or the assumptions you are starting from), but I think your argument is well said."
I'd often like to de-emphasize the people that I agree with. I don't need my own opinion echoed back to me so much, thanks. That's what FB, Reddit, HN seem to tend to do.
Or, they find "engaging" content. Which is normally obnoxious, offensive, and flat-out wrong in uninteresting ways. They feed on my pugnacious attitude for clicks.
I'd rather spend more time talking with people who accept the "Principle of Charity" as sacrosanct, than talking with people who will quibble about minor points.