this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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Showerthoughts

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It's weird that we enjoy stimulating our fear response (lemmy.ca)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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What would aliens think if they leaned we evolved fear as a survival mechanism, but we intentionally seek out situations that trigger our fear response, for fun?

Horror movies, extreme sports, thrill-seeking, it's all weird.

Edit
Changed the title and added an extra line to make it clear I'm talking about the fear response, and not specifically about extreme sports

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[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago

I like that "safe space" theory, that seems very plausible.

It's still a bit messed up though, because that part of our brain can't distinguish between play fear and real fear, so we get "rewarded" for both which seems like a very risky move, evolutionary.

I can imagine the aliens being like

How did they survive to become the apex species?

Although with all the brinkmanship and poor threat analysis we've exhibiting now on a global scale, perhaps we won't survive as the apex species for long, so 🤷