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
I mean, yeah fear is a big part of extreme sports, but it isn’t the attraction. You never heard Tony hawk say “hey, watch how scared I get when I attempt this trick”. That’s not the point. It’s about the satisfaction of improving motor skills and the ability to move in new and interesting ways. But mostly it’s just fun. Really it’s not so different from skill-based video games, it’s just that in real life you have to work your way up to the more advanced stuff to do it safely.
Do you know what’s worse than stimulating your fear response? Stimulating your anger response. And millions of people choose do that daily in their interactions with social media.
My guess would be that after we get scared the brain goes “good job, you survived, here’s some endorphins”. That way we enjoy getting scared because happiness follows
Source: none.