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

  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.caOP
    2·
    6 days 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 🤷