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
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.
They would think that we create sport out of pushing our physical limits so as to advance our physical limits at an optimal pace.
“The human performed two whole rotations! And while doing so, they removed their vehicle, spun it around their body, and placed it back beneath their feet before landing! However, clearly the humans valued the human who performed two and a half rotations a lot more. They call home ‘Tony Hawk’”.
Extreme sports was more supposed to be an example. Horror movies are the same.
People go out of their way to feel scared, what would aliens think of that?
That we distill what makes us uncomfortable and make a mockery of it. As a communal past time.
That’s still a pretty messed up pass time if you’re not anthropomorphizing. It’s a crazy way to have evolved.
This is actually really funny because I think Michael Knowles talked about this exact same thing either 2 or 3 days ago. The conclusion was: we have these instincts. Some people just really like exercising them, and others, they’re exercising fear/horror/disgust in a safe, controlled environment because that helps to prepare them for the fears, horrors, disgust they’ll face in real life.
Not that they’re thinking that consciously. But subconsciously.
I think any aliens advanced enough to visit Earth would probably understand it.
Whether it’s horror movies or extreme sports, it is some kind of play, which is about creating a safe or controlled environment to explore things that either isn’t really happening (horror movies) or things that haven’t been tried before (extreme sports).
A lot of extreme sports are actually relatively safe because it’s done by individuals in highly controlled environments. Statistically it’s a lot more dangerous to participate in other sports or everyday activities where there’s a larger risk from other participants or things that are unpredictable. Things like horse riding, traffic and trampolines are more dangerous because they’re more unpredictable. The consequences might be worse if it fails thoughm, making it “extreme”.
Travelling through space to explore inhabited planets absolutely requires the same kind of desire and process of safely testing out things that are potentially dangerous.
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 🤷
