Comment by lovethevoid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lovethevoid | Hacker News Reader

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An interesting thing to note is that we don't really have an evolutionary fear of seeing snakes and spiders. Studies on infants have been unable to back up that claim ever since we got the ability to process brain activity and more than just "what we see".

So in the past a study on infants might claim that with seeing spiders they show fear, but modern studies only demonstrate infants show increased alertness. Contrasted with adults/older kids where this fear shows up as we expect in brain scans and behaviors. Basically, it's a learned fear, and is also why we don't see other animals in the same way when logically we should.

The fundamental fear of the unknown makes more sense as a source, in which the fear of demons or vampires becomes understandable when they were created to creatively prey on the unknown. Eg. vampires lurking in the shadows/night. This fear of the unknown can also explain why exposure therapy can be so effective, you're filling that void with knowledge.

This fear of the unknown would also explain why new modern creature creations can be scary, despite quite literally knowing they cannot physically exist, we still have that little bit of our amygdala going "but what if we don't know..."

> Basically, it's a learned fear, and is also why we don't see other animals in the same way when logically we should.

This is not demonstrated by the evidence you offered, and this doesn't address the strong evidence we have at perceiving snakes and spiders in low lighting. Nobody was claiming this is true for infants or small children, too, and I am a mature adult.

> The fundamental fear of the unknown makes more sense as a source

This makes no sense. What does this even mean to fear the unknown? I get experiencing fear in low-lighting circumstances but this in no way implies a fear of monsters. I absolutely cannot imagine fearing a vampire when looking down a dark alleyway—but snakes and spiders are very real and easy to be scared of.

None of the children I grew up with had any innate fear of either snakes or spiders. Most of us knew which ones could kill and which ones wouldn't, snakes and spiders were watched, and if they moved onto you we let them run across and off again - over reacting was a way to get bitten.

I recall my sister bringing around a girl from a TI family new to the area, walking into our house she saw the first cat she had ever seen her life .. I've never heard anyone scream that loud nor get to the top of a couch that fast.

Timeframe: 1960s | early 1970s

TI -> Torres Strait Islands.

Location: Nor'eastern Kimberley region.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/snake-sense-wisdom-of-lesser...

    Aborigines lived close to nature and hence to the various creatures who inhabit it; they knew, of course, that snakes can be dangerous, but they also ate them.

    It was not my experience, however, that snakes were of any special concern to Aboriginals.

~ Snakes in an Aboriginal world-view, Herpetology in Australia, 1993

Snakes and spiders here are not unknowns, they're everyday creatures, unlike (at that time and place) cats.

Fear is probably not the right term; it's more like a heuristic built into our vision that allows us to react faster (even if it sometimes gives false positives).

>Nobody was claiming this is true for infants or small children, too, and I am a mature adult.

I was providing evidence that because this fear does not exist in infants, it is not innate. It is learned. If it was innate, infants would also be scared.

>I absolutely cannot imagine fearing a vampire when looking down a dark alleyway

I find it extremely funny how literal you took this. The fear of the unknown is that feeling we get when we don't know. For example being in the middle of a forest at night, not knowing what those sounds are or if people are around. Alternatively, that terror we feel when we see images of the deep dark ocean. This fear of the unknown is what fuels our other fears. Such as social anxiety, we fear the social interaction because we do not know what is going to happen, only that our mind starts racing to worst potentials.

Hope that explains it in a way you can understand. Avoiding mention of vampires because I don't think the fictional creatures helps grasp the concept of the unknown.

> I was providing evidence that because this fear does not exist in infants, it is not innate

Not all innate behaviors are present in infants. They are rather well-known to be partially developed humans. This just strikes me as very, very weak evidence.

Plus, children may not have the self awareness and ability to articulate mental phenomena and qualia (some) adults possess that would be required for a reasonable study.

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