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Comment by sampullman | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure? From what I've read, and personally experienced there's some innate fear of heights. Similar to snakes and spiders, it's baked in.

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Babies will happily crawl off of the edge of whatever they're on. I'm not sure if it's because they aren't afraid, or if it's because they're so used to being carried that they don't grasp the concept of gravity, or both.

My toddler recently went out on our roof to retrieve a football. I expected her to be a bit nervous, but she walked right up to the edge, no fear apparent at all. I had to desperately shove my instinct to yell for her down so I didn't scare her and distract her.

IIRC very small kids are also developing depth perception, they aren't born with it.

Here's an experiment showing 27 of 36 crawling-age infants had no apparent fear of heights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cliff

100% sure. It's completely uncontroversial scientifically, so I'm not sure what you read, but it's also obvious to any parent.

I can't find the article I was thinking of, it was a while ago. I'm pretty sure it was about the visual cliff experiment though: https://www.simplypsychology.org/visual-cliff-experiment.htm...

It looks like there have been a number of studies over the years, so not completely uncontroversial, unless there's something definitive you've read?

The point isn't that babies never fall off stuff, just that at least a part of the fear is built in.

The link you shared doesn't relate to fear at all.

An aversion or wariness, but I think it's clear that a fear of heights is not entirely learned behavior.

It's not at all clear. I think you're just reaching now to avoid admitting you were initially (and very obviously) mistaken.

There's research (and my own anecdotal evidence) supporting my initial claim, so I don't see how it's an obvious mistake. Do you have anything to back up your point?

This is like arguing with a wall. Right back from Gibson & Walk’s 1960 visual‑cliff experiment, there's endless research showing that babies don't have an innate fear of falling. It's so uncontroversial that it's now taken as undisputed fact in medical documentation and research.

You linked to an article about the visual-cliff experiment (apparently having not read it?) as it is what kicked off the avenue of research that came to this conclusion and which has been confirmed and uncontroversial since the mid-2010's.

It's also the lived experience of billions of parents.

There is no currently viable counter-arguments presented anywhere globally. There is more consensus about this issue than, for example, anthropogenic climate change or pangea or any number of other issues than reasonable people aren't expected to defend due to their overwhelming acceptance.

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