fear of heights = fear of pain

[granpa]

(debilitating) fear of heights = fear of pain

the type of fear of heights that is so bad that you become completely paralyzed and incapable of even moving can't be overcome until you first overcome your fear of pain.

Suppose that A fears pain and B doesnt fear pain

it isn't that A & B feel the same thing and one fears it and the other doesnt.
A & B feel completely different sensations
A feels scary pain and B feels nonscary pain

the difference is not one of intensity.
they are two fundamentally different sensations.

scary pain is completely debilitating.
if I am far enough above the ground then I am completely paralyzed with fear


furthermore fear of pain seems to be unique to humans.
Apes obviously aren't afraid of heights.

[davidivad]

hopefully i am not derailing the thread here.

i find it interesting that you can project fear to another individual through your expressions and body language.

you can also replace it with a calm projection.

 

example;

a person with social anxiety disorder walks into a room with several people.

within minutes you can see hand wrenching, fidgeting, less eye contact, and the likes.

there is also some form of isolation of the individual at a social level.

is this an evolutionary trait we have picked up that ensures the likeliness of survival?

[md65536]

I disagree with your reasoning.

 

If you think of it in terms of evolution, heights can be deadly. "Paralysis" can be a protective adaptation. If you're hanging around on a cliff, one who moves about freely and without fear may be more likely to fall and take themselves out of the gene pool. Then, we can automatically tend to freeze around heights without even needing to connect it with anticipation of pain, as an evolved association. I think it's why we tend to fear heights more than say speed. Evolutionarily, speed has pretty much always been an advantage. Nowadays, accidents involving speed can cause as much pain as those involving heights, but we haven't evolved aversion to speed.

 

When considering evolved traits, one can't just take what one expects and extrapolate that into something that "should" be evolved. In the case of apes, it might simply be that skilled movement in trees combines better with increased mobility and low fear, and is selected preferably over fear and paralysis.

 

I might be wrong, these are just ideas that make sense to me.