How are they able to perform well under intense pressure? Literally life or death situations. I’m talking about hardcore parkour or crazy people climbing skyscrappers.
Have their brains been altered that they can’t feel fear from their stunts?
Former Skydiver here.
At least for the Skydiving community… Skydivers are not better, nor are they worse than the general public.
What skydivers are… is different. Your average jumper will not experience fear on an average jump. I’ve actually fallen asleep on the way to altitude. There are things that can scare us though, usually when we’re in the plane. I’ve experienced two bailouts (both from the same plane), one crash (fuel starvation on climb out), and multiple rejected take offs. All of those events gave everyone aboard those planes a good dose of fear, including me.
We all still jumped the very next time we could, even after the crash.
As I said… Skydivers are just a bit different, but we still experience fear.
Why did I quit skydiving? I got bored. Yes, literally. Made a skydive, it went perfectly with people I was good friends with, got to the ground and started daisy chaining my main and realized… I just didn’t feel anything any longer. Felt it was better to leave the sport than to try increasingly crazier things to find that feeling again. I know people that did that and it usually doesn’t end well.
No expert here, but this is an ELI5, so…
Turns out, there’s something in our brains that trigger instinctive fears. This is good for survival, generally.
Some people have too much of that, so they become very afraid of things (phobias) or they might even develop more serious mental issues.
On the other side of the spectrum, there’s these guys you talk about. People who were predisposed or either “learned” to be more “fearless”, the most extreme guys being basically already dead by stupidity.
I was admonished to be careful on a dirtbike as a child, had a fear reinforced in me. Meanwhile, this other kid was quite aggressive, and would piss me off when he’d fly by me on the track. In contrast with my parents cautions, his parents encouraged his style and he was a very highly ranked competitor in the state. He was WOT no matter where he was, turns, jumps, passing me. Absolutely fearless.
He had a bad day at the races when he was about 10 years old, suffered a significant brain injury. And he hasn’t been independent since.
