Rock climber Alex Honnold doesn’t experience fear like the rest of us

I'm a high sensation seeker - I don't climb, but I do skydive, bungee, and I love to ski at ludicrous speed down unmarked terrain - flying off a cornice that you didn't see and having to think fast about where and how to land is a crazy rush. Why I mention this - I can identify with the visualisation and memory rewrite process he describes. I am, by no means, master of my amygdala - but more often than not I am. I think about the bad possibilities of anything I'm about to do, and visualise avoiding or dealing with them. I rehearse in my head. By the time I get to the real thing it's old hat. There's no fear, just supreme confidence that I know what I'm doing. It's the same sort of process one goes through before pitching to a customer or investors. Rehearse mentally until it's easy, even if you've never done it before.

When I do have an unfortunate experience, like chopping off a thumb, knocking myself out, or shattering a hand because I forgot that trees are quite hard at 100mph, I revisit it until it's funny, and no longer regrettable and associated with pain, both in my own mind and by recounting the tale. Having a wilful disregard for the integrity of your own body is quite useful - I know I'm not bulletproof but I don't mind the missing and numb bits.

That all said, once in a while I find myself with shaking legs, tunnel vision, and all the rest - usually from stupid and inconsequential shit that, critically, I didn't anticipate - like his ten foot fall.

I remember the moment I figured it out, aged seven, halfway down an icey mogul black, panicking and crying, and then suddenly realising that I didn't know what I was scared of - and then blasting down the piste, realising that it was all about just believing that you can and it'll all be fine and just getting on with it.

Anyway. My two cents is that you can self modify and override "hardwired" behaviour with only moderate conscious effort, and far more people do this than we currently realise.

That line reads like it'd be the intro to a bad (or good?) action movie.

I'm by no means discounting his accomplishments and skills, but rather highlighting that it isn't quite as reckless as it first appears.

Eskil Ronningsbakken - http://www.eskilbalance.com/

He seems genuinely sick of discussion about death, which at first shocked me (shouldn't someone tell him that almost every free soloist dies?! It's irresponsible not to!).

But if you listen to him, it's immediately apparent that he's fully cognizant of the situation. After just a few minutes even I was annoyed by the hypocrisy and judgment when someone questioned his risk assessment. And he has to deal with that almost every time he interacts with people outside of his inner circle. I can hardly imagine how frustrating that must be.

Do you have a link for the study?

Also, anxiety is not the same as fear. Literally being unable to feel fear would be very dangerous.

In Honnold's case, they may be safe from this, as it's the total absence of signal relative to a control subject that is interesting, not activity in some unexpected region of the brain.

[1]: https://vimeo.com/2872213

Probably because the inflation of such a sphere, like an airbag going off, would be an incredibly violent event in itself. Also, decelerating inside the confines of a small sphere wouldn't be much gentler than just hitting the ground at full speed.

Some sort of jet-assist contraption to slow your descent might be a better bet. It would arm itself when it senses that you've fallen, and fire the next time it senses that it's upright.

I have a feeling that a lot of people who die in this sport are either paralyzed or dead before they hit the ground, due to collisions with outcroppings in the rock face. Free climbing isn't something that you would want to do if you have the slightest concern for your own neck, and I don't think any number of Rube Goldberg gadgets will change that.

Because it's fun.

One may sense tremendeous joy seeing new flowers in the spring and vast sense of disappointment missing a train when next leaves 15 minutes later.

In order to get the same sensations, some other needs to success in something in which a failure would mean death, or fail in something very difficult that he/she has been working on years.

Now, if you force the first person to not have those sensations, what will happen? I find it a very possible outcome that the life becomes so unbearable that the person is ready to kill him/herself. If this is remotely correct, it should be quite easy to see why some people are ready to take fatal risks voluntarily. To feel something.