Heather Berlin

You might start to fear that, right?

So you have lived experience, which can program.

And then you also have kind of pre-installed predispositions to be more likely to be fearful of these things that we've learned from our past.

Yes.

I mean, fear can be maladaptive.

So there's a healthy amount of fear and you don't want too little, you don't want too much, right?

Too much and if you freeze and you can't respond or run, let's say from the tiger, you're dead, right?

But if you're not afraid enough, you're dead.

So it's this middle ground that is really the healthy fear.

And then when we get into psychological disorders, sometimes it's too little or too much.

And that's where the problems start to arise.

Well, I mean, when you look at it, like if you look at population genetics, like there's things that remain in the population because it's an adaptive niche, right?

So if everyone's playing by the rules, it's actually adaptive for those to be outside of that, to be more risk takers.

And so we find that genetically speaking, there's a certain gene that codes for people who are more risk averse, but also who take more risks.

And there's niches within the population for both those people to have an advantage.

Now, if everyone, like once you get past a certain amount, you know, percentage of the population, then it becomes maladaptive.

So it kind of like we work together as a whole organism, if you think of us as a population, to keep a certain amount of risk takers, because that's adaptive for us as a society.

They're the ones who are going to look and go a little further and explore.

Absolutely, exactly.

So it's actually adaptive for there to be certain people out there who are more likely to take risks.