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Estarlio comments on Rationality Quotes July 2013 - Less Wrong
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Because the consequences of losing are so terrible, people tend to avoid serious fighting if they can. Being hunted - a far more likely state - is decidedly un-fun.
Being hunted is just as likely as hunting. It's just that being hunted is much worse than hunting is good.
Also, being in the state of trying to avoid being hunted is also un-fun.
It's definitely terrible and to be avoided if at all possible, but it is kind of fun. We can and do get back a small part of that feeling with roller coasters and action movies and fighting sports.
"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Winston Churchill (from his years as a war correspondent).
Do you have data for prevalence in this respect?
As a martial artist and as someone whose been in fear of getting the crap knocked out of them in the past this just doesn't line up with my experience. There's a degree of focus that goes on in fights that largely excluded feelings of excitement, it's not like being on a rollercoaster. At least not for me. Fighting feels more like floating if it can be said to be like anything,I just get incredibly tuned in and a lot stronger than usual.
Admittedly I don't think everyone experiences it like that, some people probably do enjoy it.
In the middle ages it was more respectable to talk about how much you enjoyed killing people, and some people did, though I can't remember any references.
I would suspect that sparring in a martial arts context - the product of years of training and practicing specific, restrained moves, in which the objective is not to harm the opponent but to demonstrate superior technique - is rather different, emotionally, from a life-or-death struggle or even a fight between two combatants working off instinct and experience, neither of whom have been conditioned to associate that particular kind of fighting with a safe, controlled environment.
That said, I agree with you that there's a matter of individual variation. The people who receive the strongest adrenaline high from fighting, however, are probably not the ones asked to return to the martial arts academy.