Comment by munificent

Higher frame rates do result in smoother motion and animation.

The reason viewers prefer 24 FPS is that film is traditionally 24 FPS and video is 30 FPS (60 half-frame fields per second in NTSC). That has trained a generation of viewers to associate higher framerates with "cheap". The aesthetic carries an association that is counter to its actual quality.

Sort of like how people prefer "rustic" furniture because that implies "handmade" which implies "expensive" even though roughly-made things can often be mass produced more cheaply.

If it wasn't for the historical quirk that video was based on halving the AC rate which ended up being a few FPS faster than film, we'd all prefer higher framerates.

I suspect that thanks to the rise of gaming, that association will fade and eventually we will use higher framerates for movies. You already see trends in that direction: YouTube will stream 60 FPS because a lot of what people are watching on YouTube is gaming. But because of that, people get used to it, and I now see more non-gaming videos at 60 FPS too.