hacker42

Most of these have been studied separately, and not all of them may be required for an activity to be considered "mischief." Each one has its own set of evolutionary stories.

Breaking the rules: There are evolutionary advantages to the species as a whole (e.g. stable organized societies) for having everyone predisposed to following the social norms. Similarly, there are advantages to breaking the social norms: personal advantage in a world where others are unwilling to cheat, collective advantage to having a society that isn't 100% conformist (if the norms are bad, that will only be discovered if some people start breaking them and succeed).

Playing for fun (not goal-directed): Studies on play behavior in animals suggest that play during development serves several functions. It develops practice with give-and-take social interaction for more harmonious social order later, and physical play develops coordination that can help in adult behavior later (puppies playing and becoming better at fighting as dogs).

Pleasure derived from antisocial behaviors: This may fall a little bit outside of mischief, however the desire for revenge has been studied, as has duper's delight (pleasure from fooling others), or pleasure from cheating. In general, any behavior that could have an evolutionary advantage for some individuals is likely to have pleasure associated with it somehow, since that ensures that the behavior will be expressed. In any competition, using a strategy that would not occur to the opponent is to the individual's advantage because the opponent won't be planning to counter it. So whatever rules the opponent assumes you are playing by represent opportunities for advantage by ignoring them. There is the risk of winning the battle but losing the war (getting caught and punished), however this is a risk/reward trade-off.

Pleasure derived from eliciting reactions in others: There are rewards on multiple levels (neurological, social, existential) from getting others to respond:

- Neurological: Experiencing perceptual feedback to an action is inherently rewarding, which may relate to why kids enjoy hitting things and knocking things over. It is part of experimenting with and discovering the causal mechanisms of the environment.

- Social: A displaced or repurposed desire for social interaction, for example when preteens chase and hit girls or boys they are attracted to, or when adults "play the victim" to elicit sympathy.

- Existential: Feeling that one has an impact on the world, that one exists, that one matters. This might relate to enhancing the feeling of personal agency: the sense of power and causal control over the environment.

- Curiosity and personal amusement: Finding out what will happen, and watching the predictable reactions of others play out can be amusing (credit Naman Kumar).

There are also strategic reasons to create disruption in the specific social setting of a dialog (e.g. "trolling"):

- The disrupter wins social points for being dominant, tougher, funnier, and less naive than other participants.

- The bad boy (or b* girl) is admired by peers for being immune to the judgments and approval of others. From an evolutionary perspective, being revered by peers makes one attractive to potential mates in a social species (credit Ernie Bornheimer).

- Humor can be a way of moving the discussion away from an uncomfortable topic (credit Marcus Geduld).

- Sarcasm, ridicule, and shaming can be a strategy for shifting the power in a dialog, silencing opposing viewpoints, and changing the official view in the disruptor's favor (as with political debates).

Lastly, there is also the role of anonymity in mischief. Acting anonymously can be a way of playing out a fantasy without consequences to one's reputation in society. It certainly resolves one of the inner conflicts to antisocial behavior, the risk to one's reputation, by eliminating that risk altogether. Anonymity also facilitates pleasure derived from superiority, power, or knowledge. If you know something that no one else knows -- who is behind the mischief -- then you may be getting pleasure from what would normally be a positive evolutionary behavior: acquiring more knowledge than the next person, understanding causal mechanisms in the world, accumulating power.

Research on the neural basis of breaking the rules:

Moll J, et al (2005) The neural basis of moral cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Spitzer M et al (2007). The Neural Signature of Social Norm Compliance. Neuron.

Sanfey AG et al (2003). The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game. Science.

de Quervain DJF et al (2004). The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment. Science.

Comment · 10 years ago

I think this is basically the major and effective meme/emotion that Trump plays into: Nostalgia. Thiel also voiced concerns about the state of the infrastructure at a GOP Convention. Nostalgia is a strong emotion and it is often based on false memories or weak comparisons. Sure, large parts of our infrastructure are worse than they were 50 years ago, but on the other hand we had very different problems back then. We used to consume goods that turned out to be toxic. Today almost everyone has access to extremely fast transportation via air travel. Almost everyone has access to the world's knowledge at any time. Medicine has improved a lot. "Make it great again" is the central lie and people are dumb enough not to question it and to believe his financial independence would make him a superior leader, when in fact he only displays characteristics that are opposed to the ones we should expect from a good leader, for example decency and intelligence.

Comment · 10 years ago

Here is an interesting take on this matter:

> Famously, the only reason he went to seek fortune in the Silicon Valley was because he was denied a highly prestigious clerk position for a Supreme Court justice.

> It seems to me that Thiel originally wished to become a politician, and only stopped pursuing that path to seek his fortune in the Silicon Valley when he hit his first setback when applying to clerk for the Supreme Court.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Peter-Thiel-supporting-Donald-T...

Comment · 10 years ago

But MCTS works in AlphaGo because the 'world' can be fully represented by a tiny state vector which fits a billion times into primary memory these days. The real difficultly of real world problems is the ill-defined, mutable, high-dimensional and partially observable state space.