In Praise of Folly: Flexible Goals and Human Cognition

Humans often pursue idiosyncratic goals that can seem remote from functional ends, including information gain. We suggest that this is valuable because goals (even prima facie foolish ones) impose valuable constraints on hypothesis generation and planning. Ideas and plans can be transmitted and adapted intergenerationally and decoupled from their original aims, leading to a proliferation of diverse ideas. If even some of these novel ideas and plans eventually pay off in learning or useful ends, this may be valuable to society as a whole.