The problem is when you consider the game-theoretic incentives of "Greater Madman" posturing, through the len of Trivers' "Folly of Fools" [0]: that the most ef

The problem is when you consider the game-theoretic incentives of "Greater Madman" posturing, through the len of Trivers' "Folly of Fools" [0]: that the most effective way to fool others is often to first fool yourself. It is entirely plausible that Darwinian selection pressures rewarded not just those who cynically postured as madmen, but those who actually were madmen (within some bound of Minimum Viable Rationality). Such madness only has to beat the average; unlike the MAD dynamics of nuclear weapons, during most of evolutionary history, a catastrophic error of genuine madness didn't result in destruction of the entire species. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Folly_of_Fools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Folly_of_Fools