[visarga]

> Human being are just complicated ways for strings of nucleic acid to replicate themselves.

And from that evolved mechanisms for learning, consciousness, culture and technology. Amazing creative power in such a "small" task. I think the drive for survival is the root cause of all the other reinforcement signals that drive the brain development, such as the need for food, sex, sleep, companionship, learning and so on. Shaped under the influence of these reward systems, the brain evolves to create the subjective, intelligent and ineffable experience we all know we have but can't properly explain.

[colechristensen]

Assuming the 'drive for survival' is a root cause misses the point. There isn't a point.

You exist because your ancestors reproduced. That's it. The traits that they had happened to result in reproduction given their life experiences. A "drive for survival" happens to be one of these traits that shows up often and for easy-enough to understand reasons, but it just happens to be one of the traits that exists in the population.

The environment shapes what reproduces, but it's messy and prone to random circumstance.

We're all the result of a billions of years old monte-carlo simulation.