/lit/ - Literature

The difference between you and the ant is a matter of complexity. Most of the decisions made by an ant colony as a whole are the queen’s, as she decides where to settle and start pumping out offspring. Her offspring are machinelike because they are genetic extensions of her, especially the first few generations. You, on the other hand, are a member of a species that adopted a more flexible approach to social behavior that gave you the comfort and investment to develop an UNSUSTAINABLY huge brain.

That brain is motivated by reward, sure, but it’s so densely forested with neurons that have so many complicated, plastic pathways between act and reward that you can find a million novel ones.

You can want a reward and take a winding, esoteric mental route to get there, informed and shaped by factors like “will this be as good as a delayed reward with greater intensity?” or “will this hurt my standing in the group?” (again, your amazing brain can consider the “group” to be anything from your family to the human species to some metaphysical gestalt “life”).

Being disturbed that your brain is motivated by reward is like being disturbed that dna has only four nucleotides. It’s simple at the base, sure, but complexity gives the system its identity. It’s a toolset.