>>11984143You're anthropomorphizing natural forces.
Imagine a session of Conway's game of life played on an infinitely large field. The initial conditions are set randomly. Each cell has a certain probability of being alive at the start of the game.
When the session begins there is a great deal of variety in the universe. Countless shapes of either configuration and size. As the generations progress unstable shapes fade away while persistent or self-reproducing shapes stick around.
Would it be accurate to say that the purpose of the cells of a self-reproducing shape is to make it reproduce itself? Well, you could say that if you chose to define things in a very particular way, but this conclusion does not stem from the facts. It's a human judgement superimposed on a cold, uncaring universe. Some shapes persist, some shapes vanish, and the universe does not prefer one outcome to the other. "Purpose" is a human abstraction that helps us think about things.
Emotions, in the aggregate, lend themselves to self-perpetuation, but that's not the same as them being "tricks to make you procreate". Some are non-useful byproducts of useful traits. Playfulness boosts fitness in young animals but is not useful in adults. Playful youths tend to become playful adults, though, so we get crows who roll in the snow. Vengefulness probably reduces individual fitness but it boosts kin-level fitness. It's sort of like a social version of being poisonous. Instead of poisoning predators you get your tribe to fuck them up.
The key is self-perpetuation. Purpose is human. Survival is absolute.
