Imagine a race of creatures that don't have a chemical risk-reward mechanism built-in

Imagine a race of creatures that don't have a chemical risk-reward mechanism built-in.

How would motivations of a creature that feels neither pain, nor pleasure work?
What foundation would their society be built upon?

Boredom and the avoidance of it.

Also intellectual satisfaction.

However they are able to interpret survival would be how they form their survival. They would have some definition of pain/pleasure. Chances are you get something along the lines of Vulcans maybe.

Smug self satisfaction from making 'funny' internet comments?

If this is the case then it would have to be a race that already has an environment that ensures its survival.

And that's pretty lame.

Perhaps robots, they don't feel pain or pleasure, only cold logic.

Reason (if they developed to this point).
Or duty to their makers (if artificially created).

I don't think something could evolve if it didn't have those built in biological functions. once it has evolved however, it might begin to resemble something like the vulcans or maybe the idirans from the culture novels. They have an extremely religious, zealot warrior culture and have evolved to be nearly immortal and immune to nearly everything. so their main driving force is their religion not personal pleasure or whatever.

It literally can not exist.

Unless they engineered themselves to not have those things in which case a part of them would soon die out, because they see an existence without experience as dull getting no reward for any intellectual pursuit or even experience or discovery, a part would maybe take the original calling of procreation and just work towards spreading themselves like cancer.
In short. A species does not do things without motivation.
And life could not arise without motivation, because on cellular level each cell functions by trying to find the chemicals that it associates with continued existence. > a reward mechanism

If you mean that they can still experience the body feeling refreshed after eating, but don't have a subjective experience of the whole thing, you're getting into the hard problem of neurology and metaphysics, with the soul which can not be answered with our current understanding because we know fuckall about why and how that even happens in humans.

Lame for u idiran, we 're going to have fun for a long time whatever u judge about it.

>something like the vulcans or maybe the idirans from the culture novels
Or, you know, 40k Necrons.

Robots are one thing, AI another.
If you have AI, it too has a computational reward mechanism built in.
Either because it's a seed AI and needs to know that being more intelligent is a good thing to work towards, or it's not a seed AI and it just has goals built into it (three laws of robotics for example) which would allow it to exist normally.

In short AI also need reward mechanisms.
An intelligent robot without anything to work towards and understanding that it is not possible for it to FIND such a purpose would immediately shut down into endless idling.
Like when you leave your computer alone.

wut

>In short AI also need reward mechanisms.
Yeah, but this mechanism is not chemical and thus meets OP's request.

......
That's a copout and you know it.

They would do fucking nothing all day, eat when they're hungry and drink when they're thirsty and that's that.

Or they have taken such measures to alter themselves to increase their odds of survival in harsh environment.

Nuclear winter for instance.

Their is no more pain from the bone numbing cold, no disgust at what is having to do and eat to survive and no drive towards short lived personal pleasures.

Of course it should be obvious how this will eventually turn into nightmare fuel.

Make a robot thread.

The people of the neutral planet?

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It could be cool. Avoidance of boredom could lead into increasingly dangerous situations.

And yet it would be the perfect evolutionary course. Perfectly adapted to their environment.