Stripped to its essentials, every decision in life amounts to
choosing which lottery ticket to buy. . . . Most organisms don’t buy
lottery tickets, but they all choose between gambles every time their
bodies can move in more than one way. They should be willing to ‘pay’
for information—in tissue, energy, and time—if the cost is lower
than the expected payoff in food, safety, mating opportunities, and
other resources, all ultimately valuated in the expected number of
surviving offspring. In multicellular animals the information is
gathered and translated into profitable decisions by the nervous
system.
Steven Pinker