Randomness is the basis for all life and seems necessary for there to be any sort of curiosity component to intelligence. At a macro level, it seems to represent breaks in cycles that allow for change. Further, if our own decision making amounts to weighted distributions in neuron paths, how would a brain resolve an equally weighted distribution (no matter how small the chance of that happening is).

Edit: To further explain, I apply the basic principles that govern life to all facets of life, all the way up to the complexities of human society, language, etc.. That is, DNA is a self-replicating system that through randomness was able to build more and more complex organisms over time. It generically represents a way to encode behaviors through time, a necessary subset of which include behaviors for self-replication and resource acquisition (mostly to satisfy the self-replication requirement). On a more complex level, human society is the organism, human language (including speech, writing, visual arts) is the DNA (a means to pass knowledge, behaviors, etc. through time), and humans are the "cells".

Deterministic pseudorandom would also solve these cases, and is not true random.

I'm not saying these cases are pseudorandom (the logistics of having a prng with state apply to biology looks hard), but that it doesn't seem to require true random

Correct! I think that's the question though. Is there true randomness in the system or is it really just playing out based on the laws of physics. I'm more inclined to believe the mechanisms at which randomness gets injected into DNA replication is pseudorandom, but for mental constructs I'm more inclined to believe it's sensitive enough to true randomness.

Buridan's ass:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass

Oh hey, I didn't know there was a thing to explain that!

Organicism can be a useful and fertile frame but it's not without its perils

Hmm, I don't think what I'm saying is the same thing. I'm saying that the behavior of organisms amount to systems with the same function no matter the complexity or timescale. Though to that end, I do consider human society to be an organism of sorts, but beyond that not so much.

You only typed that because the laws of physics made you do it.

My guess would be free will. Most of us are heavily dependent on this concept being valid.

Edit: I guess I was wrong.

Not entirely wrong. I think it's entirely possible for "free will" in the sense that it's normally talked about to not really be a thing. After all, we're taught about "nature vs nurture" in psychology, that is, learned vs inherent behaviors passed through genetics. I think what we call "free will" is itself curiosity manifest from random decision making. The overwhelming vast majority of our decisions are based on learned behaviors though, and decision making itself is known to be a cognitively taxing process; so we're predisposed to routine, simplification, and working with proxies.

Edit: to your point about needing validation: the desire for acceptance is simply put, the desire for a positive feedback response on a personal or societal level. Remember, our brains are big reinforced learning machines and crave feedback as quickly and unambiguously as possible. The desire for acceptance is both a thing that keeps behaviors "in-line" with societal expectations while allowing for changes in those behaviors to shape societal behaviors (and expectations) over generations (time), and therefor make progress, or at least change.

Underlying physics is non-deterministic, so how could the brain operate deterministically?