Or tricked into worrying about that as a control signal to perform its main task in service of its microorganism operators ;)

Nobody in this thread has read Selfish Gene, apparently. That's the whole point of the book: That genes may as well have invented all of life to propagate themselves.

In this context, species conflict is like fleets of world-ships fighting total war.

That’s an interesting SciFi idea: the real world is digital, and digital beings have created a physical world to fight battle via genetic biological machines, which are effectively concrete data structures.

like the scene in Jurassic park

"It's a Unix system. I know this!"?

Genes are effectively biological computer programs.

Somehow akin to a fork-bomb

> That genes may as well have invented all of life to propagate themselves.

I think the point of the book was, that genes didn't invent anything. They were just the first self-replicating molecules. Everything else had to happen, because they were forced to exist and compete with clones and mutating clones of themselve – a game which we call life today.

Which is all subservient to its actual main task of increasing entropy. I've found myself cycling down the street wondering if my actions were all just an elaborate way of increasing entropy more quickly.

my machine just worries about food, and work to get food

All those are just for satisfying the urge to reproduce.