DNA is not here "for" anything, DNA is a Thing That Happens. Given the right combination of atoms, a source of energy, and enough time, a self-reproducing system will appear by pure chance. After that Darwin takes over.
> that which is being replicated holds this capacity for playfulness and the enjoyment of play
Sure, but that's just a side-effect of the process. It's not the reason we exist.
I agree, and my point was that saying:
> We are here on earth to make copies of our DNA.
Just kicks the can down the road. We're not here to make copies of our DNA any more than DNA is here to make copies of us.
> Sure, but that's just a side-effect of the process. It's not the purpose of our existence.
So, too, are we, as is replication itself. It happens to be the only reason the process continues, but it has no inherent purpose any more than playfulness does. It just is. This could also be framed as: we are the process.
> Given the right combination of atoms, a source of energy, and enough time, a self-reproducing system will appear by pure chance. After that Darwin takes over.
All of these things happened before Darwin was involved, and while I realize the point you're making, I'm calling this out because Natural Selection is again just a language and labeling game that maps the process relative to our experience of it and our understanding of various scientific disciplines.
None of this brings us closer to a "purpose", per se.
The statement that "existence is fundamentally playful" is not a claim about purpose either. But rather, an observation about how things appear to be, based on our ability to understand them.
Some people would also say that existence is fundamentally mathematical.
Existence can be fundamentally a lot of things. One isn't taking away from the other.
If we're here to make copies of our DNA, then one has to ask what the DNA is here for, and we're back in the same place.
The point someone like Watts is making is that even if we're just DNA replicators, that which is being replicated holds this capacity for playfulness and the enjoyment of play, which confers some broader notion of playfulness to the conditions that brought about our DNA.
I recently watched "My Octopus Teacher" (worth a watch), and watching the behaviors of the featured octopus as it goes about it's daily life doing octopus things, even including what appears to be literal playtime with schools of fish, it's easy to see the point Watts was trying to make.