3.1.1 Theories of Behavior

The Theory of Options, more than anything, is a theory of behavior, but this can be many things. It can be a theory predicting how people behave, such as under stress or in crowds, or how children learn language. These predictions can be tested, so we can gather facts about how people truly do behave, and use the information to solve other problems. It is not primarily a predictive theory, but the Theory of Options supports predictive testing of behavior, providing it is for relevant information. Learning how astronauts behave on a space flight is needed to plan future space missions. Learning the sociology of life in a brothel life is not as relevant as uncovering the conditions that drive people into prostitution.

Only while important, facts and rules are not all that we need to learn about behavior. We also wish to understand human motive, how the mind works, the causes of non-predictive behaviors, or the cause of behaviors that are hard to test, such as why humans go to war. This requires general theories of behavior that include predictive rules, which can be tested, plus broad principles. Only because principles cannot be tested so easily we must be convinced of their truth by logical argument. In the modern age, we have developed four broad theories of behavior this way. There are many names for these, but we will group them roughly as follows;

1. Pure Psychiatry: (We also call this theory Freudianism, though to his critics Freud is discredited). This theory teaches that the human mind is conditioned, usually in childhood by parents, teachers, or some traumatic experience. Early experiences affect the human consciousness, or even its subconscious, throughout adult life.
1. Behaviorism: Freudianism is a difficult theory to test in the lab. This led to a theory that outputs of the mind were a response to inputs or stimulus from the environment, which allows extensive testing. The broader theory is that throughout life minds will be conditioned by environments, and these will determine behavior.
2. Cognitive Psychology: Behaviorism tried to reduce mind to mechanical response to environment. But mind has independent qualities that can also be tested. This has led to a new theory that mind has modules much like computer programs, which respond differently to inputs
3. Evolutionary Psychology: This theory is that if mind has modules, they must have been selectively adapted. This will make the modules content specific to evolutionary needs, such as drives for sex or territory.

Onto these theories, Freudianism, behaviorism, cognitive psychology and evolutionary psychology, we add a fifth theory; the Theory of Options. It teaches that of all the things humans try to achieve through behavior, they most attempt to maximize options. Only the theory of maximizing options does not just focus on one aspect of behavior, but is a broad understanding. Human behavior is so varied that that almost any theory of it can be partially correct and can enjoy predictive success. Plus there are so many facets to behavior that no one theory can cover them all. Of the four earlier theories none could deny say, the contributing influences on behavior of childhood trauma, cultural conditioning, evolutionary drives or self-directed effort. So, a new theory of behavior must not merely account for some aspects of behavior, or only reflect current knowledge. The theory must be sustainable in the light of everything that we presently know about behavior, or are likely to learn in the future. This includes knowledge of;

1. how human behavior arose through evolution
1. cultural and psychological influences on behavior
2. the human purpose
3. deep human drives like the need for religious or moral expression
4. how the mind works and can be tested
5. facts we observe about behavior, that make sense in everyday terms.

Yet, no matter how much we learn about behavior, by observation, testing, or newer theories, it will be knowledge that increase options. This knowledge will not itself determine how humans behave, but will instead confront humans with choices over how to utilize the new information. Plus unlike theories that isolate behavior to a single cause, the new theory accepts that there are many contributing factors to behavior. This way, the new theory is not frozen at any level of knowledge. Each day we learn new things about behavior, which confront us with choices over how to behave.

The Theory of Options began as an explanation of human motive that made sense in evolutionary terms. Only it has its own predictive theory, one that follows a well-established pattern. This is that for humans life is not always harmonious, but a constant jostle for advantage, usually between parents, children, spouses, or colleagues. Only whereas other theories teach that the struggle is for direct motive such as power, dominance, or sex, the new theory teaches that the motives are often indirect. Humans seek not so much direct power, dominance, sex, or fitness, but the options of it.

Take drives for sex. People in all societies all through history have had extra marital flings. Yet while this can be explained by an evolutionary need for offspring, the human peculiarity is that during extra marital flings people most try to avoid offspring. This is contrary to how birds behave, so it needs an explanation. Here the dispute becomes enigmatic, because there are fitness reasons for avoiding many offspring. Especially, the physiology of the human female has ways to avoid pregnancy with less preferred males. Only the male physiology has no mechanism for avoiding pregnancy nor a reason to, despite that the human male might try to avoid pregnancy even when a female wants it, contrary to evolutionary intent. Fresh arguments can construe how this too might be a fitness advantage. Only there is a point where arguments become so convoluted that they are no longer credible, scientifically, or by perception of how humans really do behave. So, we wonder if there is a more logical explanation scientifically, but which also makes everyday sense.

The Theory of Options examines how if nature has to meet all these competing needs, it would have selected human neurology for that purpose. Basic drives such as a need for sex truly are encoded genetically. Except complex drives such as deciding an opportune circumstance to procure offspring are constantly changing and must stay flexible. So complex drives become enacted through the more advanced learning neurology of the higher cortex. This creates the "inner conflict" between biological need and social restraint of which all humans are aware.

Only competing drives between biology and inhibition create a deeper need, apart from obvious conflicts. This is need for psychological assurance that the individual is in control of the biological drives, and could enact or restrain them as an option. To return to the cliché of sex, genes might "urge" the human male to procure as many offspring as possible. But the male really wants self-assurance that he has the options to do this dependent on his choosing. As motive this allows a whole range of observable behaviors. These include the male who philanders but does not get his liaisons pregnant, satisfying his ego that way, to the male who prefers to remain chaste, or abjure female company, but who still meets a psychological need of "I could if I wanted too". Only people fool themselves too over what their real options are, and this is where conflicts arise.

So people do not just think through their options, but test them. While humans might only act out biological drives in fantasy or subconsciously, they nevertheless test limits of how far their options extend. According to evolutionary psychology genes motivate us to mate with biologically fit partners. Yet if this is true many humans might not physically try to procure offspring from the fittest partner, but they will test their options of how well they might fare in such competition. Individuals will constantly assess among themselves each person's attractiveness, influence, or control. Individuals will also make "moves" throughout life to enhance options for future behaviors. Only not all moves to increase options are smart ones, and not all displays to test one's attractiveness or influence are carefully thought through beforehand. In sex people flirt and philander to test their options, but they make stupid moves too, outside the limits of their true power and influence. In politics, in legislatures, business, the office and the family, people constantly make moves to improve options vis-à-vis a rival, or to assess how they would fare in a more overt confrontation.

This constant testing and making of "moves" to increase options gives human life not only an internal dynamic, but an external one. Humans do not engage (most of the time) in a fratricidal struggle for advantage because they greatly depend on each other for group cooperation. Plus the human gene pool is so mixed that the raw biological motive is lessened. Evolutionary psychology tries to discover a gene to motivate each human inhibition, but it would have been very inefficient to evolve so many genes for different purposes. It was simpler to evolve the human psychology to respond as a guide to make moves that enhance one's options, but avoid moves whose net consequence is a decrease in options. Most individuals throughout their lives learn this, though there are some who never find a balance.

Therapeutically, individuals come to the table with a constrained set of options, depending on each person's education, wealth, abilities, and age. The therapist should establish constraints first, then determine the options available. From whatever a current situation is, it can always be improved once constraints are understood. If an individual thinks he or she is young and attractive, when that person is getting old and crusty, then the options available are becoming discordant with options that exist. The task of therapy would be uncovering the problem, then providing realistic options from which the individual could improve life from that point forward. This might differ from Freudianism in that here we would examine the options available to an individual first. Only then should we consider if childhood trauma was a factor interfering with current options, or if there was another problem, of which childhood trauma was an effect.

Even with drives for sex, the real need is not reproductive fitness (sex drives needing therapy are mostly not reproductive) but to test an individual's 'I could if I wanted to' options. The task of therapy would be to establish the individual's real doubts that he or she felt entitled to as options, and why those might not be available in the reality of a situation. Normal behavior would be the ability to assess and fulfill options in a mature way. It is when unbalanced drives for aggression, sex, parental conditioning, or greed take control, limiting fulfillment of real options, that there is a problem. But if an otherwise capable individual suffers lapses, such as drinking, prejudice, or temper fits, which restricts options, that person needs to confront any predictive circumstances causing this. It is then up to that individual to work on real change, so that friends or colleagues can be surprised by non-predictive improvement.

So, the Theory of Options has its own predictive theory, which offers a plausible explanation of behavior in everyday terms. We see the options effect all the time. In a crisis, statesmen reiterate that they will "keep their options open". To stay competitive companies must do business in ways responsive to changes in the market. In personal relations, if individuals sense being edged into a position that they no longer control, each person begins examining "other options". One difficulty of evolutionary theory is how we explain suicide. In the new theory we see that people are driven to suicide when individuals feel that all the usual options in life have been closed off. Society punishes and humiliates people by depriving them of options. While individuals broaden their options through acquiring wealth, knowledge, and personal freedoms.

However, modern theories of behavior must not just be logical or sustainable in the face of changing knowledge. They must provide a theory of how the mind functions. And this is very difficult.

The Theory of Options follows evolutionary psychology to a point. It agrees that the mind adapted to meet evolutionary needs, but only based on how evolution actually works. Notoriously, evolutionary psychology began not even from the ‘middle’ of the evolution debate, but from a far extreme of so-called "ultra-Darwinism", reducing everything to the adaptive value of a gene. Yet, only 1-2% of new genes evolved during human evolution. 98-99% of our genes we share in common with chimps, and while we do not have an exact number, there are no more than the 50,000 genes expressing the human brain as in the chimp brain. Most telling, the profound neural capabilities of the human brain, abstraction and language, evolved in the last 50,000 – 350,000 years, where increase in brain capacity was in the most homogenous part of the brain. We doubt if specialized neural circuits evolved in such a short time, at a highly saturated stage of life, in the least specialized part of the brain. Especially, the trend of evolution was always of encephalization, or initially enacting complex behaviors in the homogenous, learning part of the cortex first, and refining this as reflex later, over millions of years later.

So the issue is not that brains evolved, but that every attribute evolves at a cost. We will discuss details in later chapters, but the human brain evolved in a way that maximized the options of behavior, for the cost of evolving. A more flexible or reliable brain is conceivable, but at too high a cost for the time and state of neurology available. On the other hand there was great pressure on early hominids to evolve a brain more adaptable and versatile than rivals, but within all the other cost constraints. So in a way, the ‘content specific’ brain of evolutionary psychology might have evolved. But if it were inferior for an equivalent cost to a more flexible brain that could maximize options better, the content specific brain would have been wiped out in the African boiling pot of change. So we want to discover what brain actually did evolve, that could maximize the options of behavior for the least cost to modify that way.

The following diagram shows a minimal brain for an advanced primate. The input/output at the lowest layers is simple, fast and reliable. Except pre-natal reflex is inflexible and each circuit must be designed specifically, maybe needing one gene per circuit. As the brain evolves it builds in layers, with each layer allowing increasing learning after birth. This lowers the genetic instructions needed per total number of circuits, because the neural circuits can complete connection details after birth by experience. This allows a greatly expanded brain for minimum genetic design costs, plus it allows a flexible brain. But speed and reliability go down as learning increases, plus increasing brain bulk draws higher metabolic costs. (The human brain is 2.5% by body weight but consumes about 20% of the body's energy.) Generally, as functions become fixed by repetition selection tries to dispense with learning, and further refine reflex. But when new challenges arise, or the body must increase brain bulk or flexibility quickly, learning circuits increase, often vastly in number. Over the history of life we see selection balancing the cost-effectiveness of which functions to control with which types of modules. Though always, the brain evolves in layers from consolidated reflex to expanded learning.

In the Theory of Options then, we are not treating the brain as what we call a ‘black-box’, whose internal workings are unknown, but for which we are trying to establish a functional model. Rather, we are trying to ‘reverse engineer’ the brain, much as we would a competitor’s computer, to find out how it actually works. This is a two-step process.

1. By testing, we establish which functions are pre or post-natal reflex, long term or short term learning, or any combination. We know that the brain contains all these modules, we just need to establish which ones are used for which functions.
2. Having established which modules the brain uses, we then question why. Using our broader theory, we know competition was intense. The brain that offered maximum options of behavior for the least cost to modify was the one that triumphed. So we might find that something we expected to be reflex was learning, or the reverse. We place this problem in the context of our broader theory, to see why nature selected the functions that way.

At this stage none of this testing has been done. This is a totally new theory, formulated for a slightly different purpose concerning the evolution debate. Here we only show that the Theory of Options also has a theory of mind and how the brain works, one that can be tested, and makes predictions about how the brain will be discovered to work. (It maximizes the options of behavior for a given cost to evolve.)

However, the precept of maximizing options of behavior for a given cost to evolve can apply to any attribute of human evolution, not just the brain. So, let us now examine this precept in its broader context.