How might one apply the Theory of Options? More than anything else the Theory of Options is foremost an idea which is meant to be used. So, where and how should it be applied?

As explained, the theory arose from a scientific-philosophical debate over the evolutionary motive of human behavior. From this, we have been able to derive two new theories, one of behavior, one of human evolution. The theory of behavior is that we would better understand behavior if we assumed that each human felt motivated to maximize the available options in life. The theory of human evolution explains this motive, but it is complex. It begins with a slightly modified model of evolution. This teaches that while species modify incrementally all the time, very large changes occur when an evolutionary pressure pushes one or several groups of competing individuals far along what that we call a fitness pathway. At different stages in the history of life different pathways become available, but the one available during human evolution was one that maximized the options of behavior. Why that pathway was available, but not another is a problem of general evolution and the history of life. But even if we do not know why it was that pathway, human evolution is still easier to explain if we assume that it was. We must remember that although the whole species evolves fitness is a struggle between individuals. If we look at the whole species it might seem obvious why a large brain, melodious voice or delicate hand would be fit. But if we examine individual fitness it is often more helpful to ask, 'how would this maximize the options of behavior?' to see why the attribute was individually fit at all.

Only even after we accept that humans evolved in ways that maximize the option of behavior, it is still not clear why this as a fitness criteria would translate into a modern, psychological motive. This is another problem of the pathway. Maximizing options means keeping behavior flexible so it can be adapted quickly. Yet, it might take hundreds of generations to alter inherited behavior by selection. But by learning behavior can be adapted in a single generation, or with humans, new things can be learned every day. Human behavior is 85% learned in terms of neural mass, so while many basic human behaviors are inherited through reflex, complex behaviors as guides to life are learned. Yet, nobody has ever taught humans explicitly that they should strive to maximize the options of life. If anything this is a totally new theory, which can only be explained in scientific language, through modern, democratic social values to which people today aspire. Yet we claim that humans try to maximize the options of behavior as a principle, whether they have been taught that theory or not. If this is true, then an inherited attribute of humans, part of the 15% reflexive behavior, must drive learning and culture in any society towards a psychology that teaches individuals to maximize the options of life. So, before we could claim explicitly that maximizing behavioral options as fitness also motivates behavior as psychology, we need to examine the many factors of evolution, behavior, culture and society that bring this connection about.

The preceding chapters have explained the connection between human evolutionary and psychological motivation in broad terms. Yet, because human behavior is the ubiquitous property of our species any theory of it should also make everyday sense, apart from its scientific explanation. This is a criticism of the other theories. We can explain how the Freudian sub-consciousness, cultural conditioning, or evolutionary impulses affect behavior, and these influences exacerbated prevent individuals from maximizing the available options of life. But taking a contributing influence to behavior, such as an urge for reproduction or the subconscious, as a prime cause of behavior is not a credible everyday explanation of how people truly think or feel. For example, a man might procure more offspring than he can comfortably afford, so his children's lives will be more impoverished than his was. We could ascribe this motive to many things; evolutionary urge to reproduce, a social tradition that large families bring security in old age, or subconscious anxieties over fecundity. Each motive would make sense within some theory, but not necessarily any sense to the individual as motive.

The Theory of Options teaches that whatever is the perceived motive, each individual embarks on behavior that he or she believes will maximize the options in life, even if the actual behavior restricts options. This does not mean each individual perceives directly that he or she is trying to maximize options. People can as easily believe that they are carrying out God's purpose, or have another motive entirely. The connection as perceived motive is never simple, because it is just 15% of naturalistic evolutionary impulse interpreted through 85% of learning. While the real learning is almost 100% cultural, because motives like God's purpose can only be explained in language building over thousands of years of human culture. But once we have the new theory we can explain motive in ways that make credible sense. One can write a book about 'Maximizing Options in Politics' and the title makes sense. But if one writes 'Maximizing Reproductive Fitness in Politics' or 'Utilizing the Freudian Subconscious in Politics' the book might be interesting, but it is already not credible everyday sense. Only we are not just trying to make sense, we are trying to formulate a scientifically credible theory of evolution and motive, which makes meaningful logic to ordinary people. That individuals were selected to maximize the options of behavior makes evolutionary sense within that fitness path, plus psychological sense within how modern humans behave. This principle is still not a perfect, complete, or universal explanation of human motive. It is just a big improvement in the direction of generalizing a theory of motive against other theories currently available.

So how do we apply the theory in an ordinary, everyday sense?

Well firstly, we advise people to behave in ways that will maximize the individual's options in life. Some of this is obvious. To preserve options you do not destroy your health, mortgage yourself to the hilt, gamble away the pension fund, sign contracts with no let-out clause, have more children than you can support, or addle your brain with drugs. Some paths in life seem enticing at the time, but if they close off in single direction options that should normally be available it will bring pain, frustration, and social burden. This is why humans as a species have moral constraints, or why having morals is fit within a pathway of maximizing options of behavior. If we can restrain ourselves by morals behavior is flexible, because circumstances change. But if we habitually surrender to impulse we are both controlled by surroundings and no longer in control of them, so our behavior loses all flexibility. The body through evolution senses this. The crucial circuits of inherited reflex do not know anything about God, ethics, or moral right or wrong. But they do 'know' that with only 15% of reflex they have to retain a modicum of control over a larger, smarter, recently evolved 85% of learned neurology. In evolution learning is only fit if it is retained. So those who never learn are going to suffer not just from society, but from within the body's neurochemistry, which can sense when restraint within the upper cortex is no longer working.

Only apart from general precepts that apply as common sense, people also get into crises over available options. This is when the individual is feeling motivated to maximizes options, but the endeavor is going wrong to a point where counseling by friends, colleagues, family or professionals is required. Individuals hold as a generality that whatever action he or she takes at the time, even if it is falling down drunk every night, maximizes the real options available. This part of the theory anyone can understand, even a person depressed to the point that he or she does not feel that there are any viable options left in life. But objectively, outside of individual impression, humans should have many viable options they might not always appreciate. The problem is not that over the whole species evolution along a pathway that would maximize the options of behavior was not a success. It is that flexible behavior is highly impressionable and deeply driven by circumstance, mood, learning, and childhood and cultural perception. Each human individual inherits a capability to maximize available options of behavior. But within the highly impressionable, flexible brain individual perceptions of options easily become distorted, or behaviors can become self-destructive in ways that close of options that should otherwise be available. How do we apply the new theory to this type of circumstance?

Again, no details of the Theory of Options as clinical psychiatry have been worked out. But the procedure would be first to explain that the deepest psychological satisfactions come from each person knowing that he or she has viable choices in life, or has control over a situation. (If the individual is about to jump out the window, the procedure is to first calm the person down.) Then we would try to establish the facts surrounding any situation that an individual might be facing. One harsh fact each individual must confront is that any individual does have a limited set of options physically. Most people do not have the wealth, attractiveness, charm, or power that a person might feel necessary to obtain the options some people crave, or obtain the recognition to which a person might feel entitled. Counseling can only establish the options that are available within the realities of any situation. Then we need to establish two more things.

1. If the individual insists on pursuing options that are not real, or are physically unavailable, we need to find out why, as there is clearly a problem with perceptions.
2. Even if the options are achievable, such as not falling down drunk every night, we need to examine why the person has difficulty obtaining options that should be available to any mature individual.

Either of these problems could be of the deep psychology perhaps related to destructive childhood influences, pathology of distorted biological drives, or habituation to alcohol, violence or drugs, that has a deeper cause. Again, the Theory of Options is not here a theory of clinical psychiatry. This is just how we interpret such problems from a Theory of Options perspective. The new theory begins as a theory of human evolution, but it works easily within what is already known from psychology and psychiatry.

However, there is one area where the Theory of Options might differ slightly from many other theories. In the new theory all knowledge, even knowledge established by counseling ends in humans making choices. Humans evolved in ways that realign behavior outside of impulse, so moves will be evaluated morally by foresight, and thinking through actions and their consequences before taking them. Any exchange among humans of a counseling nature is to delineate for people what their real options are. This must be adjusted to the sensitively of a circumstance and the level of understanding of the parties. Except everybody has choices and everybody uses a native Theory of Options. If an individual needs to modify his or her behavior and that person chooses not do it, then even the most fair and humane societies have options too, which forms part of the continuum of reality each individual faces. Again, much of this is common sense. One confronts a person with options and sees how he or she responds. The response then becomes information for making further choices by other individuals, and so on.

Some of this might sound harsh. Only the Theory of Options is not intended to promote harsh values or unjust treatment. It is a theory explaining why all human action ends in choice, and why from a perspective of evolutionary fitness, humans are creatures of choice and accountability for their actions. Further, when all individuals are held accountable in a moral sense, and we accept that the locus of change is with the individual, society will be a better, more democratic unit. Yet also in society all through history people on the lower rungs of a social scale were denied politically and materially the options to which all human beings should be naturally entitled. This another sensitive issue in the debates, because once we suppose that humans act from a structured set of drives with no options for change, it implies that however society exists at present is how it was naturalistically structured to be.

So how does the Theory of Options approach this very sensitive, complex topic?

It is today widely commented that theories of any sort do not arise from nowhere. Every theory has an objective content of facts and logic independent of the age in which it is perceived. But theories have a subjective, cultural content as well, interpreted through the attitudes and social conditions of the time. When people believed that the objects of the universe moved because of Gods, philosophers produced theories that people too were moved by souls and spirits. In later times, when scientists tried to disassemble the universe as parts of a machine, philosophers produced theories that humans were also a machine, though the most famous theory of this type had the mind still motivated by a soul. Or when society was slave owning, philosophers had theories of why this was natural and just. Later, when it became economic to buy and sell labor on an open market rather than to keep slaves, new theories arose explaining why all people were naturally created equal. One controversy surrounding the Theory of Evolution is that it arose in an era of ruthless dog-eat-dog industrial expansion, although this had no baring on its scientific correctness. Only the early theory viewed evolution as continuously variable, also like in the early analog type machines of man. But today we live in a digital age. So, now we see that the information content of evolution is transmitted in discrete packets of digital type DNA information, just like information in our latest, hi-tech gadgets, although for evolution this might not explain the whole picture either.

The Theory of Options then, while it tries to be factual and logical, also must be accepted and interpreted into the times in which we live. So, what are those times in broad terms? Well, it is certainly a changing world, socially and economically. Politically the world is becoming more integrated, while the modern economy has become more global, and clever people everywhere have new opportunities to acquire great wealth. But the nature of the economy is changing too, from an older industrial model of what is called extensive production, to a newer model of intensive production. Intensive production means doing more with less by intensifying some process. Often this means doing more work with less people, but other processes are involved too. For example, producing more gasoline for cars once meant processing larger quantities of oil. But if the refining process itself is intensified, then a higher proportion of gasoline can be produced from the same quantity of crude oil. Similarly, for producing engine power, once the only answer was to build bigger engines, but if the engine can be made to work more efficiently the same amount of power can be obtained for less fuel and less bulk materials such as steel, used in engine manufacture.

Yet the modern economy is not just intensifying the processes of old industries but changing the nature of production itself. All these intensification processes require knowledge of how to build more efficient machines, reduce inventory, plan work, and so on. So, eventually knowledge itself creates its own industry. Especially today, marketing, management, finance, engineering, and computer technology have become knowledge intensive industries. Ironically, this in turn feeds the intensification cycle, because unlike an oil refinery which must be rebuilt once the new process is designed, people and organization based-industries can be quickly remodeled to suit new circumstances. We note also that economies that have switched from the old extensive production base to the new intensive knowledge base have maximized their options. It is much easier to remodel a knowledge-based industry than to change a steel plant or shipyard. Plus, while the new changes have caused great social disruption, as any industrial revolution does, long-term intensive industries, especially knowledge intensive ones, are ultimately less demanding on the environment than the old extensive industrial economy. For example, computers have almost replaced cars as the new toys of the industrial age. But if replacing a computer every few years seems wasteful it still consumes less extensive resources to replace a computer than a car. In addition, it is easier to redesign a machine performing an intensive function, such as processing information, and genuinely improve performance, than it is a machine performing an extensive function, like moving people from A to B.

The Theory of Options fits into the new economic model in several ways. For example, the old industrial model required a very precise definition of scientific truth and this problem was revisited in this book, because the new model also needs science. Only the old model was dismissive of intuitive and judgmental knowledge, questioning if these had any value in a technical sense. But this is not sufficient for the new model where important decisions often must be made with incomplete information. So, we require a philosophy that both insists on scientific rigor, but legitimizes intuitive thinking where this is required. The same problem applies to the purpose of knowledge. The old model provided no purpose to knowledge, only a specification for it such that knowledge was not considered of value unless it consisted of facts or logic. Several philosophies tried to break from this narrow specification, the most controversial being American pragmatism, which attempted to put a cash value on knowledge. Only this was contestable because cash value is not a criteria of scientific truth, and in today's model an organization or individual could quickly end up in court trying to make it one. In the new theory we cut through this tangled argument by teaching that the purpose of knowledge is to increase options. The correct term too is not the cash value of knowledge, but its value added in the sense of the effort required to uncover knowledge, against the return it provides in revealing true human options.

This problem of knowledge goes deeper. Many left-wing philosophers have criticized the older paradigm of knowledge beginning with Descartes, because it allegedly dissembled nature into the parts of a machine. This disassembly of nature, and the reduction of all phenomena to a rigid chain of mechanical cause-and-effect has been variously blamed for the environmental crisis, male suppression of women, and even the failure of science to make further progress on research issues like the fundamental particles of matter. The substance of these arguments was that the old science looked at phenomena in isolation, but nature works interactively. Yet, the new economic model is interactive too. Economies always have been interactive, but it became most noticeable in the modern computer industry. In the old model, large computer companies developed both the hardware and software for computers. But in the new model smaller companies, or ones that started out small became specialized in one area, and both relied on, but competed with each other, to bring new technologies to market as an integrated whole. And we see this all the time now in the modern computer industry. There is a competitive "race" to bring a new technology to market, but no one company has the power to do it alone. So there occurs a huge interaction between hardware, software, and manufacturing companies, the press who need advertising and readers, and the consuming public, who will buy the new technology but want to see it working first. While because the public in this case is buying computers, it tends to better grasp the technical issues than the traditional housewife choosing among brands of soap powder.

This interaction in the economy occurs across all production. Companies wish to both diversify and divest, and the two things are very different. Diversity increases options in a changing market, plus it offers opportunities to create markets, like a steel manufacturer building ships, or a TV manufacturer buying a recording studio. Divestment means concentrating on what are now termed core competencies. If say, a specialized manufacturer needs a large warehouse, but it is not very efficient at running one, it is better to out-source management of the warehouse, and just concentrate on the manufacturing competency. This increases options, because if business goes down, the cost of maintaining a large warehouse is not born by the manufacturer. On the other hand, because the running a warehouse is the core competency of the warehouse owner, he can seek warehouse business in another market doing better at the time. In fact, this is how one would intensify the utilization of a large, fixed structure like a warehouse, by seeking more business opportunities to keep the warehouse full. Keeping a warehouse full in a fluctuating market is hard work of course, but the work is knowledge intensive, and again, knowledge intensive processes are easy to redesign and maximize. In fact, in the computer age it should take no more people to run a full, busy warehouse than a quiet, empty one. Even more, in the computer age, one would not use people for mental tedium like logging warehouse inventory when they could be utilized more effectively in a people intensive chore, like obtaining fresh business for the warehouse.

These examples are only illustrative. Strategies for efficiently organizing production should not becomes tied to the emotive issue of whether this justifies capitalism or not, or how equitably wealth is distributed in society. Inherited wealth, like inherited privilege, is a relic of feudalism extant in most societies, which interferes with the efficiency of the economic system. However this is an issue for legislature to deal with, and should not detract from the Theory of Options. Similarly, production of goods harmful to health, environment or people's moral well being should be also controlled through legislature at the options of society. Strictly, all modern society needs for efficiency is a level playing field in which companies must compete by the same set of rules. It also seems more a cycle of money politics that protects industries like tobacco, or manufacture of ozone depleting chemicals than a fault of the economic system which allows this to happen. People are, or should be in control, and they should change through the legislative system any segment of the economy that they do not like. Business too must accept that changes will come, but that change also brings competitive opportunities. Change is part of life. The Theory of Options is not to teach that bad practices of society should stay, but that when change comes, how to maximize options for dealing with it.

Maximizing options brings us to the final segment of change in society, which is the role of people themselves. Recall the nature-nurture debate. It is not really about whether behavior is determined by upbringing or biology, but why there exist gradations of privilege, wealth and power in society, and who is entitled to occupy which positions. Humans in a natural, tribal state sought to increase individual options by a competition which if it was not fair, was at least as brutally equal as any competition for individual fitness in the wild. But when civilization began, when wealth, power and privilege became the accruements of human culture, people still carried on the struggle to increase individual options, blind to the natural forces driving individual ambition. If a man were King he would try to stay King, and ensure his son would be King too, because that increased individual options, despite that selection of the very first King must have must have been based on a distinguishable ability. But because Nature had only evolved humans to cope with biological adaptation to changes in the natural environment, it had no naturalistic solutions to problems created by human social structures. Humans created laws, wealth, power and privilege to increase options beyond natural needs. When these things are not working for humans with the equitability that was intended, it is something humans themselves have to straighten out.

Yet, we have now at least democratic models of society, which though imperfect point a way forward. We have a global economy and global communications, and science has revealed to us shared perils for our human family, which we must act jointly to solve. Most importantly, the economic model that now provides the greatest wealth to society requires a maximizing of human abilities to produce that wealth. Especially, in modern knowledge intensive industries people are often not only the most expensive resource, but the resource which makes the difference in the success or failure of the enterprise. Because industry produces the wealth, all people, even those selfishly striving to enhance individual options, need to know what motivates people. Managers also need to know what brings out creative qualities in people, how to look for natural leadership, and how to get people working together as a team. As we have repeatedly seen in modern industry there are no sure bets that inherited, traditional wealth today will be the new wealth tomorrow. We want every individual in society to strive to maximize individual options because the striving of one person creates fresh opportunities for another. Again, we have seen this in the modern computer industry, where acquisition of great wealth by enterprising individuals has created many related opportunities for others. So the fault in society is not its rewarding wealth or fame for opportunities seized or options realized, but only where it remains frozen with an inherited power or wealth structure from an earlier age, and will not allow enterprising forces to fully assert themselves.

This is where the Theory of Options offers an advantage over the older theories of both nurture and nature. In the end it does not matter so much what people are, but what they do. And it does not matter so much finally if certain abilities are inherited or acquired, as it matters to make sure that people are motivated to produce the individual's best. In the Theory of Options the issue of status becomes one of leadership ability, setting goals, and motivating others, while acquisition of wealth should be nothing more than a measure of success, and ability to increase individual options. If anything, humans feel the deepest satisfaction when they act in a manner which increases options. People who acquired wealth by accident can feel helpless if their real options of change become diminished, while those who know instinctively that they can motivate and influence change in any situation, enjoy deep inner feelings of self-assurance.

Finally, the model of creating options within the economy is only used to illustrate a point. In modern society there lie many paths to increasing individual options. The deep drives of the psyche were formed over hundreds of thousands of years of emergence, and theses drives existed long before society created wealth or status for rewarding contribution. So it is still basic drives that must be satisfied. To return to the economic model people do not work more productively only if they get paid more, but they want to feel that they are part of a team, and that their effort has meaning. Disputes over wealth or status are usually anyway disputes over how society measures worth and contribution, and every organization has to deal with that. But every individual in any situation, whether it is family, business, sport, the community or the electorate, must decide in which terms he or she thinks contribution should be best judged, and what efforts justify which returns that an individual expects. Humanity as a whole can only move forward if every individual contributes in some way. It is the old problem of the tribe. If humans were just competing with each other biologically as individuals, the species would already have gone extinct because human ancestors had already lost the Darwinian struggle to chimp ancestors. But when humans compete for options over and above those achievable by individual effort, the human whole obtains more real options than the sum of its individual parts.

The Theory of Options has emphasized throughout the role of the individual, not in a selfish, acquisitive sense, but as the locus of change, choice, and moral accountability. All knowledge, even knowledge of how we behave, ends in choices that humans make. This precept is not new, but it is novel in a scientific theory, especially one based on evolution. Science studies nature, but without intelligent creatures in it nature does not exhibit choice in a moral sense. In the primal universe there is no choice, just as there are no elements with more than 92 protons, no plastics or synthetic fibers or radio waves transmitting pictures, and no machines or artifacts. Such things come into existence when creatures with language, culture and intelligence come into existence. Choice in a moral sense too only comes into existence when intelligent beings come into existence. Moral choice is an emergent property. It exists only after other properties exist first in certain relationships, but does not exist when they do not. Emergent properties can be simulated on computers or in chemical reactions, but for something as complex as human behavior we can only make verbal or philosophical models.

Only there are bitter disputes over this. The theory of evolution is developed to a point where certain types of equations can describe behaviors in some animals. It is then contested that any attempt to describe behaviors, even complex ones leading to emotion or choice outside of these equations is a surreptitious promotion of forces that have no explanation, and hence no existence at all. Only while we do not question that we should seek precise, quantifiable explanations of forces, we wonder if equations now developed enough to describe some behaviors or other facets of evolution are sufficient to describe it all. Especially, and this is the issue, people such as Dennett who refer to living entities as nothing but algorithms are seeing equations themselves as physical forces of the universe. Yet, in this thesis we have consistently maintained that mathematics is only logically enforceable human abstraction. The physical laws of the universe have existed objectively and independent of consciousness since the Big Bang. But analysis of those laws in symbolic form is another emergent property of the universe, like choice or morality, which only comes into existence when creatures with consciousness, will and intelligence come into existence. Moreover, and this is the thesis, mathematics exists precisely to extend the range of human options. It is always an historic process. Choice, will, intelligence and options came into existence first. Then tools of these attributes refined, such as symbolic logic and formalized methodologies of problem solving like algorithms, come into existence as an adjunct to extending the range of choices.

So the debate is not whether knowledge might extend to where equations can explain choice, but whether an existing class of equations we call time symmetrical ones can do it. Relatively simple equations such those of velocity, v = u + at, are time symmetrical, in that time 't' can take any value including a negative one. This means that we not only can calculate possibilities forward, but backwards to a past state to see how systems originated, or for all time. This was the hypothesis of Laplace. The hypothesis works for mechanical systems in that if we measure the trajectory of an asteroid or comet we could calculate its trajectory throughout time within limits of other knowledge. This principle also applies, though again within limits, to evolutionary behavior. If a creature is alive today we assume that all the behavioral moves its ancestors made were winning moves by descent. We could therefore retrace on a calculable basis the fitness moves its ancestors made that produced the genome of the present species. Except if the behavioral moves of the creature appear moral we could not claim that they were moral as calculable moves. They were just those behaviors that through natural selection determined the present DNA mix of the surviving creature's genome. Theories such as sociobiology claim that human behavior can be understood, and only understood, on such a calculable basis.

A similar argument could be applied to how the brain works. Suppose that from a given set of inputs we get a computer to produce certain outputs. If we could get another computer, no matter how long it took, to reproduce identical outputs from identical inputs, we could not claim that the first computer made any choices. The first computer only responded to a constrained set of moves repeatable on another computer. We could apply this argument to human behavior. Suppose an individual performs an act that appears morally reprehensible. We only have to prove than that a similar individual under an identical circumstance would act the same way to prove that all the moves were constrained, and that no choice was involved. Or we only think that we have made choices, whereas if we were only following a constrained set of moves we would follow anyway by Laplacian trajectory, there was no choice involved. This is another evolutionary argument, in that if we can isolate a behavior that is universal among a species, then no choice is involved. 

Throughout this thesis we have tried to show why these mechanistic reductions of complex behaviors, especially human ones, to a few equations of gene flow are misplaced. These equations work for single or a few genes or alleles and only for cases where these alleles influence the fitness of their own propagation. A mutation like the one causing sickle-cell disorder can propagate and be traced this way, so here the equations work. But there is among humans no single gene or allele responsible for love, honesty, intelligence, or aggression that influences reproductive success in individuals, or affects the human genome. During human evolution when the population was small, interbreeding, and rapidly evolving certain genes were being selected. Only these genes were selected for general characteristics of a type that would move much of human behavior outside of biology. Moreover, many of these genes were selected long before humans evolved. Humans share 98% of genes with chimps, or 70% with all other mammals. So the genes selected specifically for humans were ones multiplying neural mass, refining moral empathy and mechanisms of choice and leaning, and the unique human morphology such as walking upright. Human behavior today is not selecting for these crucial human attributes, because these genes are already selected into the human genome.

In the new theory we would denote genes present at a reproductive event but not selected by that event with a Ö -1 symbol, indicating that the genes were selected in an evolutionary era now past. Only the existing equations of gene flow do not contain this symbol, or any mathematical mechanism to account for the stark fact that the majority of genes in any modern genome where selected 'elsewhere' in evolutionary design space. We also note that these same equations lacking such symbols cannot explain the evolution of sex, or first life, or the large step changes of evolution plainly evident in the fossil record. So, while the symbols are only illustrative, the past might not just be -t, but can be Ö -1t, which is different, because the complex sign would isolate us from past information. When they work, time symmetric equations like those of Laplace might give an impression that the past can re-exist physically. But physically the past is gone. Time symmetric equations are only a symbolic means to recapture information from a past state assuming that all other factors not in the equations hold equivalent over time. But if empirical knowledge tells us that factors outside of the equations have changed, we have no way to recreate that information from the past analytically.

Plus other equations we could choose can as easily tell us that the past is cut off. The simple equation a² = 1 cuts us off from the past because it has two solutions, which we cannot choose between without other knowledge. Equations used to model the fate of the universe involve a process akin to integration. But as every schoolchild learns integration creates a constant whose value we cannot know without other information. So while there can exist equations that can model the universe, there exists no algorithm which can tell us its fate, because no algorithm can specify the value of the so-called cosmological constant. Plus all natural processes, including life, are thermodynamic. Only thermodynamic processes are inherently time-directional so we must introduce boundary and empirical values external to analysis to solve how these systems behave. Yet when we recognize through other information that we have a problem, we must choose an equation appropriate to the solution. Only while some people claim that living creatures are just algorithms, no universal algorithm that humans have discovered can tell us which type of equations will unerringly solve which types of problems. On the contrary, within current orthodoxy the problem of how fitness can give rise to moral behavior is not recognized as a problem of algorithms or equations, but only a problem of alleged anti-Darwin attitudes in society. Yet it is precisely because of choice, in this case misplaced, that orthodox Darwinism tethers itself to an inadequate set of mathematics by which it attempts to explain the enormously complex properties of human behavior and motivation. Only we could hardly claim that because through choice we only apply a very limited set of equations to the problems of evolutionary behavior while ignoring other evidence, for this reason choice does not exist in the universe!

Similarly, we have shown that our knowledge of how brains work as far as making choices is also woefully inadequate. We have demonstrated that brains capable of abstraction are analytical machines, but these depend on a program to run, and programs are another property, like choice, that does not exist in the early universe. For brains to work there must be a transformation of the type (E, d, x) à (E, d, p, x), where p is the electronic program. Yet there is no equation to explain how this works, although empirical neurology can now crudely explain the learning process of the brain. Mathematics too, a form of abstraction, depends on a program p to disconnect the input-output x from the rest of the physical universe, E and d. This too means that mathematics is a choice of program, which has been effectively proven by theorem's such as Godel's. It also means that the brain, or large ones like the human brain capable of abstraction, are disconnected from the physical universe, which might be a property of the large neural mass of the neo-cortex acting as a form of information insulator. We are not suggesting here that the Theory of Options can solve these enormously complex problems. We are only suggesting that because there exist problems such as the nature of choice which existing mathematics cannot solve, it does not prove that choice cannot exist. 

If anything, the Theory of Options sets humanity on a totally different course concerning science and behavior. Total, perfect knowledge of the universe will exist when abstract reasoning such as mathematics becomes coincident with all other facts of our existence, which we must measure. Ironically however, such perfect knowledge would close off our further choices because it is always within the differentiation between facts and reasoning where intuition, judgment and choice lie. The Theory of Options contests that we do not have the present knowledge to close this gap, so we should be seek further knowledge to delineate more clearly what the choices are. Ironically, this too is an inherent human dynamic from evolution. The power of abstraction comes from its generality, and the power of mathematics comes from its logical connection within its internal rules, plus its empirical disconnection to the remainder of the universe. The most rigorous form of abstraction is tautology, and the most complex equation can prove to a being who is infinitely wise no more than "a = a". For this reason all abstraction no matter how refined must be verified against facts that we can measure. We have proved this in philosophy before anybody knew about evolution, but evolution of the human brain, correctly understood, confirms that nature selected human brains to think the way they do on the same basis.

The very large human brain, which has never been explained by orthodox theory, did not evolve to the size it did because of the stupid peacock's tail, or so humans could gossip about sex! Humans evolved along a pathway that maximized the options of behavior, and that pathway stayed open to further evolution until a brain evolved that could fully abstract. But full abstraction requires a transformation of the type (E, d, x) à (E, d, p, x) where p is the program which disconnects the internal workings of the mind physically from the rest of the universe. So, the large brain was most likely the critical neural mass that could act as an information insulator, to achieve the full abstraction effect. Human reflex, which was selected as genes and alleles from fitness events, did not select as abstract thoughts in the higher cortex, which has a homologous neural structure anyway. Instead, most reflex in humans selected for the refinement of the senses, aural, visual and tactile communication, leading to the fullest gathering of facts for evaluating situations. The brain also evolved as reflex for full reinforcement of moral empathy, judgment and the emotions of learning, so from a range of information derived factually and by abstraction the wisest choices of a course of action could be made.

If we strictly categorize knowledge this way then physical processes in the universe, including processes of thought and life, ultimately do remain inexact and unknowable. This might seem unsatisfactory but it is a superior option to pretending that we fully understand things that we do not. We need today a science of human behavior, perhaps more today than we will ever need in our history, because our behavior for the next few generations will probably determine if the species is to survive at all. So, in this sense we should treat all human behavior in the factual manner that we would treat any physical process. Only we must embark on our most perilous study from a correct theory of knowledge and a correct theory of cause-and-effect, and of human options. This means using all our science, mathematics, and rigorous philosophy to reveal to humanity its real choices in the coming age. We then confront humanity with the moral courage it will require to make those choices, in the best interests of the entire species.

The Theory of Options arose less than a century and a half after Darwin because science itself came to an impasse over human nature. Evolution, one of the last great pieces of the scientific puzzle of existence, by explaining human existence, threatened to put that existence in chains of its biological past. This did not happened for so long as people accepted the dichotomy to human behavior that its past was explained by biology while its present was explained by psychology. But even the psychological explanation restricted human options, by trapping people in an immediate psychological past plus not allowing for natural individual differences to compete for overall human benefit. The Theory of Options offers an escape from this impasse by defining human goals in neither biologically or psychologically specific terms. Humans seek to maximize all their options regardless of how this is motivated. So human behavior becomes not merely a drive to maximize options, but a confrontation with them, in which human individuals become the locus of change.

The Theory of Options is not a theory about what humans are. It is about what humans, from all their options, ultimately choose themselves to be.