Maximum Capacity of Choice

A Suggestion for Biological Predetermination and the Opportunity to Experience a Satisfying Life that Compounds

There is a psychology study that was done and published in June 2024 titled, “The human hypothalamus coordinates switching between different survival actions”, by Jaejoong Kim, Sarah M. Tashjian, and Dean Mobbs. The study caught my attention because of its themes and potential for drawable conclusions. In this first of a kind study the researchers set out to discover whether there is a relationship between the hypothalamus and survival behaviors, as is the case with non-human animals.

This study was done as an experiment where participants in a controlled environment simulated survival behavior, mainly hunting and escaping, against an artificial intelligence. While participating in the experiment the researchers used functional Magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan and monitor participants’ brain activity. The researchers found that the hypothalamus does control switching between hunting and escaping survival behaviors, and that it coordinates in this process with the survival behavior switching network.

Your survival behavior switching network is a group of regions or parts of your brain, specifically, your hypothalamus, amygdala, periaqueductal gray (PAG), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and prefrontal cortex. Your hypothalamus regulates homeostasis or equilibrium in your body via your heart rate, body temperature, sense of hunger, and need for rest. Your amygdala processes your emotions, while your PAG processes pain, sympathy, and “protective” or “avoidant” behaviors. Your ACC controls motivation, decision making, learning, cost-benefit analysis, and your sense of conflict resolution. Your prefrontal cortex controls your executive functions like your thoughts, actions, and similar behaviors.

The results of this study led me to interesting questions and hypotheses worth sharing as research on this and similar topics continue to proliferate. Within my line of personal and professional interests, concluding on the biological significance involved with decision making is affirming and reassuring to my ideological approach. There could be some bias here, and there were some mitigating factors in the experiment that could skew conclusion drawing, but I offer these thoughts as an opportunity to expand on the research already done.

A Biological Understanding for Choice

Not to bury the lead, as the title of this article articulates, the main theory that this study illuminated to me is, the ability for a maximum capacity for choice. A maximum capacity for choice is the condition where you have the most choice possible. According to the study done, the main way the hypothalamus influences behavior is by sending neurotransmitters across your brain that inform you of the state of mind you should be in, based on your ecology and physiology. For example, if you are in an unsafe situation, based on those stimuli your hypothalamus will conclude and inform the rest of your brain that you are unsafe. The same is the case for any other external environment you may be part of. The first thing this does is inform us that the human brain is inclined towards survivability.

So, no matter the situation you find yourself in, your brain will likely incline you to make decisions that are pro life longevity. In this experiment the escape group did better than the hunt group but that could have been reflective of how the experiment was done, as opposed to instinct or ancestral biological disposition. Success in this experiment was operationally defined directionally, linearly versus variably, suggesting that appropriate hunting and escaping behavior conducts itself respectively so. This led to some data points on the hunting side being excluded (participants as hunters (participants did so in both roles interchangeably) who traveled in variable directions had “score deductions” in the experiment).

The participants who were part of the escape group also demonstrated more anxiety than the hunting group. This culminates to the point that how you interpret your environment is subjective. Additionally, within that subjectivity you have an “arsenal” of behaviors and responses to situations that you draw on for contextualization. Your hypothalamus informs you on how you should feel by creating the physiological experience deemed appropriate to your context. The rest of your survival behavior network uses the information you have readily available to you to help you make subsequent and subjectively “appropriate” decisions.

The Catalyst for Choice in your Life isn't Void Context, Making Decision-making Predisposed to being Reactionary as Opposed to Determinant

This function of human behavior gives it a disposition of predetermination. Behavior comes off as predetermined from this perspective because given what you know at any given point in time, and using what you know to make decisions, I suggest leads to an “expected end.” An expected end can be operationally defined as a conclusive moment. In the realm of potential and possibilities, the resources you have available to you all function in a certain capacity, leading to a certain outcome, known or unknown. This is an expected end. An expected end doesn’t need to be concluded upon to exist.

Based on how you know to subconsciously and unconsciously respond to something, that will lead to a known ambiguity (the knowing that something ambiguous is going to happen). The psychoanalytic perspective of psychology suggests that most human behavior is sub and unconscious. Newer studies and research have found that it is possible to program the unconscious. You create your world from the inside out which also gives behaviors a predetermination air, while at the same time re-affirming the importance of context.??

As a human you also undergo personality and character development. When who you are, where you are, and what you know collide you are presented with a specific handful of choices, AKA the maximum capacity of choice. All those decisions lead to an expected end or known ambiguity. It’s predetermined because of what you have the options to decide about.

No decision is made in a vacuum meaning every decision has outside influence. Even in a vacuum, you are in a vacuum and would have to make a decision within the context of being in a vacuum. The subconscious and unconscious point is about how your decisions are influenced by your context or phenotype on a self-concept and desires plane. Another idea for this is a passive self-fulfilling prophecy where your inputs contribute to your immediate outputs. You’re perpetuating or compounding your context on to your context. You may not know the effect from this understanding of behavior, but the cause is the cause is the cause is the cause.

So, while no one may know what the future holds for them in the long term more so than in the immediate, you are viscerally aware of the contributing factors. Physiologically your mind and body constantly adapts and perpetuates them (the contributing factors) based on your survival behavior network. The contributing factors of outcomes are too varied to conclude upon but it’s safe to say that similar behaviors create similar outcomes that can lead to inferable conclusions about a period of time, a known ambiguity, or expected end. Without saying for sure you can approximate the trajectory of a person’s life based on their environment and behavior.

Better Decision-making, as a Byproduct of Galvanizing Knowledge for the Purpose of Outcome Optimization from the Perspective of Experience as Opposed to Circumstance Change, can Lead to a Fulfilling Life

Applied knowledge becomes the mitigating factor in how one conducts themselves. Your survival behavior network leads you to make decisions based on previously ascertained information for a specific context. Think of it like you have a set of behaviors you know to use when you are in a happy situation, a set of behaviors you know how to use when you are in a sad situation, so on and so forth. The hypothalamus study showed that the hypothalamus aids in state changing and then calls on your amygdala, PAG, ACC, and prefrontal cortex to tap the subsequent arsenal of behaviors to respond “appropriately,”

A good analogy for what is potentially happening here is that you are on a proverbial and metaphorical road trip. The destination is set from the perspective of you having the ability to glean a general understanding of where your behavior and background could lead you, it’s an expected end or known ambiguity. The influence you have on the road trip is in the route you choose to take. The route you choose to take isn’t the objectively best one to whatever degree that is possible, rather it’s hopefully ideal in relation to your capacity to set a course for yourself.

Your capacity to set a course for yourself is in the decisions you make not for what you hope might influence your expected end, but what can get you there in the most satisfying way. Arriving at an expected end satisfyingly gives meaning to and helps you draw valuable conclusions about your life. I hypothesize that these kinds of decisions are the only true or real decisions people get to make in their life. The maximum capacity of choice is your ability to capitalize on and maximize outcomes for yourself in the immediate, that may marginally influence an expected end of some kind (expected ends can happen in long- or short-term segments), based on all the information you have available. Conducting yourself in this way may also lead to self-actualization via integration of various aspects of your psyche (a person’s internal and external self-perception overlapping).

A study on the mitigating factors of a person’s ability to exert self-control, specifically in constitutionally adverse situations would be a good next step in uncovering the influence of one’s ecology on the trajectory of their life. Can a person with a fortified psyche make informed decisions that can at least improve their outlook on the next day or situation on a regular basis, under the pressure and or influence of phenotypical, ecological, and similar factors that don’t affirm what that person holds valuable as general information or self conceptually? At what point in a person’s life can they do such a thing? And what does that look like operationally? Admittedly there may be studies on this particular subject that I have yet to come across limiting the depth and breadth of the conclusions I can draw, but honing in on self-control as a focal point is significant because self-control is one way you can have and make choices at maximum capacity. Self-control can help keep you from doing things that aren’t self-serving.?

Your hypothalamus regulates your physiology by informing you on how you should behave given a particular context. That’s a predetermined experience. The way you behave in that context is based on your relationship with that context, the knowledge you have available to you, and your decision-making capacity. Cosmically and potentially your arrival to that reality was predetermined because you made decisions that influenced your context, you did not create a new context for yourself. And a relatively subjective context is inescapable in terms of a general understanding of what contributes to existence. From a behavioral perspective these compounding influences on your decision-making can lead you to make decisions that perpetuate your reality. By making inferences about your reality from this perspective, you confront a or various expected ends for your life.

Again, those expected ends aren’t changed, they are influenced. The way you can influence an expected end is by behaving in a way that gets you to it in a satisfying way. I hypothesize that based on the role the survival behavior network plays in your life, if you have better knowledge and a fortified psyche you can achieve situationally, a maximum capacity of choice. The first question I pose is how do you fortify a psyche, specifically not exclusively through self-control? At what point in a person’s development can a fortified psyche withstand maladaptive subconscious and unconscious messaging? Over time, how do more and better options for more and better decision-making influence the trajectory of a person’s life? And is that trajectory on par with the totality of possibilities available to that person based on factors and degrees of what can be described as predetermination?

Journal Reference:

Jaejoong Kim, Sarah M. Tashjian, Dean Mobbs. The human hypothalamus coordinates switching between different survival actions. PLOS Biology, 2024; 22 (6): e3002624 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002624