• Causal-Influence: A variable X has a causal influence on Y if changing X (through an intervention) would change the probability distribution of Y.

• Option State: a state the agent can currently exercise causal influence.

• Non-Option State: a state the agent cannot exercise causal influence.

• One Degree of freedom: one option (one state with causal influence)

• Option-Space: Set of all options / degrees of freedom an agent possesses.

• Resistance: A resistance is any causal force that prevents a state from being an option.

• Solvent: what helps overcome a resistance, moving a non-option state into the option-space as an option.

• Recursive-Freedom: Pursual of future newer degrees of freedom (options: states with causal influence) that are currently non-options by overcoming resistances (causal force that prevents a state from being an option) using current degrees of freedom (options: states with causal influence) by synthesizing a solvent (a specific solvent configuration) that eliminates the effectiveness of the resistance.

• Recursive-Freedom: Pursual of currently non-option states (future option states) by using current option states as a substrate to synthesize a solvent that eliminates the effectiveness of a resistance, where each newly acquired option becomes substrate for the next iteration.

Perceptual Horizon: The boundary of what you can see, know, and respond to right now. The edge of the boundary where P(data) tends to 1. It's a confidence gradient where P(data) ≈ 1.0

The Expansion Paradox: Every solvent you deploy simultaneously reveals resistances that were always there but invisible (because your perceptual horizon just expanded) and creates brand new resistances as side effects of the solvent entropy itself.

RESISTANCE

Sources:

1. By the Universe: A resistance whose causal force is originates from universe's entropy, physics, nature, etc.

2. By Other Life: A resistance whose causal force originates from another agent(s) and their emergent systems' causal influences opposing yours. 

3. By You: The internal causal force originates from the agent's own systems: biological, chemical, psychological, etc.

Civilizational Option-Spaces and Personal Option-Spaces:

• Maximize Personal Net d(DoF)/dt is best coupled with Life's Global Net d(DoF)/dt: (Civilizational: Life other than you): 

• If personal d(DoF)/dt expansion leads to Global Net d(DoF)/dt contraction - it is a waste of energy

• If personal d(DoF)/dt contracts despite Global Net d(DoF)/dt increase, then both are not sustainable because the former comes to 0 first and will have no effect on the latter at all, thus only effective on a very short span dt.

• Ideally d(DoF)/dt expansion coupled with Global Net d(DoF)/dt expansion by many folds constitutes the most effective energy and time expenditure of a well pursued aliveness.

• The reference point is LUCA: Last Universal Common Ancestor - the starting reference point and the collective of civilization (other than you and including you)'s direction of life.

Main Irreducible Skill-Sets for Humans:

Plan - Meta-cognition (Pre-frontal cortex): The ability to step outside the loop, audit the prediction layers, identify the resistance source, and simulate the solvent.

Act - Will (Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex): The sheer mechanical persistence to execute the physical probe, bypassing the legacy hardware's premature "stop" signals, until thermodynamic reality actually yields a new Degree of Freedom.

SOLVENT-CONFIGURATION

Examples of Primitive Solvents:

• Regeneration

• Reproduction

• Mutation

• Locomotion

• Perception

• Extrapolation