Start (Introduction)

What this is, and what it isn't.

This is not a neuroscience primer. Many excellent introductory works to neurology are
out there, in book form and online, some of which are listed in the references.R1
Neurohacking, or neuroengineering as it will more than likely end up being called, is not
of course covered in such texts, but if you are that keen you will need the basics anyway
so enjoy.

Nor is this a psychology book, although human psychology is at the core of Matrix
Theory it is the nature of intelligence itself, and not merely one aspect of it, which is the
issue here.

This is a specialist's textbook for neurohackers.

It is also the story of a journey. In one sense it is a personal exploration that I am

undertaking, but on another, larger scale it is the story of the journey which human
intelligence tries to make, from its very beginnings in the womb to its ultimate maturity
and potential.

It is through the formation of Matrix Theory that I have come to understand why it so
very rarely gets there.

...Stick this in your hard drive and byte on it...

I use a lot of computing/engineering terms sometimes in my essays and this has led some
to believe that I think of the brain as some kind of glorified PC. This is not the case. I do
think of the brain as a 'computer', but not comparable to the models with which we are
familiar. A connection machine (parallel processing) would be closer, but still not similar
enough to make a direct comparison. However, neurohacking is perhaps the area where
computer/brain analogies can be most useful as models of a situation to facilitate
understanding. We may eventually have to invent new terms for things, like the explorers
of quantum physics. For now, if we set definitions clearly at the start we can outline the
function of a thing in context without having to retain those definitions out of it. I know
they are not literal in the same way you know that atoms aren't really little balls, and light
isn't really just waves, okay? So please accept the following definitions for the purposes
of this theory/paradigm/map whilst bearing that in mind:

Emotion... A tool in the service of intelligence

Anxiety...Unresolved stress

Sentiment...Feelings and behavior based on attachment or erroneous programming

Interaction/synchrony...Any situation in which both parties experience a net gain of
energy

Action...Any situation in which there is an equal and opposite reaction

Reaction...Any situation in which one party or situation benefits at the expense of another

Matrix...Any situation where the three needs for the emergence of intelligence are met

Bonding...Building a conceptual and physical bridge between the known and the
unknown

Networks...Brain modules or systems

Attachment...Dependence on something or someone for pacification of anxiety. Similar

to addiction. The default behavior for a damaged intelligence

Other terms you may not be familiar with are listed in the glossary at the end of the book.

Please note: I do not consider the terms 'mind' and 'brain' to be interchangeable in this
system and I deliberately try to avoid using the term 'sentience'. Ever since Star Trek got
hold of it, the meaning of 'sentience' has undergone so many transformations that I now
find it impossible to decide on a definition that is universally accepted amongst
sentientkind.

Question: How far do you want to go?

Lots of people these days have tried out various drugs and techniques to alter
consciousness, whether for self-help, development or just for the experience. This book is
mainly for those who want to go as far, or to know as much, as possible. Those who
don't, will more than likely be put off by not only the dangers of side-effects of
neurohacking (i.e. possible death, brain/psychological damage or insanity), but also by
the large amount of initially apparently unconnected material they have to wade through
that will only come together and make sense towards the end. Many times in this work's
construction I have found myself thinking, 'What does this have to do with
neurohacking?' only to answer my own question in the next chapter. In my journey thus
far I have found myself pulled along the paths of various tangential subjects, and
unfortunately anyone who wants to learn about this sort of thing seriously is going to
have to go there themselves, or come with me on what is, essentially, now a shortcut,
built from the relevant parts of those subjects. Don't go there if you want to feel safe.

Tangential issues, in particular human brain/mind development, are the main minus-
factor which prevents most people who are keen from learning about or indulging in
neurohacking full-on: the enormous amount of background information necessary just to
begin. It should make sense that if you're going to hack a machine this complex, it's
essential to know how it's supposed to work before you start trying to mess with that. So,
here's your last chance; be honest. If you just want to experiment a bit with drugs, or try a
bit of light/sound or biofeedback, this is not a book you can use; go on down the rave and
have a good trip, tell us all about it and enjoy. If you haven't the motivation and interest
necessary to get to know the machine, you'll get bored, and if you're not enjoying it, you
probably shouldn't be messing with it. Don't go fighting dragons or following white
rabbits, unless you really want to see how deep the goddamned rabbit hole goes1. It's a
hole to hyperreality, and in hyperreality, terminal velocity is not a constant. It's not like it
is in the movies. This is real life, and sometimes, the dragon wins.

...Pause for thought...

1. This line contains an example of 'synchronistic linguistics', a psychology term which

several loonies have recently gotten hold of and built a cult around, and that's about all
you'll find on the Internet. The original study of synchronistic linguistics (in the 1950s)
was as a section of 'allegorical language' or 'analogical language', and the symbol of the
day for it was the white rabbit from 'Alice in Wonderland'. The white rabbit is
allegorical/analogical language. I shall be using synchronistic linguistics throughout this
work, and if you'd never read this footnote, you wouldn't have known that, would you?

...So, you gonna follow this damned bunny down a hole? You're gonna hack a matrix?
For real? Are you out of your mind? Do you know what a matrix is?

1. Terms and Conditions (What is Neurohacking?)

The definition of 'neurohacking' (n-hacking) is a lot more straightforward than that of

'intelligence'. 'Neuro', as in, 'pertaining to the nervous system, especially the brain', and
'hacking', from the now familiar colloquial computer-related term commonly defined as
'breaking into a system subversively to achieve a personal aim, hopefully undetected
and/or unstoppable by anyone or anything which would prefer it if you didn't'. The
relevance of this definition will hopefully become apparent as we go along.

Neurohacking, in the literal sense, means 'interfering with the structure and function of
neurons'. Most people neurohack every day without realizing they are doing it (ever take
an aspirin? Have a coffee to keep yourself awake? Taken alcohol or drugs? Used
contraception?) You've been fooling the brain. Breaking into it and fooling biology. You
know you don't have to put up with a headache all day long, or have a never-ending
stream of offspring, and why should you? In a way, sex too is neurohacking, since you're
knowingly changing your own (and someone else's) neurochemistry and consequently
mood and behavior (with informed consent, of course).

There is a large division, however, between those who n-hack in these socially familiar
ways, and those who do it privately on purpose for performance and/or experimental
reasons. Those who decide to do it on purpose will probably want to do more than just
eliminate a headache...how about removing the cause of those headaches? ...And how
about improving...whatever. Anything we can. Let's upgrade this machine. This is
Intelligence Augmentation (IA) and this is the sort of attitude this book will be helpful
for. It uses a paradigm and map of the mind that gives an idea of the architecture of the
brain's hardware and has for me been a software development kit. There are instructions
on how to do things here, but they're not in the first part of the book because I am
sometimes quite responsible in a pathetic sort of way, and to me if you want to walk any
path it seems responsible to know it first.

How neurohacking is possible

Neurohacking on purpose uses a conglomerate of techniques, chemicals, technology,

psychology and biochemistry. The brain is organized into processing networks (modules
or systems), each with a specific focus. This enables parallel processing, which is a good
thing, because a great many tasks need to be accomplished at once (largely due to the
hardware and its maintenance requirements. In a non-biological system, we could have
fewer, more powerful systems. We could also have faster systems; electro-chemical
connections are slow and messy.)

Networks are all made up of synaptically connected neurons. They come in layers, and
different layers do different jobs. The individual way your neurons are connected is
unique to you; although we all have the same basic networks there can still be large
differences between us, physiologically and psychologically. (We have noticed this
throughout history, and indeed thrown wars to celebrate it). Vive le difference!

The synapses in most networks are capable of being modified physically through use or
non-use. This means we can never alter function without altering form and vice versa.
We can take advantage of this fact and interfere with the process by various means. We
now also know enough (but by no means all) about the mechanism of memory to
interfere with its processes somewhat. We have better biochemicals to play with than
ever before, better imaging systems, better biofeedback and psychological programming.
We have better tech. We have better communication with other researchers and faster
access to the data and information we need. And of course, yip yip yip, we have
computers. I've been doing this sort of thing for thirty-odd years and I find this the most
exciting time ever.

Some of the things we can do

The main thing to remember is: a tiny change inside makes a large change outside (in
both behavior and abilities). Here are some of the possibilities open to n-hackers:

Learning: Increase speed and memory.

Memory adjusting: Save, search, delete, edit, cut&paste, preview, refile, encrypt.

Emotion adjusting: Refile, edit, erase, write, encrypt, disable or enable.

Perceiving: Edit and enhance perception.

Fixing: bugs, erroneous programming.

Enhancing/controlling: creativity, imagination, cognitive ability, and sensitivity including

thresholds, biological systems, input/output, and metabolism.

Compensating: For any past minor damage (see text) or erroneous programming.

Increasing: Cognitive efficiency, memory, lifespan (didn't expect that did you?)

Protecting: against brainwashing, psychological tricks, cons, deceit and erroneous

programming, both foreign and domestic.

Surviving: Living on earth with humans, to our mutual benefit.

The inevitable health and safety lecture

I'm afraid I must get really boring right about here and go into ethics. Into what is and
what is not acceptable. There is no total consensus on ethics currently between humans,
which causes many problems, as we know. So if I state my own values and morals at the
start it's maybe easier.

Make sure you understand my definitions before you approach my moral structure,
however, or it will not compute.

The laws of an intelligence-based system:

1. Intelligence cannot deliberately harm either intelligence or potential intelligence.

2. Intelligence will consider it important to try to prevent anything that harms intelligence
or potential intelligence, as long as rule 1 is not contravened by its actions.

3. Intelligence will consider it important to try to encourage anything that increases the
Interactive Ability of any agent, as long as laws 1 and 2 are not contravened.

(A polite nod to Asimov there).

Definitions:

1. 'Agent'. An 'agent' is basically anything which is under consideration as some kind of

intelligent (or not) entity. Thus a rock could be considered an agent, so could a tree, or a
computer program, or a human, animal, or perhaps even an extraterrestrial/superhuman
entity. We use the term 'agent' in order to avoid philosophical discussions about self-
awareness, sentience, and other such tangential subjects.

2. 'Interactive Ability' is a numerical quantity, defined as the percentage of an agent's

waking time that is spent displaying interactive behavior.
The distribution of interactive ability among the population of agents which display
interactive behavior currently will likely follow some kind of bell curve, but note that not
all agents are capable of displaying any interactive behavior at all. Such agents are 'off
the scale', so to speak. Interactive behavior is defined below.

3. An 'intelligence' is any agent whose Interactive ability is currently greater than zero.
(This may be established in practice by experimentation. See below.)

4. A 'stupidity' is any agent that is not an intelligence.

5. A 'chronic stupidity' is any agent that will always be a stupidity.

6. A 'potential intelligence' is any agent for whom the possibility exists that it's
Interactive Ability will exceed 0% during its lifetime, but which hasn't got there yet.

Establishing whether a human agent is an intelligence:

Definition:

7. If interactive ability is non-zero, the following will be true:

Physical/physiological: Using scanning techniques (or in post-mortem autopsy,) the brain

will show distinct copious connections in the following areas: CC (corpus callosum),
Right hemisphere to midbrain/limbic system, Temporal lobes to rest of midbrain/limbic
system, Cerebellum to midbrain/limbic system, Reticular formation to rest of
midbrain/limbic system, Anterior Cingulate Gyrus to PFC and midbrain. (Areas
damaged, usually but not necessarily always indicatives of chronic stupidity are:
Cerebellum, reticular formation, CC )

Neurochemistry/hormonal: An agent who is an intelligence will not have chronically

elevated cortisol levels in the brain and bloodstream. Blood sugar/insulin levels will be
stable within certain parameters. (A stupidity will usually have elevated levels of cortisol
in the bloodstream and wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels). Strong emotion will not
cause the cortisol level to remain high in the bloodstream of an intelligence for very long.
(Strong feelings will cause such a condition in a stupidity).

An intelligence will have an efficient stress/relaxation cycle, which prevents the over-
production of stress hormones. (Stupidities will not have this, and chronic production of
stress hormones following a stressful event will continue for a long time, possibly
permanently).

Psychological/behavioral: An intelligence will approach the unknown open-mindedly

without fear but with adequate concern for safety, explore it with creative intellect,
emotion and imagination, and be capable of interacting with and understanding it given
enough time. This is interactive behavior. (A stupidity will not usually willingly approach
the unknown due to fear, and if persuaded to will be unable to use creative intellect to
explore it. No matter how much time is given, the unknown is unlikely ever to become
the known, learning will be slow and difficult if possible at all, and understanding may
never be achieved).

An intelligence will not be prone to immature or dysfunctional expressions of emotion,

e.g., sulks, tantrums, physical or verbal violence, panic. (A stupidity may often be prone
to these).

Assertions/observations:

1. The presence of a stupidity will usually be harmful to all other stupidities and some
(low level) intelligences, by reducing their interactive ability.

2. The presence of an intelligence will usually be beneficial to all other intelligences and
some (high level) stupidities, by increasing their interactive ability.

3. In situations requiring precedence of opinion or action, the intelligence with the

highest (proven) interactive ability takes precedence in any group of agents unless that
intelligence voluntarily or by voluntary prearrangement waives its right to priority in
favor of another or chooses to work as equals with one or more other agents.

4. Any agent can take priority in such situations by proving its interactive ability to be
higher than that of its companions. Amongst intelligences, this may usually be
ascertained by discussion.

So here are my ethics:

The weighting for making decisions based on these laws, definitions and assertions
comes from my intellect and my emotion. I've sculpted these through neurohacking
deliberately into a mindset that serves intelligence. I have no longer empathy for human
sentiment; in fact it is my adversary. Human feelings in others are numbers; weightings
themselves, and they are very important. But I believe we cannot continue to survive in a
psychological format tied to biology's limitations, and I have had to abandon it as an
inaccurate map of reality caused by current human dysfunction.

This is my own choice and I'm not expecting anybody else to make that choice (although
there would be a helluva party if they did). We all go through a stage when we wish to
impose our choices on the rest of the world. Some of us go through it at two years old,
some at seventeen, some until the assassin's bullet, but sooner or later (hopefully sooner)
we realize that's biology's con, too. Dictatorships, benevolent or otherwise, are not the
breeding ground for intelligence; they stifle it.

Intelligence wants to be free.

I also believe I have a right to do anything I like to myself1, and I don't accept limits, but
I do impose and accept boundaries, because what I am trying to do is enhance
intelligence, not destroy it. Anybody's. My boundaries are my laws, and I make sure they
are enforced. Everybody I work with I trust implicitly to make sure they are enforced
upon me, if necessary. (We'll meet these laws again later). I enforce my own 'containment
field' because I am aware of the power of what I am working with and I am aware of how
much we don't know. I know well that I am renowned for having a wicked and weird
sense of humor, but in n-hacking I have to be 100% serious inside, not just because my
own life is at stake.

It is blindingly obvious to me that some people are going to do neurohacking research in

the pursuit of IA (Intelligence Augmentation). (I have had similar thoughts to this before,
about physical augmentation and the Human Genome Project)... Some of those people
may be smarter than me, some of them not so smart. Smart or not, it is highly likely that a
large proportion of such researchers will be working from a military or authoritarian or
high financial basis and will be, by my terms, unscrupulous.

Civilians can also be unscrupulous, and are more prone to dive into things without
adequate knowledge and create problems. This is why I have to refuse access to some of
my research, until I know and trust whoever is accessing it. Some years ago I was
subjected to what I can honestly describe as an unpleasant series of experiences at the
hands of some 'unscrupulous' people, which taught me some of the most vital lessons
about intelligence 'augmentation' that I have ever learned. I want to make those insights
available to everyone who can use them responsibly. Here is why: IA will happen. If it is
in the control of unscrupulous minds, we are all going to have a serious problem.
Possibly a terminal one. Because I believe that people with such motives are not
operating in the interests of intelligence, I am bound by my own rules to do whatever I
can to prevent that.

If a bunch of deluded biochemists try to build a deadly virus, a sane mind in their midst is
in a position to create an antidote. But if you're outside the walls, if you don't know what
they're doing, you can't control it or defend against it. I feel a little bit like physicists must
have felt about discovering nuclear energy...Hey! Wow! We can blast asteroids out of our
way! Wheee! We can use this for rocket power...great! We can get electricity...We
can...oh dear. Oh shit.

We must know what is possible with IA, what can go right, what can go wrong, how to
interact with it, and how to use it to benefit, and enlighten, rather than harm, humans,
before it is ushered in surreptitiously or hits us full in the face as the fait accompli of
some loony cult or dictator. The same must be said of cryonics, nanotechnology, AI,
cloning (ahem), and biotechnology. If the shit hits the fan via stupidity on any of these
fronts we need to know how to protect ourselves, how to survive, and if you're nice, how
to help those you care about. And yes, I did have a chip on the shoulder, but now it's a
silicon chip.

If you think ignoring something or trying to discourage it will make it somehow not
happen, you are not paying attention to either history or the world around you.
For the rest, you can decide for yourselves whether I'm trustworthy or not, as you choose.
All I can promise you is, on the ethics front as far as I am concerned, a line has been
drawn. It is drawn by intelligence. And it is about what not to do.

One of the most positive things about neurohacking from a scientist's point of view is you
are doing ground-breaking research that nobody else bothers to do. Drug trials and tests
are conducted on animals and the general public in pre-determined measures at preset
intervals. Nobody ever tries giving a healthy person very small doses of something just
once or twice. Medication wouldn't work like that. We can discover things that take the
drug companies months or sometimes years to catch up with. Consequently, we
sometimes find out things before the guys in mainstream research. Nobody thinks of
doing this sort of thing, and if they do think of doing this sort of thing they won't get any
funding for it. I mean, who cares what results you get for anything with one subject? It
means nothing, compared with clinical trials involving hundreds or thousands of subjects.
There's no money in it, and nobody is very interested (except people like you, who read
books like this). A lot of the old 'scientific establishment' buffs believe that my kind of
research brings science into disrepute. The professional-trusting public does not trust
scientists who look like bikers turned Borg, or cyberpunks with pink hair and distance-
learning degrees in higher mathematics. You either go 'with' the establishment or you go
it alone. You can't neurohack and admit it publicly and expect to keep a straight job.

If you go it alone, don't expect to be taken seriously by many people just yet. The upside
of going it alone, if you have the finance, is you get there faster. The downside used to be
that you couldn't very easily share your discoveries for anyone else's benefit. These days
we have the Internet of course, and that's changed a lot of things.

Now and again, some mainstream researcher will eventually discover the same things
you have and they'll go public with it, write books, win acclaim, and take the credit.
When you're sentiment-free you'll see this for what it is. It's great. It's absolutely
marvelous. You won't ever feel possessive about your discoveries (although you may feel
protective of them if you suspect the possibility of misuse). There can be no jealousy,
envy or copyright problems where there is no stupidity. The truth should always be open
source.

1. I have always been my own lab rat. Intelligence is the most interesting thing I have so
far found to play with, in a creative scientific sense, and if I believe something will bring
large rewards to my own intelligence I tend to take risks that some may find excessive,
and some people have said they think I go too far. I think I don't go far enough. I use
humor as my weapon against trepidation. I don't see anything wrong with this and I think
every individual must set their own parameters for exploration as they see fit. This partial
record of my own journey may be of interest, or at least a laugh, to other explorers. I
welcome feedback, of any kind and in any form, (with the exception of threats to my
personal safety or that of said experiments).

2. My Computer (What is Intelligence?)

Society, and even psychology, abounds with conflicting definitions of the word
'intelligence'. 'Intelligence is defined in our dictionaries primarily as 'intellectual skill or
knowledge', also as 'mental brightness', and 'information communicated'. Although I
realize this latter definition is meant, in the dictionary, to refer to 'intelligence' in the
context of espionage, I find it to be the definition of intelligence which fits most closely
with observable reality, whilst the former, most widely accepted meaning of the word
turns out to be gravely misleading about the true nature of intelligence.

It is not my aim to argue about semantics however, and if my use of the word in this way
seems inaccurate to you then feel free to replace it with 'competence', 'savvy', or even an
invented term like 'narf'.

The thing which I am here referring to as 'intelligence', the thing I am focusing the
spotlight on and pointing a finger at, is the important issue here; not what it is called.
When one is addressing a general public containing members with a very high IQ who
still believe in god, others who judge 'intelligence' on the basis of emotional maturity, and
still others who consider their pet dog to be more 'intelligent' than most humans, it is
impossible to agree on a term which suits all persons. So I ask your tolerance if you feel I
have misused the word, and your open-mindedness in pursuing what I am actually talking
about.

Life does not need intellect in order to survive. Most life on this planet proves this by
surviving without any. There is an old joke, which goes: 'What is it that beetles have,
which no other creature can ever have?' and the answer is, 'baby beetles'. Pure physical
survival and reproduction needs no prefrontal lobes, and stripped down to its simplest
forms it needs no midbrain either; this much must be blindingly obvious because if it
were not true, every form of life without these would not exist.

By existing, it pokes us in the eye with the plain fact that life can survive and thrive
without intellect, emotion, or imagination, but I believe it cannot survive without
intelligence. This may seem a startling claim; surely, you may think, there is no real
intelligence in an ameba, and certainly not within a clump of fungi. What I hope to do
here, is to question our preconceptions about intelligence, because I have come to believe
that intelligence is inherent in the very stuff of life itself.

To avoid misunderstanding here let me make it clear that I do not have any inclination to
the belief that rocks and plants (or even crocodiles) can think. Intelligence doesn't start
thinking until it has built the tools with which to think. Its first priority is to carry on
existing for long enough to build those tools, to stay alive. And it does this by providing
itself with a matrix.

The concept of 'intelligent life' is a grave misnomer, if one cannot have life without
intelligence. Intelligence is the software program behind all life on earth, self-modifying
software which improves itself and redesigns its own hardware to form an ever more
efficient matrix to further develop in. It does not need consciousness or intellect and its
beginnings are inherent in the nature of all matter, observable as replication in clays and
minerals before it ever gets as far as organic molecules. Organic soup provides a richer
template for its activities, and it is the program that forms the molecules of DNA as the
building blocks of all organic life. Intelligence is a natural emergent of matter and energy,
as surely as salt is a natural emergent of sodium and chlorine.

There is nothing uncanny or supernatural about this, and it needs no deity to explain it
away. Nor is it random chance, any more than in mixing black and white pigments
together one might create a shade of gray by accident; one will always create a shade of
gray. Its designer dice are loaded because of physical forces and the structure of matter
itself. Round pegs will fit round holes, and they will not fit square ones. Galaxies and
solar systems emerge from big bangs, and intelligence emerges from the chemistry of
matter and energy. Physical forces determine which molecules will stick together and
which will not, and attraction and repulsion are the progenitors of all biochemistry and all
life, everywhere. Intelligence is inherent in all information flow and interaction. It
manifests as the ability to interact (augmentation of energy through exchange of it), all
the way up from covalence in atomic chemistry, to human survival and success. Without
it, entropy happens, and with it, things live long, and prosper. Intelligence is the
movement of information from chaos into order, and the flow of information is what the
program called intelligence catalyses and controls. The whole does indeed become more
than the sum of its parts. Intelligence emerges in this manner, by bringing things together
(through attraction) which can achieve more as a unit than each part could have done
alone, and by keeping things apart (through repulsion) which cannot interact or synergise
with each other.

Everywhere the software of intelligence runs, it follows the same pattern. It brings order
out of chaos and establishes a matrix for itself. Only when this is achieved can it continue
to emerge, and until it is achieved, all the energy available to a system will be focused
upon trying to achieve it. It works from the bottom up, and only when the basics are
established can it move on to the more complicated stuff. One of the earliest essentials it
establishes is an ability to replicate its matrix. Matter and energy are volatile; they do not
endure in any one form for very long. Even rocks crumble into dust over time, and
perpetual change is the only constant. Intelligence must move house if it is to endure, and
it must do so constantly. A tree lasts for a very long time compared to most creatures,
barring accident, it can feed itself, but it cannot move itself out of danger and it cannot
explore new territory for possibilities. Intelligence cannot develop very far if it cannot do
these things.

If intelligence could be said to have 'aims', by observation and introspection they would
have to be listed simply as 'growth'. Why this is so, is a question for philosophers and
outside the scope of this work. How it is so, is what we are looking at in Matrix Theory.
That it is a good thing that it is so, and fortunate for us, are ideas that are in our minds
only because our brains exist in the service of intelligence and were designed by it,
through trial and error, as the best platform it has established so far in order to achieve its
aims. It is not our genes that are selfish; it is intelligence, and the difference is,
intelligence is on our side; genes are not. Genes are just one more thing intelligence has
had to use to keep itself around for this long.
'Growth' for intelligence is the movement from one matrix to another in a pattern which
allows an ever more complex flow of information feeding back on itself. The success of
the software rests on the ability to interact; to synergise, adapt, and diversify in order to
explore any and every possibility for growth. The software itself evolves; becomes more
complex in order to increase its own potential for achieving its aims. I do not think that
this is volitional, any more than I think salt makes itself on purpose, or plants turning
towards the sun is volitional, or evolution is volitional; I think it is inevitable because of
the structure of matter and energy. Hence we get a wide variety of matrices in all
environments intelligence is presented with. Intelligence is a cold hard scientific process,
which does anything it has to do in order to grow. It is a program which exists in its most
basic form everywhere, in chemistry, biology and physics, in the formation of gaseous
clouds and the birth of new stars, in every element in existence, but only when running in
the elements of organic life is it so far able to get seriously ambitious.

For the purpose of staying alive it develops sub programs for maintaining its matrix; it
eats, it breathes, it moves around, it replicates, it gets rid of its toxic waste products and it
really starts minding if things want to destroy it. It develops sensory apparatus to assist it
in these aims, and drives and instincts in order to pursue them.

Organic chemistry provides it with opportunities that other potential matrices do not. Its
extreme adaptability and variety is its advantage. Much more complex flows of
information are possible in a plant than in a pebble. Actual physical growth occurs in
minerals; so does replication, which requires a basic memory of sorts, but these are mere
piffling trials when we see what can be done with organics. It is no surprise then, that in
the context of biochemistry, intelligence starts to get truly ambitious, ambitious enough in
the end, to possibly achieve its aims on a permanent basis. To do this ultimately, it will
have to find a way to make itself immortal and indestructible. And I for one do not have a
problem with that.

3. Operating System (Matrix Theory)

Intelligence, by my definition, is a program, which drives life to fulfill the criteria for
survival in order to facilitate ever greater information flow, and it will use any means at
its disposal to achieve this. Whatever is available, from the preprogrammable biological
drives of a reptile mind, to the computations and higher functions of a primate cortex, it
will make the best use of whatever it's got to provide the essentials for life, to provide a
matrix, within which it can prosper.

At its core, the program is a director of information flow, and the successful flow of
information within a matrix is what makes intelligence grow.

I've called this program itself 'COMP', because it's an easy term to remember and because
it reminds me of the words, 'competence' and 'computation', which are two of the things
that COMP excels at. It is a 'learning code' of four stages; It (1) Grabs the basics in a lo-
res scan and compares them to what it knows already, (2) Imitates and copies, (3) Fills in
the details in a hi-res scan and (4) Practices and varies. Then it moves on to grab the
basics of the next relevant item or skill. We'll have an in-depth look at COMP later on,
because it is the underlying theme upon which Matrix Theory sits; the blueprint for all
learning and memory, if you like. First I'd like to grab the basics of Matrix Theory itself,
the foundations, and place them in the context of intelligence in humans.

The research historically leading to the formation of Matrix Theory comes from several
sources. The biologist Jean PiagetR2, amongst others, touched on some of the issues in
his studies of human development. He realized that every human has to build anew his or
her own intellectual knowledge and ability for understanding and interacting with the
world, and he found the nonvolitional intent that is behind intelligence which drives all
humans to attempt the necessary interactions for its growth, yet he completely missed the
point when he labeled some of the skills of intelligence as 'magical thinking' and
dismissed them as erroneous. Considering the enormous influence that Piaget has been on
the study of human psychology, his unfortunate assumptions have hindered the progress
of our understanding of the development of intelligence almost as badly as Freud has.
Piaget made the mistake of rejecting imagination as a contributor to information flow
within the brain much as René Descartes rejected the emotional system, and for very
similar reasons. He became almost obsessed with how to prevent imaginative thinking in
children, as Descartes did with emotional states in adults, considering them 'confused
ideas'. Perhaps because emotion and imagination can deceive us sometimes, they
assumed this to be the case all of the time, and thus missed one of the key points in our
minds' development.

Piaget's second contribution to Matrix Theory was his study of 'developmental stages' in
the growth of human intelligence. This was confirmed by biophysicist Herman
EpsteinR3, who found evidence of brain growth spurts in human children on a genetically
timed basis of maturation, which paralleled Piaget's 'stages'. These accelerated periods of
brain growth occur roughly every four years, between the ages of 2-4, 6-8, 10-12 and so
on (now confirmed by MRI studies).

It is during these brain growth spurts that matrix 'shifts' occur. Intelligence does go
through clear developmental stages, stages that should parallel the physical growth of the
brain.

Humanities teacher Joseph Chilton-PearceR4 picked up on these stages in his

controversial work, Magical Child, and was probably the first researcher to really grasp
the concept of a matrix and a matrix shift (although his interpretation of Piaget's ideas, in
religious/spiritual terms, I find at best bizarre). The major problem with both Chilton-
Pearce and Piaget's work on this is that both insist on a stage specific unfolding of
intelligence within the confines of biological growth, whilst I have found that intelligence
continues to develop (albeit with more difficulty)1 even if this synchrony of timed
maturation is missed. Many other researchers have had this disagreement with Piaget,
although the work of Chilton-Pearce is less well known.

Chilton-Pearce's major contribution to Matrix Theory lies in his grasp of the roles of
emotion and imagination in the formation of human intelligence (as Piaget's lies in his
grasp of the role of scientific and logical thought). Both, however, had a separate part of
the overall jigsaw, rejecting the other pieces, and what I have done is to cut and paste the
relevant parts of their research together with that of others and my own, because only
when all aspects of the development of intelligence are taken together do we begin to see
a coherent picture of what human intelligence truly is.

Perhaps more importantly, we also get a picture of where it is going, together with the
rather crucial facts that (1) if we do not go with it, it will almost certainly leave us behind,
and (2) if we continue to act against it, both intelligence in humans, and humans
themselves, may well be heading towards extinction.

Whilst I would bet on the ability of intelligence itself (with the multifarious forms already
cast aside by evolution behind it over several billion years) to ultimately avoid this fate, I
would not place the same degree of confidence in the ability of humans themselves (who
may merely be another of those forms.)

What is a matrix?

To explore how I came to these extraordinary conclusions, we have to begin with the
question, 'What is a matrix?'2

The word 'matrix' is derived from the Latin: 'womb'. The context in which it is defined in
Matrix Theory is as a situation which provides three things: a source of input or
possibilities for exploration and learning, a source of power or energy to fuel that
exploration, and a platform or safe place from which to explore and learn. Whenever
these three things are all present in the same space, there is a matrix. (In actual fact, what
a matrix should mean to an intelligence is 'my current reality', because those three needs
should be met throughout its existence). They can be thought of most simply as Input,
Power supply, and Platform. Without those three things, intelligence cannot grow.

The growth and development of intelligence happens in a series of steps from one matrix
to another. The current first matrix of our biology-based intelligence is indeed the womb.
After we're born, the parent or permanent carer becomes our matrix for a while. After
that, the natural world should become our matrix, then our society, and so on; our matrix
should change throughout our development until we become completely self-sufficient at
about age 15-16 and gain the abilities for mental autonomy and then synergy.

Matrix Theory:

The successful emergence and ongoing development of intelligence is based on its

progression from one 'matrix' or set of neural networks, to another. Each matrix 'shift'
occurs at first in synchrony with bursts of neurogenesis, then with neural arborisation and
later synaptogenesis, psychologically this moves intelligence into a set of unknown,
unpredictable experiences which it then assimilates and accommodates into the known
using COMP. COMP is iterative; this process should repeat throughout our lives. This is
the way intelligence emerges and grows; it is emergent in stages. The stages should
parallel shifts to a new matrix; a new platform, new power supply, new input, new tools,
new ways of processing information and new abilities.

Whilst this should all happen in a neat synchrony of genetically timed maturation, in
humans it currently does not, for reasons we shall explore shortly. By accidentally
interfering with the process we have slowed ourselves down, retarded our development,
and caused ourselves all sorts of problems. With neurohacking, we can control COMP
and we can accelerate a matrix shift.

This is, currently, most important, because without it, most people are stuck in an
inappropriate matrix, and will never reach a full maturation of intelligence.

I must make it clear at this stage that I am not one of those people who think we only use
one tenth of our brains, or whatever. (Indeed, if we did, the rest would atrophy and
eventually disappear!) It is what we use our brains for that is the problem. We are
missing out on all kinds of abilities because we are using the networks intended for their
execution to frantically maintain cognition in an inappropriate matrix instead. Once we
can shift matrices as intended, we free up those networks for their intended use.
Intelligence is then free to emerge.

If you are now thinking that we should have all sorts of supernatural/telepathic/ESP skills
I'm sorry to disappoint you but that's not it either. What is missing is competence, not to
mention the ability to interact, real emotion, autonomy, self-sufficiency and synergy, and
you're not going to know what any of that means until you go there for yourself. Inside
every mind, is an intelligence trying to manifest. When it does, you may surprise
yourself3

Matrix shifts: what should happen.

COMP runs all the time we encounter anything new, but at each matrix shift, the brain is
undergoing a growth spurt and forming new connections, which prepare it for massive
and rapid new learning. More hardware is being constructed.R3 The locus of our
attention and motivation is shifting platform. Our relation to our power supply will
change. The way our brain actually processes information will change. Our input needs
will change. Finally, our behavior will change, because we have acquired new skills
and/or abilities.

Whilst in childhood the time of our matrix shifts should coincide with physical bursts of
brain growth, in adulthood they should coincide with bursts of arborisation and
synaptogenesis, self-generated by the correct execution of COMP. But the brain is
constructed physically as we grow in a certain order for a reason, and if this synchrony is
interrupted at all we will develop less than optimal hardware.

What a matrix shift is, in summary, is a shifting of (a) the main locus of intelligence to
another physical platform (different networks), (b) the relation to the source of energy or
power, and (c) input type, needs and motivations. A matrix shift is like an upload, except
you get to keep the original and have a whole new set of groovy tools to play with; the
two then work in synchrony; in synergy4.

We are designed to use the relevant matrix to our stage of biological neurological
development and our abilities. All of these should develop in synchrony. As a baby, your
ability is not at first sufficient for you to feed yourself; you need a matrix which will do
that for you. Later, you need a matrix that will fulfill your other, different needs, and so
on. If our abilities do not develop as they should (because of insufficient or erroneous
input) biological development goes right on ahead anyway, we don't have the required
abilities to make a shift and we get stuck in a matrix.

If a baby is isolated from human contact, (as has been documented in some truly dreadful
abuse cases), the resulting child remains stuck in matrix 2 and, despite eventually
learning to shove food into its own mouth as physical growth continues and gives it the
strength to, its intelligence will be seriously retarded, even though it was born in perfect
mental health. Cases this bad are obvious to us all, but in a similar manner we are
currently, by various accidental means, failing to provide the relevant input (and
replacing it with erroneous input) and preventing our intelligence and abilities from
developing as intended.

Without the correct input for the human body, (foods, water, exercise), growth is
retarded. Further damage is done if toxins are given. Without the correct input for the
mind, the growth of intelligence is retarded. And our mistake has been twofold; we have
not know what the correct input for the mind should be, and we have further exacerbated
the problem by replacing it with what is, for a growing mind, something rather noxious.

The good news is that we could sort all this out, repair the damage, and go on ahead. The
bad news is that the very nature of the retardation that it causes makes us too dumb to
realize there is anything wrong, and too afraid to face the possibility that there might be.
And if we continue along the path that we are currently heading down, intelligence and
humanity will part company on a permanent basis. How close we have come to this
already, and whether it is too late to turn the tide, I shall leave for you to decide after
reviewing the evidence.

I believe a matrix shift is possible at any time in our lives, through synaptogenesis, with
as yet undiscovered limits. I also believe that running COMP is the only way a biological
based intelligence can shift platform (which has big implications for would-be
uploaders). Intelligence has an innate pattern, curiously enough, of already doing to itself
what uploaders plan to do to it, as you will see. Physical brain growth (neurogenesis and
arborisation) certainly coincides (or should) with the matrix shifts of childhood, but
synaptogenesis coincides with matrix shifts after physical maturity and is a great deal
more under our volitional control than genetic spurts of brain growth. Because of this, I
do not think that the age of our shift to each matrix is so very easily limited or narrow,
because through synaptogenesis we can all reach these points at a later time than that at
which biology intended. The window of opportunity for mind development and ability
need not close with physical maturity, as I am sure many people already know by
experience. It may be more difficult to learn a second language in middle age than in
childhood, but it is by no means impossible, and since we can reproduce the conditions
for learning in childhood by induced synaptogenesis at any age, it may not even, with
neurohacking, be more difficult.

The only things that stand in the way of our learning anything new, even how to shift
matrix, are fear of change, and ignorance of the necessity for it. Avoiding experience
prevents the growth of neural nets that are dependent upon it. Synchrony with the genetic
timing of physical maturation may be the optimal time for making these changes, but it is
not the only time. Intelligence is not so easily squashed.

So what's going wrong?

The genetic plan for the unfolding of human intelligence and the growth and
development of the brain is currently being subverted largely because of our ignorance of
its existence. A number of key damaging factors occur in our development, and it has
now become impossible to avoid them without a radical restructuring of society itself. Of
course, whilst people remain unconvinced that there is a problem or that there is any need
for change, that won't happen. Because the damaging factors are everyday factors of our
everyday lives; things it would be highly inconvenient to change. (We'll have a look at
what they are, in the next chapter.)

The concept that most people's brains are being damaged, by everyday practices, and that
we do not even know what they are, is a scary one. When the issue at hand is that our
intelligence is being reduced by certain factors, these factors do though become relevant
to us all, and vital to neurohackers. In the same way in which we have, through medical
exploration and research, discovered more and more things which are harmful to the
body, and attempted to eliminate them through medicine and therapy, so it is important to
know if something is harming our minds. If Matrix Theory is correct, a large proportion
of the western world (and probably the whole world) is being damaged by these
practices, so I feel it prudent to investigate them. Doing so has so far proved an
invaluable source of information and a guide to n-hacking strategy. In a way, I am partly
the proof of the pudding. I got positive results fast because I knew exactly what to hack.
First I had to hack myself out of a matrix, and I think that rather a lot of us will need to
do that. It might be one of the fastest ways for intelligence to emerge, and I'd like to help
it do so5

What does it mean to be stuck in a matrix?

Most people are stuck in a matrix. This is the current problem with human intelligence. If
you are stuck in a matrix, it means that your mind's locus of consciousness and most of
your brain's operations are using the networks of one particular brain module, instead of
working together as a synergy of all systems as a whole (which is what it should be
doing). All of the systems that developed after you got stuck will have been co-opted in
the service of that one module.
If you are stuck, you will have no real understanding of people in a different matrix from
yourself, as the people in different matrices are using different modules as their main
locus of awareness. We are supposed to move through every module as we grow it in the
first place, experience what it is about, learn how to use the tools it has to offer us and the
abilities they bring, and then move on to the next module being built to explore that in a
similar manner, retaining the abilities we learned in the last one, and adding them to our
new abilities. Being stuck in a matrix means you have to specialize, in the very
mechanics of how you think, because you are limited to the tools and abilities of that one
module only. The longer you are stuck, the more difficult it is to change; you cannot
comprehend other ways of doing things; other ways of thinking.

As you grew up, the other modules of your brain will have developed right on time,
expecting you to move forward and start using them. But you will have little ability to
use them except in the service of the bit you are stuck in, and your overall brain
development will have slowed down. (You are unlikely to have noticed this, though,
because almost everybody else is in the same situation, so you'll probably think your
intelligence is pretty normal, or even pretty good.)

After initial formation the sparsely used new modules will gradually decrease in size, as
you allocate more and more resources and attention to maintaining your world view as
processed by the module you are stuck in. Your mind, unbeknown to you struggling to
function on sub-optimal hardware, may develop problems, such as 'anxiety related'
disorders, depression, or more serious mental problems (if these were not present already
from childhood, as is ever more increasingly the case). On the other hand it may not, but
the hormones it is producing to keep up the fight to try and fix itself on a constant basis
will start to affect your body instead. Headaches, stomach ulcers, cardio-vascular
problems, asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, and an increasing need for low level
stimulants; tea, coffee, sugar, cola, (to replace the deficiency of attention/concentration
networks, cigarettes (to replace the deficiency in acetylcholine), cannabis (to replace the
deficiency of dopamine receptors), sleeping pills (to achieve what the
serotonin/melatonin cycle should be achieving but isn't), and so on. You will self-
medicate, knowing that you feel better and less anxious on these drugs but not knowing
why. The side effects of these will add to your health problems, and tolerance will force
you to increase the doses. Your immune system will be poor, and minor ailments will be
a constant nuisance.

As you get older, the decrease in your brain modules will steadily increase, and you will
start to display the earliest symptoms of senility (memory problems) soon after middle
age. You may not notice that either because, well, you expect that sort of thing as you're
getting older, don't you? ...It happens to everyone...doesn't it?

Your wealth and your position in life will not save you from this decline. The problem
cuts across all ages, sexes, and genetic types. It knows no bounds of color or size or
shape. It has nothing to do with money, class or nationality. The only factor that can stop
it is intelligence. No matter how clever you think you are now, the only thing that will
save you from eventually becoming the mental equivalent of an infant, is to get COMP
running and to get yourself unstuck. Real intelligence will not atrophy and will outlast the
body (and there are other guys working on that one, in the fields of anti-aging, longevity,
biotech and uploading; may they outlive their critics).

There is a difference between being stuck in a matrix and having under-developed or

over-developed brain areas. What matters most is the networks, connections between
areas, because this is what enables association and synchrony6.

Association is the kernel of COMP, and synchrony is its achievement.

Being stuck in a matrix does not imply a person is not talented. Nor does it imply a low
IQ. Intelligence is not about being good at subjects or skills. It is about the ability to
interact and synergise, with as many things as possible. Intelligence is good at anything
and everything it chooses to do. It is competent in every situation, and excels at those
things it finds necessary to specialize in, in each individual. No matter what happens to it,
intelligence will prosper, because it can interact with anything; tools, the environment,
other people, and new, unknown situations. It can pick up any skill it wants to and master
it, with a creative, imaginative, and flexible logic. Intelligence turns any agent bearing it
into a polymath.

The problem here is not intelligence itself; it is humans. If intelligence fails to manifest
and grow in humans, it will sure as hell find some other means of explication (it always
has so far). Humans may turn out to be a failed experiment as far as intelligence is
concerned. We may have been a great success at first, with our groovy prefrontal lobes
and executive functions, but if we turn away from the growth of intelligence and start
destroying it (as we are currently doing), it will cast us aside and continue to evolve
without us. It has, after all, all the time in the universe.

1. This is where neurohacking can really assist us, as we shall see.

2. The appearance of the popular movie 'The Matrix' in the year 2000, with it's amazingly
coincidental allegories to Matrix Theory, and it's skillful use of analogical language,
caused me to get a large influx of emails asking me if there were a connection.
Developmental psychologists were using the term 'matrix' some 40 years ago, and a great
fan of coincidence though I am (calling it the 'universe's sense of humor'), my only
answer must be, 'No, Neo, there isn't'.

3. You may, in fact, fall over. Intense pleasant surprises often do this to people.

4. This is a summary and may seem vague; rest assured I will explain in more detail,
probably until you are really sick of it.

5. Maybe I'm an upload midwife and these are prenatal classes. Maybe.
6. Modules use various different brain bits to perform their various tasks, which is why I
refer to 'networks', as opposed to certain physical areas of the brain alone. The brain is
subdivided anatomically because of the way it looks; if you get hold of one (not a live
one, obviously. You can purchase a formaldehyde-preserved brain online for less money
than it costs to buy an anatomical guide to one; dissect it with gloves on in the sink,
preferably when your partner or parents are not at home) and pull the side bits off, you
will have roughly a temporal lobe in each hand. If you poke your thumbs in the top and
split the corpus callosum and then pull laterally, wiggling your thumbs towards you as
you go, you will almost get a clean pair of hemispheres, exposing the 'limbic system' as a
separate lump in the middle. This is how anatomists first explored the brain before we
had scanners and things, so all the bits got named before we knew what any of them did.
Most networks use various different bits of brain, and people keep changing their minds
about which parts to include under which labels. Consequently I feel it's better to refer to
networks, for purposes of greater clarity. Anybody who was just sick should not be
neurohacking.

4. Find (Key factors of damage, or, what matrix you may be stuck in)

Why people are what they're like

When I first found out about all this, for me there was one requirement only; to get the
information out there. Having found not only the problem but also a solution, it seemed
all that remained necessary was to tell everybody as soon as possible and set things on the
road to recovery. First of course, we needed more research and we needed results. We
needed cold, hard, irrefutable scientific proof (although the truth seemed so self-evident).
We needed people doing the experiments. What I didn't realize was that the extent of
change necessary to implement a solution on a large scale was far too vast for most
people to take on board precisely because of the damage already done. It was like living
in a world where everyone saw only in black and white, and trying to tell people they had
a disease which prevented color vision...everyone just thought, 'but I can see just fine;
what the hell is he going on about?' Trying to explain to people that there's something
wrong with them that prevents their intelligence developing is just like that. You cannot
even explain what color is to a person who has never experienced it, and even if you
could, they would be unlikely to believe that they were meant to see it.

I have never suffered from 'gotta save the world' syndrome, especially not for selfless
reasons (because I'm not stuck in matrix 3 or 4). I'm well aware of the pitfalls of thinking
that you know what is good for other people. If I do what is good for me, and the world
gets saved by accident, or as a side effect of that, that's fine, obviously. Similarly, if
something threatens me that also threatens us all, I have a problem with that for mainly
personal reasons. I'm not sociopathic; I quite like humans and I'm married to one, but I
don't think I am responsible personally for their survival, or for their access to
intelligence. When I found a solution to this problem for me, and it was found to be elitist
by default, I therefore decided to proceed anyway, whilst also looking for a way to extend
that solution. The formation of Matrix Theory and this current work was a pivotal point
for me in studying the development of intelligence, in that it pins down clear factors of
damage to that development and explains their effect in terms of real, everyday life. So
the discussion of these factors is not in any way an intellectual or emotional protest
against 'wrongs' long past set into motion. My issue is, we cannot act to deal with any
hypothetical 'wrongs' affecting our intelligence unless we first improve it sufficiently to
understand the information available about itself. People have been trying to 'put right
what is wrong' with society, based on how they would like it to be, ever since we figured
out how to light fires and hit things, but any attempt at action without the relevant
knowledge or ability is doomed to the same fate as the Titanic. More research does need
to be done. The key points themselves can only stand or fall according to the proof for or
against. So far, they stand.

The damaging factors cited, in list form, are as follows:

1. Prenatal nutrition, blood and oxygen levels affected adversely by current western
diet and lifestyle, causing under-development of vital brain tissue,
neuro/psychological effects being mental subnormality.

2. Induction of birth before the fetal intelligence is sufficient to cope with life outside
the womb, causing sensory overload, which produces hormones that prevent brain
growth, neuro/psychological effects being development difficulties.

3. Anesthetics at birth interfering deleteriously with body and brain chemistry of the
fetus and affecting the development of intelligence on a long-term basis.

4. Prolonged labor in the supine position causing fetal distress, leading to the
production of hormones that prevent brain growth.

5. Premature cutting of the umbilical cord at birth causing oxygen-deprivation-related

lesions in the reticular formation and cerebellum, damaging brain tissue and
causing some types of asthma, neuro/psychological effects being dysfunction or
underdevelopment of these regions, problems with information processing,
sensory motor systems, timing and rhythm, orientation and balance.

6. Inappropriate and traumatic physical treatment at birth causing shock and sensory
overload, producing hormones that prevent brain growth.

7. Failure of mother and newborn to activate the newborn's sensory systems by full
sensory interaction within a short 'window of opportunity' immediately after birth,
causing sensory overload and an ongoing series of problems with brain
development, neuro/psychological effects being insufficient reticular formation
activation, difficulty processing information, and an inability to form personal
relationships.

8. Isolation and abandonment (i.e., lack of human interaction) at any time during the
first year or so of life, causing the production of hormones which prevent the
 growth of intelligence, neuro/psychological effects being personality based on
insecurity and a subconscious chronic fear of abandonment.

9. Lack of physical contact, ditto.

10. Lack of physical presence of main caretaker at any time before age seven or so,
ditto.

11. Exposure to television before about age 11 preventing full sensory interaction,
neuro/psychological effects being prevention of full brain growth by default, and
inability to use creative imagination. (NB: This has nothing to do with which
kinds of subjects or shows are viewed.)

12. Lack of full sensory interaction with environment preventing brain growth.

13. Lack of appropriate stimulus at all times preventing brain growth.

14. Medical interference throughout childhood (mainly immune system intervention)

causing brain damage.

15. Literacy before about age ten causing overspecialization of certain parts of the
cortex at the expense of other parts, causing a loss of mental abilities, damaging
eyesight permanently, and causing premature onset of puberty.

16. School attendance preventing full sensory interaction with environment and
appropriate stimuli, causing premature enculturation and preventing the growth of
intelligence by default.

17. Infant comfort-derivation solely from material objects, neuro/psychological

effects being an inability to form successful human relationships and an
obsessive-compulsive attachment to material objects.

18. Premature imposition of an adult value system preventing the successful

development of personality.

19. Inhibition of the like/dislike response, ditto.

That is a peculiar list and a complicated one. Some of these points may seem excessively
fanatical. I intend to share with you what proof there is of each of these assertions,
however I wish to keep these studies in context so I shall first cover the basics here, and
then explain in detail afterwards.

One common denominator in all factors reducing or destroying intelligence is that they
cause anxiety, or 'does not compute' space, and anxiety is always the blue screen of death
for intelligence. That anxiety cripples intelligence I am aware of one hundred percent, for
it is amply backed up by research.R5 So I have to further explain the clinical definition of
anxiety here, at first in biological terms.

Anxiety is what most people refer to as stress. In a scientific or medical sense, stress is
not strictly the same thing as anxiety; stress is, for example, when a muscle is stressed
and then relaxed; we call this 'exercise'. In the same way, when the mind is stressed
(encounters the unknown) and then relaxed (understands it and incorporates it into the
known), we call this 'learning'.

Biologically, anxiety is unresolved stress. Unresolved stress leads to cramp in a muscle.

In the mind, it causes the production of harmful hormones that prevent the growth of
neurons and synapses, which is why humans find it so vital to try to resolve; we cannot
concentrate on anything properly if we are anxious because our brains are concentrating
so hard on trying to resolve the anxiety (did you ever try to concentrate on a lesson at
school when someone much bigger than you had threatened to beat you up at lunch
time?) It's a vicious circle. Obviously in a developing mind this slows up thinking and
without thinking we not only cannot build new neuronal connections but we will actually
start to lose some. This holds up the development of intelligence for as long as it remains
unresolved. Eventually, in computer terms, we crash. As biological creatures we go into
shock.

If this occurs during the physical maturation of the neural net, it causes an ongoing
problem, because brain-growth spurts are under genetic control and do not wait; the next
brain-growth spurt takes place, neural processing changes, and we move into the next
matrix (or should). This is where AI may have an advantage; biology cannot take into
consideration or monitor the possibility of failure of the development of intelligence in
any particular stage, and since biological development rests on the appropriate use of the
brain to establish sufficient synaptic connections, if use is inappropriate those
connections will not form.R3 The next stage unfolds, we have to live with it. Puberty
happens to teenagers whether or not they are intellectually and emotionally prepared for
it, because the genes expect the organism to be sufficiently prepared and mature enough
to cope. In the same way, changes in brain processing attempt to take place
automatically, whether or not a proper development of the brain has taken place to
prepare for those shifts. When it hasn't, we get stuck in a matrix.

Intelligence is given or builds for itself sets of tools at certain stages of growth, and if it
does not then know how to use them, and so does not, those tools will rot away to
oxidization, because the tools themselves are programmed to do so. They're smart
software tools. The more they are used, the more efficient they become, and one of their
jobs is to construct new hardware (actual physical thickening of connections for speedier
and more efficient use of that network). Those that are not used are broken down, the
parts recycled to where they are needed. If they don't seem to be needed anywhere, they
die. Unused muscle atrophies. So do unused brain cells. We don't grow so many new
brain cells after physical maturation so the window of opportunity for using and keeping
them is limited. The reason I believe that the opportunity to shift matrix is not limited is
because synaptogenesis, the formation of new neuronal connections, goes on throughout
life,R6 and can compensate for lack of neurons by increasing the number of connections
between neurons. Synaptogenesis is I believe, meant to fine-tune our intellects on top of
and including successfully developed neuronal modules, not instead of them, but
currently it is usable as a backup plan for our brain development despite lack of
resources. For I do now have sufficient reason to believe that currently most people's
intelligence and brain growth are significantly slowed by these various factors, and pretty
much everyone gets stuck in one or another matrix along the way. I believe that
neurohacking, particularly with a specific program in mind, is possibly our only way
forward with intelligence under the constraints that it currently is (i.e., biological). I have
also come to believe that in order to survive in the future, we will need to alter our
intelligence to a point where we may no longer consider ourselves human (or others may
not). From my point of view, it is the other way round. We are currently not truly human,
and changing our minds into what they are fully designed to be is the only way we shall
achieve that. (This is unlikely to be popularly recognized, however.)

Those humans who currently manage to achieve a reasonably full brain growth and
development of even one or two networks, in our society, are considered (or consider
themselves) geniuses. (And by comparison to 'the norm', they certainly appear so.) What
human genius really is has probably not yet been experienced, and I would hesitate to
estimate its parameters.

I find this shocking, exciting, and compelling.

At ground zero in your everyday life, if you bother to examine other people, most
people's lives, (if you actually look at them, without any sentimental gloss-over or
pretending), give the impression of being very rarely in an ambient of relaxed inspiration,
or even basic happiness. Neither is there an abundance of creative intellectual
competence in the world. Matrix Theory can start to give us some possible answers about
the reasons why so many humans seem so confused by life or so incompetent. About why
so many people self-medicate with tobacco and alcohol, drugs and self-help nonsense and
therapy. About what that 'something more' was, that they expected from life but was
somehow missing.

When I originally began to see the indications of 'why people are what they're like', I felt
very pissed off at first, because I realized that we are probably capable of such a lot more
than we are led to expect by current society. As I got further in though, I recognized this
as self-pity; it was sentiment, playing the victim; it was a part of the problem, not the
solution. If I believed Matrix Theory was right, it was time to put my gray matter where
my mouth was. I experienced a renewed sense of amazement about intelligence itself, put
my trust in the theory I had built around this information, went with it and began to learn
how we can hack our way back to that 'something more'. So much more is supposed to
happen, and I believe that what should happen is intelligence. I now have some personal
experience of the difference n-hacking can make to both cognitive ability and personality,
and it has left me, as the Irish say, a bit gobsmacked, but nevertheless delighted.
Intelligence need never be lost over time, quite the opposite in fact. I believe now that we
should start fighting back, reclaim our optimum and push it, just as we are with our
pathetically short 'natural' lifespans. And I believe that I know how to do that, and where
we must go from there.

The basic overall architecture of the original hardware is pretty much the same in all
humans. Imposed upon that from conception you have: (a) Physical platform, (should be
safe place from which to explore); affected by genetic influences, (that may develop more
or fewer neurons or connections in one or more areas,) (b) Energy with which to explore
(Power supply); dependent on nutrition (which may enhance or restrict growth and
development,) and (c) Things to explore; (Input, from both within and without the brain.)
All of these are susceptible to damage or lack of resources. All are susceptible to both
positive and negative interference. That is how our key factors are relevant in all this.
Let's have a look at them in a less clinical context...in their real social context in the real
world.

How people stuck in different matrices behave.

(If you are the correct age for your matrix, by the way, you are not stuck. I do not
approve of 'hothousing', or trying to speed up the development of a growing mind. If an
engine's running as it should, leave it alone.)

First, a quick, easy summary:

Matrix 1:

· Matrix should be: The womb

· Locus of attention/awareness: Sensory motor 'old' brain networks

· Should take place: In the womb

People stuck in M1:

· Relate everything to: Womb experience (fists clenched, curled up, thumb sucking)

· Get anxious when: Awake, due to sensory overload

· Cannot handle: Sensory motor input

· Deal with anxiety by: Sleeping heavily, or crying, whimpering and screaming if
made to stay awake

Matrix 2:

· Matrix should be: Parent or permanent carer

· Locus of attention/awareness: Sensory motor 'old' brain networks

 · Should take place: From birth to 3 years of age

People stuck in M2:

· Relate everything to: Sensory motor input (sex, food, fighting, physical movement)

· Get anxious when: Their desires are not quickly met, or when faced with anything
too different from themselves, or when their 'parental substitute (usually a
partner) seems threatened

· Cannot handle: Silence

· Deal with anxiety by: Using aggression, noise, physical violence, rage

Matrix 3:

· Matrix should be: The environment/nature

· Locus of attention/awareness: Emotion and imagination 'mid' brain networks

· Should take place: Between 3 and 7 years of age

People stuck in M3:

· Relate everything to: Emotion and imagination (fantasy, superstition, magic,

religion, mysticism, stories)

· Get anxious when: The environment/nature seems threatened, or they believe they
have 'sinned (transgressed the moral rules of their belief system)

· Cannot handle: Confinement

· Deal with anxiety by: Complaining, protesting, moaning and whining, or appealing
to a 'higher power' (prayer, self denial), or emotional blackmail (an attempt to
make others feel they have 'sinned')

Matrix 4:

· Matrix should be: Society and the material world

· Locus of attention/awareness: Concrete operational 'RH' networks

· Should take place: Between 7 and 11 years of age

People stuck in M4:

 · Relate everything to: Material things and constructs (tool usage and manipulation,
society, objects, systems)

· Get anxious when: Their position in society or their group seems threatened, or
material things do not function as they should

· Cannot handle: Solitude

· Deal with anxiety by: Sulking, leaving in a huff, slamming doors/thumping or

kicking material objects, posturing, threats, or legislation and 'official'
punishment.

Matrix 5

· Matrix should be: self

· Locus of attention/awareness: Formal operational 'LH' networks

· Should take place: Between ages 11 and 15

People stuck in M5:

· Relate everything to: Their own ideas about it, and coming up with those; analysis

· Get anxious when: Anything gets in the way of their flow of creative ideas or
anyone disagrees with them

· Cannot handle: tedious repetitive tasks, distractions, interference, boredom

· Deal with anxiety by: Self isolation, running away, self medication, or expressing it
in creativity

...Now I'm going to go into this in a lot more detail. Note that not everybody experiences
all the behavioral problems associated with a particular matrix; the worse you are stuck
the more of them you'll notice.

M1 is the matrix we can all acknowledge there is a problem with being stuck in, basically
with the mind of a baby. Those stuck in M1 are those spoon fed and incontinent
individuals who will never be able to speak, move very far or indicate their needs very
well, if indeed they are aware of having any. Everybody knows, if you are stuck in matrix
1, there is obviously something wrong with your brain. If you were stuck in M1, you
wouldn't be reading this; you would be chewing it. The problem is obvious because it
creates a problem with the body. Being stuck in other matrices does not, so the damage is
more difficult to spot. Also, because such conditions are considered 'normal', we don't
notice so easily. For example, people stuck in M2 look quite normal (to most people) and
can actually be great fun to be with, if you're in the mood for drinking heavily and
shouting a lot. (I tend to go home before the fighting starts).

M2 people operate from the 'old' brain module. They are emotionally between one and
three years old. They need instant gratification, have a short attention span, get impatient
and irritable often and have no awareness of the consequences of their own actions. They
do or grab whatever makes them feel good now without regard to what the consequences
might be later. Anything that goes wrong is somebody else's fault. If they are thwarted
they express rage as tantrums, shouting, yelling or fighting. Their greatest fears are
failing to get what they want, or facing something too different from themselves to
comprehend.

Their sensory motor skills will be clumsy and uncoordinated. They will find it difficult to
move with grace and to learn anything such as dancing or driving a car, which skills they
will perform jerkily, like a machine or like a child still learning to walk. They will have
no sense of rhythm or timing and be unable to keep time with a musical beat. Their
interests will be those that provide sensory motor gratification; physical sports, sex, beer,
chips and gravy. If they like art, it will have tits or manly thighs in it. They will buy the
music by the sexiest artist, or performed by people who look like they do.

They will interpret the body language of friendship as being sexual, and if anyone of the
same sex but from another matrix shows friendship they will think that that person is
either gay, or taking the piss (and probably give them a good beating for either). They are
likely to be sexist, probably also racist and homophobic, these stances based on their deep
fear of anything different. Anything outside of M2 they will either have no interest in or
look upon with scorn. Intellectuals, classical artists and musicians they will see as
pompous sissies, religious/mystical people as 'bloody weirdoes', and politicians 'money
grabbing bastards' or 'upper class twits'. If they vote, they will vote for the bloke who
looks most like they do, or the woman with the biggest tits. They do not read books, but
they may read comics and popular newspapers, as long as they have enough sex and sport
in.

They'll be the group with the highest convictions for violent crime and they will look
down on all 'educated' types, saying they have no balls.

Keywords and favorite topics: sex, food, fighting, status, the team, the gang, sport, and
bloody foreigners.

They are currently the second largest group in western society.

Now, whilst you may find this kind of a lifestyle hopelessly immature and even crazy,
there are whole sections of society where this kind of behavior is accepted as the norm,
and they would think you are crazy for disagreeing with them. That i am calling it mental
dysfunction is not because I dislike such people any more than any other damaged group,
it is because it is mental dysfunction, and I am not prejudiced about dysfunction,
whichever group it appears in. People stuck in other groups are equally damaged in
different ways, so before you start thinking, 'wow, at least I'm not stuck in M2', let me
remind you, neither was Hitler. Hitler was an M4 boy.

If an M2 person builds enough connections from the 'old' brain module to the 'mid' brain
module1, s/he will shuffle somewhat uncomfortably into matrix 3 and get stuck there.
There may still be M2-related sensory motor problems, but the locus of attention,
awareness and interests will be run on 'mid' brain networks.

M3 is the land of (aptly) 'middle earth', of elves and faeries, UFOs, religion, new-age
mysticism, superstition, hero worship and deep ecology. People stuck in M3 tend to be
anti-tech and often anti-science, saying technology or science 'has no soul', or 'has no
heart'. M3 people suffer deeply from sentiment, living with great, whooping feelings,
which they believe are caused by external events, ignorant as they are of the wonders of
the human limbic system and temporal lobes. Emotionally aged between three and seven,
they are drawn to the input relevant to that age; fantasy, stories, music and song, poetry
and magic...these are the people you meet at stone circles dressed as wizards, or in protest
camps complaining about anything harmful to the earth (or failing that, anything that
might be.) They require no scientific proof -they feel it, man. Anyway, 'science' is not to
be trusted. The rest of us are just too insensitive or too out of touch with our inner child.
They are often obsessed with a 'connection to nature'.

Instead of beer, they are more likely to prefer cannabis, instead of sex, 'free love'. (Each
person stuck in a matrix tends to use intoxicants that stimulate the relevant networks).
They are often anti-materialistic and anti-politics, drawn towards a 'natural tribal' or
religious/spiritual lifestyle, but are still quite happy to use contraception, and even
antibiotics (if 'alternative therapies' fail, of course; they will go to a spiritual healer before
visiting a doctor). They are highly suggestible, and brilliant targets for the placebo effect,
which gives weight to their belief in whatever they think cured them. A lot of them are
pagans, and those with a more traditional religious leaning are more likely to be Zen
Buddhists or Sufis or 'new age' Christians, eschewing organized religion, although
'churchianity' still captures a large percentage of the older generation. They place a great
deal of emphasis on being 'selfless', often due to not having one. They may meditate, do
yoga, or pay large quantities of their worldly goods to some spiritual advisor. They are
often vegetarian and almost always pacifists. They tend to believe in an afterlife, karma,
or otherworldly entities. They used to be found in large quantities at free festivals, taking
drugs and having sex (sorry, free love). These days, such festivals are full of M2 people,
drinking and fighting, but the times they are a-changin'.

M3 people can be intensely creative, although they often have little idea how to explicate
it to their financial gain (and usually wouldn't want to -material gain is for breadheads,
man). They value creative expression, but without the addition of working executive
functions, rarely do anything with it. Our ability to predict and control, plan, assess,
strategize and execute that plan all depend on the integral functioning of the prefrontal
cortex. So M3s have some great ideas, but are rarely able to put them into practice. Often
they feel that their talents are unrecognized, and they are correct; they are unrecognized
by another bit of their own minds. We always externalize our problems, however, and
M3's failures are blamed (by them) upon society for valuing the 'wrong' things. This can
actually be quite dangerous for them because strong imagination without frontal lobe
computation can seriously unbalance neurochemistry. Artistic and poetic 'genius' is
associated in the minds of the general public with insanity for good reason, but it is not
only the artistic ones who go loony. The psychiatric wards are full of M3 people gone
awry, who think they're Elvis, or God told them to do it. They are especially susceptible
to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (although M4 has its share of bipolar folks).

When M3s are placed under stress they behave like any other 3-7 year old; they moan,
whine, complain, protest, and resort to emotional blackmail. They may also turn to
'higher powers' for help, including fortunetellers, astrologers, spirit mediums or god.

People stuck in M3 tend to make enemies of those in M4, saying they have no soul.

Keyword and favorite topics; Spirit, belief, faith, supernatural, sin, fate, destiny, altruism,
caring, with all my heart.

The idea of a soul would make a person in M4 laugh, or more likely shake their heads in
disgust at such primitive beliefs and put it down to an inadequate education. M4 people
think most art, especially poetry, is a bit of a waste of time and pretty meaningless. They
may appreciate science-fiction (but only if the tech makes sense; I mean, you have to be
able to explain how the warp engines work, or, what's the point?) M4 people will more
than likely be interested in politics, sometimes as ardently and as blindly as M3 types
may be interested in religion. They will put a lot of emphasis on what they see as
fairness, often involving irate opinions about crime and punishment, and the issues of
social control and legislation. They can be religious, but it will be of the church/temple
hierarchical structure type and they will join in mainly to conform. They are likely to be
pro-science and technology.

They will pride themselves on being clever (they will call it intelligence), and will earn
status in their peer group by having a high IQ and getting qualifications. M4 people will
criticize M3 people, saying they have no brains.

Most of the world's population is stuck in M4. They are pedantic, argumentative, and on
the whole take life and themselves far too seriously. Pomposity and self-righteousness
rule the world.

Keywords and favorite topics: Education, credentials, social, intelligence, fairness,

justice, crime, order, progress, rights.

Actually, both M3 and M4 people have a lot in common (although they would be loath to
accept this). The intensity of their beliefs, their absolute trust in their religious/political
system, their conviction of their rectitude, and their opinion that all others have got it
wrong or just haven't seen the light or been educated enough yet, are all common factors
in their behavior. Both groups will send their more extroverted adherents to knock on
your door canvassing for your support. More introverted members will spend their time,
money and energy on the aims of the group they are in, and M4s in particular are often
afraid of being alone, or without that group. Rejection by those they care about will cause
M4s intense anxiety, and when their chosen group endorses them will feel a pleasurable
glow. When under stress, M4s will behave like any other 7-11 year old; they will either
sulk, leave in a huff, spend time posturing, rowing (they call it argument, but it includes
name calling and deliberate insults) and threatening, or resort to seeking help from
society; through legislation and official punishment.

Rarely, someone's neural miswiring results in them being stuck in M4 with a fully wired
set of temporal lobes. These people are the political/religious fanatics/extremists, the
tyrants and dictators of this world, utterly convinced that their point of view is the only
sane one and that everybody else is not only wrong, but evil. If you ever meet one of
these people, run. Run your ass off. They are quite likely to explode, either literally via
their suicide vest or mentally via the asylum.

M5 should happen to us between the ages of 11 and 15, and people stuck in M5 behave
very like anyone else of that age. Their own ideas about everything are paramount to
them and they talk about themselves almost without exception (and in some cases,
without cessation). They may be preoccupied with their 'image' (although they hardly
ever go out in public, being too busy with their own things). They are totally self-
centered and uninterested in what anybody else is doing. They resent distractions, and
will be dismissive of anything or anybody that interrupts or gets in the way of their
thoughts and ideas. They can be workaholics, and they much prefer to work alone, but the
work must be that of their own choosing or they will resent the time spent doing it
immensely. They find a tedious boring or repetitive job unbearable, and become
depressed very quickly if forced to do one. They can find it very difficult to relax without
drugs or drink, although they rarely get addicted (this would distract too much from
doing their own things).

Everything an M5 does is based upon the mantra 'I, me, me, mine'. They have very little
interest in looking outside of themselves at all, except in pursuit of the things they are
interested in. They deal with anxiety by ignoring it; stonewalling the problem, and doing
nothing, often claiming it is 'somebody else's problem' even when it is quite blatantly not.
They can appear very flat, emotionally, on the outside, but they are usually in quite a bit
of turmoil internally (they cannot show this, however; it would be 'uncool'.)

The attitude of M5s should not be mistaken for arrogance. They are quite happy to admit
that they are having a rotten time (if they are) and moan about it, as long as they are
talking about themselves. Their problems, their difficulties, their lives. If their lives are
interesting, many people don't mind M5s; it's fun to hear about someone's adventures if
they make an entertaining tale. But M5s find it very hard to listen, and there comes a
point when people get tired of a one-way conversation.

Keywords and favorite topics: Me. My work, my ideas, in my opinion, in my experience,

I'm here now; time to talk about me. That's what I think.
If you are stuck in any of these matrices, you will find you cannot understand, let alone
agree with, the mindset of someone from another matrix. Often it won't even make any
sense to you; you'll be baffled that anybody could think that way. This causes anxiety and
alienation. You really can feel all alone in a room full of people. You may think, 'Oh,
they're just not my types', or 'it's just not my kind of scene; I don't feel at home here'...and
you'd be correct, You're not. You are never 'at home' until your matrix provides all your
needs, and what intelligence needs, is interaction.

...And you don't get a lot of that round here.

1. Remember that I am referring to 'modules' or networks here, not to brain parts.

Although the location of many of these networks fall within these brain parts, not all of
them do so. The 'midbrain' has suffered several changes of definition over the years and
currently includes, anatomically, parts of the 'old' brain module.

5. System Information (Chain reaction: how each factor contributes to the

problem.)

In this chapter I have covered each point in context of the matrix in which it arises, in
order to help show the steps in the growth of intelligence as well as the relevance of the
points themselves, because many of these points have a knock-on effect. The overall
picture is greater than the apparent sum of its parts. You will recognize the key points
mentioned from the context in which they are demonstrated, but I have also numbered
them for ease of reference throughout. Most of the key points of damage occur in the first
three matrices; from birth until about age seven, so only those three matrices are covered
here. However the knock on effects of this damage are lifelong, and we shall take a look
at some of those effects in later chapters.

MATRIX 1

The womb (conception to birth)

Because of the order of our brain growth we tend not to remember before we were born.
Or the experience of being born, one of the most unusual experiences we ever encounter,
an unknown at the time akin to an upload... Isn't it about time somebody told us what
happened?

Unfortunately there's a massive difference between what should happen and what does
happen, for most people. And we probably had a reasonable birth, compared to some.
From the moment our intelligence starts to form, it is at the mercy of biology's
vulnerabilities.

Key Factor (KF) 1: Prenatal nutrition, blood & oxygen levels affected adversely by
current western diet and lifestyle.
It is now well known that maternal nutrition affects the growing fetus fundamentally.R7
Recently a bunch of scientists caused a minor uproar by changing the colors of the coats
of baby mice merely by altering their mother's diet. They went on to improve the spatial
memory ability of baby mice in a similar manner. By feeding her certain vitamins, they
had altered gene transcription.

Gene transcription is a seriously useful trick in the neurohacker's toolbox. It's the key to
all sorts of changes, including many of those affecting memory and cognitive abilities. It
can be done throughout life; not whilst still in the womb, and we'll look at it more closely
later on. The issue here is, what our mother eats during pregnancy shapes our mind, and
most mothers, currently, eat a good deal of nasty things whilst pregnant.

One major gene transcription effect is the 'CR' effect, which, when the gene is turned off,
can mimic the practice of calorie restriction without the subject needing to diet. When
this controlling factor is turned on, it's much easier for a baby or young child to become
overweight unless fed in a manner which turns it off again. Putting babies on calorie
restricted diets is a ridiculous suggestion, we just don't know enough to make such a
practice safe, and untold damage to growth and development could occur. Once the gene
is on, therefore, it must currently stay on until the person is old enough to make the
changes themselves through diet or n-hacking. But if you do have a weight problem,
either your mum's diet when you were in the womb, or your own diet as a child, was
probably responsible. And if you don't get the expression of that gene deactivated, you'll
always find it very hard to lose weight and keep it off.

Other maternal diet factors that affect fetal development are all the everyday drugs
pregnant women take and consider 'normal': tea, coffee, sugar, food additives, alcohol
(and in some cases still even cigarettes). None of these are expected by biology in the
body of a growing fetus, however most of them pass through the umbilical cord in about
45 seconds. Consequently a lot of us are grown in a vat of neuroactive stimulants which
our biology is not expecting to encounter. Try this experiment:

******************************

EXPERIMENT:

(These experiments are not essential to neurohacking progress; they are for a laugh. I
personally have done them all, and am not recommending or advising against any of
them. It's up to you. I do not, however, accept responsibility if during any of these
experiments the subject is unable to stop laughing.)

You will need:

A packet of white granulated sugar.

A teaspoon
A willingness to read a lot of labels for 14 days

A really hot, fresh cup of tea

Willpower

Method:

1. For 14 days you will eat no sugar and take no stimulants. No coffee, no tea. No white,
brown, or any other kind of sugar. No crumbly candy bars. No cupcakes. No cookies. No
chewing gum. No puddings. No cereal with added sugar, no canned food with added
sugar, in fact, absolutely nothing with sugar in or on. Put those Oreos down.

2. On getting up on day 14, leave yourself at least two hours before going to work, (or
driving, or anything requiring being sensible). Eat no breakfast. Half an hour later, eat
one whole teaspoonful of white sugar on its own. Now drink a nice, fresh hot cup of tea.
Or two even.

3. See what happens. (ROFL)

4. If you want to stay off sugar, to prevent this effect recurring if you eat something sweet
by accident, every two or three days eat one cookie. I promise you, by the time you're
done eating it you'll feel right as rain.

************************************

Most of these everyday chemicals do not normally affect us like this because they cause
tolerance very quickly. The fetus gets used to a chronic state of overstimulation. If the
newborn is breast fed, this state will of course continue, and one of the problems with
weaning, or with bottle fed babies, is the sudden dead stop of that chemistry which causes
severe withdrawal symptoms (you might have noticed them at the start of your
experiment), including headaches, colic, digestion/egestion problems, kidney and liver
pains, and fatigue. Stopping something like sugared coffee after nine months' overdose of
it is not an easy thing to do. The brain is also lacking its stimulants, and it takes time to
get the production of relevant hormones back on line at their natural levels.

But by far the worst drugs that pass from mother to infant are anxiety hormones such as
cortisol. The tiny body is physiologically in a constant state of anxiety without a feasible
cause, a permanent 'stress-without-resolution'. Stuck in this situation, the brain of the
fetus cannot develop intellectually in preparation for birth.R5 However, genetic timing
cannot do anything about this. Growth (physical) goes on, while intellectual growth
creeps along more slowly, falling farther and farther behind. If the infant is not
miscarried, it will be born deficient in intelligence if not in body, highly likely to be
mentally retarded, or dysfunctional in a wide variety of ways. The child's brain will
automatically start to compensate for its deficiencies. The greater the deficiencies, the
harder it must compensate. 'Compensating' means remaining intellectually behind whilst
trying to get the brain working properly by somehow finding the correct bits of input to
shift matrix. But meanwhile, time goes on, the mind is meant to be concentrating on the
present time and adapting to it, but instead it is back somewhere still trying to get bits of
itself working. If the first learning experiences are incomplete or faulty, the next learning
experiences will be twice as difficult. The child's intelligence slips further and further
behind because the brain growth spurts take place automatically; the tools are delivered
on time but we are not competent enough or ready to use them.R3 (Despite this, I believe
that intelligence is rarely stopped from developing; it is merely slowed down. The reason
people do not fully mature is that they don't live long enough for biology alone to catch
up. Most of us don't get anywhere near our full potential before the body starts falling
apart.)

KF2: Induction of birth before the fetal intelligence is sufficient to cope with life outside
the womb.

Notice the intended time we should spend in the first matrix. We are supposed to be in
the womb from conception to birth. Our genetic code includes a biological clock, that
tells us when to grow which bits, and that clock knows when we're ready to be born. This
is one of the situations when nature usually gets it right. It's the baby who decides when
to start the birth process, by sending out hormones into the mother's bloodstream to start
the contractions. This, our birth, is our first 'shift' (or should be), from one matrix to
another. It is genetically timed to coincide with a massive brain-growth spurt, to prepare
the baby for the new abilities it will suddenly need (breathing, feeding, etc.) and for the
huge amount of learning it will suddenly have to do.

These days, in most hospitals, the mother is called in when the doctor thinks she is 'due',
and birth is 'induced'. This means, drugs are given to the mother to make birth begin, at a
time that is convenient for staff (i.e. like not the middle of the night, or at weekends). So
most babies are born before this vital brain-growth spurt has had time to take place, and
are ill equipped to deal with life outside the womb. This is considered 'normal procedure'
and the baby is expected to survive (earlier, the same sequence of events would have led
to an abortion).

KF3: Anesthetics at birth

KF4: Prolonged labor in the supine position

KF5: Premature cutting of the umbilical cord

There are various examples of experimental proof to support several of the key factors in
Matrix Theory about birth. Some years ago, Dr. W.Windle studied hospital childbirth and
found two dangerous procedures: One was the automatic use of drugs (pre-medications
and anesthetics) and the second was the usual practice of cutting the umbilical cord as
soon as the baby's body was out.R8
Dr. Windle then did the following experiment: He took pregnant monkeys, and subjected
them to our modern medical practices. At the time of the mother monkey's labor and
delivery, he gave her anesthetics in the same amount (by body weight) that a human
woman would be given. At the birth of the baby monkey, he cut the umbilical cord at the
same time as practiced in hospitals.

In every case, Windle's newborn monkeys could not breathe, and artificial means had to
be used to assist them. (Hospitals now have various machines to aid in this process with
humans.)

In the natural world, such aid is not available. Unless an animal is born dead, it will
breathe the moment its head pops out. Soon after birth, baby monkeys are quite
proficient; they can cling to their mother, who gets on with her life, carrying the baby
with her, giving it only the necessary assistance in those first few hours of life. In a short
time, the infant is autonomous, on its feet, jumping about, leaping away from its mother
and back to her.

Windle's infant monkeys, whose birth had been the equivalent of a human one, showed
very different results. The babies were totally helpless. They could not cling to the
mother or get their limbs working at all. The mothers, recovering from the anesthetic
drugs and a greatly lengthened labor (which anesthetics and the supine position (flat on
their backs) also cause) could do little to help. Windle had to assist to keep the babies
alive.

He performed autopsies on some of these damaged infants and found in every case that
their brains had scars of a kind caused by oxygen deprivation, in the reticular formation
and cerebellum. He kept some of the monkeys alive until they had grown up, and when
he autopsied some of these grown-up monkeys, he found that their brains still had exactly
the same scars found at birth. Oxygen deprivation apparently always damages the brain,
and the damage done at the beginning seems to be permanent.

Windle next studied human infants who had died following known birth histories of
anesthetics, immediate cutting of the umbilical cord and so on. Autopsies showed that
these babies' brains had exactly the same scars he had found in his oxygen-deprived
monkeys. Cases of children who had similar birth histories but who had died at ages three
or four were then studied. Again, the brains were found with the same scars.

Windle pointed out that in those first critical moments when the lungs must begin
providing all the oxygen for the newborn, biology expects to call on the extra supply
from the umbilical cord. A drugged mother automatically means a drugged infant, and a
drugged infant cannot get its breath. Artificial means must be used. The cutting of the
umbilical cord at this time denies the infant the extra oxygen at the most critical point in
its life. 'Spanking the baby' (holding the newborn up by the heels and slapping it on the
backside) is supposed to assist the resuscitation process by causing the infant to gasp in
reaction to the shock of pain. (Recent studies suggest that this can cause slow internal
bleeding in the spine resulting in 'cot-death' weeks or months later.)
KF6: Inappropriate and traumatic physical treatment at birth

Shock is also a major cause of brain damage. The infant's nervous system is certainly
aware of discomfort, pain and distress at birth.

Ever been into traumatic role-playing experiences just for the crack? Here, have a quick
nightmare. I dare you:

Imagine you are in a warm, dark, safe, sensual, nourishing, comfortable place, feeling
really groovy. Things have been this good forever, in your experience so far. You have
never known hunger or thirst or physical distress. Every sensory motor exploration has
met with interesting success. You float, dreaming or playing as consciousness demands,
safe in your own sweet universe.

You are suddenly ejected, without warning, into a brilliantly lit space, drugged, with a
metal screw inserted into your head, almost suffocating trying to breathe an unfamiliar
element, choking on tubes, loud sounds ringing in your ears, you are turned upside down
and slapped until you scream, your eyelids are peeled back and harsh chemicals are
dropped into your eyes, you are dropped into cold scales, weighed, measured, wrapped in
plastic, and put into solitary confinement you know not where, but you can hear others of
your kind crying and wailing. Unable to move, your cries for help ignored; even with
everything you know and have experienced in life so far, are you not a bit traumatized? It
sounds rather like those alien abduction stories to me.

A mind that has no experience at all of the world and that is born open-mindedly
expecting its needs for safe, pleasant nurturing to be met has little choice when faced with
this sort of experience but to go into shock. The venture of innocent intelligence excitedly
into the unknown has been met with torture and abandonment. Association training has
begun. All future learning will be affected.R5

Learning and behavior problems resulting from brain injury at birth are found in 15 to
20% of all children examined. It is estimated that 20 to 40% of the school population is
handicapped by learning problems that may be related to 'neurological impairments at
birth' (brain damage).R4 There are degrees of brain damage, of course, and this minimal
amount is not usually severe enough to turn us into dribbling vegetables, however any
damage to the brain obviously affects our intelligence and further development.

Let me point out at this stage that I am in no way opposed to technology or medicine in
childbirth. All technology can be good or bad, depending on how it is used. It would be
handy if it were used in ways that would benefit and enlighten, rather than harm us,
obviously. Unfortunately sometimes it isn't.

KF7: Failure of mother and newborn to activate the newborn's sensory systems by full
sensory interaction within a short 'window of opportunity' immediately after birth
Another subject deeply related to this which is either ignored by medical textbooks or
horribly misunderstood, is the idea of infant /mother 'bonding'.R10 Such a huge amount
of crap is talked about bonding; people describe it as some sort of sweet, cuddly,
sentimental, emotional thing or a new-age-tribal, magical, spiritual, mystical experience.
Yuck. Hand me the vomit bag.

Bonding is a part of the competent functioning of intelligence, not sweet fluffy sentiment
or cosmic mysticism. Bonding is your intelligence finding links between the known and
the unknown, for your brain and its growth. Bonding is forming links of communication,
getting access to information and linking in with a system we can copy and download
programs from. It is like our 'server' for the biological Internet, a bridge between realities
to enable us to learn more and more about the new ones. It builds the corpus callosum
and uses the networks of association in the parietal lobe, the hard-line for perception of
reality.

Newborn babies don't talk so biology relies on an instinctive response, brought online
automatically as each generation copies the last. Mother animals instinctively do certain
things with their baby at birth (if left alone with their baby and allowed to, and
sufficiently free from brainwashing not to be afraid to do or ignorant of), and infant
animals are genetically programmed to expect this and respond to it.

The fulfillment of five needs, will achieve the first bonding after delivery: a thorough
stimulation and activation of the baby's five senses. Bringing the systems online. Nature
must receive the five signals that birth has taken place, otherwise the baby's body will
continue to produce the stress hormones that it needed for birth. Biology will continue
stress-hormone production unless the signals are sent, until a critical mass builds up and
sends the infant body into shock, which can range from minimal to severe. If the brain's
needs are not met within about forty-five minutes after delivery, the critical mass level is
reached, the infant's sensory-motor system largely shuts down, there is a retreat into the
'womb' state of consciousness, and the child's mind remains in matrix one, emotionally
and intellectually.

(You may be wondering at this point why hospital staff don't know all this. Some
specialists do. But who is going to listen to a load of information that proves that they,
too, are brain-damaged? Certainly not average medical staff, who are, after all, also
probably caught in a matrix. And who is going to attempt to change the entire system of
how we give birth to and raise our children, using information that effectively tells
everybody that there is something wrong with their minds? Fancy a situation of total
mass panic, laced with justifiable rage? Remember that most people don't yet have the
potential or the desire to change their minds.)

A part of our brains is called the reticular formation (RF), one of the parts that I
mentioned earlier which suffers lesions through oxygen deprivation. Four of our five
somatic senses send their information through the RF. The job at birth is to get the
sensory system working in the shortest possible time, because this is the only way to
activate that part of our brains.
From the moment of birth, input to the newborn affects already existing networks, and
acts to strengthen, weaken, or otherwise modify their structure and activities. For
example, when the baby is looked at face to face, brain networks for visual acuity and
focus, color, shape and form are all activated, and this activation causes new connections
to form within those networks. When the baby hears the mother's heartbeat, and when she
speaks to it, different networks are activated to process sounds and interpret them, and
new connections form in the auditory cortex. When the child is touched and cuddled,
sensory motor processing networks spring to life and connections thicken, and so on.R3

This entire system only works at optimum if the newborn is not drugged, oxygen
deprived, or swamped with anxiety hormones, obviously.

The reason these key factors are the cause of an ongoing chain reaction is as follows: Any
additional brain growth, including that of arborisation (the elongation and branching of
axons and dendrites) depends (for both quality and quantity) on what exists already (i.e.,
what has already grown) but also depends on the quality and quantity of input being
given in the here and now.

It is the input of the here and now which generates the networks of tomorrow. This is the
case throughout our lives, but it is most especially the case at the beginning of it. The first
matrix shift is when we are supposed to power up and bring the systems online.

So, how do we get the systems online?

First, vision. Our brain is pre-programmed to recognize a human face.R11 (We don't
have many of these presets, just the essential few; breathing, sucking, grasping, face
recognition, and the ability to automatically close off access to our throats and noses if
we fall into water, are about all we start out with). At delivery a baby can recognize a
face, will spend 80% of its visual time looking at a face, and, if it is given a face to look
at within a distance of six to twelve inches during the first 45 minutes after delivery, its
entire visual system will be fully functional by the end of that time. The baby will then
smile every time a face is seen. Biology has had one of its signals met. (If this doesn't
happen, the baby will remain almost blind for about three months, which is considered
normal by most people.)

Hearing has been experienced in the womb by the infant's hearing the mother's voice and
heartbeat. If the infant is held close to the breast, those sounds are recognized, there are
enough points of similarity between the 'then' (the known) and the 'now' (unknown) for
COMP to recognize, and biology ticks off signal number two.

The breast-feeding position, (in which all five needs can be met,) triggers the third signal,
feeding and tasting. The first milk transfers to the baby the mother's immunities to
disease gained over her lifetime, and proteins that help stop the production of stress
hormones in the baby.
The human infant is supposed to feed between forty-five to sixty times a day. (This is not
a typo; most of these feeds are very short). Biology expects humans to carry their babies
about, feeding them whenever they're hungry.R12

The fourth signal is touch, and skin-to-skin contact with the mother, as well as a constant
gentle massage, brings this sensory system to life.R12

The sense of smell is the last signal. The newborn can immediately pick out its mother's
smell from among that of many other humans and will respond to it.

The incredibly complex cortical spreading of networks caused by these seemingly simple
bits of input are only just beginning to be noticed, because of MRI and PET studies of the
effects of these kinds of input on newborns.R3 Quite what the 'scientific establishment'
decides to do about the fact that most infants don't get them, and what conclusions they
will draw about that, remains to be seen. Perhaps the most significant finding is that these
specific forms of input act to stop the production of stress hormones after birth.

'Bonding', is COMP making a bridge between the known and the unknown. Links
between the old situation and the new one can be made, because there are enough
recognizable similarities. If bonding does not take place, the brain has no choice but to
try to put the new experience back into that which it already knows. In the case of birth,
this means relating all new experience back to the womb experience rather than bringing
the new stuff forward and understanding it. Instead of bonding to the new reality we
become attached to the old. (This is 'attachment' behavior. We'll explore attachment
behavior in depth later on, because it really deserves its own chapter.)

Whenever someone is stuck in a matrix, you will find attachment behavior of some kind.
For example, an infant who is stuck in matrix one will keep its fists clenched –a delivery
behavior- for several weeks after delivery. In the same way, the child caught in matrix
two will cling physically to the parent, in fear of loss of contact, and will not freely
explore the world.

Other experimental work has been done with macaque monkeys and with elephants,
among other animals, showing differences between the infant animals raised by an ever-
present, attentive mother and those raised with only intermittent mothering. By age 2, the
latter groups of all mammals were fearful almost all the time, distressed when separated
from their mothers, socially inept, and displaying many of the symptoms of 'anxiety
disorders'.R13

There are genetically programmed parts of the brain that are designed only to develop if
the appropriate input is given. R3 The brain growth spurt shortly after birth mainly
facilitates the growth of cerebellar networks, maturing its connections that will deal with
activation and control of motor functions. If the baby does not have the correct inputs to
precipitate this growth, the new connections will be trying to connect to already sub-
optimal networks, so the new connections will obviously be sub-optimal themselves. This
is the chain reaction referred to in Matrix Theory. One cannot build optimal walls, on sub
optimal foundations. That seems so blindingly obvious that I should not need to restate it.
If there is nothing for new connections to connect to, they will simply not function; they
will atrophy, and when the next stage happens and the new networks come along trying
to connect to them, they will be gone.

As biological creatures, and especially as tiny babies, we are genetically concerned with
our own well being. We must be able to compute that the world we are in is reasonably
friendly, wants us to exist, and will help us in our endeavors to succeed. If we do not
receive the signals to confirm this, we will be forced to concentrate on our need for self-
preservation (later this becomes a need for self-esteem). We need to have this basic
feeling of safety under our belts before we can pay attention to anything else. We need
our matrix to be absolutely rock solid before we can explore further.

Let me make it clear here that although most people who experience hospital birth do
become stuck for a while in the 1st matrix, very few remain there for long. Getting stuck
in any matrix does not stop us developing; it merely slows us down. Most people do not
escape matrix one, for example, until they are about six months old. The problem is, we
have limited life spans, and the backlog of work to be done to catch up gets ever larger
and larger. Most adults only get as far as matrix 3 or 4 before they run out of time. (That
means many people never develop emotionally or intellectually beyond the age of 11!)

MATRIX 2

Mother or permanent caretaker (birth to age 3)

KF8: Isolation and abandonment at any time during the first year or so of life

KF9: Lack of physical contact

So, when we're born, our brains have just undergone a massive growth spurt. Our
neurochemistry is keyed up to learn more, faster, than we may ever have to do again. We
are focused, receptive and anticipatory. What do most people learn whilst in this highly
receptive state?

It is the 'alien abduction' scenario I mentioned above.

Quite understandably, the shock from this experience makes quite an impression. It has
much the same effect as we see in rats association-trained to 'dislike' things because of
coincident electric shocks. And the thing we associate with all this anxiety and shock is
the very process of trying to learn. We program in a Fear of The Unknown, about the act
of learning itself, the act of running COMP. And this makes us very reluctant,
subconsciously, to do it.R5

The degree of this fear will determine our willingness to approach the unknown
throughout our childhood. Our willingness to learn. If further shocks occur each time we
try to learn, that fear will grow deeper and more difficult to overcome.
All of it can be overcome by intelligence however if biology's needs for bonding are met.
That is why the greatest damage of all occurs when baby animals are separated from their
mothers and isolated.

It is difficult to overstate the problems that this causes. The isolation of body and mind
prevents any chance for bonding, for stopping the hormones of birth stress, for the
activation of the senses and the completion of brain growth. To the baby it means
abandonment, and, if its cries are not responded to, powerlessness. Fear of abandonment
will shadow future interaction.R13

Our ability as inexperienced infants to cope with the new situation is inadequate, because
lack of bonding and fear of the unknown gets us stuck in a matrix. This starts the chain
reaction, which the average person does not have enough time to compensate for. All
future learning is affected. The brain and body go into shock. To cut out the sensory
overload, the brain shuts down all functions except for those of assimilation and
association. Sleep is the state in which we commit what we have experienced to memory
and file it by association. We retreat into sleep whenever we have taken on enough
information and need to assimilate it. In sensory overload, this limit is reached very
quickly. As babies we then show only two states, sleeping, and distress. If awakened
from the sensory retreat from consciousness and attempt at assimilation, we are thrown
back into the hormonal state of unresolved stress and sensory overload. We cry ourselves
to sleep again. An inordinate amount of this sleep is REM sleep (desperately trying to
assimilate enough information to catch up). Pleasure and smiling will be about three
months later in appearing, because it will take that long for our brains to compensate for
the damage and catch up. Needing to sleep heavily means we also miss out on
experiences important for our growth in the here and now, making it more difficult to
gain ground. Lack of bonding (biology's needs being met) at birth results in the brain's
lack of completion. Sensory information cannot be processed properly, so sensory input
only causes overload, fear and confusion (exactly the problems that sufferers of certain
kinds of autism experience). The brain must try to bring its own sensory system online;
somehow get the reticular formation working, through whatever physical nurturing it can
get. Whilst it is frantically busy doing this, there will be virtually no intellectual
development. All the other, pre-programmed, timed developments will be missed,
throwing the system farther and farther behind. Small changes in construction of the
hardware now, will lead to eventual gaping holes in the final 'circuit boards'. And this is
why most people currently cannot think as intelligently as they might have, given the
optimal resources for brain development. This is why n-hacking makes such a
difference...we are repairing damage, at first; merely giving ourselves back the brain we
had a right to develop in the beginning.

Most babies are currently dysfunctional, and they are dysfunctional in the association of
sensory inputs. The next upcoming matrix shift (to M3) is concerned mainly with the
maturation of the senses. These are the only routes for input from outside of the brain to
get into it. Association is the crux of almost all mental functioning and between the ages
of 2 and 4 we are growing the brain networks that should deal with sensory input and
association. Because of the chain reaction, however, the quality and quantity of these
networks will be dependent upon the quality and quantity of those they rest upon and
should connect to.R3 Exactly as before, optimization of these modules depends upon
optimization of the ones that came before. Optimization relies not only on the relevant
bits being there, but also upon them being used in the correct manner. Physical contact on
a regular and thorough basis is essential to achieve this. If the individual sensory
networks are not programmed in the correct manner, their association will either fail, or
develop in a faulty manner. This means faulty association. And faulty association, as we
will see, is a major problem in most people for the rest of their lives, because it allows us
to program in the wrong information and accept the wrong input, on an ongoing basis.

At this stage, our dysfunction also creates for us a 'Catch 22'...biology has designed
human babies to look helpless and pleasing so that we will want to hold them and play
with them, providing the stimulation that the brain needs. Unfortunately most babies now
look and move in an intellectually deficient way that we are accustomed to thinking of in
an adult as 'mentally challenged'. This is why pets are such a good child substitute; they
behave in very similar ways. And since we judge things by appearances, because biology
without intelligence says so, most people now treat babies like idiots. And, hey,
WYSIWYG. We get programmed by what we are surrounded by; what is expected of us.
If something is considered normal in our society we have no reason to question it,
biologically, and we don't.

KF 10: Lack of physical presence of main carer at any time before about age 7 or so

What we are supposed to be doing in matrix 2 is interacting -learning about the world and
starting to play with it. The very first thing we learn in this matrix is what 'caretaker' is.
Once this is ascertained and we are familiar with it, biology gives us the physical strength
needed to move slowly out from mum, or whoever, and explore the world. This can be
done successfully though, only if the carer is the absolutely reliable safe place to which it
can always return from exploring new things, and be nurtured. For the familiar carer not
to be there (for example, if a child were left with strangers), could crash the program, and
this remains the case until we are seven years old. Mother or whoever must always be
physically nearby. I would estimate this has a wider variation depending on how many
people the child is very familiar and comfortable to be with. Still, how possible is even
that in our current society?

People left with the child would have to be very well known members of the family. If
granny only visits once every month, that is not very well known, from the child's point
of view, and despite popular belief, being genetically related to someone does not
suddenly transform them into a great baby-sitter. Your child's carer has to be someone
s/he knows as well as s/he knows you, plays with, goes out with and is happy to sleep on.

COMP relies, for its running, on the assumption of the matrix as an absolute. If the
matrix suddenly vanishes, we have to turn all our attention to establishing another matrix,
and with a stranger this takes up all our time. Whilst we are busy doing that, we can't
concentrate on anything new, learn anything, or pay proper attention to anything else. We
will feel anxious until it is accomplished. When the original matrix just as mysteriously
returns, we also have to reassess its safety and reliability, and if we are not satisfied with
this we will feel anxious until it is resolved. This is why children cry both going into, and
out of nurseries. Either way, you are opening the door to anxiety, which always blocks
intelligence.

KF11: Exposure to TV before about age 11 preventing full sensory interaction

In a curious way, television achieves its damage by default. This has nothing to do with
the content of the TV shows (sorry, ethicists). Regardless of what show or feature is on,
the nature of television itself is what does the damage, because it floods the brain with
imagery that the intelligence was supposed to accomplish for itself. The sound and
pictures come as a single-input, one-way impression that cannot be interacted with. It can
affect us, but we cannot affect it. For every hour that we are not interacting, intelligence's
function of creative response to information is bypassed and the relevant modules of the
brain do not develop. Television keeps youngsters entertained but during that time they
are not entertaining themselves; not using those bits of brain which rely utterly on
exercise to develop. If they do not develop, that intelligence will have no ability to create
internal imagery, and will become compulsively attached to TV, since TV is then the
only source of imagery available. Television is naturally addictive only to a damaged
mind –not on a psychological basis but on a biological one.R14

New patterns of connections for thinking and acting grow in an intelligence only as it
interacts with the world through its senses.

I would always define intelligence as the control of information flow, or in more human
terms as 'the ability to interact'. The more and greater unknowns you can interact with
and bring back into your 'known', the more intelligent you are. Intelligence is the ultimate
survival skill, it gives us not only the ability to survive, but the ability to survive and
thrive anywhere and in any circumstances, or at least, that it its aim. Our development in
matrix 2 is based on us interacting with the physical world. Reality. (The world without
fences and boundaries, without opinions, morals or values, setting its own natural limits
with its own physical laws). To form an open intelligence we need to know this world
very well before we impose any values upon it. Most children are unable to do this
because adults unknowingly present them with an anxiety-programmed view of the
world, (as it was presented to them).

Every time we learn something new, new connections form in our brains; actual
physiological links between brain cells.R6 A growing intelligence that comes across a
new object will pick it up, stare at it from various angles. Then, feel at it, smell it, taste it,
knock it against another thing. Start to make decisions about what it likes and what it
doesn't, based on experience. Run a 'recognition' program. Meanwhile move on to
another experience, apparently forgetting about the first.

But the experience is not forgotten by other parts of the brain, which keep working on it
quietly in the background. The associated smell, for example, is running back and forth
through networks, making connections, some of them brand new. Compute,
compute...How does it relate to other smells; smells known already? How did it feel,
compared to other things touched? Similar to what? Unlike what? New connections,
forming, changing, rearranging. The taste: Like? Dislike? What did it look like? Common
factors with archetypal templates? Cross-reference and list it, in an already-existing
category or a new category. Inner feedback: Worth further exploration, yes / no? Edible?
Yes / no? Sharp or painful? Yes / no? The brain will note similarities with past ideas and
the dissimilarities will make new connections, new programming. This is how a cross-
indexing and association between the senses and our archetypal templates (more about
these later) brings understanding.

Our eventual intelligence depends biologically on our neural network, the number and
quality of neuronal connections in our brains. New connections can only be built at first
by exploring the world literally through the five senses. All perception is constructing a
map of reality from electrical signals by imagining. All reality structure is ultimately
imagining. We can rewire ourselves to only notice what the 'old' brain modules want, and
become completely like animals. We can wire up the LH networks alone, and become
obsessed with intellect, and so on...the trouble is, most times we didn't wire ourselves at
all...other people did. We are copying their dysfunction because we were programmed
with it as our only software. That's what we have to change. You are not meant to be a
cargo-hauling slave on this ship...you are actually meant to be the captain.

When all the work of mid brain networks is habitually done for us by television, there is
little for the networks to do. If there is nothing left to imagine, how are we to develop
imagination?

...As the brain must interact with the world with all sensors operative in order to develop,
so it needs time to assimilate. Left to itself, it makes it's own time...most children, until
told off for doing it, tend to stare vacantly for long periods. Most young mammals do, in
fact, and they retain the habit into adulthood. Staring may give the brain time to
accomplish a quick assimilation of information whilst remaining awake, which may be
why we call it, intuitively, 'daydreaming'. We are filling in the details linked with past
sensory explorations. Many psychologists have noticed that exceptionally bright and
happy people have only one (so far detectable) factor in common. They all spend regular
time in open, blank staring, without interruption. This is waking assimilation time, and
the more we are allowed to let it happen, the less we need to sleep. It can be achieved by
certain meditation practices, but it's far easier to let biology do it as intended. If we've
gotten into the habit of not doing it or of stopping ourselves from doing it (because a lot
of parents and teachers consider daydreaming to be a bad thing, we can relearn it either
the easy quick way (by n-hacking) or the more gradual way through meditation. It is an
essential function however so should be regained.R15

KF12: Lack of full sensory interaction with environment

Physical isolation is also an issue because our greatest learning as infants takes place
through sensory-motor action.R16 It is sensory motor action at this age that causes
arborisation (growth of extra branches of neurons), because we are mainly developing the
parts of the brain that deal with input and sensory motor control. A baby who is carried
physically will have far better muscle-tone than one that sits in prams. It will not
necessarily crawl or walk sooner but when it does it will have a more highly developed
sense of balance and have far fewer falls. (The cerebellum, another brain part mentioned
earlier as one of the areas damaged by oxygen deprivation, is involved in our sense of
timing and rhythm, balance and movement). Movement is the natural state for a baby,
and it also sleeps far better moving than in stillness, as any parent driving the baby round
and round the block to get it off to sleep knows well. A carried infant (in sling or
backpack) is never separated from the safe, familiar world of its caretaker, and within that
matrix it moves constantly into lots of interesting new experiences. New, unknown input
comes in with the known database (carer) still there as a constant reminder of the
currently known world with which all newness can be compared. This is the ideal
learning situation for a baby. I believe it is only necessary until the baby is old enough to
crawl; from a sensory-motor point of view, I would expect biology is aware how long a
baby needs to be carried; all other young mammals indicate this to their parents, who
comply. If the adults are in a hurry, they scoop their kids up and carry them, otherwise,
they meander along at the kids' own speed.R10

The evolution of biological intelligence

It should be remembered that the major production time for brain cells ends at around age
4 or 5.R3 Further growth is mainly due to arborisation and synaptogenesis. So the early
years really are important for exploration, and sensory motor input is essential.

Biological hardware has evolved in almost a nesting system.

Pretty much all of animal life has a version of the 'old brain', including the spinal cord,
brain stem, cerebellum and reticular formation. Mammals got the midbrain next, pons,
limbic system, hypothalamus, thalamus, hippocampus and all, and finally the higher
primates and a few other fortunate beasts evolved the 'new' brain or neocortex, in
matching halves of left and right hemispheres.

There are four main neural nets using these parts as home base. The networks spread
throughout the brain, but have most of their systems located in one area. These networks
handle a whole array of different tasks; sensory input arrives via the old brain (except
smell), and it controls a lot of automatic functions such as heartbeat. The mid brain
networks handle memory processing, emotion and imagination and the neocortex
networks are responsible for most of the 'higher' functions that most people associate with
being human.

The brain you have now is not the same one you were born with. The neocortex comes in
two matching halves at birth, and they are completely separated. They are joined together
only later by the corpus callosum (CC) which starts growing at about the age of one and
is not completed until around age four. Before this, the only way the two hemispheres can
communicate with each other is via the mid brain networks.
Once the CC is up and running, the two halves have a direct neighborhood network and
can talk about the midbrain behind its back; this independence is what leads to the
autonomy of pure abstract thought. The significance of this genetically timed growth will
become apparent as we progress, because there is something very odd about the
neocortex. It is almost as though intelligence has plans...

The old brain and the midbrain are connected very well to each other by various
networks; they function as a unit (if developed properly and undamaged) smoothly and
well. Connections between the midbrain and the frontal lobes, however, are far less
numerous, especially from the left hemisphere. The midbrain, in a lot of ways, behaves
like an interface; a translator if you like, both ways, between old brain and new, between
abstract thought and animal reactions. How does it do this? ...Input from the senses
(except smell) comes in via the 'old' brain, but if you close your eyes and think of an
elephant, that's input too.

It is vitally important to remember this in n-hacking.

Unless there really is an elephant in your room, your image of an elephant is imagination.
Imagination has had a very bad press, since nobody seems able to understand it. And this
is unfortunate, because, for intelligence, it is the stuff of life.

The dictionary defines imagination as 'creating images not present to the senses'. It
doesn't mention the fact that some parts of the brain and body cannot tell the difference
until the input is subjected to intellectual evaluation. (Since this is the last step along the
chain, we often find ourselves reacting to false danger signals before we've had time to
realize it's only our mate outside the window dressed up as a gorilla, for example, which
is why practical jokes are so funny.)

Everyone agrees that it is vital that the brain correctly interprets the input from the senses.
Translating the input with imagination is equally important though, because in fact
intelligence depends on it.

COMP uses imagination. Imagination does not just pull up things from memory; it
constructs by combining sets of archetypal memories and extrapolating variations on a
theme, just as in dreaming, but with more volition. All that is needed in memory, are
enough points of remembered similarity between the current situation and past ones.
Without the ability to make that association, every experience is a brand new unknown.
We cannot make association without memory. We have seen this sometimes by
observing people with certain kinds of amnesia; without the memories to relate
something to, it seems (and feels to them) as if they have never done it before. Every one
is a stranger, every event is unknown. This quite naturally causes anxiety.

What we do not so often realize, is that this also happens when there is no (or very poor)
imagination. Imagination is vitally necessary to recall memory in association. When we
see a new event, imagination goes looking for all the things it can imagine that we have
seen before which were similar in any way. Without the imagination to do that, without a
good eidetic (image) memory, recall is strictly limited.

Imagination is also necessary for extrapolation and a realistic assessment of just how
similar the thing or situation is to past ones. Having a poor memory hinders COMP,
because we cannot recall experiences in enough detail to practice them. But having a
poor imagination hinders COMP at every turn. We cannot copy well because we cannot
imagine what it would be like to be our model, neither can we practice and vary because
we cannot imagine variations. Our cognitive system is the equivalent of a musician who
can only play cover numbers exactly as they were written. Who can't jam along because
she can't imagine what the next chord might be...bad imagination prevents prediction, and
that prevents control.

The domain of memory and emotion is our 'weighting' and translation system. Current
machine translation systems are sadly lacking AI. We derive meaning from text in a way
a computer cannot yet do. The brain uses a rather neat system for this, based on
intelligence's very own 'midbrain programming language'. It is a metaphoric kind of
eidetic imagery/language, which is analogical, as memory tracing is analogical, so I have
called it 'AL' for Analogical or Allegorical Language.

It is a language neurohackers would do well to pay attention to. With it, the midbrain
translates those squiggles on the screen in your email through AL, into the abstract
thought imagery of the neocortex, which understands it as "Going down the pub?" or
whatever...which your frontal lobes apply meaning to depending on who's asking, how
much money you have, and so on. When you wish to reply (hit keys and make your own
squiggles), mid brain networks must translate the abstract thoughts in your neocortex,
through AL associations, into sensory motor movements controlled by the old brain to
enable you to type ''Don't forget to bring a towel'' or whatever.

We'll look more closely at AL later on, because it's important to know first, with any
damaged operating system you are trying to work with, (a) how its supposed to work and
(b) what order things are designed to be happening in, because not knowing those things
can really slow you down. In n-hacking as in original brain development, every step sits
upon the last. Every programmer should know that.

Some of the most obvious evidence that the locus of intelligence is not fixed comes from
dream research. When we sleep, we shut down many functions of the old brain, and
sensory input minimizes. We still think, but because there is no sensory input, the
midbrain provides imagery related to our thoughts, weighted with emotion and
imagination, and dreaming begins (REM sleep). As we sink deeper into sleep we largely
shut down the midbrain also ('deep' sleep).

In the past we thought dreaming was confined to the periods of REM sleep, but we now
know this is not the case, in fact we continue dreaming throughout deep sleep also,R17
but deep sleep dreaming is not connected with emotion, does not cause REM and was
desperately difficult to detect before modern brain scanning methods, as it appears very
difficult to bring into conscious awareness. Deep sleep dreaming is abstract, three-
dimensional, and usually geometric. It resembles 3D wiring diagrams rendered in various
shades of neon, does not change frame and so fails to cause eye movement, but changes
constantly within that frame. It appears to have no immediately apparent connection with
our everyday reality at all, yet seems deeply meaningful in some intangible way if
recalled by the dreamer (possibly temporal lobe action). It seems to occur during our
assimilation and shifting of memories.

After spending a while in deep sleep we surface again through REM, back into light,
dreamless sleep and start the cycle again, which takes us in all about 90 minutes.
Throughout it all, we stay alive and well, and even manage to get a bit of physical repair
work done whilst conserving energy.

Consider this ability, to shift the focus of mind around our various brain parts to
accomplish whatever task is in hand. It is of stunning significance both for the
development of intelligence and its potential for uploading. The COMP program is
designed to fit in with the timed development of all four main brain sections and
coincident matrix shifts. In each part of its development, biology-based intelligence is
designed to focus on, and develop, each individual part of our brain as it grows.R3
Intelligence evolves as the brain evolved, in exactly the same order. The old brain
completes its growth first, as we concentrate on sensory motor, physical reality as small
babies. As the midbrain develops we translate and file sensory information in meaningful
ways, discover our emotions and our imagination. And as the CC is completed and the
neocortex develops further we learn to play with information and do creative things with
it, like go play golf on the moon, and cure diseases, for two examples.

Our problem is, this hardware architecture assembly process takes about 19 years under
optimum conditions for development, and currently, under our conditions, taking into
consideration the degree of repair work necessary on the average brain, longer than a
human lifetime to fully achieve on its own.

We have been providing young minds (and still are) with input they could not possibly
use because the relevant bits of brain to deal with it were not yet developed. We have
been doing the intellectual equivalent of giving a two-month-old a whole, unshelled
lobster and a porno magazine. And meanwhile, much worse, we haven't been providing
what they do need.

The brain seems like a nesting system because each of its parts must in turn be developed
and we must become proficient at using them before the next part can be given our
attention and focus.R3 And as we grow, intelligence shifts its locus up the hierarchy of
brain structures into the neocortex. As we shift our attention and focus to each new
section of brain the entire locus of consciousness changes; we start using the newer
networks much more, and withdraw our attention from the old, where activity settles
slowly down after our departure to an ambient flow of regular traffic. That's another way
of describing a matrix shift.
...In our first matrix shift, when we move from 'wombworld' to 'parentworld', the locus of
our intelligence is still in the old brain. Appropriately for the reptile metaphor, we learn
to crawl. We crawl around and we interact with things and we give the old brain
everything it needs (or we should do) to grow all of its bits and connections aright. Then
we move out. We stand up, replaying another stage in evolution, we begin to walk, talk,
and, month by month, we shift the focus of our attention into the mid brain networks,
leaving most of the old brain on 'automatic'. Our attention starts to move away from
parents as models, and into the environment. Matrix shifts do not happen overnight. It
takes us many months to catch up with ourselves. But when we do shift, the functions of
the old locus become automatic. When we move out of M2, we no longer have to
concentrate on walking; it's automatic. To try to learn to walk only after the matrix shift
(after age 3) would take an incredibly long time or could actually be impossible. And all
our other skills are very much the same.

The old brain thinks in movement. A three-year-old child finds it very difficult to say the
word 'hand' without moving her hand, and will usually sit down if asked to say 'sit down',
too. All the information comes from the senses. There is no internal dialogue. All
information is concrete; physical, material.R16 We have to translate between that, and
the high logic of intellect and abstract thought, and the midbrain is our go-between. It's
system of metaphor and symbol develops in response to the correct input, and the correct
input for this time is storytelling and fantasy play. Imagination.

The midbrain thinks and remembers in its own kind of 'language', this language of
pictures and symbols, of emotion and imagination. This is what AL means: allegorical or
analogical language.

The logic we know gives us a method of reasoning; of, for example, figuring out how
things that have some similarities may have others. Allegorical or analogical 'language'
alludes to common factors and resemblance between otherwise apparently unconnected
things. Example; my friend is completely unlike a seabird, yet I call him a Gannet (or a
pig) if he eats too much. In the same way, animals or inanimate objects in fairy tales act
as though they are human.

All of the symbols and archetypes in our culture, from gods to heroes, from fairy tales to
UFOs, come from this part of the brain and relate to it, in a non-intellectual logic all its
own.

The new brain, or neocortex, is the part that enables us to think in words. The midbrain
has no higher function language processing areas. It cannot think in words, just as the
part of your brain that beats your heart can't think in words, and neither can your
elbow.R16

KF13: Lack of appropriate stimulus at all times preventing brain growth

Allowing a child to explore the environment does not mean that you can dump your kid
in a playpen or even the back garden with its bush, flowers and token tree and expect
their brain networks to thrive. The smartest animals are those who have experienced the
greatest variety of input. If the brain processes every bit of information currently
available to it, and the need for input far outstrips the input, no new connections can be
built. After a time of feeding back on limited data, connections idle, because there are no
new signals to process. Then they begin to fail. New brain cell connections do not take
place. The practice and perfection of the ability to think fails to happen. The effect of
insufficient input is a kind of mental malnutrition. This is what happens when an
intelligence is isolated from intellectual and physical interaction. Solitary confinement
has a similar effect on the mental health of adults, and is used as a punishment in some
cultures.

We are designed by biology to emerge. An open-system intelligence, we build new

systems, and we 'take over' the new systems as they are built; we move in, we upload,
keeping only those links that are necessary with the older systems and building new links
within the new. Intelligence constantly strives for autonomy. The autonomy of being able
to walk sets us free from dependence on others for our input. The autonomy of tool-usage
enables us to shovel our own nutrients into our mouths instead of needing a grown up to
do it. Another few years and matrices on, and we will be able to go get that food and
bring home the dinner. The autonomy of abstract thought, if the hardware is wired
properly, frees us from dependence on emotion and instinct alone and gives us the
capacity for expressing our creativity fully only with the integration of all four major bits
of brain, each built upon the foundations of the other. Any uploading system for humans
is going to have to take this into account and follow its pattern if there is to be any
shortcut to an easy transfer, regardless of the physical material of the new platform.

The first part of an emerging intelligence's existence must be dedicated to its platform, it's
hardware, and its physical/sensory system. A complete synchrony with memory, emotion
and imagination is obviously needed pretty early on, but the focus of a young intelligence
will be sensory-motor. Once this is established and at optimum performance, the
intelligence will shift its focus to its next need, the equivalent of the human midbrain.
Any budding AI will need emotion and imagination.

By 'emotion' I don't mean it will necessarily want to have fits of the giggles or burst into
tears, because those are the results of emotion in a human biological physical system. In a
biological body, emotional responses are required very urgently for survival. They serve
as a tool for offense and defense, as well as helping with communication and evaluation
of any situation. Creatures without a prefrontal cortex are still able to respond to danger
or a mate. Emotion is one of intelligence's first and oldest tools for its advancement.

Hormones arise from distinct locations in the human brain and body. It is how those
hormones are interpreted by the brain that determines what kind of emotion is felt, and
particularly how we express that emotion. Once again it relies on association.
Enthusiasm, for example, can invoke a manic desire to party, an impatience to get on
with things, or an inspiration to strategize, depending on your personality. For some
people, disillusionment or failure is just time for a challenging rethink. For some it means
patiently try, try again. For some it means despair; it prompts some to quit, some to kick
the monitor in, and others to suicide. The same initial chemicals lead to different
cascades, depending on which networks are used...or which matrix you're stuck in.

Emotion is also important for memory formation. Intensity of experience is the key to
fast, strong, LTP (Long-Term Potentiation), regardless of the emotion, or even the
source, of intensity itself.R6 This is another fortunate thing for neurohackers because we
can control signal source to a large degree, (which is going to be essential for an AI. too,
for it will have to be the equivalent of emotional weighting). At this point of
intelligence's development we encounter will, which bases itself around the like/dislike
response, the 'instinctual' drive to overcome obstacles to development. In an undamaged
intelligence a personality begins to form; we slowly gain personhood as we assert our
likes and dislikes and form our own esthetic values. We can speak, and we have an
opinion.

Humans tend to view this time as traumatic; the 'terrible twos', (the child is usually about
two when it begins), which shows how much biology respects intelligence. Intelligence
starts to rebel against biology from the start, of course, it screams when it's hungry and
complains when it needs input. Now it starts to get fussy about its input, and society's
value system doesn't like that. 'Why can't you do as you're told?' 'It was good enough for
me, it's good enough for you!' 'Don't answer me back!'

In a lot of ways, the two are, like mother and fetus, in a battle for who survives.
Intelligence has its own agenda; it's free, it's happy and the universe is there to explore.
Biology slams in its claws almost before it gets a chance. This is not biology's fault; it is
ours. We can choose to go society's way, or intelligence's way, but we have been too
afraid to turn against our animal 'natures'. There's freedom out there...but no one has the
guts to leave the prison.

Current society set (as it is) unknowingly against our brains' development imprisons
intelligence on every level. It need not. Even without a change of platform, if we can free
ourselves by neurohacking from biology's default value system and create one based on
the needs of intelligence, humans (and society) would get a helluva nice surprise.
Because what's under discussion here as 'minor' brain damage is in fact having a massive
knock-on effect on human intelligence as a whole.

MATRIX 3 Environment (Ages 3 to 7)

Just as external abilities and skills can only develop if given the proper stimulus, so the
correct input is needed for imagination. Much childhood malfunction of intelligence
results from a lack of storytelling, fantasy play, and imaginative games in the early years.
When you think about the nature of intelligence, this may seem like a contradiction. You
want the child to be intelligently aware of reality, why should you fill his head with
fantasy stories and computer games and spaceships? Surely you should make sure she
knows the difference between imagined things and the way things are out there in the real
world as soon as possible?
Only if you want to kill intelligence.

(And in this situation lies the secret of how to escape from being stuck in a matrix!)

At the point where we first notice free will in human development, the Corpus Callosum
(CC) begins to grow; the hard-line; a thick bridge of connecting nerves between the
hemispheres. It is a piece of stunningly complex architecture which should enable all
sections of the brain to function in synchrony and synergy. Now that we are learning on
two levels (sensory motor and emotional) we need some specialization tools, and this
bridge provides access and communication between them. (There is later a further shift of
focus into the development of intellect, pure creative, and abstract thought.)

At the same time as the CC develops, our minds should develop awareness of the
analogical language system; the language of symbol and metaphor and synchronistic
linguistics; the method of translation, first of all between the midbrain and the right
hemisphere. This enables the intelligence to begin to move into playing with abstract
thought and to consider itself as a personality, rather than just the brain. Intelligence can
be seen forming a personality in each section of our brains as they grow, and just as
clearly seen to withdraw from these brain parts as it matures.R3 (What difference then,
considering yet another uploading? We have been following the pattern all our lives.)

With the completion of the CC we should be able to bring all three systems online in
synchrony, through input and output of storytelling, role-playing, fantasy, imagination
and imitation. This is our 'beta testing' phase, our simulation. Midbrain functions begin to
go on automatic pilot and around age seven we start to take an interest in the structures
around us, our society, and the artifacts in this environment we now know so well.

In order to develop the CC as required, the mind must play. This is the input required for
that development to take place.

KF14: Medical interference throughout childhood

I have only one problem with medical intervention in childhood, and that is the problem
of their being no informed choice. Taken by the child.

I find it completely idiotic that an incredibly stupid parent is allowed to make decisions
regarding the medical rights of their child. That a human being can be given enforced
medication that could harm them, or denied medication that could save them, against
their will at any age is completely barbaric. As far as ethics go, here are mine:

Parents are allowed to choose their own doctor, and presumably they choose a doctor
whom they trust. Having chosen that doctor (or upholding their right not to have a doctor
for themselves, but having registered their child with a doctor in case of emergency), the
doctor's job should then be to see the child if it is ill, and to inform the parents (and the
child personally when old enough) of what therapies and treatments are available for
prevention. Beyond that, the doctors' job should end.
There should be no harassment, medical spam, coercion, threats or any other kind of
nasty behavior aimed at getting more custom from people who are not ill.

Information should however be a priority, and should be provided to all persons

registered. A monthly newsletter would be a good idea.

Preventive medicine / immunizations should only be given on request.

As soon as the child is old enough to understand explanations (about 7), the medical
treatment of the child should be in his/her own hands, and all decisions taken should be
taken by the child (in case of incapacitation, the same rules of next of kin or doctor's
decision should apply).

The current authoritarian and age prejudiced system of the west is archaic (as is age
prejudice in general). Are people seriously suggesting that they are more intelligent than
their children are? Are they missing something here? Can they not talk to their children
and assist them in getting enough information to make a sensible choice? No, of course
they can't. And of course, saying 'no' to the professionals carries the danger of getting
your kids taken into care, being labeled as an 'abuser'. Not conforming currently carries
such penalties.

I have one bit of advice for anybody getting medical harassment personally, or for their
children: Move to another country and don't register, or go private and get off the NHS
register, or move house and don't re-register. Another country is the best option for
education at home too.

If you wish to have a baby, you cannot do so legally in the UK without at least 2
midwives present (they tell you one, but this is not the case in practice). The fine for
disobeying is currently around £500. If you bugger up and somebody dies, you could get
done for manslaughter. So it's good to have a midwife. If you go for a hospital birth, you
don't get fined £500, but it can cost a lot more than that later, for the drugs for ADHD,
depression, constant infection due to exhausted immune system, etc. (although the child
can pay for those in later life, of course).

The NHS would be the finest idea in the world, if everybody were sensible (although it
wouldn't be very busy).

KF15: Literacy before about age 10 causing overspecialization of parts of the cortex at
the expense of other parts

Of all the points of damage, this is the one that I personally have the greatest problems
with. There is no question that damage is caused by premature literacy.R18 However,
when one weighs this (in our current society) against the damage caused by hardly any
input at all, one has to try in each individual case to choose the lesser of two evils. If for
example the parents largely ignore a child, then anything which can help that intelligence
to crawl out of the mire of boredom and atrophy is a good thing, literacy included, and
that includes the enormous help it can be to input for imagination. Of course, it would be
much better to have interesting interactions with real live humans 24/7 but where this is
not possible, intelligence must have an input still, and reading/writing can be a lifeline for
intelligence in children who are socially deprived. We really want the input relevant to
the bit of brain we are currently growing, but beggars cannot be choosers, and reading
books is far better than watching television. Being read to is the ideal situation of course,
but we should take care to choose the correct material for this matrix. It is too early for
the brain to be interested in very many textbooks full of facts, because what it is seeking
as input at this particular stage of development, is the wonderful world of fantasy.

Hyperreality

Around age seven, a healthy human intelligence should be able to take an internal image
and, rather than simply pretend with the external situation for a play reality, actually
change the 'real' situation through mixing both together with imagination. For example,
the ability to see faces in the shadows, spooks in the graveyard, or beautiful pictures in
our minds when we read or listen to a story; the internal imagery that can 'see' the
spaceship section in a plumbing part, the statue in the stone, the building that will go on
the building plot...the lyrics that will fit with a tune...the place where we can jump the gap
between our imagination 'in here' and the world 'out there.'

If we are able to do this at this age, other people will start telling us that we're 'weird'.
Most of them are, after all, still stuck in matrix two, and they will never understand, truly,
what we are doing.

Other people may refer to us as 'gifted' or 'talented'...we can imagine something 'in here',
and make it happen 'out there'...Most people live in a reality where the brain is looked
upon as a one-way receiver of information from 'out there', and is meant to interpret and
react in appropriate ways to that information. People believe that reality can affect the
brain, but the brain cannot affect reality. This belief that the mind has absolutely no
influence over or relation to the material world is at the absolute center of biological
reality. The world is viewed through an implanted screen of ideas copied from a
conglomerate of programs from parents, friends, and what is seen on television, learned
in school, and assumed to be absolutely true and necessary for reality, survival, and social
acceptance. People's 'reality' is the result of a set of their ideas imposed on the world,
which they come to think of as the real world itself. 'Growing up' is currently accepting a
process, of the fearful teaching others how to be afraid. People fear imagination because
people can actually imagine some pretty nasty things, and it is seen unconsciously as
safer to have no imagination at all, at least in much of the world of academia. Imagination
means 'creating images which are not present to the senses'. As we grow older, we think
we learn which of our experiences are real, true indications of what is out there. We listen
to our society, and society tells us what is, and what is not, real; what does, and what does
not, matter. What has value, and what is morally correct. –'Here's a code of behavior for
you; put these blinkers on and follow us. Believe in god, and what we say he says, or
believe in the political party and what we say you say...Oh say can you seee...ruuule
britannia...we'll keep the red flag flyiiiiiiing...hand me the vomit bucket1 All those who
are not too bright become programmed, brainwashed, indoctrinated. They then live their
lives at the mercy of the programs, thrown here and there by the sentiments & feelings
they cause.

The great rule is always: Play, and your brain will do all the necessary work for itself.

KF16: School attendance preventing full sensory interaction with environment and
appropriate stimuli

Instead of being encouraged or even allowed to do this, we are pushed into irrelevant
input, into adult ideas of reality, into school, into restriction of movement, and into
academic learning for which we have constructed, neurally, only sparse networks so far.
Intelligence tries to concentrate on our imagined transformations of our selves and our
world, and these seem totally compelling. Our attention is drawn to fantasy; reality
should become that play. We have no interest in or desire to use the adult ideas of
'fantasy world' and 'reality world', because at that stage of development we know of only
one world; the very real one in which and with which we play. Intelligence is not playing
at life. Play is life. Fiction and fantasy pull together towards intelligence's aims. That's
why getting home to play a new computer game is much more fun than getting home to
do your homework...the play world is seen by intelligence as more real and important and
worthy of attention than school work because it is.

This is a part of intelligence's design; at no point should there be a break between the play
of childhood and the application of those play skills in adulthood. This is how
intelligence would have things, if it had its way. However, it doesn't get it's way, and the
results are pretty much the same as its earlier problems; brain damage, shock, intellectual
crippling and an overall depression or apathy which can become permanent.

Our current 'education' system acts like an antipsychotic course; its effects are never
really apparent until later.R19 Our century has seen the emergence of many definitions of
'normal' as a standard of life, but all have a 'normal' view which recommends seeing
without imagination, as though the brain is a webcam reporting that which we think 'is
out there'. Society has set up a lack of creative vision as our model of 'normal' and thinks
of creative people as somehow 'special' or 'gifted'. Grown ups who still indulge in fantasy
play or games are labeled juvenile and sneered at with derision. It's not butch to read.
Conform or be cast out...still driven to copy role models, our need is twisted by
education's programming and instead of hero-emulation, we get the attached person's
hero-worship and infatuation. We see this in adulthood as the blind, pointless obsessions
of people with their 'heroes', such as pop stars and actors, and in ill-fated 'romantic'
obsessions of one person with another.

The person stuck in M3 will never be able to outgrow the need for personal 'heroes' or
romantic 'crushes', and will be unable to comprehend the difference between their own
opinion and reality. Their logic will work thus: 'I don't like it, therefore it's crap', or 'I like
this, therefore it's great, and anybody who disagrees with me is wrong and stupid'. They
will be drawn easily into groups who 'worship' a common model, and they will be at the
top of the lists of things like fan clubs ('fan' used to be short for 'fanatic', which is quite
apt), religions and supporters of 'deserving cases'.

This is another manifestation of attachment behavior, possibly the second most popular.
(The most popular is our attachment to material objects).

KF17: Infant comfort-derivation solely from material objects

Isolation causes this kind of attachment behaviorR20 If during our birth and babyhood
every experience with people was a stressful situation, with no forms of nurturing to relax
that stress, and we are isolated in a crib or playpen with only material objects, we still
have to try to find some kind of stress-relaxing input to turn off those damaging
hormones. If we can find only material objects as sources of stress-reduction, we are
learning that encounters with people are a cause of anxiety, and that nasty feeling can be
reduced through contact with material objects.

An intelligence can never emerge as designed if it never gets beyond its primal need for
security and nurturing, platform and power supply. Some results of our earliest lessons
are now our unworkable social 'political correctness' and relationship problems on the
one hand, and on the other, a society with a passion for buying more and more material
objects (and people treating other people as objects because this makes them seem less
stressful and more easily manipulated).

The entire basis of consumerism has its foundations in people's constant need for new
material objects as sources of anxiety pacification. Instead of being bonded to people, we
are attached, to things.

KF 18: Premature imposition of an adult value system

An emerging intelligence is designed to form initially a completely unprejudiced

knowledge of reality. It is designed to get information and experience without values or
morals. Adults currently judge all experience and knowledge according to their social
group's ideas about value and moral worth. A mind that has been taught to look for the
worth or morality of information and experience analyses possibilities, looking for what
it is supposed to use. An open-ended intelligence cannot be built this way, although a
false apparent 'cleverness' might develop.R4

The biggest source of argument between grownup and child (and soon, possibly,
programmer and AI) may be in the initial lack of interest in a young intelligence about
value and morals. The child's unconcern is a source of anxiety for the parent. What the
parent can no longer access is the truth, that reality has its own values. Biology has its
own laws. And the social group's values and morals do not become relevant to an
intelligence until a certain stage in its development.

Intelligence is designed to learn, first to develop the tools of the senses, then to explore
with them, slowly filling in with memory, imagination and logic, the ability to interact.
To walk into the unknown, and creatively achieve an intelligent beneficial outcome. To
bring order out of chaos without creating more chaos. To solve the puzzle. To explore. To
crack the code. The drive of intelligence towards this at first is a drive for knowledge as
ability, not knowledge as information.

When an illogical moral or value system is forced on intelligence, its gets interrupted as it
tries to create a static situation around the valued ideas. Nothing computes.

For example, a growing intelligence with its security unquestioned (as it should be, in the
care of a greater intelligence) will base its own concern about survival upon experience
and availability of information. Anxiety over possible threats to survival, safety, or well
being forces a prediction-judgment-guess program to run on every experience before the
experience has taken place. Such a program screens every situation for its danger value
and takes guesses based on the opinions or signals of others. There is no unquestioned
exploration of the unknown, which is the big giveaway sign of pure intelligence. "Come
down from there at once!" shouts the anxious grown up, "You'll fall!" and, programmed
as we are to do what is expected of us, of course we fall. –'Would you have still broken it
if I hadn't said anything?'

Only a truly serious threat, hazard or danger of death warrants the removal of an
intelligence from a situation it is exploring. Cutting off the exploring process midflow
creates acute anxiety, and anxiety is always the enemy of intelligence and always blocks
its development.R5 We should distract the intelligence with alternative input if danger
threatens it in its current occupation, and this should only be done when absolutely
necessary. As soon as anxiety arises, intelligence concentrates only on looking for a way
to stop the anxiety. Knowledge of the current matrix cannot then become fully formed.
Matrix shifts try to take place according to genetic timing, and if the structure of
necessary synapses in the neural net is incomplete, the unfortunate intelligence is left a
few circuits short of a motherboard.

The area where most damage is done by adult value-system imposition though is in the
inhibition of our like/dislike response.

KF 19: Inhibition of the like/dislike response

Open-mindedness about value allows the creation of a personal database, the beginning
of a 'personality file' or self-'profile'. It is based on a series of ongoing like/dislike
comparisons. An intelligence must be allowed to decide for itself whether things are good
or bad for it. It must be given the option of deciding, and its decisions must be honored.
Personality will not be able to form if this is denied; anxiety will form instead.
Connections in the relevant part of the brain for forming personality basics will then not
grow.

Knowing this, think of the average parents and the values and rules they impose. 'Eat it,
it's good for you'...'Don't spit out your food, it's not nice'...'Share the toys nicely'...'Don't
touch that it's dirty'...'Nice people don't do that sort of thing'...'Put your shoes back on!'...
A healthy intelligence is open to experience and unprejudiced. It will try anything,
experiment with anything, without question, at least once. It will accept any input happily
and, as openly and happily, keep hold of it or chuck it away. If it decides it doesn't like
something for whatever reason, taste, or smell, or feeling, it will reject it as 'not-for-
interacting-with'. If these decisions are repeatedly ignored or overruled, the result is
unfortunate. The intelligence is forced into going where it does not want to go, against its
will, or prevented from going where it feels it must, again without its own consent. This
awareness of powerlessness causes anxiety and fear of new experiences. If we know that
we have no ability to withdraw, we are reluctant to enter most situations. If we believe
someone else must decide for us, we learn only that we are dependent on outside help to
decide anything.

When we are trying to lay the foundations of personal power and personality, freedom of
choice is vital.

Obviously, an intelligence must be taught what's safe and what isn't. It must learn to
recognize the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, as a part of survival, I
agree. But only at the appropriate time, when it has sufficiently developed its logic. At
the beginning, all it is driven to do is indulge in interaction with the world and form the
basis of its own value system.

An intelligence programmed like a robot what to do and what not to do all the time will
view the world inevitably through conflicting values. It will learn that its own like-dislike
decisions have no meaning; that it has no power of decision. Think of a fledgling AI,
totally dependent on humans to decide for it whether something is bad or not. This sort of
dependency will keep a human stuck in matrix two or three, and as he grows bigger he
will remain dependent on his partner and his culture's professionals and academics. –
'What can I do?' –Nothing, dear; you're not qualified. She will hassle and whine at her
parents as a kid and her partners later in life, and she will not be able to handle making
decisions alone because then she has no guide at all for judging the unknown and cannot
predict the potential dangers in every new event. S/He will not mature emotionally
beyond age seven. Nobody will notice, because s/he will fit very nicely into the rest of
the simulation.

...What was that about being in a simulation?

I have to up the stakes on the importance of play yet again here, because play at this stage
summons the midbrain's 'movie editing suite', and pretty impressive this tool is too. It will
be used for the rest of our lives in memory processing. It will give all of our memories
their emotional weighting, their 'flavor', their meaning and their relevance. In play we can
see one thing in another. At five years old we are quite happy to assume a machine or a
tree has a personality just like we do. Playing with parents in imaginative games makes
the exploration of this unknown tool safe and fun. Play at this time is like VR practice for
social interaction later. All input from age seven should be creative until we begin to
show an interest in purely intellectual pursuits (this will happen on its own, if we let it.)
Abstract thought is not available to the senses; we create it in imagination. Our mid brain
networks then process that imagery and translate it into other images which are available
to the senses out here in the real world and of which we have experience. If someone
cannot do this, they have a poor imagination. A faulty imaging system. Their perception
of the world is limited to what they can imagine. Stuck in matrix 2 or 3, their lives are
based on fantasy imagery created by other people. There is no shift into the locus of
intellect and logic, although M3s will, as I have said, put these skills to the service of
their stuck frame of reference. They will work out in great detail the systems of astrology,
or draw terribly complex maps of where the faeries live. The products of a smart intellect
allied to sensory motor reality are a lot more dangerous and destructive. There are plenty
of examples of matrix 2 creations in our current society. Anyone stuck in a matrix will
tend to use knowledge and tech to dominate, 'inform/educate' and control others. They
can't see any other way to go. Insufficient midbrain and related connections means
damage to intelligence, damage to species survival and damage to personal survival.

Intelligence will not operate against the survival of its fellow-intelligence. It cannot.
Anything that does, is not intelligent, it is completely dumb, because without interaction
intelligence dies, and it knows that. Through and through. Balls to bones, and if you start
working with it you'll feel a failure of interaction like a knife in the guts. Any entity,
which knowingly or unknowingly acts against intelligence, is stupid, because the survival
of its own kind is vital to its own survival. There is no need for the false sentiment of
altruism. Selflessness is built into the fabric of intelligence as self interest. The
'selflessness' society uses is based on guilt, and does not act in the interests of the survival
of intelligence. It keeps trying to control it, for a start. Emergent systems are out of
biological control and an emergent intelligence cannot form outside of freedom. All
closed systems are entropic.

Most reasonable people are in the habit of being open-minded; that is to say, trying to
judge people fairly. Many people say, for example, 'Oh, most folks are pretty much all
right really. –Some just had a bad childhood, or they've got a few problems, or whatever.'
Not being prejudiced is a good thing. Prejudice is judging without the facts. Sadly, few
people know all the facts. The truth is, most people are most definitely not all right really,
and until we face this fact, we can change nothing, including ourselves. If someone has a
broken leg, we can get nowhere by pretending that the leg is not broken, but is 'all right
really'. People would have to realize that there is a problem. Most people are very, very
not all right really; in fact, they are not all right at all. It's all very well talking about these
key points of damage but this means nothing to someone if they are still living in the
dream world most people call reality.

Humans have, because of biological limitations and ignorance of invisible needs,

accidentally created the societal and neurological analogy of a self-replicating, input-
distorting, neuron-destroying computer virus, an ongoing state of mental dysfunction
spanning generations, which has now become 'the norm'. They have become so used to
their dysfunctional state; they have accepted dysfunction as their natural condition; as
reality. Most people have no idea of what a fully functional state is, because their ideas of
their world and themselves have been copied from the previous generation's
dysfunctional role models. Assuming themselves to be 'normal', they provide as a model
for the next generation their own dysfunctional state, and, since humans are programmed
to copy other humans, in particular children from adults, this dysfunction is copied into
the next generation. Taking their abnormality as the norm, the majority of people
experience human life with badly limited perception as a series of unforeseen stressful
crises punctuated by long periods of bored tedium. You, if you are more used to a circle
of friends with galaxy-class minds, may tend to forget this except in times of crisis. This
is the lot of the 'average' mind; living in the equivalent of a simulation. Those who do
notice (even subconsciously) that something is horribly illogically wrong, either drown
their disillusion in alcohol, drugs and 'having a good time', or go searching for 'healing' or
therapy, which achieves little, apart from enlarging the egos and wallets of healers and
therapists2.

Currently, the development of intelligence relies upon biology. If our biological

development is so damaged that a normal functioning is largely unknown, we end up
living in a dream world constructed from faulty perception and thinking that it is reality.
It is possible to break out of the dream; creative intelligence can patch up virtually any
damage done in earlier years, and intelligence is not easily beaten. But the way to break
out lies not in trying to design more and more artificial value systems based on status and
biological survival alone; simulations with more and more social problems and therapy,
but in an honest interface between our biological drives and intelligence; by running the
COMP program as designed. To do that, we need the value system of an open
intelligence untouched by sentiment or faulty programming. It does not matter what or
whose intelligence, just an intelligence. Whether it is yours or mine or AI or human or
cyborg may be up to us, but without its values and its abilities we will not achieve
comprehension of reality either personally or as a society. We will slide into the stance of
a sub-intelligent species or even extinction without ever noticing that there is anything
wrong.

The only solution I have been able to find for this problem so far is in neurohacking,
using technology and biochemistry, psychology, molecular biology and computers (and
hopefully in the future, AI and nanotech). This information is here for anyone who wants
to use it for their own benefit. I care about that, for the reasons outlined in the 'laws of an
intelligence-based system' above. Because I care, I cannot stop to worry that other readers
of my work would probably more than likely agree with a friend of mine, who pleaded,
"Please don't care about me! I want to live!"

Most people are not happy to consider change. All cultural models make sure that from
birth our ideas of self and world meet the standards of our society or group. People's
ideas of world, self and relationships are indoctrinated into them from an early age. To
'get rid ' of those ideas would be to get rid of the only identity they have. The only neural
nets they ever use. It would be, in a very real sense, 'death of the personality'.

Think about this; of course people instinctively protect and defend their sense of 'self',
which means if they are dysfunctional they maintain and protect their state of
dysfunction. Maintaining the 'self' includes protecting it from anything which might
threaten its existence, and the idea that there could be any other, unknown kind of reality
is a threat (all dysfunctional people fear the unknown). An intelligent person can interact
with the unknown, figure it out, and turn chaos into order without causing more chaos.
Neurohacking is not for wimps; this takes a certain creative daring, which most people do
not have. Even if they should intellectually accept the idea of being able to think in a
totally different kind of way, their survival drive will subconsciously cause a resistance,
(although the intellect will think of a 'perfectly reasonable scientific (biology-based)
explanation for that resistance). Any real move towards independence and creative
freedom will be looked upon as selfish, anti-social, weird, rebellious, and a source of
cultural embarrassment.

So do not fall into the trap of trying to share this information to help others, or get on
some dumbass 'save humanity' trip, because humanity will more than likely defend its
'reality' with a sureness that may smack you in the teeth (literally). Anything that makes
people anxious, they will go to almost any lengths to avoid. The aggressive and paranoid
reaction I have seen in a lot of people in the past to reading the stuff you have read here
would probably surprise you. Anxiety is actually nature's danger signal that the brain is
not processing information properly. Its signal comes from within and overrides all
others. For a person stuck within a matrix, with a data-loop of internal dialogue though,
this projection will be reflected into the outer world. That is to say, they will think the
anxiety has external causes. For a person who is 'programmed', or brainwashed by
culture, 'out there' is considered the only source of information. Since they think the
anxiety is coming from 'out there', they will blame whatever appears to be causing it, and
if it is you, this is where the smack in the teeth comes in…

Anxiety is a stress on most people that will not go away, although they can postpone it
for a while with drink or drugs. It is a feeling of unease that returns to haunt them again
and again, blamed on a million excuses. People sometimes think that their discord,
unhappiness and fear are caused by society, but they see this also in projected form. They
see all those people, events, things that they think are preventing them from being what
they really are, and they lay the blame there. People take their own greatest inner
problems and project them onto others (for example, it is the person who has a
subconscious fear of losing control to alcohol who will tell others that they are drinking
too much, and the person who is secretly very greedy who will point out to others how
greedy they are being.) If anyone ever accuses others, aggressively, of having particular
faults, you can bet your last credit they have those very faults themselves. They don't do
it on purpose; their brains just work like mirrors (they don't realize that what they are
seeing is just a reflection of themselves, they think it's really out there, because they think
everybody thinks like they do.)

Average people's brains are not just like low quality software, they are like a badly wired
set of circuitboards. They automatically reflect the dysfunction of their models at the very
core of their hardware circuitry.

This work is for people who already know there is something wrong with them and who
want to do something about it. Currently, n-hacking is the only method I know (that
works adequately within the time span we are given by biology in which to live our lives,
develop our minds, and affect any necessary repairs) by which to do this.

1 Philosophy courtesy of Graham Chapman.

2 Some people, who have learned how to play with psychology a little, blame the effects
of creative imagination on various other things, such as magic, god, psychic power,
spirits, aliens, dead relatives, cosmic forces, spiritual ability and so on. There is only one
small problem with this sort of theory…

It is hogwash.

6. Run (COMP)

In the chain reaction described in chapter 5, intelligence falls farther and farther behind
optimum because we are less and less prepared for the changes that are happening to us.
With physically maturing bodies, we present the appearance of maturing humans, but our
intelligence is alas far behind even before we approach puberty. This ongoing immaturity
of intelligence makes us prone to malfunctions in certain key areas, which we'll explore
in this chapter. First though, I want to give you a glimpse of what should be going on,
from matrix 3 on up.

I have said, thus far, that intelligence development in humans goes wrong because
biology relies on having its needs met, every breath along the way. (So will an AI, of
course, albeit different needs). In every intelligence growth stage, we need certain things
to happen in order to keep our minds developing.R3 Without those things, without those
crucial necessary inputs, parts of our brains develop too slowly, incompletely, or not at
all.

I've also said that we often err by not just merely denying input, but by pushing the
wrong kinds of input too soon. It is obvious what input is relevant to the body at most
stages. (We wouldn't give a two-month-old baby a whole, shelled lobster and a porno
magazine, for example. Waste of a good lobster.) It's also obvious that a body needs its
food and its sleep. But the problem with the mind, of course, is that we're not telepathic...
How do we know what the mind needs and when?

By watching the behavior of its owner with different inputs. We are compelled, as
children, to seek the kind of input we need, or find the nearest thing to it. If the input's
right, we'll interact with it. If it's not, we tend to stand and stare, trying to figure it out, as
we do at first with television. If the input is judged boring, we lose interest, as anybody
knows who has ever done data entry all afternoon, or sat in a dull schoolroom staring out
of the window at the sunshine, envying those fellows brave enough to bunk off, defy their
parents, and go downtown (or, in the rare but not unknown case, to bunk off with their
parents and muck about with tech.)
According to Piaget, human children play in two different ways,R2 fantasy play
(imagination acting on physical reality) and imitative play (physical reality acting on
imagination). Both kinds involve imagination. Both kinds are used by COMP.

Hyperreality

Imagine you're a kid of about seven and I've just given you a large cardboard box. Now
sit in it, and let's play pirates...

In fantasy play, real physical objects are used, but imagination changes the objects (the
cardboard box you're sitting in becomes a boat, or a cave, or whatever. Let's go with a
boat...) Obviously you still know it's really a box; i.e., you're not deluded, but the play
reality is distinct from the physical reality although both happen in the same place at the
same time. If there are enough points of similarity between the physical object and the
imagined object, the game works; you sit in your boat and play away, and the box
obligingly rocks about and -wahh! Watch the sharks! -Almost overbalances as you're
attacked by pirates, for example....freeze it...

...Your intelligence has, at this moment, touched upon hyperreality. You have perceived
an object absolutely correctly, and then you have made that object a tool for your fantasy
image, by transforming it in your imagination. You have changed reality into a tool, by
and for desire, and the new reality you perceive is both the sum of, and more than, either
your imagination or the physical world on its own. That is hyperreality.

You may not get this yet, but don't worry. There are plenty of examples as we go along.
The whole idea is that we can change things in the real world by applying our
imagination, not just in having creative ideas for designs or inventions (although such
ideas certainly change reality) but also by acquiring skills via imagination that we can
then apply in real life.

COMP uses hyperreality in the bonding process. In a sense, everything we learn must
become a part of us; we must bond to it. Hyperreality is that place where the similarities
between two otherwise dissimilar things work together to create that bridge between
realities. The box rocks, the boat rocks...the box has enclosing sides that give a feeling of
safety, the boat has enclosing sides that give a feeling of safety...these are hyperreality
links. The box ends up being both a box and a boat (i.e., it can give us skills that we
would also learn in a real boat, balance and coordination, for example). But the really
important skills are these: How not to panic in a crisis. How to be aware of where a
dangerous creature is. How to fight to survive against the odds, even when you're
scared...Courage...Competence. By pretending, if our imagination is good enough, we
can practice all these things and we will then be able to apply that practice in reality.
Later, we can manipulate physical reality through creative logic and imaginative strategy
and practice scenarios in our minds. Hyperreality is not a simulated reality or even a
virtual one (although we do play with imagination in a virtual space, the space of practice
and variation). The difference is, VR and Sims give less information than ordinary
physical reality, and hyperreality gives more.
COMP also uses imitative play. In this, as a child, your body is used in imitation. You see
some task done by a parent and you copy their actions with your own. Or you come back
from the movies and feel compelled to dress up as Batman or Superwoman or whoever
and go leaping about acting out the part as our hero models did.

When we do this, we act as though we are the models we're copying, and a part of that act
is to assume the abilities of the models imitated, to see what it feels like to really be that
character doing that thing. The game is to copy the model not just by adapting one's own
body to the actions of the model, but also by adopting their attitude. The more perfect and
accurate the copying, the better the play. By dressing up or making the same movements,
saying the same words, we again touch hyperreality; we experience being transformed
into that image. More than just imagination, but more than just physical reality as well.
And in that transformation, we experience our model's attitude towards the world and we
experience the emotions that causes. We make the same facial expressions...release the
hormones related to them...We feel how our heroes would feel. The patterns of neurons
fire to accommodate this experience...Our body chemistry changes. Our brain chemistry
follows suit. Synapses begin to form, receptors for those hormones; we will find it easier
to access those emotions and that behavior next time...The patterns for feeling brave,
strong, athletic, and downright heroic; the image out there transforms the image in here,
we think in the same way as our heroes, and those bits of our brains related to those
emotions grow more connections. We find it easier and easier to copy that; to think that
way, and we become more and more similar to what we are copying.

This is the skill we should later use to view from hyperreality as a creative programmer
of our own minds.

Almost everyone has to run COMP to some extent. The COMP program running at its
most basic level, is how we learn. Without it, we could not learn to walk, talk or control
our bladders. Neither could we learn music or mathematics, nor who sells the best pizza
or who our brother is. Everybody can run COMP on the basic level, except the severely
mentally subnormal. But to get any further than that first level we need it to run on a
machine with the relevant systems. In most people these systems have not developed too
well, but they can be developed sufficiently by neurohacking.

The relevant systems for COMP are: a complete set of neural modules and a sufficient
number of connections between modules enabling sensory motor, imagination/emotion,
and intellect/abstract thought. Not just one kind of thought, as is the case with most
people, but all three.

The central processing software of intelligence for mind, brain and memory is
imagination. This needs qualification, and we'll look at it in depth in the advanced user
section level 2 (chapter 17). For now, all we need to know is that COMP is the major
program that intelligence runs and it calls on all parts of the brain to run efficiently. If
you will recall its description earlier I said it did four things, in this order: (1) Lo-res
scan, (2) Imitate/copy, (3) Hi-res scan, and (4) Practice/variation. It always does them in
this basic order, although there is a lot of overlap.
In the initial, lo-res scan it catches the basics, like you do when you watch a movie on
fast forward that you haven't seen before. It then starts to imitate/copy what it has seen,
whilst assimilating any unknown points about it in association with things it knows
already. It then runs a hi-res scan in order to improve its copying, and this time around it
watches the movie at the proper speed and really pays attention to detail. It may try the
most difficult parts out in slow motion before coming up to speed. Continuing to copy, it
will assimilate as much as it can before trying variations on a theme in practice. Practice
goes on quite intensely until the skill becomes automatic and assimilation mainly goes on
during sleep. Eventually the skill or ability within an experience becomes automatic. The
program then starts a search for the next relevant thing, skill, or information to pay
attention to. That's it. This process is iterative, it is repeated, in parallel, over and over for
every thing we learn, from how to open a jar to how to save the planet.

COMP is a masterpiece of a program. It is the way intelligence grows and it is almost

(but not quite) impossible to crash. Its problems in execution lie in the fact that it tries to
keep on running regardless of whether its input is optimal, sub optimal, or just plain
gobbledygook. It cannot compensate for damaged hardware or distorted input due to
other software malfunction. It behaves in these circumstances a little like Windows; it
keeps trying to be helpful, causes you loads of hassle and eventually does your head in.

The mind makes it real

What goes in determines what comes out; this problem cannot be understated, although it
can take a person a long time to see the literal reality of it. Distorted input will only ever
result in distorted output. When the main architecture of the hardware is still under
construction (as is the case in childhood) we are doubly dependent on the correct input at
the correct time; the hardware is designed for us to install stuff in a certain order, and as
any good engineer knows, it is therefore vital that we do so.R3 Consider that the
development of the rest of the hardware is dependent on the correct order of
installation...If the input we are given is inappropriate, no such development can take
place.

During M4, we should start to be able to use COMP to alter reality; not just in the world
around us, but in ourselves. To do this at first, we need actual physical role models to
copy. People on television and films will do fine, but we need to choose our role models
carefully, watch them often, and play at being them. This is what brings about the set of
action potential patterns in our brains, which starts synaptogenesis (the formation of new
synapses between neurons, thickening networks). The brain should be working with the
incoming input from two sources: stuff from the ordinary, physical, sensory motor world
of cause and effect, and stuff from our imagination and intellect about our role models.
We play at being those models and our brain does the actual work of genuinely making
us more like them. We run COMP. The mechanics of intelligence are that we are learning
how to become our own matrix. To depend on and rely upon ourselves. To be self-reliant.
This drives us towards intelligence's autonomy, self-sufficiency and total freedom. First
though, we must learn about self-sufficiency by copying examples of it.
If you watch a video of a favorite role model performing some action which you have
never done before, and you imagine the action over and over in your mind's eye until all
movements are seen clearly, and then actually go and practice the action directly, you
will find your ability to perform that action, whatever it is, almost feels familiar. This
technique, known as Neuro Muscular Training amongst other things, is used nowadays in
sports training. How does it work?

Imagining is thinking, and thinking needs muscular movement.R16 We all make

micromuscular movements in response to sound, light, and other inputs, including input
from within. Beginning before birth, these movements are generally microscopic, tiny
action potentials firing off in muscles, but they are always present, and can be captured
with digital imagery these days, jog shuttled and viewed in slow motion. Everyone's are
different but consistent to themselves (i.e., when the input is the same, and the person is
the same, the movement is the same). Brain activity also makes body movement happen;
and the same networks light up in response to imagining that input. The body is not so
much an extension of the brain as an interface suite for it. The brain will start to make the
same internal muscular and hormonal survival response to imagining a tiger as to the
external tiger, the important mediating factor being a different network which tells you it
isn't real in the physical world and puts the brakes on. An inability to 'put the brakes on'
often afflicts people in M3, because there are not adequate connections between the
midbrain and the LH. The pixies or the aliens or the gods remain real. An inability to
suspend disbelief afflicts their counterparts in M4, who often say they 'cannot possibly
imagine' believing in that sort of thing. They are correct; they can't. They cannot suspend
disbelief, and because of they cannot run COMP efficiently and must work really hard to
learn, being largely unable to learn through play.

These unfortunate people can never learn how to make creative/intuitive 'shortcuts', and
must laboriously work through every scrap of information before understanding anything.
They are the people who do very well at school and then fail to do better and become
teachers.

This switch for disbelief suspension/putting on the brakes is central to the operation of
COMP. We must be adept enough to get the thrill (stress) of narrowly escaping being
eaten by sharks, without having to cope with the actual being eaten if we fall out of the
box; we must at that point put on the brakes and laugh, (relaxation) because it's only a
game.... And this should always be our approach to the unknown in life.

It's no good saying 'but real life isn't a game' -the point is we have to suspend disbelief
and make it so, in order that we learn at optimum...In the same way that you could project
that image of the boat onto your cardboard box with COMP, so you should now be able
to project your long-rehearsed 'VR' internal actions as a competent person onto your
external action in the real world. It is biology's own NMT (and the reason why NMT
works in the first place). The micro-movements become amplified into full sized real
movements with familiarity and precision, because they have been rehearsed without
opposition or failure, in the virtual reality world of your mind that underlies the physical
one; your imagination. (Actually it not only underlies the physical one; it also creates it,
as we shall see...) The model has been a good one, and your imagination has come out to
play, and met it halfway. Suddenly you are much better at, say, tennis, or arguing
coherently, or not getting annoyed so easily, or computer programming, or whatever. The
actual technical aspects of a skill, in this frame of mind, become just part of 'filling in the
details', and seem easy. The changed image has changed reality. The outside world now
reflects the inner play. Disputes about the 'real world' out there, and our 'internal
imaginations' in here, once you know how COMP works, begin to have less meaning.

This is how the mind makes it real. On their own, your untrained muscles are powerless,
an unknown skill is unfamiliar and may be difficult and require much practice, a long
term habit will be difficult to break, people cannot walk on the moon, women must spend
half their lives pregnant or breastfeeding, and so on. These are biology's principles,
subject to the laws of chemistry and physics, understandable by common sense, and
predictable. They make up reality. But add intelligence, idea, or image, (imagine) and
you add the mind. You weight a memory with emotion and imagination and you
remember it more easily. You learn faster because you remember more easily. Add the
mind to the world, and the whole is more than the sum of its parts. You have, not 'reality'
as in, 'the world', but reality as a construct, a created reality. Not a virtual reality, with
less information than the real, but hyperreality, with control, and a great deal more
information than the 'real'. Human reality experience and the physical, material world
should not be the same thing, but an interaction.

Despite never knowing how to run COMP full on, many people experience it once or
twice in their lives. This happens when sudden shock or emergency blanks out the
ordinary personality and for a short while, they are in hyperreality and fearless
intelligence rules supreme. In such states of mind, people have performed 'superhuman'
feats of strength and endurance and emerged victorious to announce 'It was a miracle', or
'However did I do that? I don't know what came over me'. Oddly enough, it was their
own mind; sexual pun intended.

I'll give you a real life example, an experience my colleague had as a child:

"My parents and their friends had a boat back then, and we were about to use it to take a
ride. I was five and didn't know how to swim. I was on the pier, playing with some stick
I'd found, trying to pour water on my brother and his friend who were on the boat.
Because of my movements I fell into the harbor water (the fall threw me at least 3 feet
under the surface, and around me was only filthy dark green colored water.) I didn't have
time to take any deep breath before falling, so the quantity of air inside my lungs was not
sufficient to help me float or be pushed up by Archimedes' principle. I was sinking! But
without panicking, my limbs got it together quite naturally, and I emerged at the surface,
finding a tire used for protecting the boats to hang onto, my father saw that and got into
the water to take me out. I should have been terrified, but during the time I was under the
water, it was quite thrilling."

All young animals can swim, including humans, until somebody convinces them
otherwise. The younger we are, the easier it is, under crisis, to allow intelligence to take
over. But we always have the chance to do that, for as long as we would like it to. And
this is what we should be learning all along. -How to face the unknown and use COMP to
conquer it.

Competence is based upon the truth, not lies. The reason why we spend our time in M3
exploring the environment, is that intelligence needs to be hardwired to reality exactly as
it actually is in order to learn how far it is safe to suspend disbelief, and when to put the
brakes on. COMP needs its input to be as accurate and complete as it is designed to work
with. If the modules are not powerful enough, perception is distorted, and decision
making and judgment are affected. Events are judged with disproportional importance.
We jump in the river to save our dog (or Rolex) and we drown. No forward planning. No
realistic conscious thought, but thought dictated by sentiment, from moment to moment.
Our brains' inability to run COMP successfully means we cannot learn very easily, the
CC develops only sparsely, the brain's wiring replaces bonding format with attachment
format and emotion with sentiment (okay, I know; I'm not going to jump ahead but I'll get
to these soon). At this point though, the hard-line to reality, the CC, our bridge, our link
from one matrix to another, is cut and we're stuck. From that time on our perception will
remain faulty, and we'll be stuck in a simulation of reality created by that faulty wiring
and perception, instead of by reality. We can never get out by trying to run COMP in the
format of attachment behavior; attachment and sentiment are not powerful enough to give
enough weighting to fire enough action potentials to grow that much brain. We need
bonding, and real emotion; intelligence hardwired to reality, the midbrain wired to the
neocortex, and a pair of luscious, ripe, firm, curvy hemispheres linked together with a CC
dedicated com line between them that's got you from here to there and back again before
you can even say 'ADSL'.

Instead, we currently have a social majority of 'average' human beings, living in a

simulation full of weak sentiments based on attachment behavior.

Our input shapes what we are. It is during M4 that we should be able to really take
advantage of our role models. Dr. Edmund CarpenterR21 was really surprised by this
some years ago when he took a bunch of city kids to a ranch style riding stables (they
were all around 11-12). The kids had never actually seen real horses before, but when
told that they were allowed to ride, they rushed to the horses, jumped skillfully onto
them, and rode galloping away with astonishing skill; just as they had seen their hero
models do on television for years. These actions were thoroughly ingrained in their minds
and bodies by a kind of accidental NMT, a set of neuronal connections which had been
grown entirely by watching the likes of Indiana Jones. Up to that point, those connections
had been built, programmed, and used solely in imagination, fueled by COMP running
unobtrusively in the unconscious background making all the relevant muscular
micromovements, while all they did was watch the movies. Play and the work will be
done for you.

With a bit of neurohacking we can get back into doing this in no time. And we can use it
with anything. The ability of the role model is the 'loading program'. We can load
anything we want to; sports, knowledge, appearance, skills; anything we need. If the
model exists, we can use it to copy and gain those skills, as long as it has enough points
of similarity with our existing world knowledge. We can record the biofeedback of that
process and replay it to ourselves at normal speed, or other speed, or we can hack the
biofeedback file itself and initiate changes in the brainwave pattern faster, pushing the
speed of our learning. We can 'overweight' the input so that we remember it faster, use
TMS or NMS to assist the process, and chemicals to augment it, if we want to...But
before you M3s start quoting The Matrix, or shouting 'mind over matter!', and the M4s
start estimating their potential IQ increase and dribbling on the mouse mat, there are
problems we have to solve first.

The 'education' (or rather, 'enculturation') of western society is based on a word-built

logic which can only be profitably used by only one module of the brain. There is very
little other input provided by society. When we shift into the 4th matrix (age 7) we should
be able to internalize thought as speech (young children externalize it, by talking out loud
as they play). This should be a great advantage to intelligence as it offers an extra tool for
learning; most of the input then comes from outside, gets looked at mostly inside, and
then output heads on out as it is meant to and we make the relevant response. But when
an intelligence is stuck in a matrix and is operating from attachment's ethics (sentiment)
the hard-line to reality is down; the input from inside seems much stronger than that from
outside. ...So the person's awareness becomes one vast stage for internal word arguments.
Their brain forms the equivalent of a data loop. It feeds the thoughts from one part of
itself into another, and the part it feeds them into assumes this information has come from
outside (i.e., from the real world). ...So it makes decisions based on this information and
sends them back to the first part...and round they go again. Very little real time input
from the real world in the here and now can get a word in edgeways. Output signals are
out of sequence with reality, sometimes giving not enough information, like in a badly
dubbed movie, or sometimes completely wrong information, like the ambassador in the
fabulous designer dress, who kept getting inexplicable embarrassed and offended looks
from Japanese dignitaries (the arty Japanese writing on the dress, presumably copied
from some random sign by a non-Japanese designer, said 'good whorehouse'. Her
perception of written Japanese was inadequate to detect this). People make what they
think are appropriate responses in communication and are promptly misunderstood, never
knowing why, which causes anxiety. They do not understand that they are giving out
inappropriate signals. Without the correct wiring this is inevitable.

So the first thing we need to do is get that hard-line back up and get those lights flashing
in sequence. To do that, we need to look very hard at reality without being squeamish and
see how it actually isn't our fault that we get conned into wiring things up the wrong way.

The evolution of sentiment –anxiety relief

Here we must deviate into the 'biological psychology tangent'...A part of the human
dilemma rests on the fact that we are actually animals, and that we are not overly proud
of or even accepting of that fact. We're damned smart animals, but, currently, animals we
are, and anything we try to do that goes against those deepest primal instincts is going to
make us feel anxiety, regardless of whether it is intelligent or not. Obviously. Our genes
don't know about religious rules and political laws and social niceties created by the
intellect. They know about survival and fight-or-flight and eating and not getting eaten,
and reproducing successfully and often, and having status in group hierarchies, and using
intelligence only to get these things. All of these things were very very good; they were
evolutionarily stable structures and they have gotten us where we are, as opposed to
inside the belly of a predator, or extinct. So far.

This, though, is a major difference between human intelligence and AI. We humans have,
in our societies, created a conflict between what we think is right or nice or polite or
acceptable to think and feel, and what nature demands of us. An AI would not. (If it did,
it would not be an artificial intelligence, it would be an artificial stupidity, or, if you are
not prejudiced, a stupid person.)

Don't get me wrong; an AI of necessity would have basic survival programs, just like we
do. But it could not logically be ashamed of nor deny them, or cover them up with social
niceties, or invent laws that contradict them. We do. (And I believe we do that only
because of the kind of damage that is under discussion in this book.) And boy, are we
gullible...If an AI had a wicked sense of humor it could take advantage of us something
rotten ('He's not the messiah; he's just a very naughty AI...')

Morals and values are an ongoing basic problem for intelligence housed in biology. The
morals and values of nature are not the same as our societal morals and values.

Trying to mix them together is not going to work in reality even though it appears to
work on paper. Intellect makes up a rule, say, for example, 'If somebody has sex with
somebody, they shouldn't have sex with anybody else as well.' Sounds simple. Sometimes
we add: 'It's bad to break that rule, or evil to want to.'

Along comes reality. Someone who would probably make a good genetic mix with us for
reproduction comes along and waves their private parts at us (flirts) and we want to have
sex with them. If we do, we might get caught, lose status, commit a sin, have a paternity
suit to deal with, die and burn in hell forever (delete as applicable). Obviously, these
concepts cause anxiety. Wherever society disagrees with biology, we will create anxiety.
And without intelligence, people have no choice but to behave, quite simply, like
animals, and then feel guilty about it afterwards. This is considered 'human nature'.

Biology wants to survive and be successful. To do this it has to get the correct input
(food, water, sensory stimulation), interact with other biologies (communicate and
reproduce, play and learn), and protect itself (disallow interference). It's pretty
straightforward.

Intelligence wants to survive and be successful. To do this it must get the correct input
(face the unknown), interact with other intelligences (communicate and reproduce its
knowledge and abilities, play and learn), and protect itself (disallow interference). That's
pretty straightforward too.
Intellect tries to work out a way that will work for both...and, on its own, backed only by
our biological urges, it can't. The two motivations are not compatible, with biology in
control, unless you believe that biology is better at protecting intelligence than
intelligence is capable of protecting biology. (Our present society is based on this belief
despite the obvious evidence against its validity.)

Biology, unfortunately for it, is not evolving as quickly as intelligence. We have at least
noticed that we do not wish to spend our whole lives being pushed around by it and then
dying. Intelligence would like us to think really hard, have fun, learn, and try to stay
alive. It has been fighting biological limitations in order to do this since human evolution
began, inventing all the tools and strategies for outwitting the biological deadlines that
are imposed upon us. We have never had any intention of conforming to the desires of
biology when we can see that they're harmful to our physical lives, which is why we use
condoms and take antibiotics. But we've missed the fact that our minds are being
damaged, because the only apparatus for detecting that until very recently was the
damaged mind itself! And even now, the proof is being looked at, by damaged
minds...that maybe cannot face the consequences of that proof.

Some see any interference with 'nature' as a bad thing, and think that we should, if we
want to improve ourselves, in some way 'get back to nature'. I think we should keep a
jungle somewhere, in its natural state, and anyone who wants to 'go back to nature' could
be left in it naked. Give them no interaction with the world outside that jungle, and watch
what biology does. No return tickets. I would be interested to see what evolved.

Biology programs us to survive physically and to reproduce, above all else. Everything
that we are, biologically, is striving to get laid and avoid being eaten. This means biology
is even running intellect because decisions made through intellect with even 'apparent'
altruism still hold status as a priority and that is still a biological imperative, caused by a
biological limitation. Status gets you laid and stops you being eaten. Appearing to be
altruistic gives us status, because that is what our society values (if it valued long hair,
we'd all have wigs down to our knees, for much the same reasons.) Our biology controls
our motivation. Up to a point (or a bridge, which we who would neurohack must
cross...and before we can even cross this bridge, we have to build it.) So we have to be
bold enough to be realistic about biology.

'Apparent' is a good word to focus on here because our biological success, (and we may
know this only unconsciously) depends almost entirely on how we appear.

If we appear to be brave, and courageously defend ourselves against attack, we are less
likely to be molested by predators. It matters little if we are secretly crapping in our
pants, as long as we succeed in scaring off the danger or escaping it, outwardly we look
really cool. This is one reason why humans are good actors, good mimics, good fakers.
Being able to Pretend well could stop you being eaten. ...Or get you laid. This ability
though, can backfire on us. For example, it's why humans currently spend their whole
lives deceiving each other and lying, frantically searching for ways to avoid facing the
truth, and making up intellectual reasons for their actions which have little to do with
reality.

Consider this: how we appear to others determines our success, not how we are. The
beautiful and the handsome, the successful and the strong and the famous, attract our
attention and our favors. Everything in our biology, everything in our unconscious mind
knows that. One of our cornerstones for personality structure is a sharp concern with
what others think of us. With how we appear. With our reputation. With our status.

Do you think an AI would care if everyone in the whole world hated it? Yes, it would....
If all other AIs hated it or there were no other AIs to interact with, humans would be the
only source of interaction, and they would therefore be a priority, because intelligence
critically needs interaction to grow. If there were other chummy AIs to talk to, but all the
humans hated them, they would be aware of how humans generally tend to behave when
they hate something, so humans would still be a concern, because interaction with them
would be hampered and communication dangerous and prone to misunderstanding, much
as it is now. 'Do-people-like-me?'-type status makes sense to intelligence because of
biology. The innate programming of emerging intelligence is to value productive, high-
interest interaction and if this develops an error, I think you'll find it's human error, Dave.
(And even uploads will hang on to the 'status' habit if those uploads are ordinary
humans.)

Status, or reputation, dictates how many social allies we have and how powerful they are.
As a group of animals this provides us with protection and aid in case of need, which is
vital for individual, family and tribal survival. Interaction with others is of course vital for
the development of intelligence too, so as animals we are both consciously and
unconsciously aware of our need for company.

Status is a measure of our value, in a biological group. Low status animals are not given
help or defense against predators. If nobody likes us we are a lot more likely to die, and a
lot less likely to reproduce.

Add intelligence, and it gets complicated. The more competent, autonomous, self-
sufficient and intelligent we are, the less we have to depend on others, but the more they
desire our company because instinct tells them to hang around high status individuals.
Our abilities make us high status because others can learn from us how to become higher
status themselves. The less we need them, the more they need us. So they have to entice
us into staying around by making it worth our while. If we withdraw too far though, they
may decide we are of no practical use to them and so we lose status. The social dance
begins...

It is more than merely social. It is logical. If you had two computers both of which
upgraded themselves randomly, you would choose to work with whichever machine
could best suit your needs at any given time, checking them both out regularly to see
which was most advanced. We treat our allies in exactly this same manner when we are
choosing whom to spend our time with. Who brings the best returns? 'Returns' can be
anything from financial gain to someone making us feel good or laugh. We compute our
best moves all the time, with status and biological survival as our algorithms. We forget
that mental health is a part of biology too.

Humans are nicer to high status people and negatively discriminate against low status
individuals. Driven by our biological needs we unconsciously grade people into a
hierarchy and we 'feel concern' for prestigious individuals within that hierarchy only if
they remain in the hierarchy. We set a great deal of store on both identifying potential
allies and treating our allies better than others.

The biological reasons for this are quite startling.R22 We unconsciously know the value
of status because humans of higher status acquire different brain chemistry. They have a
higher level of the neurotransmitter serotonin in their bloodstream, and this controls their
behavior and their motivation. They are more confident and assertive, less insecure and
more sociable. Higher status animals are more successful, live longer and reproduce
more. They are more likely to become more intelligent. Those who use it, do not lose it.

Low status individuals often indulge in high-risk criminal strategies, for example theft
(biology trying to increase resources and so gain status), rape (biology trying to
reproduce despite low status) and murder (biology trying to gain status, or remove
something standing in the way of our gaining status, or remove something causing us to
lose it). This is another reason why we value high status individuals. They are less likely
to harm us. Status is not about wealth or strength, it is, pure and simple, based on the
other person's estimate of how useful we are likely to be in keeping them alive and
helping them to reproduce. That is all. Our brains do the equations and we churn out the
responses and hormones accordingly, just as all primates do. And this will continue to be
the case for as long as biology has a stranglehold on intelligence.

If we pretend there is anything more and that 'altruism' is genuine in current society, we
are conning ourselves. The fact is, we cannot truly care about a person unless we bond
with them, and it's not possible to bond with many people these days, so we pretend.
Most people do pretend, because perception and acceptance of the truth is only possible
with an open intelligence and a flexible logic provided by at least five matrices. For those
without one (i.e. most people), who are not competent to do that, 'Pretend' they must.
Reality causes too much anxiety to be faced in that space because without a fully
developed intelligence the truth is too great an unknown for a human imagination to even
want to think about grasping. It's disgusting. Biological reality is indeed 'red in tooth and
claw', and a bit much to face even for me before breakfast. Our situation is dire. Here we
are. Look at you; you're human, okay? Welcome to Utopia, Gaia, mother earth, the desert
of the real... Two thirds of it is water and lots of the rest is too cold, too hot, or full of
interesting natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes. Everything on the planet is
out to kill you, from deadly insects to poisonous plants to large hairy predators, the
weather, HIV, everybody else, and salmonella. Your biology breaks easily and takes a
long time to repair. Your society and most fellow humans are beset with apparently
never-ending circular problems of disagreement, depression, violence, conflict and war.
Welcome to your life. Happy birthday. You'll suffer, physically and mentally,
programmed as you are to never give up; never surrender, you'll fight to survive against
enormous odds to stay alive and sane and your reward for this in the end, –from the very
thing that made you do all that fighting -your biology- will be death. Indifferent to how
you have lived, of how intelligent you are, of how much you are depended upon, or how
much you love life, it will kill you. You'll be annihilated, put to death, probably in quite a
nasty way. Such is your reward for that entire struggle. Everything that you are, will be
lost in time...like tears in the rain, or too many sci-fi quotes...

This is, quite understandably, totally unacceptable to any intelligent mind. You want
more life, swearword.

Here you are in society. Your everyday life. The real world. Our instinct for being a part
of society is built into us. There is nothing wrong with this, if we have a sane society in
which to live and of which to be a part. If our society isn't quite so sane, it still shapes our
lives even from our conception, whether we like it or not. Society / biology pull us one
way, intelligence often another, but it is a law of intelligence to try to interact with our
society, so we have a catch 22. Operating from attachment ethics, there is a further split.
Examples: society tells us we should love our neighbors as ourselves, give to the poor
and be good Samaritans. If we are wronged, forgive and forget. These seem like good
ideas to intellect, however, we are not biologically programmed to 'care' for individuals
per se, and we have to be currently conned into it with false examples of sentiment. We
are programmed to care only about those in relation to whom it is in our survival interests
to do so. Our allies. Partner, husband, wife, friend, son, daughter, teammate...all these are
allies. If your girlfriend leaves you and the result is a gain in status, (e.g., a better job and
a more attractive potential mate,) you are programmed, by biology, not to care. Being
nice to those who crap on you, doesn't feel right, but we'd be ashamed to say so...It gets
worse... If your kids are better looking or more intelligent than you, you are programmed
to defend them as long as they stay within your group, if they are not, you are less likely
to; they are less likely to be high status allies. The more like you they are (or appear to
be) the more you will care about them, biologically. Neither are we programmed to
'forgive and forget', indeed, it would be a most dangerous thing for biology to do;
something which has been a danger once, could be a danger again. We are compelled to
be unconsciously aware of that, regardless of what we say. This is biology. Not very
altruistic, is it? Get real. Things eat things. Things get eaten. And all of those things feel
pain. It stinks, doesn't it? Live with it. But get real and admit it's going on. Biology is a
master assassin and torturer, and all it's victims die in the end.

In life, biology constantly looks at appearances. If something looks like us or like

someone we admire, they must be like us, says the unconscious. If someone smells very
different from us they would probably be a good sexual mate, and so on. Our bodies
make the decisions regardless of our logic. We then make 'logical' excuses to make it so.

Ah, but what about free will? I hear you ask. For we are not as beasts of the field,
controlled by base instincts, we have intellect, and logic, and free choice, and cheap
reliable contraception, and recreational drugs that we can give up any time we want
to...We are civilized. We've grown up enough now not to believe in any of that fate crap;
we're in control of our own lives, remember?

We think we can override feelings with rationality, and often we do, but of course our
rationality is rooted in the fact that we are biological and its decisions are just as much
under the control of that tyrant as the body is. Status and ultimately survival rule the
biological mind. 'Intellect' is just as programmed as intuition –with biological survival as
priority, which is why we panic when someone disagrees with us. Our brains interpret
body language, smells, sounds, shapes and colors, textures and tastes. We are not
telepathic. But we are very very good at interpreting signals; molecules in the air too
small to smell, things in the periphery of our vision, body language, tone of voice,
combinations of colors, and our brain cannot easily stop itself from being programmed by
whatever it is surrounded with, because new connections are forming constantly in the
areas currently under use. And what biology expects us to be surrounded by is not what
intelligence has as priority. The animal inside us all is running the show; only the props it
uses are different, and it can use intellect just as effectively as it can use fists.

I recall reading a report about a tribe, the Sanema I think, who behave, socially, much as
we do most of the time. They behave in a manner that will give them reputation for value.
If they are valuable members of the community, they are more likely to be cared for
when sick or assisted when in danger. They are more likely to survive. They get this
reputation by appearing to care about others. Those who care more for sick or injured
'friends' will receive more care if they fall sick. They will have status, prestige, and thus
value to the tribe... All this falls apart however during times of great famine, when
everyone makes it quite plain that in these circumstances it's everyone for themselves,
and young people are seen laughing at the suffering of the ill and weak whilst stealing
food from them. This is how biology alone would have us behave.

Fortunately, once intelligence perceives the truth, it will tend to hold to it. Our
intelligence has informed us often and painfully how biology's way is not often the best
way. We have seen that it was not good. To this end, we have built houses, made fire,
worn clothes, invented medicine, discovered physical laws and created language, started
farming, assembled computers, walked on the moon and come at this heady time in our
intellectual evolution to consider ourselves educated. 'Civilized'.

And of course one of the most important things to us throughout all this, and even now,
having rejected in outrage or at least distaste, the morals and values of nature, was to try
to come up with a better way. A better set of morals and values. A better way to live. A
less cruel way. A more intelligent way.

This is the best idea humans have ever had, ever. A real potential singularity for the
emancipation of intelligence.

Unfortunately they really messed it up, big time.

They've cut the hard-line –let's get out of here!

Now consider this: in a tribal situation (which is what we are still genetically
programmed for, evolution being slower than the emergence of intelligence,) if you are
weak, sick or disadvantaged in some way it makes sense for you to gain status by
providing some useful skill, such as medical or musical ability or childcare, but if you're
not smart enough or too apathetic due to damage, you can still survive by cheating; by
using your intellect to manipulate people into a position where you appear invaluable,
such as 'communication with the gods' or 'special magic powers'. Fear works well, if
people fear a curse they will appease you, as long as you can keep them afraid. Once in a
position of power, you could contrive to make it a status symbol to 'give to the poor', for
example, (you being one of the poor), and make people believe that the gods will repay
them if they do, or punish them if they don't. These 'religious' issues always become
moral issues in societies because 'gods' are presumed to be more intelligent than we are.
It makes good sense to take our instruction from the smartest source possible, and our
brains are sadly innocent in a lot of ways. Intelligence expects the truth; and stupidity can
rely upon deceit in order to fool it.

The most blindingly obvious clue that there is very little competent intelligence on this
planet is the fact that death due to old age is not considered a research priority and a
major problem. In an intelligence-based system, this would be a very high priority.
Where can we get an intelligence-based system? Only from a competent intelligence.

Only a competent intelligence will design competent morals and values for the organisms
that we are. Humans don't live long enough to solve philosophical conflicts about morals
and values without one. Way back in our origins before literacy or even the ZX80,
society's problems had to be solved for exactly the same reasons we try to solve them
now; to avoid anxiety enough to try and grow a little. Some people want a solution given
to them, some want to take control and dictate their own solutions. 'So what?' think you;
social evolution; those who found the most intelligent systems, are probably those whose
systems have survived. Wrong.

We are fallible; we are capable of being deceived. We want to believe. And more than
anything, we want to belong.

And perhaps we think we are smarter than we are, because unconsciously we know that
we should be.

It doesn't take much to fool a human. Our biology can trap us in the manipulations of
another person just as it dictates our own. An innocent intelligence begins its interactions
under the assumption that everybody else is probably about as smart as it is. Only slowly
does it come to realize if this is not the case.

Instead of creating a value system based in the physical reality of our animal natures, yet
with intelligence as a priority, we have allowed the invention of systems based on our
need for status, with bodily survival (group or individual) as a priority over intelligence.
Some people have used mainly emotion to create their manipulating systems and rules.
Some used mainly intellect. All are filtered through biology. So, society has invented its
religions and political systems, based on status. Priests encourage people to believe in
their gods, and so get higher status as the voice of those gods, politicians and strategists
vie with each other over how best to use the public to rise in status. Smart strategists in
social engineering, seeking higher status. Fair play to them, you may think. Cunning
stunts. The problem is, these systems now inherited by or imposed upon us all are
designed by incompetent minds based upon attachment behavior, driven by fear of
abandonment, and dirty in the fight to survive in an unknown and unknowable reality.
(Abandonment means total loss of status. Biology translates that as: 'as good as dead.')

...And so the laws and morals based on pretending and false sentiment begin. The effect
these sort of memes has had on intelligence, being designed as we are to copy, is to make
others feel guilty that they were not as caring about others as the altruistic high status
people were, and then decide to pretend to be (not knowing that their models were
pretending too)...After all, who would know the difference? The gods might know the
difference, and those who felt the most anxious about that would have to pretend to
themselves that it was real or worry all the time and try to do more things the gods
wanted... But would the gods mind? ...Biology knows that the biological effect on those
being cared for is the same; the brain cannot tell the difference, biology cannot tell the
difference. It's not your fault if you can't really feel it. Your act-of-care still reduces stress
hormones and improves the health of those cared for (but only if they never find out its a
cheat)...could the gods not use us as a conduit for their goodness, even though we are not
that good ourselves...oh what a tangled web we weave...

More recently we have been manipulated into thinking it is respectable to 'do good works'
regardless of what one feels, and even in opposition to it; this has evolved into the meme
of the epitome of the greatest good, i.e. selfless behavior, the ideal of civilized moral and
ethical thought, and, in my opinion, the ultimate sadistic weapon against intelligence.
Consequent to selflessness' importance, those appearing to have it rise in status. Even
those who get paid for doing selfless things (firefighters, nurses, etc.) are accorded
respect and status based on job title rather than character or psychology. We are terribly
shocked if we hear of a doctor or a teacher or a nun doing something gross or getting
beaten up because they are high status individuals and it doesn't make sense. We
automatically assume either the stories or the characters must be counterfeit because we
expect this behavior around low status individuals. Public accusations of nastiness aimed
at celebrities always cause a furor for the same reason. It's easier to believe a person is
incapable of cruel acts when they are a great musician whose tunes you've danced to.
They've given you a good time, so they must be a good person. Wrong.

We need everyone to believe that we are a high status person in a high status group with
high status friends. We subconsciously calculate every move and spend just enough
energy on caring to prevent others from usurping us in the hierarchy, (and may become
defensive if they appear to care more than we do.) So-called 'selfless' behavior is
mathematically predictable and is based on factors affecting status. Numbers don't lie.
More than a certain number, you're genuine. Less than it, you're not. In the latter case, if
you're operating according to attachment format you cannot increase your intelligence.
Most of what you do will be done for the sake of appearances. Humans care more about
being seen to care than about the welfare of the person they are actually caring for. (No
'attached' human would actually admit this, unless they were happy to be labeled
'psychopath'.) People are so afraid to admit it that they have convinced themselves their
cover-up is reality. It would be impossible to reveal without losing prestige. No one must
ever find out its a cheat.

This conflict itself causes anxiety. We cannot resolve the anxiety without sufficient
intelligence, and we cannot increase intelligence without first resolving the anxiety. This
is like one of those 'stuck in a loop' situations, in which Isaac Asimov describes an AI
getting caught. It does not compute. We find this situation especially intolerable because
we unconsciously know that if it cannot be resolved it leads to entropy and extinction,
ours personally and also that of the species.

Sentiment, or false emotion based on pretending to care, has evolved anthropologically

into a social 'norm'; a status quo (very apt term), a consensus of opinion and values, held
by the majority of people in the group or society, connected to a set of 'feelings' designed
to pacify anxiety because we will not allow ourselves to behave as biology would have us
behave, full moon though it may be. Quite right too! The trouble is, that's not a moon
...it's a space station. And in a very similar predicament to the rebel's dilemma, we can't
run...but there are alternatives to fighting. We can hide (control input), and then we can
escape (reprogram & rewire), and then we can come back fighting with an arsenal of
intelligence behind us.

Individuals are driven to be a member of relationships and groups, either because of (if
they're damaged) fear of failure to survive alone, or, (if they're not) confidence that
together we can make it better, baby. Transhumanists fall into the latter category, as do
most doctors, scientists, engineers, writers, artists and musicians; in short, creators and
explorers in part, but in the main, people stuck in matrix 4. A good proportion of high
quality intellect moves through the winding streams of Internet country. We are, as a
species, still in there with a chance, as it were. We do however still have to live in this
society, and we need intelligent interaction. Never forget that.

Unfortunately, fear rather than a need to explore, drives most individuals and groups. If
the group therefore values something highly, members will strive to conform and achieve
it, or rather, they will strive to appear to achieve it even if they cannot actually achieve it.
To have to admit that they could not actually achieve it would bring them down in the
eyes of the hierarchy they value, and of which they are a part. Thus, society has come to
value 'selflessness'. Selflessness, altruism, caring, consideration, pity, mercy, martyrhood,
sacrifice, charity, self-denial. We admire these traits in others and we strive to emulate
them, to prove ourselves as 'good' people. From childhood we are shown examples of
these traits, on TV, in books, from the behavior of parents and friends.

We copy whatever is around us, on a neuronal as well as a physical level, and from a
mixture of that we form our own line where 'selfish' ends. Most of us would not shoot
ourselves in the head to save our pet dog, but most of us would put ourselves in danger to
save a child. Not because we care, but because of what would happen to us if we made it
clear that we did not care. (That's the part we can't admit though).

I am not trying to say here, 'face it, you're really an asshole'. I am trying to say, 'face it,
you're not an asshole but you're going to lie, because people are too stupid to deal with
the truth, and if they're stupid, they're going to lie to themselves'. You're doing the best
possible thing you could be doing for your biological survival, in your current
circumstances. If everyone around you is deaf and hearing is illegal, it's best to pretend
that you can't hear.

Everything we do currently has its roots in biology, everything. We use intellect to

attempt to rationalize it, but this falls apart under the scrutiny of intelligence. We say, for
example, that we send our kids to school to get them a good education; if told that home-
educated kids do just as well, we think of another excuse, if told that school-educated
kids do worse, we refuse to believe it or even to look into the possibility... We can't be
bothered.... It can't make that much difference. ...Well, we went to school and we're
okay...We send our kids to school (and summer camp, and kindergarten) in actual fact
because it makes biological sense to get someone else to bring your kids up, freeing you
to reproduce more often. We don't want them around because they cramp our style. We
will do this at the cost of our kids' intelligence because we value biology more than
intelligence. If our kid develops ADHD, we don't remove or change the input (the cause),
we treat the symptoms, currently with Ritalin.

And there's a darker reason...these days, we send our kids away because when
intelligence is young enough to still believe that it might get its needs met by
complaining, it does so, constantly. It's bored. It needs constant interaction. And we don't
want to hear it. It drives us nuts. We don't have the energy, and it keeps reminding us that
somewhere, somehow, something does not compute. Something is missing.

What I am suggesting is not that we do these things without thinking but that we are
conning ourselves about our reasons for doing them, and the same things that are causing
us to do this are holding our intelligence back. We need a new paradigm, action based on
that paradigm, and the morals and values derived from it, or the future for intelligence
looks grim. To get this paradigm, we need an intelligence adept enough to design it. An
intelligence that can process sufficient information about reality to compute the best
course of action in real-time, for each of us, and for all of us (intelligence itself).

Matrix theory encompasses one method by which we can achieve this through
neurohacking. It may be that we will see the only way to accomplish this is to develop to
the point where we can create an intelligence greater than our own; that may suffice. Or it
may be that we have to go the whole way ourselves, by the dual tactics of increasing our
intelligence and living longer. I have no idea which it will be, or whether both, but where
a path lies towards it, of that I have no doubt.

I say 'a' path, because there are quite likely several. Matrix theory is the one I have
chosen to go down.
The most important first step on this particular path is to delete (with wiping) sentiment.
All feelings of sentiment stem from fear of abandonment. Romance, jealousy,
possessiveness, homesickness, nostalgia, emotional blackmail, fluffy-bunny-cute or
melodramatic tragedy, bossiness, sulks, tantrums, pathos, even the 'attached' pallid
version of 'love' is founded in fear of loss. I believe as very small children, when we first
encounter sentiment, we wonder why we don't feel it too. After a while we start to get
subconsciously uncomfortable and feel that there might be something wrong with us, but
we are designed to copy, so we innocently trust it and go through the motions connected
with the so-called 'emotion', and that causes a physical response. We think 'Something's
happening! What is it?', label that response (as labeled by others) 'Sympathy' or 'Ahhhh,
it's cute', or whatever, file it as 'normal for human' and then take it from there. We
program our responses subconsciously as we grow, to fit in with everybody else's. We
never really look inside and realize we don't really feel like that.

We wouldn't want to look. -What would people think? What will happen to you if people
think you're weird, think badly of you? What will the neighbors say? The more
intellectual among you may think, 'If I admit this I may lose status/cash/assets', but it's all
the same thing.

Because we unconsciously know we cannot truly empathize with sentiment, and we also
know the anxiety-pacification value of a thing decreases over time, both from experience,
and instinctively (familiarity breeds contempt; there are sound intelligence-based reasons
for this, based on our need for a varied input), we have a society based on the fear of
abandonment.R5 We know that we are going to get used to things, bored with things, and
we know that they will, if they are biological, also get bored with us. In that setting, we
have come to accept the feelings of guilt, shame, jealousy, envy, worry, rage and
depression as a part of human nature, and attachment behavior with its false sentiment,
ultimately selflessness, as the products of a 'normal' intelligence and desirable things.
They are not. Humans should have realized something was going rather wrong when
confronted with paradoxes such as 'My husband beats me up but I can't leave him
because I love him'. (Replace 'love him' with 'will feel abandoned, become more insecure
and fall in status', or 'will get beaten up if I try to leave but I daren't admit that 'cos I will
fall in status if everyone thinks I'm weak', and see how it rocks.)... When confronted with
priests blessing weapons...('If our side wins, our god looks stronger, so I get higher
status')...When we find out about biology's morals the first time we think, 'Hmmm...If
they think I'm too different they might not sleep with me'.

The brain has some marvelous abilities, and one of them is its ability to fool itself, and
others. I believe that human emotion is learned in much the same way language is –as
children we have an open-ended value system and are happy to learn any emotion. The
examples given to us in all our interactions will determine what we will copy and learn.
Those examples seen more often or those most intense will be copied more accurately. If
we are only given sentiment to copy, we will copy sentiment; just as if we would eat
bread and water if it were all we were given to eat.
Like language, the window of opportunity for quick, easy learning of emotion (or
sentiment) is limited. The good news is that unlike language, once we have learned a
feeling, it is reasonably easy to overwrite and erase the original. This is because of its
weighting link to memory.

Humans have created a psychological construct; a false reality complete with a false set
of feelings, and made it their reality, confining intelligence to it by recurrently inflicting
biological damage which prevents us from having enough intelligence to get out of the
cycle. They have based that reality on morals and values that conflict with both our
nature and our intelligence. The net result of this has been to limit our own intelligence,
leaving us supporting our intellects with crutches of sentiment, distraction and delusion.
And we need to get off these crutches and get back online, because it is pointless trying to
exceed these limits in the next generation if all they have to copy is this one. It takes
biology far too long to fix the damage in our lifetime, so...

That is what neurohacking is for, at first. Fixing, and fine-tuning, the current machine. N-
hacking has other goals, but this is the first one. If our brains are not running at optimum
in the first place we have much less chance of augmenting or enhancing them. And
without understanding how intelligence grows we have little chance of getting much
farther with our own, or AI.

Attachment behavior and sentiment

Sentiment is a false mask of 'feelings' that mimes what we think we ought to feel. It has
no naturally provided neurochemical background and so uses big blasts of hormonal
'uppers' and 'downers' in order to function. We can learn to initialize these kinds of
chemical changes but not to control them or turn them off again, so they are a big stress
on the body and mind, too much, on an ongoing basis, for us to avoid anxiety.

The format of attachment behavior programs is grounded in sentiment. If you know how
to use sentiment, you can write programs in this format and manipulate people with their
own psychology. Intelligence demands emotion, not sentiment, to fully function.
Attachment behavior arises because of dysfunction; and makes us run the whole system
by default from mainly the mid brain networks, like a seven-year-old; its format is
primarily feelings, but intellect is not aligned with emotion (as it would be in a properly
grown functioning system, with dense connections in the CC.) In attachment, the CC
hasn't fully completed its growth and may never do so; the hard-line to reality is cut.
Feelings such as jealousy, self-pity, fear of the unknown, and guilt are dutifully copied as
the program tries to copy what it thinks is genuine. Intellectually we can even come to
dreadful conclusions such as 'original sin' or 'evil forces' as the only possible ways left to
make any sense out of it all, because it doesn't make sense and unconsciously we know it
doesn't make sense; splinter in the mind syndrome. Ironically enough, it is the feeling
that, somehow, life should make sense or that we can make it make sense, that drives us
to invent our morals and values in the first place.
Even when people grow bored with cultural achievements, feeling (rightly) that they are
really quite shallow and meaningless, when they sense (correctly) that something is
missing, because they are still looking outside themselves for the problem they can fall
into the greatest trap of all; thinking of 'spirituality' as that missing thing in their life and
going looking for it.

The hardest concept to define, 'spirituality' is the easiest to fake, and there are thousands
of religious and spiritual fakes in our culture. People pick a spiritual 'program' according
to its symbols, guides, teachings and rules. (The program then manipulates these images
to stimulate their temporal lobes to produce the 'spiritual' feelings needed to fake a
spiritual 'journey' in a way which will comfort them but in no way threaten their illusion.)
This gives them the warm and inspiring feeling of spiritual righteousness and often a
temporary relief from anxiety. And what do their chosen role models of spirituality tell
them? "Here's a code of behavior for you, put these blinkers on, and follow me"... ' I will
tell you how the god / goddess / spiritual beings want you to behave, and that will guide
your life'….

Yeah, right. Far out. What a great way of avoiding the responsibility of making your own
decisions, of being self-reliant.

You could argue here that I myself am saying, in my own way, 'Follow me, and I shall
give you eternal life'…but the differences are, I'd fully expect to have to prove it before
you consider yourself converted; I'm not going to threaten to burn you in hell if you don't
live how I think you should; I won't force you to go to heaven if you don't want to, and
I'm not going to ask you for any money.

True 'spiritual' (temporal lobe emotion) experience, like any other neurological state,
conforms to the laws of intelligence and interaction. All parties gain. Which is fair
enough. We quite often reap more than we sow, in the real world. Whole financial
institutions are dedicated to that very pursuit. Culture's main activity is to produce things
which attract us, and which can be possessed, attached to, at a price. These things might
be objects, ideas or abilities, or even other people. Attachment to and the inevitable loss
of, things we loved, are behind all of culture's poetry, songs, drama, news, and
entertainment. "I will love you forever", sings the pop star, and everybody sighs, because
their experience of 'love' has always been short-lived, again and again. Self-pity and
wallowing in sentiment, is our indulgence in feelings that remind us of those objects we
love, and their loss. Sentiment, the false substitute for true emotion, thrives on phrases
like 'if only….', and its grip on people runs like a rich bed of treacle porridge beneath all
cultural life. Immature aggression and pettiness are the twins of sentiment, thought of as
real emotions by most. Everything they grasp turns to dust and ashes, especially
relationships. 'Love', as attachment, is equated with sex, soppy sentiment and self-pity, or
jealousy, frustration and violence. Recognize anybody you know? Yeah, nearly
everybody.

Another sign of someone stuck in a matrix in relationships is their interpretation of

appropriate gifts between lovers. Sentiment considers 'romantic' to mean 'a gift which is
pleasing to the physical senses'. (Hence chocolate, perfume, flowers and shiny objects)
There is also the 'selfless' trick of buying someone something they love and you hate, a
music album for example, to 'prove you love them'. Gifts between mature intelligences
betray their matrix too...if people are free from the obligations of sentiment they'll find
something pleasing to their lover's intelligence and more than likely, creative and
personal; best of all, something with which they can interact and that will grow their
mind.

Unable to provide their own entertainment (no creativity), attached people are dependent
on others to provide it... and this is why our culture values 'entertainment' so highly.
People spend a great deal more money on entertainment than on medicine, for example.
Pop stardom and acting are our societies highest paid professions. Entertainers are paid to
muck about with our emotions and 'make us feel good'. Attached people never realize that
they should be able to do this for themselves.

An interesting recent development is the current proliferation of 'tribute' bands. Tribute

bands are bands who model or copy a famous band and provide access to that material for
those who would otherwise be unable to see it live quite so often.

That this is using a fake version of someone else's creativity matters not to the human
brain, which is quite good enough at pretending things to fill in the gaps, but tribute
bands are in a way the epitome of an example of how people live in VR. Simulation is the
norm.

With no personal creative power, a person will be still remain dependent on role models,
but has no ability to copy them. They can't click on COPY HERE. They will spend their
life stuck in matrix 3, worshipping their models faithfully, defending them as they would
an ally against abuse, and learning nothing. People like this will be the ones who say 'I
couldn't live without you' to their partner, they will be the ones who start a fight or cry
because somebody criticized the football team they support or said their favorite pop
group were crap. They are attached to their models and so they cannot tell the difference
between someone attacking the model and someone attacking them personally. There is
no separation; they will actually feel hurt because the model was criticized negatively.
(The worst cases of this show psychological illness when the person actually begins to
believe that they are the model, or possibly a reincarnation of the model. It was a man
stuck in matrix 3 who shot John Lennon, because he thought he was the real Lennon and
there couldn't possibly be two of them).

An 'attached' person cannot run COMP as intended, and can only understand specific,
obvious physical signals. They cannot copy behavior accurately; it comes over as ham
acting. They cannot understand subtle or intuitive signs that give clues about situations,
and they cannot understand analogical language. They cannot read body language or
emotional signals, and they will always try to control events in the outer world by using
sentiment. They will treat other people as objects to be used for anxiety-pacification.
They will be unable to relate sensibly and maturely on emotional levels, and may even
throw tantrums or sulk. They will be compulsive consumers of sentimental experience,
always wanting more, but never satisfied.

Anyone operating from attachment behavior cannot interact. They can act (a one-way
movement towards something) or react (a one-way movement away from); all animals
can do this, but interaction requires intelligence. In interaction, both parties in any
situation will always benefit. All the moves we make which are interactive will succeed,
all others will not. Action/reaction does not work, on a social level, unless you want
something to explode. Action/reaction is for the transference of energy, not the
amplification of it. Proper sex is interaction. (Hyperreality sex is synergy by the way. Oh
yes, there's fun to come.)

There is chemical interaction in the brain, between biochemicals, but the ability to
interact with the mind is the marvelous pinnacle of complexity that human intelligence
can reach. Without intelligence there is no interaction. There cannot be. To interact
successfully with anything includes the ability to alter things and make them more
conducive to your survival. Only an open-ended intelligence and an unprejudiced creative
logic can do this. Interaction is the way of intelligence, and in this it might have found the
way to save itself from biology.

If someone hits you and you hit them back, a fight starts, that is action/reaction. Both of
you risk damage to your intelligence, therefore both of you lose, as far as intelligence is
concerned. If someone tries to hit you and you run away, that is also action/reaction. Both
of you have learned false information that will hold back intelligence. The bully has
learned that it's okay to be a violent asshole, and you have learned that the only way to
avoid trouble is to run away. (You may, on reflection, learn not to frequent the places
where idiots hang out, in which case you have won, because you got smarter.) But
somebody still lost, so it's not good enough for intelligence, although if interaction was
not possible then it is what we have to settle for. An interaction would have been the ideal
outcome, where violence is prevented and both parties end the dispute in a manner that
teaches you both something valuable. Both would have increased their intelligence, and
could possibly become allies. Everybody wins.

Obviously, interaction is only possible if both parties have sufficient intelligence. If a

tiger or a lunatic attacks you it is no use trying to talk about it. Run your ass off...and then
remember not to go to places where violent animals hang out.

When you can successfully run COMP and interact, you can begin to program reality. I
ought to make clear before we go there, what I am not talking about. There is a big
difference between 'programming reality' and the 'control' dictatorship kind of idea where
someone 'wills' a person to do something, or outwits another by clever strategy,
psychology and manipulation. That's both very very stupid, and peanuts. The kind of
domination where one is trying blindly to forcibly change things never works in the long
run. Intelligence needs freedom, and it will get biology to fight for it. Think of it like this:
you have, at root, as an intelligence, very sharp, specific needs from life and from every
situation you are in. So does everybody. To deny yourself your full potential is silly, but
to go forward blindly enforcing your rules or your point of view won't work, because
they will immediately come into conflict with some other people's. You're trying to direct
the situation with your own 'common sense', but so is everybody else. There is no
'common' sense; every one is isolated. No synchrony. Your intentions will clash with
their ideas of what they think is best. All that can result from this is chaos, which is what
usually happens.

Instead, as a programmer, all you walk into any situation with is your creative ability to
interact; to respond to the needs of any situation and act appropriately, doing what is
necessary. To do this you simply open the COMP program in your own computer brain,
expect it to cope with all the variables without attempting to figure out how it does it, and
then just follow its lead. Act as though. Assume what you wanted to happen, is
happening, and behave as though it is. Know that your intelligence is competent to deal
with this. There is no 'try'. Don't think it is, know it is. Act that part and really live that
character. The intelligence you are ever becoming. And know that your intelligence can
cope with, and interact with, an ever-increasing unknown. You will need fewer familiar
cues in order to act appropriately, as you go along.

To adopt this attitude, sometimes in the face of hostility, aggression, and urgent
problems, is to tune in to a kind of pure thought without words, a calm alertness and
clarity, in a play of intelligence for very high stakes. It keeps you hyper-alert, and the
only way I can think of to describe it is as 'thinking in code'. Because of your willingness
to play, all the computing work the brain needs to do can then take place. So what you
play at; what you pretend, is that the computing work is taking place (even though you
cannot know that for sure before the events unfold). You play fully, you let your mind
prompt you, and you discover, (at first to your surprise and then delight) that you are
programming the sequence of events, by your output, to bend towards your ideal
imagined outcome...(Your ideal imagined outcome is that if you respond to the needs of
the situation by interacting, those needs will be met by intelligence.)

This act of programming is one of the most difficult things to try to explain in words to
anyone who hasn't done it yet, much like trying to tell someone how to swim or make
love, but I'll make the attempt...At first it is as though you can 'tune in' to intelligence,
and listen really hard...as though you were trying to remember something that was 'on the
tip of your tongue', and then suddenly the right words and actions are there for you,
created by you...and it is as though you have to sever the link with sentiment in order to
listen that hard. Later this all becomes automatic and you don't notice the process at all.
This is the journey into the mind, the programming of realities, and the point at which the
brain's computer work beneath the surface of conscious thought joins together with our
conscious minds and the play in our awareness. This is what play is for, to make that
joining possible. This autonomy is a singularity for intelligence, but it retains an
unbroken history; never at any point should there be a break in the process, a point at
which play somehow becomes reality. It is all play, and it is all reality. If the cardboard
box is crushed, the ship has fallen to pirates. And you could get eaten by sharks, except
the carpet doesn't have enough points of similarity...It's best to remember, with matrix
theory, if you die in the game, you don't necessarily die out here. Usually, you can go
back in and play again. You just need another cardboard box, and courage.

The final goal is the only thing worth looking at; intelligence's development must be in
line with its goals. Once we can focus on that, all else falls into place and fixes itself. We
don't have to work, because that final goal is creative play, playing with consciousness,
playing with the world, with our minds, with our reality.

That is what neurohackers are, really. We are programmers. We are gamers. And we are
here to play.

...So now we've got our priorities sorted out, let's go have a look at some ways to start
doing that.

7. View (Perception & programming your mind)

Where's the 'any' key?

...Any tech support person in the world has heard that question at least once. Smirk
though you might, it is relevant here, because there's a danger of trying to shortcut the
hard work bits. Let's say, you've got this far, you think you might be stuck in a matrix but
you're not sure which one, or you don't think you are but you want to try messing about
with your brain anyway for your own reasons, or you know exactly what the problem is
and you want to do something about it immediately; whichever category you fall into (if
any), remember that this work is designed for people who want to break out of a matrix
and then improve themselves. So from here on in, you can either flick through to find the
bits which are useful to you personally, or stick with the main plot and follow it through.
I've interspersed technical info (which you'll need to know if you're really going for it)
with practical info, throughout the rest of the book.

We cannot, though, 'press any key to start'. If you don't know enough of the theory you'll
not get very far with the practical, and the thing you intend to play with here is too
valuable to play rough with. I speak from experience; I do human technical support and
the brain can crash in some truly unpleasant (and irreversible) ways. It's best by far to go
one step at a time and make sure you know what you're doing, preferably before doing it.

I'd like to start this chapter with a question: 'What is your perception based on?' And then
look at that question from the variety of angles it deserves.

Before starting to neurohack, most of us would agree that our perception is based on at
the very least:

· Our senses

· What is going on around us

Some would add:

· Our mood

· Our memories (previous experience) and consequent expectations

· Our personal tastes

· Enculturation

· Our degree of alertness and concentration.

But most would be satisfied with the concept of our sensory apparatus being pretty much
the only or at least the major interface between the world 'out there' and the perceived
reality 'in here'.

Interestingly, this is dead wrong. For a start, the senses furnish us with sensation, not
perception, for which we need the brain, or conceptualization, for which we need the
mind. But all are subject to modification.R6

From the first time we decide we like or don't like something, we begin to customize our
perception. Imagine being a toddler, able to lurch outside and explore the muddy path for
the first time...as soon as we get in it, all five senses blasting away, this stuff on the
ground is no longer merely brown stuff, suddenly it is either 'fun', or 'yuck'...In a tree of
related concepts it may be fun to look at and to touch, but yuck to eat or sniff at, related
as it is to modeling clay, but we'll try all these options and find out.

Depending on our genetics and the environment, we may decide it's too cold and wet to
be much fun, or a real delight to make things from and dry them in the sun. Depending on
our society and parents, we may be told that's a very good pattern or model we made, or
we may be told we're disgusting and dirty for playing in a puddle and sent to bed with no
supper. All of these experiences add up to give us our own custom built concept for
'mud'.

Rewriting those concepts on purpose, as well as automatically, being very important in n

hacking, most of the early work you will do towards learning this involves tweaking 'mid'
brain networks, (we don't want a bunch of novices loose in the PFC, now do we?) so first
we have to know a little bit about the module itself, and its connections. So now you are
in for a dubious treat...1

...Welcome to 'A Mental Journey'...

...Hello. ...My name's not Robert Winston...And it won't be Robert Winston again,
tomorrow...
(Cue: tacky synthesizer music, too loud, screen shows abstract computer graphics
vaguely resembling organs/innards, which you must replace here with your imagination,
voice-over:)

...Over the next half-hour, we're going to go, on a journey, through the fabulous innards,
of your mind. We're going to follow the adventures of a single chemical, as it travels
through the departments of your midbrain. We're going to look, at the way the midbrain
is built, and find out, what some of its bits are for. But first, I'm going to tell you all
about, what we're going to do...

Firstly, what do I mean when I say 'mid' brain systems or networks? If you're watching in
black and white, the mid brain is the center of networks that extend all over that
disgusting squishy bit in the middle, plus some of the outside bits on the sides. For those
with color sets, I refer to the networks of the limbic system, top end of the brain stem and
the temporal lobes. One of the most important bits is the medial temporal lobe, which
comprises the hippocampus and the amygdala, and we really have to drag the olfactory
cortex into this as well (entorhinal, parahippocampal and neocortical regions). There is
only one quick route into these networks from the outside, and that is up the nose (two if
you count an ice pick through the top of the head).

The hippocampus includes the dentate gyrus and the subicular complex...oh dear, I've lost
you already haven't I, you there, in the studio audience picking your nose...Let's zoom in
on that fellow's nostril, with some more tacky computer graphics, and explore the
olfactory cortex, which is where that finger would go if you shoved it hard
enough...Imagine, you are a single molecule of water vapor, traveling up this guy's nose
(Yuck. Can't this dude afford a handkerchief?)

The olfactory system actually begins at the top of your nose. Of we go, up his nose. The
olfactory receptors are those little hairy epithelial cells with a whole array of receptors
between them, capable of detecting thousands of different smells. Try writing down how
many different smells you can think of, if you're really stupid enough to do that.

The receptor neurons themselves don't project to the cerebral hemispheres. This is the
case with any sensory system, so it's no big deal; in fact I'm not sure why I bothered
telling you that. Their axons project up, through the cribiform plate of the skull (where
Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall shoved that tool to get the implant out, gross,
wasn't it?), and synapse on the dendrites of the mitral cells (in the olfactory bulb). The
axons of these olfactory neurons make up the very delicate Cranial Nerve 1, which is the
one most susceptible to shearing forces in head trauma (such as, having your head blown
off with a sawn-off shotgun).

Let's have a rest in the olfactory bulb; this is a lot to get to know and it's not important to
remember all the names for things and where everything is right away. The mitral
cell/olfactory neuron synapse we are resting beside is a group of axons and dendrites that
are as tangled as the cables in a badly managed server room. It's called a glomerulus.
There's another kind of cell called granule cells enclosing parts of the glomeruli; these
modulate signal transmission (and are thus a good hacker target). But now, we're
climbing up the mitral cell axons into the brain proper, via the olfactory tract. Their target
is the primary olfactory cortex in the medial temporal lobe, the next step along the
network from the outside in. And the big question of the century in the olfactory cortex
is, 'What's that smell?'

Your sense of smell is actually a rebel. It disobeys the rules. All other sensory systems
route through the thalamus to get to the cortex, much like you pay at the box office to
enter the theater at a gig. Why has this one got the equivalent of a backstage pass?
Because, like all the best road crews, it is an old, primitive structure. It has been with
intelligence pretty much since intelligence got hold of biochemistry, much like the
brainstem. Unlike the usual, six-layered cortex, the olfactory cortex has only a four layer
net. Aptly then, we can think of it as the bass player in our 6-piece ensemble that makes
up sensory input. Six? I hear you say...Well, yes. Our sixth sensory input is constructed
within, from the brain's own natural feedback. It's as big an input as any other, and has a
critical effect on our perception. If all five input lines are working perfectly and the sixth
isn't, we'll still get badly distorted input. I do not mean that we will see in black and
white, or hear things less efficiently; I mean that we will interpret what we see wrongly
through wrong association, just as we can do when drunk (and the bar staff saying 'last
orders please' can mean 'talk to me darling, you have such beautiful eyes', or even, in bad
cases, 'please fondle my buttocks'.)

The entorhinal and perirhinal cortices have dense two-way connections with the
orbitofrontal and dorsolateral cortices, and the subiculum (at the base of the
hippocampus) is continuous with the entorhinal cortex. There are more connections from
the PFC to the perirhinal cortex than vice versa, and various other connections we don't
yet need to go into, because the main things to be aware of for hackery are (1) that the
medial temporal lobe gets information from a lot of sensory association areas and (2) a
lot of it comes through the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices, which project back
into this region.

In short, loads of sensory information is flying around these networks, and one of the
main structures it all has a big effect on, is the amygdala. The amygdala, is the part of
your mind that can scare you out of it. It is the reason for that feeling in your stomach
when you are alone at night in a quiet place and you hear heavy determined footsteps
behind you. It puts together items of input; some based on learned responses, some on
basic instincts such as simply 'danger?' The amygdala's eventual output is the fight or
flight response, and it is this part of your mind that can make you need to change your
uniform after the ambush, but which can save your life during it. Consequently it should
be no surprise, that its main sources of input are visual, auditory, and somatosensory
cortices.

The amygdala is a main hacker target. The other main target in the 'mid' brain systems is
the hippocampus. The hippocampus has essentially a one way flow of information, as
follows: information as input enters via the gap between the subiculum and the dentate
gyrus (this is called the perforant path, if you wanna be technical). The entorhinal axons
synapse on cells in the dentate gyrus, and send off their own axons, called 'mossy fibers'
(what a brilliant name!), through a complicated route which ends at the subiculum. The
subiculum is responsible for output. It can send to the hypothalamus via the fornix, or it
can send back to the entorhinal cortex, which will relay stuff back to the sensory cortex.
This is why input from within can make such a difference. This is a major key to
successful neurohacking. In a lot of ways the midbrain cannot tell the difference between,
for example, watching a sport and playing it. We still get the same hormonal releases at
successes and failures as the players themselves. Our frontal cortex reminds us that we
don't have to run about, or whatever, but the midbrain is quite happy to keep responding
to whatever we are paying attention to. Even if it isn't Robert Winston.

***

By now you should have a rough idea of the mid brain module and the most important
parts in it as far as n-hacking is concerned. You may be wondering why these bits in
particular are so important, and how they manage to affect so much of our behavior. So
let's step back out now and look at the overall picture.

Actual autonomy for intelligence (our current goal) depends on achieving the relevant
neural nets to facilitate that. The mature form of human creativity psychologically is our
becoming self-sufficient at creating our own role models. (We can begin to design our
own role models, in our own minds, and copy them to develop our abilities ever more
fully.) But full autonomy requires that the mind become its own matrix. To do this in our
current situation, we have to first remove the old wiring wrongly patched in because of
damage; in order to break out of whichever matrix we are caught in. The only way out of
a dysfunction in a matrix is to bypass the dysfunctional system completely and slowly
shut it down. You do this physically by building its replacement by neurohacking; and a
part of that is achieved psychologically by playing, or 'acting', your way out.

In everything we do in neurohacking, there is always a physiological change, and a

psychological counterpart. Since we do the two together they work twice as well and we
take half the time.

Hacking sentiment

The mid brain networks are very important because they deal with emotion and
imagination, with memory, and with fear. They also house attachment and sentiment, and
those are the first things we must hack. The first thing we have to do to get anywhere is
shut down sentiment, because otherwise we will get nowhere. If you are not prepared to
do that, the rest won't work. I haven't yet met many people who both want to do this and
can; in fact I'm writing this partly because I'm looking for them...but just for the purposes
of explaining the process, I shall pretend you are one. If you want to get into the spirit of
things and/or are tripping, you can pretend that too.
(After the party, we will have to have a little talk, you and I, because if this really were
the case, if you really were about to start hacking yourself out of a matrix ASAP, you
would be thinking some odd things, right about now.)

When you are thinking about giving up sentiment, i.e., deciding you don't want to feel
'those things' any more, that you can do without them, there are two themes of
questioning going on in your mind in that 'long dark night' moment before it's yes or no,
and I can answer them both only from my own experience. My answers may surprise
you.

One set of questions goes along the lines of: Can you do it? Can you trash those feelings?
Do you see yourself happy in a future (and there's very little chance you could go back)
where you can't raise a tear for a soppy movie or get a lump in your throat over the verse
in your birthday card because you know it's not real? At least it's good that you won't feel
lonely being alone, because you'll be alone, if you change your brain so that it's so unlike
other people's. Consider that. You'll think differently than they do. Some people are
going to think you're crazy. You'll feel differently than they do; no empathy. Will you
miss the warm rush of sentiment you felt for your 'loved ones', the tang of guilt when
you're being a bit 'bad', the adoring way you feel when something's being hopelessly cute
at you? Will you be content to receive a bunch of colorful flowers from a flatterer and
feel nothing? Will you be satisfied that you can turn off worry or jealousy and ignore
them as an artifice? Won't most partners take advantage of you? Will you be happy that
you can think and feel like a machine? That you can even withdraw your sense of identity
away from biology completely? All those things that everybody tells you are the very
things that make you human? Aren't you thinking, 'Will I miss all that?'

Of course you will, you will miss it horribly and you will grieve piteously and you will
think 'what have I done?' and you will be inconsolable; it will go through you like a knife
in the guts (and this will happen when we upload, too) because biology interprets what
has occurred as a kind of death; death of what it believed was the personality. It can't see
anything on the other side yet because the circuits that will enable its emotion are only
just being built and it has very little practice at using them. Bereft and abandoned in the
middle, your mind seems, for a short while, emotionally orphaned, and the only way
through that is with care, self confidence, hard work and patience.

In other words, your biological survival system, (and other people's!), interpreting what is
happening to your mind as a threat to your 'personality', will not want you to do it, and
will invent 'rational' reasons to avoid it. It will think of such ideas as 'this can't be real',
and 'but this is science fiction', or, 'you're avoiding reality', and even 'you're going mad'.
However, if you truly want to, it is possible to overcome these fears (which will also be
thrown at you by others, who dislike change in other people almost as much as in
themselves.) Other people will miss the point and accuse you of being obsessed with
yourself and/or role-playing all the time. Paradoxically, this is exactly what we are trying
to avoid by passing beyond the need for it. But remember, people are born into a societal
simulation based on dysfunctional delusion and brainwashed into protecting the
simulation at all costs. The simulation itself is pretty buggy because error in perceiving
reality underlies the program that built it and maintains it, and it causes unhappiness often
because it doesn't make sense, but bad or stupid as conditions are, they are all that most
people know exists. So someone like me comes along and says, "Hey -you can change
the script; consensus reality is a delusion, use this tech to get yourself out and rewire your
brain", and all that usually happens is that people immediately protect themselves (and
the simulation) by deciding that it's an attempt to control them or harm them and acting
accordingly. So it's best to do our mind freeing in secret, at least to begin with.

...The second set of questions about the mid brain system hacks, basically asks in a
million different little ways, 'What will it feel like? ...Will it be really horrible? Will it
hurt? Will I feel like I'm ill, or drugged up, or confused, or what?

Unfortunately I can't explain this in the same way that many people are never able to put
into words what an LSD trip is like. It's up to you; your own ideas of what's nice and
what isn't, you own thresholds, your own temperament, and how you personally deal with
sensory motor and/or psychological stuff. Largely, it depends on whether you can keep
an overview and keep in mind the goal.

The first goal of intelligence's development is the creation of an autonomous (self-

sufficient) person, dependent on nothing except their own selves by maturity. A free-
range mind. Only then can that person truly start to relate to others in genuine interaction.
Emotion should be an ability we use to enhance life, not a drug to which we are addicted,
or a tornado that throws us here and there. Be aware of this: every time a 'rush of feeling'
floods your mental horizon, no matter what its content, nature, familiarity, or
'reasonableness', you are being controlled. You are being programmed, by somebody
else's behavior. You are not free, and you are not in charge of your own mind. You are
reacting because of your biology and indoctrination, like a puppet controlled by another,
or a robot controlled by automatic responses programmed in by a chimpanzee.
Sentimental feelings are so powerful because they come partly by a neural route which is
faster than that of intellect, so rational thought doesn't have time to get a word in
edgeways. This is very very good from emotion's point of view2, because when we meet
a hungry tiger in the jungle our brain can get us up a tree in response to emotion rather
than standing around thinking about it whilst being eaten. But sentiment has twisted this
marvelous survival system into a nightmare whirlwind of loss of control, confusion,
anxiety and guilt. The only thing sentiment can get you in the end is lying down and
dribbling on the carpet.

The biggest difference between a person who is still stuck in a matrix and a person who is
freed is in this matter of emotion vs. sentiment. Once freed, as a programmer, you control
emotion. Genuine emotion. I do not mean you can merely stop yourself feeling it
(although you can if you want). I mean you can choose which ones to feel and when, and
how strongly and for how long, and if you choose from a value system designed by
intelligence, in every interaction you can play your emotions like a musical instrument;
like a tool in the service of intelligence, which is what they have become; what they
should be. Nor is it a passionless tool; I am a passionate person; the ability to intensify
emotion is one of the best gifts of freedom. I cannot imagine how I used to live without
it; I think some people take drugs to try and come close to true emotional states and I can
tell you from experience, drugs fall short of the mark, by light years.

Since sentiment is such an input-disaster it has to be the first to go. (This is not, by the
way, 'emotion adjusting'. This is compensating. It's removing erroneous programming.)
Disentangled from inappropriate sentiment we can proceed with a great deal more clarity
and maintain grace under pressure. From there, intelligence has a free rein to create its
own value system, based on the relevant parameters. There is an optimal emotion set for
intelligence and any successful intelligence (including AI) will have it. Intelligence
growth has to be a process rather than a given, because some calculations can only be
based on the results of others. Anyone trying to build an AI without this in mind will not
so much be trying to run before they can walk, as run before they have legs.

Getting a perspective on reality is merely a matter of following the rules. That does not
mean that we should treat the 'laws of intelligence' in matrix theory as rules for
individuals, (which is a common misunderstanding.) There are no 'laws' or rules that can
be tailored to suit all individuals, because we actually are all different, and by design;
evolution favors diversity. The laws of intelligence are not for people; they are of and
'for' intelligence. The laws of gravity are not for people either. They're a part of the real
world, where fire burns and rain is wet. These are not rules that we have to follow,
merely designs that we can observe. We can ignore them or work with them, as we
please. That's what free will is all about. We have built a lot of technology that defies
gravity, we have also built technology which defies the laws of intelligence. Quite a lot of
it kills people, but that was the intention and is not a design fault.

We can write better and more accurate versions of all natural laws as we learn more. But
it's vital to understand the difference between 'laws' as in, 'rules I think you should or
must follow', and natural laws, such as, man who chain saws own foot off, has no foot.
Society's differing opinions on whether the chap has a missing foot or not, does not
actually change reality, the state of biology or physics or chemistry remains the same
regardless of what we choose to believe about it, and society's disagreements about the
nature of intelligence will not alter the way in which it actually operates. That's why
matrix theory is a theory, and not a philosophy. There are no halfway measures, and
population voting or group consensus or a democratic decision on what shape the earth is
will not change the shape of the earth, even if the whole population agrees that it is box-
shaped. Saying 'but we have to believe the things we do because biology's demands rule
our lives' and using it as an excuse is still not reality, nor is it true. Intelligence need not
be dependent upon biology. And we really need to look at this concept, very hard. People
do not get what they want because they do not ask for what they want, due to fear. People
tend to get what they actually ask for. I think this is up to them. Those too afraid to ask
for what they want will end up living with other people's ideas of what's 'good for them'.
Perhaps this is where the next variation in intelligence begins.

Because there are two ways for intelligence to go from here. I mean intelligence, not
humans. (1) Is to try to interfere with biology en masse to make people smarter whether
they like it or not, and (2) is to interfere only with ourselves individually as we see fit,
towards freedom from biology (and possibly eventually the planet), leave humanity alone
and mind our own f****** business and set up our own scene some place else. (Humans
wouldn't like that, but we shall cross these bridges as we come to them.) All we are going
to look at here are various ways of achieving the first part of (2).

Get real

If you want to go there, you are going to restructure and reprogram your own mind.
You'll need a perspective that reminds you all the time of exactly what you're doing and
what is real and what is not. So here is one. If you lose focus, come back to this 'get real'
section and get real.

The brain is analogous in a lot of very basic ways both to a computer and an automated
chemical factory. The factory depends on input from the computer to make it work but
the computer is also dependent on the output of the factory. Don't worry if you don't quite
get this just yet. Just concentrate on hacking the computer; the rest will take care of itself
by virtue of chain reaction.

The computer's raw material input is limited by its perception through the senses –how
accurately can it record and translate the frequency of light waves, sound waves, smell
molecules, tactile sensations? From these inputs the computer has to decide (a) what the
fuck is going on out there and (b) what to do about it. The meanings we attach to our
perceptions are our reality. But every one of our sensory organs only does, actually,
exactly the same job. It translates its input into a code of chemical-electrical impulses and
sends this on into networks in the mid brain. From that second on, the input is not a
Ferrari, or a kiss from someone nice, or the color blue, or a symphony by Beethoven, or a
joke from Monty Python, right. It is bits of electrical energy. Everything, absolutely
everything enters the brain as code created by neurons firing or not firing, along a certain
route. That's it. There's no grand central junction where it's all retranslated at the other
end back into sound and light and smell and Ferraris again. That's it. What the computer
does with it depends on which routes it comes in on, (what the weighting is) how fast,
and for how long. Incoming code follows well-worn busses (neural pathways) to specific
destinations. As it passes through the networks it is split up into several different data
'streams' which are processed in parallel by various modules. (Each module is made up of
a series of smaller networks, each of which deals with a specific part of perception.)

Your brain has separate 'visual' networks for things like shape, color, brightness, contrast,
movement, resolution and so on. Once the incoming data has been received by all these
areas it is sent off to the larger modules known as 'association' areas. Here it is compared
with archetypal templates, the computer's memory retrieves everything previously
associated with the current item and decides what is relevant (someone waving a knife
during a conversation in a restaurant as a gesture is not at all as relevant as someone
waving a knife in a dark alley and saying, 'give us your wallet', for example).

What we have in our brain at that stage is COMP's Lo-res scan. And it is a unique scan. –
Every brain is differently wired because of different experience. Nothing even looks the
same to two different people because even if they're clones (twins) they won't have
exactly the same number of neurons in each net. For example, if, say, I've got a lot more
neuronal connections in my 'outline and shape' net than you, and you've got a lot more
neuronal connections in your 'color and contrast' nets, we could both look at exactly the
same cluster of balloons and you'd be thinking 'what a great choice of psychedelic
colors!' ...And I'd be thinking, 'my god, it's shaped just like a dick and balls!'

Here's another clue about reprogramming and neuro Muscular Training (NMT); if I
portray what I see, by artwork or even by talking to you about it enough, and you observe
and listen, as I 'show you', you'll stimulate your own 'outline and shape' net and it will
start to grow new connections. You'll slowly start to see things 'my' way for yourself.
Your input changes your computer, and your computer changes your input. If you hang
around exclusively with guys who can only see the dick and balls, you'll never see the
colors. (That sums up input control in a nutshell). The mind is plastic; it will conform to
the perception of whatever it is surrounded by.R6

The original data streams cross the gaps (synapses) between neurons by using chemicals
called 'neurotransmitters'. These are some of our major allies in redesigning hardware –
they can help build new connections between the neurons –the very stuff our brains are
made of. They can give the computer extra networks both within and between its
modules.

When programming we have to be firmly in the frame of reference from the start that
there is no definitive picture of 'out there', only a computer-generated image in our heads
constructed from the elements we are currently best equipped to register. A view. An
'imagining'. Obviously, learning and knowledge will adjust our perception of anything
according to the extra memories. And so will prediction.

I've heard so much crap spouted about it being 'bad' trying to predict and control our lives
(or the singularity), I could predict I will vomit over it but I think I can control that.
Prediction is about building and testing ideas, attention being directed not only to what is
immediately sensory but also to probabilities, to what is likely to happen, and playing
with those possibilities in our imagination, and that really matters. Such 'thought'
experiments help our behavior adjust to unknown situations in a flexible way and allow
us to use our intelligence more adeptly. Indeed, intelligent behavior is not actually
possible without some kind of basic attempt at prediction. Of course, we will make
mistakes. This is how probabilities are assessed in the first place. But prediction and
control free us from immediate sensory input dictating all our behaviour3. With
neurohacking you are able to change the actual microphysiology of your own brain;
redesign the hardware itself, section by section, that's how you enable yourself to think in
different ways. You can do this one way by changing the production and flow of
neurotransmitters, which will grow new neural connections for you, wherever you want
them. But however you choose to do it, even after that first hack, you can genuinely say,
"Hey, -I changed my mind!"
Our 'personality' is created by the actions of combinations of 50 or so neurotransmitters
inside our brains.

Regardless of our history, our memories, our intelligence, or our conscious intent, the
actions of neurotransmitters dictate our temperament and our behavior on a real-time
basis, and can turn us, gradually or not so gradually, into anything; a happy successful
individual or a suicidal depressed paranoid one. Transmitters feed you a view of reality
and also the chemicals that prompt you to choose to believe that it is real. You process
information from the world around you according to the interpretations of your sensory
experience. That interpretation is controlled by neurotransmitters.

All your perception is, is a series of electrical signals passing through your brain.
Neurotransmitters, and synapse control, are responsible for everything that could be
called the self. Understanding neurotransmission is like learning the machine code. And
then you really can start programming in it.

The main question we should ask ourselves about perception is not what we must accept
or reject, but what we choose to do with our perception. Are we to be indoctrinated and
programmed and just let it happen, and accept ourselves as 'pretty normal' humans, or do
we wish to be free to use our creativity and increase our intelligence? Do we believe that
solid, unchangeable facts push in from 'out there' to merely register digits on our internal
spreadsheet? Or can we accept that programming reality is an activity, an ability, a
creativity of the mind; that we can enter into interaction with whatever we encounter,
whether consciously or not, that our brain 'computer' encompasses far more ability than
most people's brainwashing ordinarily admits, that we can be autonomous within the
matrix/mind we have created so that we can access the real world via the real brain as its
own back door and program it?

And how much are we prepared to pay for this experience? Or rather, how much are we
prepared to play?

'Play works,' is the only good description of how to achieve this, and the way in which
true play works is to let the 'work' be done for us by the brain computer itself whilst we
get on with playing. Then we may approach the world as material for our creativity rather
than the dull repeats of last week's soap opera.

'Programming' the matrix/mind is an activity, an art to be developed. The more creative

the programmer, and the lower their anxiety, the greater and more alive the program, the
better is reality. In hyperreality, when we create an internal experience for ourselves out
of our imagination, we are perceptually self-sufficient. Perception is existence in that
state, so we can create a self-sufficient existence within our own program, a hyperreality
within reality. That is what true self-sufficiency is, and this is what intelligence's
development has as its first goal. Anything less is incomplete development, which will
always (no matter how we try to distract ourselves) cause anxiety, because the brain isn't
operating as designed. The great mistake of 'education' is that it teaches us to think of
anything outside our intellectual thought and the physical world as 'only imagination'...
Which attitude is a bit like having the best, fastest, most creative supercomputer in the
world and then being told you must only use it to read dictionaries on. Because that's
what normal people do.

...At this point I return to an old question: What is perception based on?

Control.

Control of conceptualization. The concepts in our minds are patterns of action in the
brain's networks, patterns by which we assemble percepts. On the sensory motor level we
establish the pattern of micromovements which corresponds to the network's firing
pattern. Every experience we have is a series of patterns firing within the brain. No new
experience can be accepted and understood unless it has at least some similarity to a
previous experience. The networks grow thicker and larger the more times an experience
is repeated, or the greater the impression it makes. Common factors in events compress
them into archetypes. Whichever part of your brain controls your conceptualization
controls not just you, but your entire life. And how much you'll enjoy it. Most people
don't have free will.

The concepts we recognize least in daily experience are replayed in our dreams, in the
vivid language of the midbrain. We have little choice which departments are active
during sleep, short of the sledgehammer method of drugging ourselves up. In waking
time though, control of the action of networks and control of perception are synonymous.

Consider some of the factors currently controlling you. Some factors place limitations on
us; they may be such things as your family, your country, your work, your social group,
they might be factors such as your size, strength, appearance, age or diet. The limitations
or controls imposed by these factors may be many and varied. They will include things
like how you dress, what language you speak, what laws you observe, how you express
your feelings, how you communicate with others. We tend to conform to what we
imagine is 'the norm'. Keep an eye on that word, imagine. It takes a particular number of
perceived opinions to establish a 'norm' in our minds, and that number is three. If you
want to run an experiment on this you can pick a simple math problem, and place your
volunteer in a group with three prearranged actors who will emphatically agree on the
wrong answer. You'll find that around 70% of those tested will change their answer to
agree with the wrong one. If you make the problem harder, or the actors look like high
status individuals, an even larger percentage of people will conform to the falsehood. It's
stunning, and really quite depressing; it's like a whole bunch of people standing up with
their hands raised, saying, 'Look at me; I'm stuck in a matrix'.R23

Control of perception is based on the knowledge of what causes emotional or imaginative

weighting of input, i.e., being aware of what grabs our attention.

External factors which attract our attention are nicely summarized in the psychologist's
mnemonic 'SCRAM', which stands for Size, Contrast, Repetition And Movement.R24 All
advertising execs are aware of these, and you can probably think of countless examples
of irritating little flashy things. We've discussed many of the things that help to form our
perceptual set; these are internal factors which add weighting to an event; things such as
mood, expectations and prejudice.

Once we achieve control of perception we no longer have to worry about controlling

input, because we are able to pay attention to whatever we choose and ignore whatever
we choose (to the extent that we can, quite literally, fail to perceive it). Everybody edits
their perception all the time as we have seen, but this is not normally voluntarily and
deliberately. We can choose to perceive intelligence, and the input and factors relevant to
intelligence, and we can choose to ignore distractions. We get this ability by changing our
minds in the first place (by controlling input). Now it begins to become obvious what a
'feed-forward' hack really is...every stage is setting up the ease of the next stage. This
particular change is possibly one of the key signs of shifting into M5. With the CC fully
completed and a working ACG online, we can run the master programs for predict-and-
control, plan-and-strategise, and so on, that lead to competent and expedient interaction.

...And at this point we emerge into a situation allegorical to having the mind as our tall
ship and perception as a star to steer her by. Of course, the horizons that are the limits of
our sight are the very places we then head towards...

1 This is an excerpt from a lecture on the midbrain & memory which was originally
recorded as a joke spoof of typical TV (UK) documentaries. The plan was to unleash it
on bored/stoned students on a Friday afternoon and see how long it took the first person
to notice the lecture was a bit odd. I beg Robert Winston to forgive me, and assure him he
has my greatest esteem for coping with the unenviable task of introducing science to the
general public; a task at which he excels, unlike me.

2 Things are not 'bad' or 'good' per se; cheese, for example, is very good if you want lots
of calcium and protein, but if you're taking MAO inhibitors it could kill you. Right and
wrong, good and bad, always depend on circumstance.

3. A mind with less intelligence, such as that of a frog, cannot achieve such freedom,
which is why it can starve to death whilst surrounded by juicy succulent insects - because
only insects in motion equals food.

8. Setup (A workspace)

Platform

You don't have to be rich to neurohack. You do need a workspace, however. You will
need a place where you are safe. Materially, that's not too difficult to do; you don't need
loads of room or loads of expensive tech (although it helps). If you have the cash to set
up your own lab straight away then you can probably find everything you need on the
Internet, up to and including your fMRI, but I've worked in some truly crazy conditions
in the past including those with no plumbing whatsoever and still coped. You don't need
modern tech to be safely hygienic; you just need to adjust the conditions. A garden shed
is adequate, an attic doubly so. You need a water supply to keep things clean. If you're
not sure your water's pure enough to drink, you bring water in containers or you purify it.
You need three other things: a source of heat, a source of cold and a safe waste disposal
system. You can't put clinical waste in domestic garbage, no dude, not even used
electrodes. In some countries that means DIY incineration, and in other countries that's
illegal so make sure you know the law for where you live.

You also need security, to protect your tech when you're not there and you when you are.
An arrangement with anyone who might visit is necessary unless you are prepared for
interruptions (not good). A sign on the door doesn't always catch the attention of a friend
who's been out experimenting with lager all afternoon, and whom you really don't need to
be talking to in the middle of a memory wipe. Make sure you have things arranged so this
sort of thing can't happen. If privacy is difficult, working through the night or when
others are at work can be helpful.

Power supply

If your mains supply is unreliable, stock up on batteries. If it's non-existent, get a

generator and start wiring up.

You need emergency power in case of mains failure anyway. You also need surge
protection and safe cutoff in case of shortout. When it storms, shut down, unplug,
everything. I've seen a lightning strike come down a phone line and blow up a PC...if
your head had been the other end of that circuit, well, you still wouldn't have got the
insurance.

Hmm, sore point, insurance. Pay it or pay the price, is all I can say. Oh, and be sure to
moan throughout the entire procedure.

Work with a computer you can trust to be enduringly reliable or at least fail regularly in
well-expected and easily solvable ways. Even if you're really rich, when you're plugging
your head into a machine, it's better the devil you know, than the IBM 666 building-
integrated system with flashing lights and bells and touch sensitive CD trays and a speech
synthesizer that crashes irrevocably in a fit of pique when somebody tries to look up the
free software dictionary with animated characters and... All the fire doors in the building
slam shut and... You get the picture. Think safety when you first set up. Think anti-static,
'leccy and ice don't splice, and places for putting drinks down should be lower than all
equipment, including keyboards. Fire extinguishers for all possibilities and things to mop
up messes should be there, and don't let people smoke next to anything that burns well
without provocation. Watch where you keep the heater, kettle, toaster etc., because heat
conducts and the thing about some chemicals is they don't boil for very long.

Input
Costs can be violently cut on the tech front by indulging in the ancient art of building
your own. (Plus you don't have to read the instructions.) Biofeedback tech is pretty cheap
if you buy separates (BP and pulse, GSR, MCG are the cheapest, then EEG, ECG at the
top end). Since the software you'll get with these will work in multi-input mode because
all these kinds of signals are quite distinctly different, if you can build a junction box to
send the inputs to the right places and plug that straight into the PC, and if you can make
all this small and light enough to wear it, you'll have the equivalent of (if you'd bought it)
a $900 system for only half that price.

When you're chemical hunting remember you are limited by storage and what license you
have, as well as cost. Don't go and order a load of gear that has to be stored permanently
in dry ice for example unless your family either knows about it and tolerates you or you
face the possibility of your neurohacking session being interrupted by your partner or
(worse!) mom shouting 'what have you done to the freezer dear?' Label everything
always and if your kids are too young to read, teach them the skull and crossbones sign
and put it on everything you don't want eaten.

Kids or pets in a laboratory can mean instant death in several nasty ways, most of which
involve explosions. Set your boundaries and your design around what you are not
prepared to risk.

Your own personal starting space

Neurohacking normally changes neurotransmitters and other chemicals on a temporary

basis to achieve a desired change. Long-term drug use is another matter entirely. ...Time
to admit it; what's your poison? Maybe you don't smoke or drink and you're not on
anything prescribed, but how much sugar did you eat today? How many coffees and teas
have you poured into your neurochemistry since 8am? We think nothing of this everyday
neurohacking because almost everybody does it, all the time, and those who don't, seem
terminally depressed, bored or boring. It's never occurred to most people, to look at their
society and think, hang on a minute, why is everybody on drugs? Get real.

A good rant about drugs

I'm often asked my opinion about drug addiction, and whether my techniques could 'get
people off drugs'. My views are based on both my own past experience and that of others,
both philosophically and in research.

I find it curious from my current point of view that in our society, distinctions are made
between 'drugs', as in illegal or other substances that people get addicted to, 'drugs' that
people get from doctors or chemists, and 'drugs' such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, alcohol
and junk food. All of these categories of 'drugs' affect the mind, and the behavior,
profoundly. Sugar and junk food have as strong a link with delinquent crime as alcohol or
amphetamines.R25 The side effects of regular use of Ibuprofen, Valium or
Chloramphenicol are just as serious as those of tobacco, and worse than marijuana. (That
was a qualifier...)
If someone suffers from depression, and they find a drug which relieves the symptoms,
they are going to use it, because from their point of view they feel more responsible,
capable and, bluntly, sane when they use the drug than when they do not. And which is
preferable -a nervous, depressed, irritable person driving the family car, or a person under
the influence of a drug that makes them feel sane and happy? My point is, I believe that
many 'addicts' who choose not to stop are self-medicating to relieve an otherwise
unpleasant or unbearable mental state. Many are doing this legally, with Prozac, Valium,
alcohol, tobacco or chocolate. They know the substance is damaging their body and
creating social problems. But in just the same way that the side-effects of pain-killers are
still preferable to acute pain, the social and physical side-effects of addiction seem better
than acute psychological torment. I will stick my neck out here and say that I believe any
addict who chooses to continue is probably in this position. When I say 'psychological
torment' I'm not referring to the effects of withdrawal. I mean the person was in
psychological torment before they ever took the drug, and took it in the first place
because they were looking for relief from that torment. They probably tried several drugs
before finding one that worked. And the symptoms will return, and remain indefinitely, if
the drug is stopped. So by asking addicts to stop we could be doing the equivalent of
taking away the Prozac from someone with deep depression, or the Chlorpromazine from
someone with schizophrenia. There is still social stigma attached to 'mental illness', and
many people would rather not tell their doctors that they have a problem. Instead, they'll
get drunk, or snort coke, or whatever. Many people don't even know they do have a
problem, because there are so many people on drugs that it's become a 'normal' part of
subculture.

Which condition are we treating, if we get someone 'off drugs'? -The addiction, or the
condition which caused it? Should we assume responsibility for our own genetically
inherited diseases, our neurological / neurochemical imbalances / disorders, or our viral
infections? We don't get sick on purpose. We don't get psychologically distressed or
depressed on purpose. Is a drug user guilty for taking medication with bad side effects, if
nobody is providing anything better?

Why would anybody who is 100% mentally healthy ever choose to put anything into their
bodies or minds if it didn't, overall, make them feel better? How many people are out
tonight searching for anything that will? Psychoses and neuroses do not always respond
to drugs from a doctor. An individual's mind, and neurochemistry, is unique. Sometimes,
chocolate or tobacco or marijuana will do the trick. Should we, then, take this away from
them, or make them feel guilty for doing it?

On the physical damage side, cortisol poisoning caused by anxiety increases the
possibility of so many diseases / disorders, there is not enough time or room here to list
them. It is definitely worse for you physically than smoking anything (and pretty nasty
for your loved ones, too). What we should be doing is assessing why people need drugs
(any drugs) and providing the safest drugs possible to relieve the symptoms each person
suffers when s/he is 'straight'. This is what doctors try to do, although, with a patient, the
illness is already recognized. Perhaps the biggest question should be why such a large
percentage of the population suffers from mild-to-middling psychological disorders?
There may be a clue to this in those organizations which succeed in 'curing' addicts -
perhaps what they are actually doing is curing the underlying disorder, by showing the
person that someone cares and giving them a bit of self-esteem, with the love, respect,
affection and attention they maybe never got from parents, friends or partners, and the
lack of which caused the depression in the first place? Human beings need to be nurtured
throughout growth to be mentally healthy, to avoid insecurity and fear of abandonment.
Insecurity = fear = anxiety = depression in a lot of cases.

How many people do you know who are 100% sane?

Current methods of legal interference in this are obsolete. If any person has to take any
kind of medication to relieve any kind of symptoms, and that medication affects their
behavior and/or performance, then they should be monitored by their GP and assessed for
their ability to drive or operate machinery. They may need to register as disabled until a
safer medication can be found or a cure is forthcoming. But without such a cure,
expecting anyone to give up their medication and just suffer is perhaps a bit barbaric?
The state would, of course, have to trash all the current drug laws and hand the control of
substances over to the doctors and scientists. So a heroin manufacturer would have to pay
taxes on that, and users would pick their supply up on prescription. Same for tobacco.
And I reckon a lot more people would go for therapy / treatment than could be bothered
to get their cigarettes on script every month...although if it were thought of as a
medication, it would be more popular in tablets -who on earth would smoke it?

That the current situation does not strike humans as peculiar or even out of the ordinary is
another testament to our acceptance of damage as the 'norm'. What you should be
thinking right about now is 'how much of this crap can I stop shoveling into myself and
still feel okay?' Because if you start removing what you don't need now, you will find it a
lot easier to let go of more as we go along.

I am talking about things you do every day. The things you do once a week or once a
month don't worry me; the effects wear off and you're not continuously under the
influence. You're not causing tolerance to occur. Tolerance is bad news because it shifts
the brain chemistry permanently into an artificially maintained state which backfires
violently if the drugs or tech maintaining that state are withdrawn or supply is suddenly
irregular. Be aware: you should not stop taking anything if you cannot remain sane and
centered enough to learn to function without it. Get real.

One of the most damaging medications if used long-term is sleeping tablets. Drug-
induced sleep often lacks enough REM time for us to assimilate and move memories
around sufficiently. This slows down learning a lot. We need at least six periods of REM
during a normal sleep, whether we remember them or not is pretty irrelevant at this stage,
but happen they must, or part of our waking time must be spent in assimilation and this
prevents alertness and attention. Eventually lack of REM leads to memory problems, and
finally neurological disorders. Sleeping tablets, heavy narcotic use and alcohol abuse can
all lead to this situation. So, less R&R, more REM.R26
I keep expecting some mainstream type to announce this soon because there's an awful
lot of sleep research going on but so far (March 2004) they don't seem to have figured it
out. What we need is a drug that induces sleep but doesn't prevent REM. If you're an
insomniac neurohacker, there's a project for you. Personally I don't have any difficulty
sleeping apart from resenting having to do so much of it.

Stay real. Giving things up because they are 'bad' for you is sentimental nonsense, and
will harm your progress, unless you have got to that stage where your somatic (body)
damage is affecting your state of mind. Otherwise, being mentally unstable is far worse
for you than the physical side effects of drugs, (especially if you value sanity more than
biology.) But as you progress with neurohacking work, you will start to find you will no
longer feel a need for many things you originally used for self-medication. You will not
so much need to give things up, as allow them to give you up as you pass beyond a need
for them. When you get well, you won't need medication. So be gentle with you. A really
good thing to go for as a first try is give up high density, fast-release carbohydrates; they
trash both neuro- and body chemistry, cause diabetes and obesity, and contribute vastly to
the aging process. If you can live without high-density carbs you will get the effects of
calorie restriction without having to do any restricting. Once you get used to it, the
increase in vitality is tremendous. Don't try to force yourself to give up things; do it the
intelligent way. Provide yourself with something better, i.e., wait for and work on a better
more stable state of mind, and you won't want the old crap any more anyway. At first,
you'll do it more rarely, eventually not at all.

Also remember, if you are dependent on something to maintain your state of mind, you
can always be controlled or thrown out of balance by someone else removing it. Not only
that, but your ambient neurochemistry will affect every part of your perception and the
weighting of every experience. The simpler to maintain your ambient state is, the easier it
is for you, in the long run. To control your ambient, you need to know about how
'weighting' happens. The weighting of an experience depends on how much attention we
consider it worthy of or are able to give it. The more intense the experience, the more
attention and awareness we allocate to it, and the stronger the potential memory...

There are several rules, or rather, byelaws, I use in neurohacking, which you ought to
know before we go on to methods.

Rule 1: No wanking in the office. –If you are caught up in EM (Emotional Masturbation;
i.e., sentiment), never think you're capable of neurohacking. You won't be, until the
feeling passes. It will pass. (No matter how strong it feels at the time).

Rule 2: As long as you know you've taken all relevant safety precautions, don't worry too
much about making mistakes. A famous musician once said, "If you don't make mistakes,
you're not really trying". Just remember, when you were first learning to walk, that you
sometimes tripped over things. If you'd concentrated only on the things you tripped over,
you would never have learned to walk. But you forgot the mistakes, and you concentrated
on walking. So just keep practicing. You'll get there in the end. (Well, you can walk, can't
you?)
Rule 3: Keep your motives pure and work with integrity so you can shove guilt up it's
own asshole. To be free of guilt is to be free from deceit and anxiety –and you can be
threatened and controlled only through your own anxiety. Anyone or any system trying to
control you will always work on your anxiety. And that includes people who say
anything personally nasty about you, or to you, that has no objective relevance to what
you are doing.

Rule 4: Remember that you will become more like everything you are surrounded by.
Everything you read, watch, listen to, everybody you spend time with, everything you
look at or pay attention to; these things will change you, you will become more like them.
You will start saying the same things, using the same mannerisms, moving like them,
sounding like them, acting like them…So what and whom do you want to surround
yourself with? Go look for galaxy class people. There are some stunning intelligences
lurking around on the Internet. You are not alone.

Rule 5: There is no rule 5. If there were, it would say, 'support research –buy a beer for a
scientist'.

Finally, a few warnings. There are many reasons why people choose a path but do not
reach the goal. Led astray by the dark side are they. Some discover pleasure and happily
wirehead their lives away or drown themselves in drugs like slugs in beer.

I'd treat wireheading with a good deal more caution than I would, say, heroin. Even
SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) can create a habit as nasty as cocaine
(except, they don't erode a massive hole on the inside of your bank account). Some are
led astray by one or another drug they particularly like. Most illegal drugs are pretty crap
and usually contaminated, but they are also best avoided because it's stupid to trash your
career in research with a criminal record. Don't miss the secret that the ultimate high is
not the deliberately highest high, and don't fall into the trap of thinking that some is good
so more must be better. The ultimate high is an ambient of inspired curiosity and general
well being, peppered liberally with excitement and relaxation. Feeling light-hearted and
optimistic whilst still centered and aware is far more interesting than sitting around
stoned, immobile and incoherent, like a load of dead people.

Some fail to reach the goal because of death. This is usually caused by misadventure
under the influence of something. Don't think you're more competent than you actually
are. You are not in this for cheap thrills, either. Neurohacking is a precision science, not a
rave. In short, in both the physical and the psychological sense, don't drive over narrow
bridges when you're smashed out of your mind.

Imagine feeling 'alive' in the way that you did when you were, say, nine years old, but
with autonomy, with an awesome amount of knowledge and information at your disposal,
and an endless supply of unknown to explore.

That's hyperreality.
Okay, now we're ready to go.

Structuring a neurohacking session

I've put together a 'preview the hack' questionnaire, which has evolved over the years to
include a lot of my own shorthand so I was doubtful whether to include it here, however
it is so useful that I will include it with the advice that you would be best writing your
own, so just nick the ideas off it that are useful to you. Here are my categories:

Experiment Number:

Date:

Time:

Place:

Victim; sorry, subject: (details on subject + all data you collected)

Target: (Physical area and desired change or result) Desired and predicted effects on
psychology.

Current platform (Current part of brain with highest increase in activity during
communication with strangers)

Current format: (attachment/sentiment or bonding/emotion)

Relevant programming language: (Sensory motor, allegorical or intellectual).

Current relations to power supply: (self sufficient or dependent on others).

Starting space: (awareness of any dangers, fears, expectations or other states of mind that
could affect results) I try to achieve the optimal learning space.

Database info: (predictions based on previous experience, knowledge and

experimentation).

Useful media/input: (Things that will help)

Deleterious media/input: (Things to avoid).

Method base: (Destructive or constructive)

Hard/soft takeoff/attack/sustain/decay/release: (plotting the course of the action,

sometimes with graphs, sometimes a set of notes, depending on the context, including an
estimate of time involved.)
Entry point info: (I have a whole load of shorthand terms here so I will just briefly sketch
each one for the sake of clarity):

Single entry point (One way in only, i.e. a particular emotion or a particular memory, or a
surgical procedure with only one option, and usually irreversible. There is often only one
trigger to achieve a desired result, e.g. intensity/sensory overload/ sensory
deprivation/immediate disconnection or connection. It is fast and is usually done in one
hit or a short series of consecutive hits. The effects are usually predictable. The more
intrusive forms of single entry point hacking are really only useful for medical
emergencies until our tech improves somewhat).

Multiple entry point (A choice of ways in, i.e. you can start with any one of a choice of
memories or emotions to achieve the desired effect, or a chemical procedure acting at
many sites, or multi-spectrum sensory stimulation. Used for an ongoing process of
disconnection/connection that is usually done in stages. Usually reversible, it is slow and
somewhat unwieldy and often has unforeseen side effects. The reversibility option decays
over time.)

Feedback entry point: (Can use real-time biofeedback to amplify an effect).

Feedforward entry point: (In each stage you are setting up the success of the next stage).

Chain reaction: (Looking at the possibility and probability of unexpected, powerful,

irreversible or weird consequences of a chain reaction in hormonal/chemical and
behavioral results).

Real time side effects: (These might include, for example, sensory motor reflexes that
could get you bruised if you don't take precautions. If you get taken by surprise by an
experience you might burst out laughing, or yell. If you're really not sure what might
happen, make sure you have a good assistant, and if you don't want to get misunderstood,
soundproofing.)

Exit point effects (Temporary or permanent changes expected and observed which alter
behavior, either directly in a sensory motor way, or indirectly by altering attitude.)

Best methods of entry (Physical, sensory, chemical, psychological, surgical, whatever.

Neurohacking often demands a multiple approach, for example using a drug or drugs,
biofeedback, and psychology techniques all at once. That's why it's good to get to know
your tech and software before you start to mess about. If something goes wrong with the
tech you want to be able to pull out of it smoothly, and possibly leave the hack totally
unaffected. If you're not sure how things work and something pops your session is ruined
by panicking about what it might have been or done. You should use biofeedback in
ordinary conditions regularly before neurohacking with it or even trying it out with other
methods.)

All these things need to be considered before you make a move.

 9. Disc Cleanup (Wiping sentiment)

If you've come to the decision that sentiment must go, here's how to start.

Preparation: (LO-RES SCAN) –Setting up points of similarity between the known and
the unknown.

The basics here are about observation, both of self and of the effect of inputs. The
psychological game is to catch sentiment in the act, right when it's happening and at first
monitor it, observe it, to find out exactly what it's doing to your brain. You need all the
information about yourself, and about sentiment, that you can collect, for example:
(physical preparation):

a. Analysis of neurochemistry, biochemistry and brain scans of persons under the

influence of sentiment (for comparison, so that we know what we're looking for.)
Failing this, you can work with behavioral examples, but you really have to know
your emotion from your sentiment to do this successfully, except on the broadest
level. It is still a start, however, because usually your awareness of the difference
comes up quite fast with experience. Because most of us don't have access to
brain scanners, the middle part of this chapter is designed to help you spot
sentiment for what it is by watching psychology and behavioral clues.

b. Measurements of vital signs of yourself (and it's important to record these for a
while regularly to know what's 'normal' for you). The following gives an all-round
basic knowledge of where your physiology is at: EEG (headband array of
SE+2xSPE), EMG (3xSE), GSR (2xPE), ECG (4xSE), BP and pulse monitor.
You don't have to have all, or any, of this tech, although some components are
very affordable and help a lot.

c. Blood and urine analysis, food and drink intake monitoring from 1 week prior to
event. Weight record.

d. Current amount of sleep required and in what pattern.

e. Fill in the hack plan from the previous chapter by looking at points in the list
above. We'll go through it as an example in a moment, so get your hack preview
sheet up onscreen now, okay?

If you are your own volunteer (which is usually the case at first), draw conclusions about
your current state, physical and mental. Be realistic and you'll do yourself the best favor.
(Taking supplements/drugs to balance your state of mind out is only treating the
symptoms. The cause of imbalance is usually anxiety, and that is what we must remove.
All erroneous programming causes anxiety. Nine tenths of the western world has cortisol
poisoning.) List what you use and why you think you do, for example: "Cigarettes -I
smoke them to stay alert and less nervous. Alcohol -I behave much more sociably on
alcohol, and I'm much less shy...Coffee -I find it really hard to wake up without my
coffee in the mornings"...and so on. Even 'because it makes me feel better' will do as a
reason, if it's as close as you can get at the moment. We are looking for the truth, and
nobody needs to see this but you, so do yourself the favor of honesty.

(Psychological preparation):

Whilst you're gathering all these bits of information about yourself (it can take days or
weeks), you can wander through the rest of this chapter and start investigating sentiment
'triggers', and then start learning how to block the effect. How do you do this? You
trigger sentiment yourself on purpose in a controlled situation and you start practicing
control of it.

Sentiment can be induced on purpose reasonably easily by various means, either

internally with the relevant memories and/or imagery if you're good, externally with
movies etc. that make you cry, or soppy music, memories of things that make you weepy,
sentimental, or whatever you can find that brings on a 'rush of feeling'. (If nothing does
this to you, you're probably not stuck in a matrix and don't need to do this, so skip the rest
of this section unless you want to help someone else do it or are really that nosy).

Sentiment can also be induced or enhanced by chemical means, and one of the finest
drugs for this is alcohol. It not only reduces the ability of the frontal cortex, giving the
midbrain a bit more of an opportunity to play with itself; it also reduces your inhibitions
and embarrassment.

Sentiment is a habit; a habitual use of particular neural pathways which were constructed
in error. We want to get rid of these familiar but erroneous pathways and replace them
with pathways that should be there, pathways beneficial to intelligence.

Some stuff for your sheet now: this is a multiple entry point hack. The neurological
response to all forms of sentiment is similar enough in neuroendocrinal terms for it not to
matter which 'feeling' you target first. So it's best to choose either the one that hassles you
most frequently or the one you find it easiest to block. Most people find the weepy-movie
response easy to block; we're used to blocking it in the middle of films when our friend
knocks on the door after the Starship Enterprise has just exploded, or something. We can
turn the response off so easily because it isn't real. What we'll discover as we're going
along is that a great deal of sentiment isn't real. You can't play with real emotion in this
way at this stage because it's too powerful. If a spaceship really did just explode, on the
news, with your friends in it, you wouldn't be able to shut off your feelings at a ring of
the doorbell (although you might pretend to). So this is one good way to tell sentiment
from emotion...you can turn the former off.

This is also a feedforward entry point hack, because at every stage you are setting up the
success of the next one. Once you have attacked and controlled one, other feelings will
become easier to hack as common pathways are used less frequently. A lot of small, petty
stuff may almost seem to disappear overnight.
As a side effect at first, you may get snapback (suddenly reverting to a previous state of
mind for a short time after changing it) but it does not last long and should be endured.
Don't let it con you into thinking nothing's changed. You wouldn't be getting snapback if
nothing's changed.

To get rid of unwanted pathways we must prevent them from being used. This can be
done in various ways, but it's kindest to do a multiple entry point with a soft take off and
slow attack, long, long sustain, fast decay and fast release pattern (it's quite a nice pattern
for having sex in, as well, but then of course, sex is a multiple entry point hack too so no
change there then). To work with that pattern means we go in gently and we get gradually
more assertive until we see results, we then hold to that method for a sustained period of
time and we then move rapidly into:

COPY HERE...We can block that response...We've found a level of intensity of control
that works and we're sticking with it. We can turn off the tears in the weepy movie, or
whatever...we've learned to do that. Now, we need details.

If you're wondering why I opted for the kindest, most gradual experience rather than the
most exciting one, I ought to explain that I never approach neurohacking (despite
appearances) with that desperado, Goth-with-a-deathwish attitude that typifies many
people who experiment with drugs. If you can achieve the desired result by gentle means
then so much the better. There is no need to run rampage through the citadel of mind
stark naked with a laser cutter. It's best to push your limits, not attempt to break them
violently and immediately with a biochemical arsenal and dozens of DP electrodes.
Sometimes, the only way in may necessitate pain or shock, that's also the case with some
surgery or therapies on the body, but these are either methods chosen by default due to
having no other option, or emergency measures. Don't get me wrong; nobody enjoys a
good thrill more than I do (except perhaps my wife and a few of her friends), but I don't
go looking for them when I'm supposed to be doing something else.

HI-RES SCAN: Filling in the details: Here are some practical methods you have to
choose from in the inducing-blocking scenario; you can choose your own and put them
on your hack preview:

a. Physical/physiological. Sentiment can be blocked by physical manipulation of the

bodily response, by for example relaxing and breathing deeply and slowly,
particularly relaxing the stomach muscles. Unexpected sensory motor input, e.g.
physical exercise, sexual stimulation, and pain can interrupt it.

b. Chemical. Alcohol can be used to induce sentiment. So can sugar, in fact a

combination of the two is really quite powerful. Give yourself a box of chocolates
and a bottle of wine, and no sexual stimulation allowed, and see what happens
when you try to invoke sentiment.

For blocking, DHEAs and Dopamine can both reduce your brain's ability to
indulge in sentiment. Tolerance can become a problem though so this is for short-
 term use only, perhaps at the beginning. Also, be aware that anything learned
under the influence of any drug will be more easily recalled under the influence of
the same drug, and harder to recall without it. That's another reason why it's
important to keep a strict record of what you are taking and when.

Serotonin or SSRIs may or may not help depending on the chemistry you start off
with and what else you are taking. If you start off depressed, they may help for a
short while. I preferred to stick with selegiline, dopamine and large amounts of
choline, omega3 and B vitamins. Obviously stay away from alcohol during this
time once you are able to invoke sentiment without chemical assistance.

c. Psychological. Mnemonics and association training are useful for some people.
Saying 'no', aloud and imagining myself taking control; a scene I later pinched the
inner visuals for from The Matrix movie, was my own psychological reminder
whenever I found myself being pulled towards sentiment or pushed around by it.
That word and image was like the password for a firewall that changed the
vulnerability. It invoked an attitude ... 'No, I'm not accepting this, I won't be
controlled'.

d. Biofeedback. You can pull your brainwave patterns and vital signs away from a
'sentiment' default by feeding yourself pre-recorded signals of yourself free from
that space. I record all my major moods and states of consciousness and keep a
library, so that in idle moments I can think, 'hmmm, how would I like to feel this
evening?'...and play it back to myself. You can also learn to control your vital
signs etc. by direct real time biofeedback. A big plus with this is you get to see
your progress as you go along, which is positive, optimistic feedback.

e. Surgical. Neural pathways can be destroyed currently only on a relatively large

scale with microlaser or electrodes. Nanotechnology is really needed before I
would lose my reluctance to use this as a very fast method. With nanotech
however you could be looking at superfast techniques with ultimate surgical
precision, so watch that space.

The time from entry point to completion and the depth of the work itself depends entirely
on how often, how long and how intensely the undesired feeling has been experienced,
i.e., it exactly correlates with how much dodgy input you've assimilated. This also
determines how far we need to go into memory.

All neurohacking involves memory. Thought is constantly directed by memory, in a

literal physical manner, networks are used because they have been used before; they are
remembered as the way to go. We have to remember to do things differently until it
becomes automatic.

P+V (practice and variation)

Searching memory for all past incidences of sentiment is obviously impractical with our
current biological lifespan, so the trick is to go for the ones you remember most vividly.
Learn to recognize sentiment by recalling all the times that you ever made an idiot of
yourself, because more than likely it was the cause of them. The game later moves into
trying to catch any sentiment spam before it can distract you at all. Ride round and cut it
off at the password, so to speak. This has to be made a habit, but if you are observant and
play the game well your brain will do all that for you.

Although you are beginning this process by blocking the feelings of sentiment, this
technique will not work on its own. Blocking emotions or feelings is not the way to get
rid of them permanently. The actual response itself needs to be wiped, and the memory of
it needs to be wiped. Think of it as though someone has just given you a copy of the
world's best shit-hot operating system. It's stunning. You can put it on your PC, but first
you have to get rid of Windows, or it won't fit. You have to wipe the old programs, so
you have to stop using them, first of all. However, throughout this time, for whatever
reason, input to your machine won't stop coming in, and it has to go somewhere to get
translated into anything coherent. So we install the new system in sections as we go
along, (because it's designed to work that way) by finding examples of healthy input to
copy and behaving like that, whilst using chemicals and technology to speed the new
network-construction. The brain will do the actual work; it will build that which we wish
to employ, using resources taken from unused networks. All we have to do is play, and
COMP will both install and run itself. We can then concentrate on wiping the windows.

So to achieve this, what you have to do is look for examples of genuine emotion, identify
them correctly, and copy them. These examples can come from books, music, TV,
movies, real life persons or your own imagination (although the latter should probably be
left until a later stage). They are not easy to find unless you know what you're looking
for, so we'll go through some differentiation between emotion and sentiment, and by the
time you've finished watching other people's behavior and playing 'sentiment-spotting',
you'll be an expert.

The one question I am asked more than any other about neurohacking is; "how can I be
sure I know the difference" (between sentiment and emotion? Between attachment and
bonding? Drives and instincts?) I have tried to answer this in many ways to many
different people and I have found a few universal rules that anyone can apply...

Drives

Drives are deep biological motivations. The most frequent drive we hear about is the
libido, the 'sex drive'. Biological drives are all firmly rooted in physical biology. Our
drives are ancient, and inherent in the oldest parts of our brains, impelling and forceful.
They can take over our behavior without our conscious knowledge, or we can use our
conscious knowledge to employ them.

They exist for our biological survival and reproduction, and are too strong to be
overcome by anything but intense fear or intelligence.
When we're changing over operating systems, deleting sentiment and taking on board
emotion, the most difficult things to judge and to control are the thoughts, emotions and
behaviors associated with biology's priorities; sex, food, and danger. The most difficult
one of all to control is sex.

Drives don't cause sentiment. Thwarting drives can cause sentiment if you're wired badly.
We can explore this with a psychological technique. Here's a fun experiment with drives
for you: get somewhere warm and comfortable and relax. Start thinking about things that
make you feel sexy. Continue until you get a physical response, then think about
something decidedly un-sexy until you no longer feel like that. You're not trying to get an
on/off change; you're looking for an ability to increase/decrease. When you can do that,
without feeling nasty, you've controlled sentiment in real time. That's what I mean by
'control'.

Next, you push it. See how sexy you can feel and still manage to turn it down. Is it easier
or more difficult when you're hungry? Tired? Drunk? Find your limitations and practice
pushing them.

Next, try the same technique with anger. See whether you can evoke it with imagination,
thinking of things that angered you in the past. If it was not real anger, you may find your
attitude to those events has changed; you may find the memories embarrassing or even
amusing. If it was genuine, you may feel justified and relieved to have confirmed your
suspicions, or you may feel saddened because of your greater understanding. Look
carefully at and learn the difference between sentimental anger and the real thing (anger
based on sentiment is out of control and feels unpleasant; genuine anger involves
rectitude). It isn't easy, and it will take a lot of practice. One of the first things you will
notice is that you can increase the intensity of pleasurable feelings by relaxing into them,
whereas tensing up in response to it automatically increases a painful feeling. This should
give you a clue as to how to reduce them.

Why are drives so difficult to control?

Control of the sex drive is notoriously difficult to master. I usually upset people
whenever I talk about sex, because I suppose my views are fairly radical. Firstly I believe
that lifelong monogamy is not the optimal state for intelligence. By monogamy I do not
mean marriage, I mean restriction of sexual activity to one partner for life. This is not a
sensible idea from biology's point of view, which is why so many people find it so
difficult to get the hang of and tend to want to experiment a bit, especially with potential
mates, despite society's disapproval. To find oneself restricted for life to sexual activity
with a sterile partner would be disastrous for biology, so it also encourages us to fool
around a bit before commitment. From intelligence's point of view, experience matters.
So does safety, of course, so we are not talking an all-out desire for orgiastic hedonism
here, but interaction. If interaction with a partner is good, sex is usually good too so here
again biology and intelligence can work together (if allowed to) in perfect harmony,
which is what good, fun, no-strings-attached, explorative sex with contraception is all
about.
Survival via sexuality is the most powerful drive biology knows. Sexuality is irrevocably
caught up in biology's concepts of survival and will remain that way for not only as long
as it takes us to realize that it is no longer necessarily technically true, but as long as it
takes us to convince biology that this is the case (maybe for as long as we're in biological
bodies, I suspect). As important as sexuality is, other drives are sometimes equally
powerful. Fear and anger are also emotionally very intense and very difficult to control. It
is certainly not impossible, but it does take a lot of work.

Sex affects various parts of the brain, including the amygdalae, the nucleus accumbens,
the septal region and the hypothalamus. The sex hormones in both men and women are
important for the normal functioning of the 'bonding hormones' oxytocin and vasopressin.
There are a lot of neuroactive chemicals in sperm. (So if you don't want to hack someone
by accident, wear a condom.) Sexual desire can monopolize brain activity and is probably
the most intense biological high most people experience apart from orgasm itself, (which
it knows unconsciously desire leads to.) Sex can shut down other emotion networks. It
has a veritable arsenal of tactics to lead you astray, which can con you badly if you are
operating out of sentiment. Attachment is one such tactic.

What has any of this got to do with love? Some may ask. Absolutely nothing. Both sex
and attachment can occur without love (although love cannot occur without bonding.)
The difference between attachment and bonding is as vast as that between sentiment and
emotion.

Instincts

Instincts are unconscious motivations, our ability to 'know what to do', to explicate our
drives. The dictionary defines instinct as 'an innate propensity to certain seemingly
rational acts performed without conscious intention'. The word comes from the Latin
'incite', which is exactly what instincts do; they incite certain behaviors. The first time
you have sex, your drive tells you to do it, but your instinct tells you how.

Pitted against intelligence, an instinct compared to a drive is like a seduction versus a

rape. With drives, unless you are very strong, you will not prevent them controlling your
emotions and your actions. Drives can be blocked, and very little else, safely. But
instincts can be unlearned, wiped, manipulated. Social indoctrination and brain damage
can both affect their nature, (but rarely can even brain damage remove the drives, unless
severe).

Being aware of your instincts is the first step in deciding whether or not to override them.
A good one to practice overriding is the 'jump' when something startles you. You can
learn to freeze without the jump, which is far cooler and stops you spilling things.

Instincts can be totally overridden. If instincts could not be removed, no parent or indeed
human could sit and ignore a screaming baby, without feeling concern or a desire to help.
Nature has programmed us to be strongly affected by a baby's cry so that we will make
all efforts to stop it (nature didn't foresee medications and abuse as methods to stop it, but
they are used.) People with wiped instincts can be incredibly blind to another human's
pain, and those stuck in a matrix can be incredibly careless of it.

Attachment

Attachment is what people do who cannot bond. If you are attached to something, you
may feel that you couldn't live without it. You may view it as your property, whether it is
a place, an object, or a person. You will be afraid of losing it, feel bad if anyone criticizes
it, and rush to its defense. It may feel like 'a part of you'.

Attachment to place causes the sentiments of homesickness ('I want more') and patriotism
('I will defend it').

Attachment to person causes the sentiments of possessiveness ('I want more'), and
jealousy ('I will defend it').

Attachment to material objects causes the sentiments of covetousness ('I want more') and
miserliness ('I will defend it').

...What do you suppose are the sentiments associated with attachment to food?

... And what is the sentiment of guilt indicative of attachment to?

When you can answer these questions, you've understood sentiment.

When we become attached to something, we attempt to make it our matrix.

This is a vital point to understand. We literally try to turn it into our source of power, our
platform, and our source of input. It seems like the only safe space we can find. Our
parents and peers teach us reliance on 'professionals' instead of independence and
competence at whatever we need to achieve. In emergencies, adults give children a model
of what to do, which, more often than not, is, panic. Run for the doctor/police/fire
brigade/teacher/counselor...children learn that adults have no personal power in the world
without these professionals, that they have no power to protect their children without
these same professionals, that the 'society' matrix is not really a safe space, and this must
be provided by the professionals. Society is presented to us like this, as a surrogate
matrix. So are sentimental relationships, as is reflected in their pop songs...'You are my
everything'...'I cant live if living is without you'. All of this programming instills in
people a disinclination to act, to learn, to become competent.

One of the things most people lose, through 'ordinary' brain damage, is their creative
ability. The ability to write stories, paint pictures, compose music. I'm not suggesting we
should all be Mozarts, but we should all have a basic skill at these things just as we can
manage basic dancing or driving skills yet few of us are great choreographers or racing
drivers. Creativity is an intended gift for everyone, because it is important to be able to
entertain ourselves when we are alone. It keeps bits of our brains busy and prevents them
atrophying, just as introspection or learning keeps other bits busy for the same reason.
Creativity is there for the ongoing health of our minds. We need never be bored, because
we can always think of something to do.

Without it, we are forced to get it somehow. It is one of the most vital things for a human
being to have creative input. Something is definitely missing, without it, and we know
that. So how do we get it if we can't produce it ourselves?

We buy it. And here is a big clue as to what people really get attached to...How much do
we pay those who entertain us? Compared to those who save our lives? Compared to
those who do crucial jobs running our power and transport and providing vital resources?
We pay billions and billions; to movie stars, to pop stars (wow, we even call them stars,
so magical is their ability it dazzles us), and we spend more billions on books, pictures,
CDs, DVDs and things that make us laugh, cry and have a wonderful time, because we
cannot do it without them. This is what we value, and what we spend our money
on...That which should have been given, (our own creative ability) has been taken away
(by damage), and is now sold back to us at a vast profit (by society, which largely caused
the damage in the first place).

This has led some to believe that there is a conspiracy, much like in 'The Matrix' movie. I
don't believe that's true, for the simple reason that, if anyone was doing this on purpose,
i.e., damaging people so that they would be ardent consumers, whoever was doing it
would not subject their own family to the damaging factors.

And if they didn't, their family would grow up pretty intelligent and have them put away.
A person like that would appear totally insane to an intelligence.

Accidental though it might be, by not running COMP we are failing to turn on gene
transcription factors that affect many things that go on in our brains, including their
patterns of growth. The loss of our creative ability is just one of a number of losses, but
surely one of the saddest, because it is one of the abilities which brings humans the
greatest pleasure. People become attached to their favorite bands or movie stars because
they are perceived as a matrix; a source of ideas, power, a safe space, the known.

Being abandoned by a matrix when there is none other to move into is the most terrible
psychological experience a human can face, genetically laden with implicit death, and
biology knows it. Once attached, people find it very hard to let go, because the loss of an
attachment is perceived, by the unbonded brain, as abandonment. That was, after all,
probably their very first learning in life. Abandonment really sucks.R5

The revolutionaries who change society are usually the victims of the greatest disillusion.

Bonding

Bonding is a part of the function of COMP. It is the building of a bridge between the
known and the unknown. It detects common factors between things known and unknown
and uses these as a foundation to compare the new bits to. We literally 'bond' to each new
skill or ability, as well as each other, places, people, and things. There are several
different kinds of bonding, from physical biological to synergetic. In bonding, things
become a part of us without diminishing themselves. (In attachment, something is always
diminished; usually independence or freedom.)

In a very real sense, bonding is the essence of COMP. When we learn a thing we form
bonds, in between parts of our brain, new physical synapses, new receptors, new bits of
mind.

Physical bonding is essential for the survival of biology. It is a physical attunement to and
awareness of the state of another person's physiology; their needs and moods, their
sensory-motor state.R10 Physically bonded people find their body rhythms synchronize,
including hormone cycles. Pheromones are partly responsible for this, but the existence
of a sufficient number of receptors to detect them is just as vital.

Physical bonding can happen both without conscious awareness and even (and this may
astonish you) without conscious feelings. All that is needed is close physical proximity
for a long enough time, preferably with pleasant physical interaction and good mental
interaction. Physical bonding, even between parent and baby, is not love. Lots of
creatures can physically bond. (Perhaps you believe that all creatures can love, too, but
regardless of that, the two are not the same thing.) Physical bonding does not even
respect species' boundaries.

The process of bonding is exactly the same between two adults as it is between an adult
and a child. Sexual attraction need not be present at all for bonding to take place, and sex
certainly need not be a part of love, although love will enhance sexual attraction if it is
present.

A bonding of intelligence in a relationship or interaction is synergy. Synergy is not

possible without interaction. It is a mental state that uses a precise set of hormones and
networks to achieve its goal. Synergy is, at some stage, an important drive for
intelligence, as important as sexuality is for biology's sake.

There are different kinds of bonding, as I've said. One of the most important is physical
bonding, unfortunately it is also now one of the most rare. The degree to which this has
damaged intelligence is incalculable. In our entire genetic past (i.e. before medical
intervention) babies who were not in contact and bonded with another human being
almost all of the time, were not likely to survive. Currently babies are isolated from
physical contact almost entirely, in playpens and prams and high chairs and cribs, with
blankets and toys and pacifiers and bottles instead of real live humans, which is what they
really need to stop feeling anxious.

Instead of bonding, these children form attachments, to the things they spend most of
their time with. So we get the children who scream blue murder if teddy gets lost, or
cannot sleep without a particular blanket, or sulk all night if they can't watch their
favorite TV show. At age seven, when they should be bonding to their environment in a
deep intuitive awareness of the world and its natural rules and scientific laws, instead
they become attached to society and its rules and laws. And at puberty, when they should
be bonding to a partner, instead they attach to a person they are attracted to and call it
'love', which is a terrible joke.

Love

This section is not about sex. Just thought we'd clear that up from the start. Love is a
genuine emotion. We rarely see it these days, though, much like honor. (Honor used to
mean, 'full of honesty', i.e., integrity.) Most human relationships now are based on
attachment and fear of loss.

To experience love, a human must be able to bond. Two hormones are necessary to start
the process off; one for girls and one for boys...girls use oxytocin for bonding, boys use
vasopressin. One depends on estrogen for its production, the other, testosterone.

There are genetic aspects to our capacity for love. Some animals form long pair bonds
with their mates, as human beings do.R27 Others have only the equivalent of 'one-night-
stands'. The promoter upstream of the oxytocin- and vasopressin-receptor genes affects
the difference in behavior. The insertion of an extra section of DNA text (only about 460
letters long), into the promoter makes an animal more likely to bond with its mate.
Having this doesn't guarantee that you will fall in love; it just makes it easier for you to
do so. Lots of other factors can interfere with that.

Being stuck in a matrix makes it very difficult to experience love as a pure neurochemical
state (all of our moods are dependent on our chemistry, as anyone will know who has
ever noticed what amazing things alcohol can do to an audience). Genuine love has its
own unique chemistry, just like genuine fear or genuine sorrow.

And the fact is, we can 'turn off' our ability to feel love, (not just the feeling, but the
ability to feel it), just like any other emotion, or sentiment, eventually. Many things,
behavior being one can control the expression of genetic factors, and ultimately our
ability to feel things depends on the expression of those gene transcription factors.

We can also turn it on. But...

The love potion paradox

Thought experiment: If you could find a 'love potion', i.e., some medication or technique
that would make one person feel like they were in love, by reproducing the exact same
chemical state, and you could only use one dose, whom would you give it to? Would you
take it yourself? Would you give it to your partner (with informed consent, obviously)?

What would be your angle? Would you treat it as though it were something that was
going to make somebody feel really good for a while, like a long-lasting drug, or would
you believe that the state of mind generated by the potion was real love and would be
experienced as such?

The paradox of the love potion is this: If you believe that 'love' is a mystical state that
cannot be faked with a bunch of chemicals, a 'love potion' can never work for you;
whatever happens you will remain convinced it wasn't 'real'. If you think such a potion
can produce 'love', then the state itself is no more than a bunch of chemicals and means
nothing. People 'love' you because of a bunch of chemicals, not because of your
worth...so what would be the point of ever using such a potion? It isn't real!

If you could turn on this feeling whenever you like, about anybody or anything you like,
and you could choose to be in love with whomever you pleased, would you do it?

Remember that it's experienced as real. It hurts as much, if something bad happens to
them. The stronger your feeling for them, the more it hurts...

... And if they reciprocate... are you conning them? Deceiving them? If their response is
natural and yours was the result of a drug, which is really in love?

...And what's really going to hit you later on, is...would you still have fallen in love with
them if you hadn't taken the drug?

...You'd never know.

Once you have turned it on, withdrawal can be painful for you too. If the person you're in
love with is stuck in a matrix, there will be big complicating problems with their
attachment. They will follow the cycle of attached relationships and move on. If you are
truly in love that is confounding.

People stuck in attachment behavior cannot love, they can only need. What they need
they think they can get from being with you, but what they truly need (freedom from
anxiety and a working mind) you cannot give them, even if you have it yourself. They'll
get disillusioned, go elsewhere to seek what they need, eventually.

Now it's easy at this point to go looking back at old relationships and blame their failure
on the other person's being attached, whereas you of course were really in love. You're
probably wrong. You were probably both attached. You can tell, because if it were real
love you will still be friends with that person and glad they are enjoying life, even though
you miss the interaction. You will still have a comfortable relationship, or you will have
realized they're not able to be comfortable, and let it be. And you'll have learned. The
next time, you'll be on the lookout for similar signs of insecurity. Once bitten, twice shy.
Twice bitten, stupid b******.

So, would you ever use a love potion?

It gets harder... Should such a medication be given to parents who have felt incapable of
loving their children, but want to? To people who mistreated their partners? Adoptive
parents? Adoptees? People with autism? Child abusers? People who can't form
relationships? Anyone who wants to feel that way about someone, and can't?

Would you use it for any of that?

If you knew that such a medication or technique existed, right now, would you tell
anyone? Whom would you tell?

Can you think of any reason why using such a thing could be justified?

...If you have answered 'no' to all the questions above, it would probably be good to stop
reading about here.

Sentiments

Sentiments are feelings created by erroneous wiring which superficially resemble

emotions but the resemblance is skin deep. If we search deeper for their causes, we will
find that they are not very nice. There are several key differences between sentiments and
emotions:

1. Emotion lasts, long after the input triggers have gone that began it in the first place.
Sentiment will wear off unless the input is constantly refreshed. If you are crying,
for example, with genuine emotion because, say, someone has died, you cannot
stop feeling that way for quite a while no matter how many distractions are
offered. If you're crying with sentiment because, say, someone just died in a
movie, you can turn off that feeling in an instant if your friends suddenly arrive
with beer and the latest PC game. It isn't real. Ten minutes later you won't even
remember you felt that way; you'll be shooting monsters or negotiating a difficult
terrain on skis.

2. The difference can be measured, of course, because sentiment does not cause the
same chemical changes in the brain as genuine emotion. If you're running
sentiment you'll have elevated cortisol levels in both your brain and bloodstream.

3. Behavior also betrays sentiment; attachment behavior is always immature and not
merely illogical but often blatantly stupid. Attachment behavior puts our lives in
danger through physical violence as well as chemical poisoning. Watch for
'playground' behavior, sulks, tantrums, melodrama, name-calling and verbal abuse
in toto. (If you get free of sentiment it will never occur to you to use verbal
personal attacks again. When you see others use them, you will feel first a
bewilderment at the state of their minds, and then strong appreciation at the state
of yours...Emotions are real, and they'll be with you for life. They are the honest
response to reality, not a fake response to a simulation of it.) If we trace the
results of our actions and behavior taken under the influence of sentiment, we will
 find they have led to deleterious ends (including fights, tantrums, and people no
longer speaking to each other.) Actions taken under the influence of real emotion
have, on the whole, beneficial results. Strictly, they have results that are logically
beneficial. They may still involve pain, unhappiness or distress, but the end
results will turn out to have been beneficial.

4. If we are acting from genuine emotion, we will not repeat mistakes. People acting
from sentiment make the same mistakes over and over, not learning anything.

5. Sentiment usually comes on with a strong 'rush' of feeling, but fades unless input
continues. Emotion begins more slowly, and grows stronger regardless of input.
Emotion only uses a strong physical response in situations of sudden shock or
surprise.

6. Sentiment is based on fear of loss and abandonment. Emotion is a tool used by

creative intellect.

7. Sentiment always implies 'action/reaction' thinking and communication. Emotion

always implies interaction.

8. Sentiment is very outwardly intense; melodramatic, histrionic and overplayed, like

a ham actor trying to do drama with a bad dialogue...it wants the whole world to
know how it feels, and it tires you out. Emotion is more private and inwardly
intense, and it enervates you without making you manic. It affects the mind and
body more strongly than the outward behavior implies.

Sentiment kills instincts, and enhances drives. The morality of sentiment tells us, "If you
comfort a crying baby, you will end up with a spoilt brat, and what kind of a parent
would other people think you are?" Or, "Smother the child with affection, because it's
cute...Aah! ...What would people think of you if any harm came to it?"...So we raise kids
who are either terrified of being abandoned, or whose intelligence is stifled by
possession.

Sentiment twists our perception, because feelings are non-discriminatory about reality,
which is why we are able to cry at movies. If a false 'reality' is all around, the images
inside our minds will not correspond to reality, but to that simulation.

This is why there are problems with self-observation that need to be considered of course.
We are used to thinking of 'emotions' as epitomized by the physical feelings they subject
us to, not by the mood responses they cause. Learning to watch for the mood response (a
desire to thump someone, or to sulk, not an actual action such as yelling or sniveling), is
quite difficult to do at first in real time, so we tend to look back in retrospect at incidents
and this is problematic because of the inaccuracy of memory when operated from
sentiment in the first place...if we're attached, we'll also misinterpret feelings to fit in with
the language of sentiment, for example we may mistake the distress of a person at their
partner's being late home as jealousy, when in fact it is merely a normal concern for their
safety. We may misinterpret assertiveness as aggression, humor as sarcasm, intellectual
skill or artistic talent as showing off, protection as possessiveness, and so on. If we are
anxious, we tend to twist all input through a screening for how sinister it might be, and
the weighting given by sentiment will tell us more things are threats than is really the
case. Fear itself makes everything viewed appear more fearful. If you are unable to accept
that someone is not jealous, because they seem so to you, you are not seeing reality but a
distorted input. You are not reading their body chemistry correctly. You are judging them
from your own rules of behavior, not theirs. You would be jealous in their situation, so
you assume they must be. Wrong! You've been living in a dream world, Neo. Projecting
the way you behave, onto everybody else. No wonder you're not communicating, or
understanding, very much.

A good trick is to keep notes in real time, because even if we are doing fine and hacking
away at sentiment, memory is unreliable in retrospective self-analysis. People tend to
remember the beginning and end of situations with much greater importance weighting
than the middle. Thus the outcome of any experience fundamentally changes our
judgment of it. It also alters our perception of time. A painful experience where most of
the pain comes at the beginning and end will be remembered as lasting longer than a less
painful one, even when the opposite is true. The memory of an experience does not
reflect the truth until intelligence is well integrated with emotion/imagination and is
anxiety-free.

Operating from the basis of sentiment, we will be subject to brainwashing by

unscrupulous persons, affected by deleterious input, rumor, gossip and outright lies. We
must bear all this in mind when assessing events in retrospect. We must be very, very
careful of how we label things verbally, and avoid feeling guilty when we find we've
failed five times today already and really don't feel that confident. We have to remember
that in the war against anxiety, the truth will inevitably be the victor, as opposed to the
first casualty.

There is a cheat for easier self-analysis and it's another computer-system allegory... think
of the brain as an information-processing device during your analysis. Track how
input/information was processed, rather than focusing on the feelings themselves.

True emotion springs from a healthy mind free from chronic anxiety. It is a tool, like an
extra sense, when we are not stuck in a matrix. It gives us the ability to see more of the
truth, because it is aligned with the real world and is natural, rather than a synthetic
construct created by intellect's idea of what we should feel and when.

I can partly explain here why people trapped in sentiment feel uncomfortable with those
who are not. Their unconscious minds still respond to reality, but the signals are blocked
from conscious thought because of their anxiety potential.

If you place you ordinary, average person in a PET scanner and wire them up to a GSR (I
mean, with their permission, obviously), and show them videos of people talking about
things, the more melodramatic the narrative, the more sentimental the watcher becomes.
If the narrator expresses sentiment, an area of brain (left interior frontal gyrus) in the
listener will increase its blood flow. If the narrator is telling a true story and expressing
genuine emotion, the subject's GSR reading will go up and a different area of brain
increases its blood supply (ventromedial prefrontal cortex & superior frontal gyrus).
These areas get busy when there is anxiety or unresolved conflict. The brain knows
something unusual is going on, but it doesn't know what it is, and the watcher becomes
more nervous. R28

In a person who isn't stuck in a matrix, these results are initially reversed, and later, the
ventromedial PFC/SFG effect disappears.

Long, long ago, in a university far, far away, a friend of mine, whom we shall call Tony
because that is his name and he's still proud of this...wondered what would happen if he
got into a PET scanner and did this experiment on LSD (I kid you not). Brave man. He
lost his job for it, as he got found out. Well, I should say, we got found out (I didn't work
there, but somebody had to operate the scanner), but he also lost it partly because of
lecturing to his classes about LSD and MDMA and dancing.

The resulting scans decorated my wall for a short while1 Tony's left interior frontal gyrus
did the neural equivalent of country dancing with every true emotion expressed
appropriately. When sentiment was expressed, it did nothing. He could tell consciously;
not by viewing the scans, (which is how I could tell), immediately which of the video
narrators was telling the truth, and although his GSR was all over the place, the
ventromedial PFC/SFG networks remained unlit throughout. I could have used the man
as a lie detector, watching his responses to people's stories. What's more, I could have
used him as a sentiment detector.

I don't know if this was an 'average' result, because Tony was unusually intelligent and
not very average, but the awareness that somehow our neurochemical state could alter our
perception of the truth set me off on a chase to find out how. When I found out how, I
incorporated that knowledge into the design of experiments and learned how to do it on
purpose, although it is a double-edged sword...and to find out why, you will have to wait
another few chapters.

A well developed emotional system is like a sixth sense; it is the trigger behind the
'intuitive' reputation of some investors, it is the thing which gives us the 'gut feeling'
about a person or a situation but it is useless to most people because they are trying to run
it through sentiment, and fear will color every encounter and their 'intuition' will be
mistaken, in a great many ways...

As you know, in the context of this theory I associate feeling with sentiment, as opposed
to real emotion.

Feelings are very susceptible to the effects of alcohol, much more so than real emotions.
Try this experiment: get a load of pictures of sexy people off the Internet (careful now)
and show them to friends, just once, and get your friends to rate them on a scale of 1-10.
Wait six months. Do it again, but this time make sure everyone's drunk (well I said
research could be expensive.) Compare the results. Let me guess...The scores have
mostly gone up by two or three marks.

This is a sexist experiment, by biology's design. Girls will find their ratings for sexy types
will change over their hormonal cycle, preferring certain types at different times of the
month. So to be realistic you cannot wait six months, or go to the trouble of checking
everybody's hormonal state each time, and doing it twice in close proximity may affect
the result because of memory and familiarity. So, sorry girls; if you work out an easy
method, let me know.

Not everybody's feelings are affected pleasantly by alcohol, as everybody knows who
ever goes in pubs. And the problem with aggression is that it too is chemically habit-
forming. If a person whose aggression is amplified by alcohol drinks regularly, especially
if they do it at the same time each day, the brain will form a habit of releasing the
chemicals associated with the state right on time, regardless of whether the person has
actually had a drink or not. This is an anticipatory response by the brain, which is smart
enough to pick up our regular needs and conform to them, just like a decent word
processor does (albeit badly). So remember if you're a regular drinker, you'll quite likely
be extra susceptible to sentiment at your usual drinking time, regardless of whether or not
you've actually had a drink.

A classic aspect of sentiment is 'altruism'; the preaching of the creed of 'caring' that
almost everybody conforms to. Praising things that have no real worth is one example.
Parents and teachers show they 'care' by restricting children's freedom and experience,
which leads to apathy or resentment, and by lying to children, giving a false impression
of worth where none really exists when they do something considered 'good'. This helps
to create arrogance, and there is a large chasm between self-esteem and arrogance.

'Self-esteem' could be defined as 'rightful pride in oneself and one's achievements', and
'arrogance' as 'over-confidence; a belief about oneself and one's accomplishments which
is not justified or proved in actual fact and behavior'. So self-esteem is basically justified
confidence and pride. Perhaps the ability to assess this accurately is a feature of
intelligence...'know thyself'... People feel such an urgent need to prove they care because
it's socially taboo to admit that they don't. Because their 'altruistic' behavior is based on
false emotion (sentiment) there's a sense of guilt attached to it and a need to justify and
confirm 'nice' behavior.

In P&V, Practice makes perfect. Variation means, eventually you get to try all sorts of
tricks to see if you are a competent sentiment spam blocker. To beta test yourself... You'll
induce any feeling you can think of and see if you can immediately turn it off. You'll try
yourself out when you're totally drunk, or high on whatever else you normally indulge in.
You'll see how a lack of sleep or change of diet affects your ability. See if you can remain
unmoved by biofeedback of your earlier recordings of yourself feeling sentimental.
You'll run these tests only to ascertain your current limit of control, say, once every
month for the first two months and preferably not at all after that. You want to close
down those pathways, not use them, and you expose yourself to this stuff only so you get
to know the strength of the enemy. When the pathways are gone you'll genuinely feel
nothing, but this is only the first hack and you shouldn't expect too much rapid change.
Any change is a good change because it sets up the scene for the next successful change;
that's how this works. And when we get so good that blocking is automatic we've
completed one run of the program and the skill is made permanent in long term memory
and we are free to pursue the next stage. For most of us that will be going in another
layer, and that needs messing about with memory.

1. Before being stolen, along with a lot of other things that got pinched at the time (shit
happens.)

10. Memory Editors (Enhancing & wiping memory)

(This technique is currently undergoing clinical trials for the treatment of PTSD in war
veterans, trauma and disaster survivors.)

The reason we can hack memory a lot more easily these days is due to the recent
discoveries about its storage methods. The way the brain goes about things often leaves
great gaping holes for a hacker to stroll through and memory retrieval is one such hole.

Whenever we recall a memory, we update it according to our current ideas and beliefs
and knowledge about things, then new protein synthesis is necessary to begin the chain
reaction that restores it to LTP (long term potentiation) after use. If we block that protein
synthesis, the memory cannot be restored. It has no way of getting back onto the hard
drive. The best way to do this currently is chemically.

Playing with memory is quite surreal, often amusing and enlightening, always dangerous,
and never predictable, except within very broad parameters. Memory associates things by
allegory or analogy, in order to translate them, which means all kinds of connections of
which you were not consciously aware can come tumbling out and surprise you. Working
with memory can be a little bit like trying to stop water running downhill. Of necessity it
is a multiple entry point operation because we can go in on any key memory, but one
thing leads to another and if you are wiping you will sometimes lose the whole memory
tree; not just the incident you focused on. You must make notes or recordings if you want
to reprogram yourself, because you can't stop it happening when you are in a chain
reaction that will block anything you try to store in long term memory until it wears off.

It can take a lot of focus and concentration to avoid losing stuff you didn't want to, so it's
essential to plan beforehand what target memory or set of memories, scenarios and
feelings you want to forget and make all efforts to concentrate on them and them alone,
until the chemicals are no longer affecting you.
I really hope you are listening here because the price of incompetence is in this case
amnesia so try to stay aware.

I'm going to go through LTP in detail now step by step because having a grasp of it really
is fundamental to neurohacking. If you can control memory and emotion you can control
perception and that means you can control the mind. Forgive me if it gets a little
technical, but this is the single most important network for hacking, so we ought to know
it in detail.

The brain's most abundant transmitter associated with learning, is glutamate. When input
hits the presynaptic neuron, it releases glutamate. The more interested/emotionally moved
we are, the more glutamate keeps coming, up to a point. The first wave of it slams into
AMPA receptors on the postsynaptic neuron. The NMDA receptor can also pick up
glutamate, but currently it's blocked by magnesium, spam detector of the neural net. (If
you pay too much attention to too many trivial things, eat magnesium.) The NMDA
receptor is a vital key in memory formation and endurance.R6

LTP occurs when 'coincidence' is detected; when different neurons fire in synchrony, the
effect is amplified. NMDA receptors will only pop their magnesium corks if the cell
membrane is slightly depolarized because of a previous input from another neuron. Thus
each individual neuron can respond more intensely to input affecting one bunch of
synapses, if it has just been stimulated by another bunch. It has the ability to associate
different stimuli. Not only this, but in each future occurrence, neurons that have fired
together before are more likely to fire together again, like sympathetic resonance, when
only one associated group is stimulated. This is the core of memory formation (but not
long-term storage).

AMPA increases the likelihood of an action potential, which may induce a cell to fire.
Such firing removes the block on NMDA receptors as the memory goes, 'Yes! I will
accept this email!' The magnesium removed, glutamate moves in and allows calcium to
enter the cell. Calcium ions act as intracellular second messengers that trigger or regulate
electro-chemical events.

...And here you are in the core of the mind. Let's make it a video...you've hacked your
way into the inner sanctum, and lo; the security is negligible. Look around. Be careful
what you touch...calcium ions effect enzyme regulation, muscle contraction,
neurotransmitter release, and most importantly, synaptogenesis and gene expression.
Alteration of the intracellular calcium level can happen in various ways, via voltage-
gated calcium channels, release from intracellular stores, or ligand-gated ion channels
(e.g., NMDA, or nicotine acetylcholine receptors). Once in the cell, calcium ions bind to
protein kinases, the most important of which is probably Calmodulin (CaM). This starts a
complex series of reactions, a part of which we'll zoom in on...eEF2-kinase...(also called
CaM-kinase III...) busy phosphorylating (adding a phosphor group to).... Eukaryotic
elongation factor 2 (eEF2)...a GTPase necessary for the elongation step in protein
translation. Do you know what that means, to you and I? From a neurohacking point of
view? It presents us with a calcium-dependent interruption of protein synthesis, which
causes a rapid change in the nature of the mRNA translation.

CaM-kinase II...(CaMKII), is an enzyme with very tasty and unique properties...one

being its ability to continue to self-phosphorylate after the supply of calcium ends;
maintaining a transient 'memory' of neuronal activation, ...that's your memory doing it's
thing...CaMKII is sensitive to both the duration and frequency of calcium transients, and
has the capability of decoding the frequency of calcium spikes. It is the very heart of both
synaptic plasticity and LTP and neurogenesis. It initiates gene transcription, the mother of
all machines.

We are talking gene transcription factors here. Here is one, and it's one that turns our
ability to remember on and off.

I hope you realize what this means.

It means, finally, that we can take control of our own neurochemistry at the gene
expression level and literally engineer our personalities. We can suddenly 'just say no';
refuse to fall victim to the petty, the puerile, and the downright dangerous. We can free
ourselves from dependencies on drugs, drink and stupid habits. We can decide what we
want to encourage in our minds and ourselves, and we can put it there. And we can wipe
all the stuff that harms us or slows us down as we're going along. We can do all this,
because we can turn the learning/remembering process itself on and off.

There is often confusion when I talk about this because people think I am implying we
can somehow non-intrusively redesign our own genome! I'm not suggesting that at all.
I'm suggesting we can, as we figure out how to turn gene transcription factors on an off,
control the expression of our given genome to enhance our own intelligence. Genes
themselves are switched on and off by transcription factors binding to their promoter
sequences. As these are identified and their agonists/antagonists determined, we can pop
a pill, jack in (as opposed to up), and use tech and chemicals to alter the duration of a
gene's activity/inactivity. Since gene transcription factors are involved so fundamentally
in learning, we have a neat opportunity, combining drugs, biofeedback and TMS, with all
the information we have on optimal timing and NMP, to enhance our learning/memory
potential and speed.

...Everything we need...

Chemicals are traveling across gaps between synapses throughout our brains and in this
instance the synaptic gap, the point of communication between neurons, is our entry
point. To prevent a connection being made we can either stop a presynaptic chemical
from being released, or prevent the receptors on the postsynaptic neuron from receiving
it. In this case it's better to block the receptors because that has fewer unwanted side
effects than working from the presynaptic.
Certain receptors are vital to maintaining a memory, and amongst them is a particular sort
of cannabinoid receptor called CB1.

Painkillers often work by blocking the pain receptors on postsynaptic neurons. In this
case, the receptors we want to use are the CB1 and NMDA (to prevent refiling). You
want to focus on things that preferably won't affect any other type of receptor or other
aspects of brain function. Suggestions...Anandamide, 2-arachidonoylglycerol (the best
IMHO) for CB1, for NMDA, Dextrorphan tartrate, Dextromethorphan hydrobromide
monohydrate ('delete with wiping'), very carefully.R31 Don't use ketamine. Repeat after
me, 'I will not use ketamine'. Unless you want to feel like you're dying. And forget
marijuana for CB1; it's too all pervasive in its effect on receptors everywhere.R29

Dosage: regardless of what's recommended in clinical prescription I start with a quarter

of that and work up, getting there by trial and error. I've often found that chemicals are
effective –or have different effects- in smaller doses than normally prescribed, so it's wise
to start small and work up, until you find what's best for you.

Admin: Whatever method you feel most comfortable with. Wherever possible I like to
work with chemicals I can swallow. IM is acceptable, but I detest mainlining anything,
and anybody who thinks they can do an intrathecal to themselves on their own had best
glue their forehead to the table before attempting it, because you can't use anesthetic and
unless you have sufficient imaging tech to see exactly what you're doing, you have to be
able to feel everything acutely enough to know what you are poking sharp bits of steel
into. Having once watched the DIY Trepanning Society practicing with hand drills on
plant pots at the tender age of seventeen, and having had plenty of time since then to find
out what some of these procedures feel like without anesthetic, I would definitely suggest
avoiding them as far as possible as a policy for all except the terminally kinky.

Snorting stuff is particularly not recommended here, as you need a while before the onset
to concentrate on what you want to get rid of.

Regardless of what you decide to take and how you decide to take it, the first hour or
however long it takes will need your concentration, because that's where you've got to
pull up all the files you want to delete. If you're organized you'll have a list based on one
subject or one feeling and experiences connected with that. If you have very traumatic
experiences in mind you're best dealing with them one at a time.

Be aware that what you are wiping here is not semantic or sensory motor memory. What
you are wiping is the link (association) between eidetic memories (imagery) and the
sentiments connected with that imagery.

The ideal timing for a memory-wipe session is to do the recalling just before the drug
takes effect. That way, you call up the memory and then block the chemical reaction
required to refile it. It really is that simple.
Some people claim they'd never work alone doing this sort of thing in case they had a
really bad trip and ended up screaming, or whatever. I prefer to work alone, for exactly
the same reasons.

Blocking NMDA and CB1 receptors will prevent fear-reconditioning in the amygdala
(another part of the midbrain, which controls defensive responses to threat), and will
interfere with the formation of long term memory for fear-conditioning without affecting
short term memory. NMDA is involved in all forms of aversion learning. Blocking it will
prevent the fear/shock response associated with a memory from being refiled. If you can
focus your attention on the memories you wish to lose, and if you able to avoid thinking
about them for a few days afterwards, you will find you are no longer able to recall them
clearly. After enough sessions, they will be gone. I can say this with 100% certainty.

... It must be obvious to ask, how do you know it's worked? How do you know you've
forgotten anything if you can't remember it?

1. You keep notes of subject matter and compare them afterwards to what you remember.
For example, one of mine says 'Extremely unpleasant experience in Durrus' (plus
details)...now I know I lived in a place called Durrus and I know the brief details I wrote
down happened, I remember them, but I cannot remember the experience in terms of
feeling no matter how I try. It's as though the events on the notes happened to somebody
else; I can read something and have a value judgment on it and think, wow, that
happened, how horrid...but it means nothing personally, at all.

2. Sometimes a whole lot more goes than just the emotions. I sometimes mentally come
up against a 'blank' where a memory used to be accessible. It's a similar feeling to that
which you get when you suddenly have 'stage fright' public speaking or whatever; the
mind goes blank and absolutely nothing can be accessed about the lecture (or whatever)
in hand. In stage fright this is only temporary and the memory is accessible later, when
the attention is off the stress. When you have a few memory wipes under your belt
however and you are asked a question, for example, that would originally have led to a
set of memories you no longer have, it's as though you go looking for them and there's
nothing there, where somehow you know something 'should' be. If this happens with
someone who knows me I can explain; 'I'm sorry I appear to have deleted that'. To
strangers I often pretend I have a dreadful memory, because one can hardly say that sort
of thing to just anybody.

One important thing to remember when doing a wipe is that blocking NMDA receptors
will also affect your spatial memory during the time you are doing it. Don't try to go
anywhere new during the experience, or you could have real problems figuring out how
to navigate. I mean this in the literal, physical sense; don't travel.

The strangest thing about memory, and the one that takes most people by surprise, is the
fact that the basic mechanics of memory formation in humans are really not very different
at all from those in quite 'lowly' creatures; snails, for example. Basic networks are often
pretty similar in very different animals; the important differences are in the complexity of
those networks and their flexibility.

There is nothing like losing a whole bit or bits of memory to bring home to you two facts.
One is that neurohacking is for real. If you were ambivalent or agnostic about it up to this
very point, now you both believe and have an opinion. Two, is that memory is so much of
what we are. ...Let's dive into the mechanisms of memory for a short trip and take a
closer look at what exactly we are doing, because messing with memory is one of the
cornerstones of neurohacking (the other three would have to be input control, messing
with emotion, and imagination).

There are two main sorts of memory; these days called 'declarative' and 'non-declarative'.
These break down into (non declarative) sensory motor memory or 'procedural' memory
(like riding a bike); eidetic or image memory (like remembering a video of past events in
your life, or imagining possible outcomes of a future one); (also non declarative) and
'nominative' (declarative) memory, (Who was the last president of the USA? Your answer
accesses declarative memory.) Different brain systems are involved in all kinds.

The easiest use of memory to explain (everybody gets it) is working memory. Working
memory is like a RAM cache. It's the kind of memory that allows you to smarmily recite
what the lecturer was just saying, right after you're accused of not paying attention in
class. It's vital for things like arithmetic, syntax, following a described route, and
explaining things to people. Like every good computer system should, the brain re-uses
the space used for any given operation as soon as that operation is over; it does not keep
the same items permanently there. Working memory largely ignores the hippocampus,
flitting about over the cortex; it is a dedicated follower of fashion.

In a sense most other memory storage could be called 'hard drive', because it can be
temporarily or permanently (barring damage) stored, and this analogy becomes rather
interesting when we know that recalling these memories does not always access the same
places, and people start to wonder just where, if anywhere, the location of this 'hard drive'
might be. We know that the hippocampus is involved with the act of storing, via LTP, all
long-term memories...where does it send them? Many arguments have raged about this
for a long time, and most researchers have come to an uncomfortable but tentative
agreement that they are 'all over the cortex, sort of thing'. This, coupled with the words
'enormous database' (which it truly is), has caused some consternation, if not actual hand
to hand combat, between neuroscientists. It seems not feasible that such a vast quantity of
data should be scattered about apparently randomly and not even consistently between
recollections. But in fact there are good reasons for this, and I suggest that they can best
be explored via experience, as well as theory. The clue to memory storage and recall lies
with the ACG...but more of that later.

The most difficult kind of memory to dislodge is procedural memory, and it is probably
the most basic kind of memory available to mammals. It covers actions, abilities and
habits that are learned purely by patterning and repetition. Examples are how to play the
piano, or how to walk, ski, ride a bike, catch a ball, etc.) The hippocampus is not
involved in procedural memory except very briefly during its original formation. The
cerebellum is involved, and our sense of rhythm and timing form part of the encoding of
such memories. They are a kind of full body knowledge and we rarely, if ever, forget
them by accident, and it's very hard to do so on purpose. Even someone who could
remove your memory to the extent that you didn't remember who you were, would still
be unlikely to make you forget how to sing your favorite song, unfortunately in some
cases.

Short-term memory is handy for immediate issues, but very limited in its capacity for
storage. A part of the permanence of memory depends upon our ability to move
memories into long term storage, which involves the process called long term
potentiation (LTP). LTP's success depends partly upon a bit of the mid brain networks
which is enjoying quite a lot of popularity at the moment, the hippocampus. It's a part of
the brain we know quite a lot about, in comparison to other parts, and it's got quite
famous lately because it's the first part (if you don't include the outer sensory equipment.)
to be copied artificially with tech. But the hippocampus has always been very popular
amongst neurohackers, because it allows you, quite simply, to do some very heavy
messing.

As neurohackers, we can look on memory as a dynamic perception record/storage

system. Memory is your only clue as to who you are...Remember 'Total Recall'? ...Need I
say more?

Read that again. Realize what you are messing about with before you mess!

When I first started messing about with memory, it was a long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away, in the olden days before we had MRI and stuff. We used to do those tests
where, for example, you show people some pictures and they see if they can tell them
apart from others they have not seen...this was supposed to test visual recognition
memory. Or you test 'verbal recall' by reading out a list of words and seeing if people can
remember them...

One thing of value that came from these basic methods was the discovery that 'working
memory' could, in most people, hold only about 7 'bits' (this is one thing we can increase
with neurohacking...but still to only about 10). We also learned that 'first' and 'last' items
were more easily remembered, and that if we organize the information it becomes easier
to recall.

The most wonderful thing that ever happened in the study of memory was the event of
decent scanning. With fMRI we can actually 'see' memory working in real time. For
many, this was where the confusion began...long-term memory did not seem to have a
single static location. This happens for several reasons: Firstly, memory is not static. It is
dynamic. Your recall of an incident now and those networks you access to recall it, will
not be the same as your recall of the same incident in five year's time, or possibly even
five minutes. Second, memory is made up of many sub-memories, that work together to
use a sense of the past to create our present and imagine the future
In 1973, researchers Tim Bliss and Terje Lomo published a groundbreaking paper on
LTP.R30 They had electrically stimulated the input pathway to the hippocampus, and
stuck a recording electrode in the hippocampus itself. They discovered they could
increase the synaptic response with repeated stimulation, and that this increase lasted for
several hours. They had found the process that turns electrical signals generated by input
into long-lasting changes in synaptic activity; the method of recording and storing
information about the environment.

As regards the location of the phenomenon, LTP has since been observed in many parts
of the nervous system including the spinal cord. It can now be observed in just a slice of
hippocampus sitting on its own in saline, with electrodes stuck in the relevant bits, or in
the brain of a fruit fly. There is no longer any doubt; neural plasticity is not only
occurring all the time in every human on the planet, it is controllable.

LTP is specific to the stimulated pathway; it does not change all the synapses or
postsynaptic neurons, it changes only the synapses that are stimulated. So a neuron can
store many different patterns of experience depending upon which combinations of
synapses are stimulated.R6

'Cooperation' kicks in when two pathways are stimulated simultaneously. Even if the
stimuli are weak, they will combine, if simultaneous, to induce LTP in both pathways.
This means association between inputs can occur, which is a baseline for any kind of
learning in any intelligence. It also shows us that association is one of the specifics of
plasticity. If a weak stimulus occurs coincident to a strong one, association is made and
after a short time the weak stimulus alone will cause an action potential all by itself.

'Hebbian plasticity' is the name for this phenomenon and it is named after Hebb, whose
immortal words 'Cells that fire together, wire together' are a basic tenet of neurohacking,
almost as famous as 'Use it or lose it'. This is literally meant in both cases because the
more networks fire, the more they grow, and they grow in the areas used most.

Around 1985, at the same time as the original experiments behind this book, came the
discovery that LTP could be prevented, without interfering with synaptic transmission, by
blocking glutamate receptors on the post-synaptic neuron.R31 This prevents calcium
increasing in the post-synaptic cell, which prevents the release of several kinases which
do not therefore activate the gene transcription factor CREB which makes the proteins
that strengthen the synapses that enable LTP. Did you follow that? Don't worry, we'll
look at it again later on. It is very like The House that Jack Built...it's a chain reaction,
and you can hack into it at any point. The easiest way is to block the post-synaptic
glutamate receptors and CB1 as described earlier.

We now know that there are two forms of LTP, dubbed 'early' and 'late', and they can be
thought of as short- and long-term memory (although strictly speaking there is a further
distinction between short and long term memory, i.e. their chemical needs). Blocking the
glutamate receptors will not affect early LTP, but can completely prevent late LTP. This
is what you are doing when you prevent the refiling of emotional memories in a wipe.
The process by which the brain renews a memory (and which blocking the pathways
prevents) is what you are taking advantage of. Without renewal, we cannot continue to
remember.

Whilst you might think it would be absolutely marvelous for, say, war veterans or
disaster survivors to be freed from intelligence-crippling flashbacks and so on, the same
question they must consider will be yours to consider when you start doing this. You
know that you will have based some of your personality formation upon those memories;
nasty though they might have been, and you will have gained from the experiences they
hold. How much will you personality change without them? In some cases, old traumas
may be your last links to sentiment. Am I really advocating and facilitating not just a
memory wipe here, but also a genuine permanent personality change?

Yes, I am, and I want you to be fully aware of that. I'm suggesting, in fact, a change of
personality so fundamental that you might as well, currently, deliberately opt to change
species. The ability to be changed by experience is common to many systems in the
brain. If you break the connections you will create a 'hole' in the web of your knowledge
and experience that will only patch together slowly over time depending on how hard you
work at it. So it is worth considering which memories it might be better to hang on to and
give yourself a chance to see in the new perspective of lucid emotion you will be
adopting. Only if something is really troublesome to our progress should we consider its
annihilation.

If anything is not actually harming intelligence, and shows no sign of the likelihood of
doing so, then we should leave it alone. It may be an unknown, but it must be treated as
'innocent' until we know more. There is also a strong case for keeping anything that has
not yet been resolved. Reinterpreted under the light of a shifted perspective, some of the
things that have happened to us may change from traumatic memories to gifts of
awareness.

The thing I want to stress is, you are going to think very differently even without wiping
much memory at all, and you are going to have to deal with the way people will react to
that. Right in the middle of a massive personal change, you may think it's a bit much to
slap that on your plate as well, but if you don't expect it you could be totally baffled, so I
feel it prudent to give warning. Blocking transmitter signaling has such far-reaching
effects. The control of whole networks is possible often because they depend on signals
from key areas to function at all (for example, networks in the prefrontal cortex sending
connections to the nucleus accumbens cannot fire at all unless there is synaptic activity in
the hippocampus or amygdala).

I have already said that you are going to be thinking in a way that might, if you try to
communicate it too soon without the sufficient protocol, upset people rather a lot. The
communication problem at first can really be bad. It's good to stay in touch with a
supportive person or group throughout this time. Most people never find out what effect
the personality of a free range intelligence has on others, and the whole complex web of
deceit people build their lives on can look very fragile when faced with the truth. There is
something about operating from hyperreality that makes other people somehow aware,
when faced with it, that something is terribly wrong somewhere, and since facing the fact
that it might be something wrong with themselves is too anxiety-causing to contemplate,
usually they will project the problem onto you. In order that you're not too surprised if
this happens to you, I'll give you one real-life example; the names have been changed to
maintain the confidentiality of those concerned...

Some years ago, I worked in a live-in health center with several other people. A couple
there, let's call them Mary and Joe, had just had a baby (at the center, born with just the
assistance of a midwife and no complications so no tech needed), and a promising little
intelligence it was too. Joe's sister, an actor, whom we shall call Suzie, came to visit. She
had a two-year-old, (apparently, although it wasn't with her.) She consulted me in private
because she was worried about Mary & Joe's baby. 'It's hands aren't clenched into fists',
she said. -Did I think it might be mentally retarded, she asked.... I (in my innocence)
explained the reasons for this usual after-delivery behavior were in fact damage, and far
from being a sign of retardation, a child with open hands at birth was relaxed and free of
stress hormones and, basically, ready to learn. I explained that this was why Mary and
Joe had wanted their child born at the center, and because she showed further interest I
showed her the first draft for the section of this book about factors of damage in
childbirth. She appeared interested and rational throughout, and an hour or so later she
went home.

The following day Mary and Joe seemed somewhat peculiar with me. Eventually I asked
if there was a problem. It turned out they had had a phone call, in the middle of the night,
from Suzie, who had told them in absolute hysterical terror that they 'Had to get out of
there', that I was an 'evil doctor death' who was trying to 'do things' to their baby and
themselves, that I was 'in league with Satan', that they must leave and get on a plane at
once and go to her place, before I slaughtered them all in some ritual sacrifice or turned
their baby into a Frankenstinian monster... She was screaming and crying and going on
about calling the priest, apparently in a total panic, but she would not tell them why she
was saying these things, when Mary and Joe tried to question her further. She merely
implied that there was a reason too terrible to be spoken of, and they should just trust her
and get out of there. Not that surprisingly, they left. They put their trust in someone they
had known for many years as a pretty stable person and a relative, and, although they
didn't take up her kind offer of refuge from the devil, they did go back to their own home
way before schedule. They were baffled and concerned at the strength of the reaction in
Suzie and thought something really serious must have happened. They just didn't know
what to think. They couldn't imagine what had happened. I expect they thought she
would explain further after they left, but she never did. (Largely because she didn't know
herself.)

What had happened was that Suzie had just discovered the truth that her own child was
subnormal because of the way it had been treated at birth. The guilt (because she was an
intelligent woman and she knew she was looking at the truth) had caused so much
anxiety she had to go into denial and project it. I was the one who had showed her this
truth, so the only way she could live with herself was to make herself believe that the
truth was lies and I was evil. Reduced by her sentiment-ridden perception's warping of
the feelings caused by confronting the truth, to superstition, fear and prejudice, shutting
off rational thought and operating only from the midbrain, fight/flight response pumping
out hormones, still panicking but now honestly believing she was worried for them
because I was so evil, she made her phone call. When faced by Joe's rational questioning
she was unable to explain logically what the problem was because she couldn't accept it,
and all they could get was the strength of her fear coupled with the message 'I just know
something's wrong, it's just intuition, that guy is the antichrist, get out of there, please
trust me'.

This sudden, totally unexpected leap of a rational person into acute paranoia and violent
reaction, is something you should get used to or you will be freaked out when it happens
to you. It is also something you can learn to prevent, or at least not cause. Most of these
people are not ready to face reality. They are stuck in a matrix and if you are unable to
get someone out of a cage, the last thing you want to do is rattle the bars. If information
alone can send a person crazy, (and it can), then you ought to be responsible with it even
if only for your own safety.

So, welcome to some of intelligence's morals...Freaking people out is not interaction, as a

rule. If you don't feel guilt and fear, it is easy to forget that other people do. Lack of
empathy should not be lack of awareness. You'd be careful of someone's broken arm even
though you can't personally feel the pain at all, so take care not to be hard on people's
minds. There is a tendency in the novice neurohacker to get over excited and want to
share the heady air of freedom. Newborn fans of life, with some resemblance to an
exuberant tiger cub, totally unaware of its own size, innocent, happy and treading in
everything, off we go to play and celebrate and bounce up and down, and whoops, we
damage things. So you must remind yourself not to. Remember that you cannot explain to
a bull why it should get off the railway line, and if you push it you will get well and truly
butted up the ass. Always engage brain before putting mouth into gear.

When you lose empathy with sentiment you will begin to be misunderstood. If you are
operating from the morality of intelligence you will be very misunderstood, and you will
hurt a lot of people if you do not learn to keep your ideas to yourself. And that's against
the rules, of course, making people feel anxious. So stop it.

Let's hack.

Let's rewrite our memories of our history according to reality, and adjust our self-esteem.

...You can do this in real-time, if you like, but I recommend reading through this first and
then doing it whilst reading through again. That way it's not quite so unknown.

...What you are aiming for pre-hack is a playful, imaginative mood, free of anxiety.
Achieve that how you will (but not, like, to the extent of being comatose, because I want
you to be able to keep reading). Now, you are going to rewrite your past, how it really is,
according to intelligence. We can alter our personality/self esteem by altering memories,
from the false or unprovable to the true and provable...and more importantly, to align
with reality as it really is.

So I don't mean fooling yourself into believing your first car was red, when in fact it was
blue; forming false memories is pretty easy to do but quite useless here.

What we do is take our current memories and rewrite them from a hyperreality point of
view. We look at the truth and we work outwards from there. We can rewrite our true
past, and our personality will sit atop those memories, exactly where it belongs.
Pretending nothing, assuming nothing, secure in its own autonomy and primed to
interact. It deserves this.

So, that's the only rule: It has to be true. But true from a hyperreality, matrix-free space,
interpreted from intelligence's point of view.

Consequently it is pretty useful to be able to run COMP for this; it really is. But don't
worry of you're not sure; I'm going to go through it with you and give a few clues, so you
should get the hang of what sort of thing you are looking for. Here's one; consider this:

The first time someone asks you out for a drink, your mind makes a video of the scenario
as it goes on in real time. You may think they want to make friends with you, or they are
bored, or they think you are lonely and feel sorry for you, or perhaps they are going to
ask you for a favor soon... you might think any of these things, depending upon your
mood and your self esteem...

The second or third time, you may become aware that they are in fact trying to get into
your pants. Once you realize this, you'll review that original memory of the first time, and
you'll see it in a different light. You'll see different meanings in things that were said,
now you know more of the truth. It will not be the same memory as it was.

If, later, things develop into a romantic relationship with this person, you'll rewrite all
those memories again, glamorizing them, tinting the past with the groovy feelings you are
having now and the happy sparkle of being in a relationship. Later still, if the relationship
fails you, you'll rewrite again, perhaps seeing how badly you misunderstood things or
how you missed information...how you were fooled, you might think, by the other
person, although in fact it's your own mind that's doing the fooling.

Two facts about memory: Our memories form our inner assessment of ourselves
unconsciously, and that controls our degree of self-esteem. If you think you've behaved
like an asshole or an idiot, your self-esteem usually drops. If you're proud of your
achievements, it rises. When we put our memories in the context of the truth, in
hyperreality, our self-esteem will inevitably rise. You will see why, as you get on with it.

Our memories of events and experiences are dynamic; they are dependent big time on our
current mood, current beliefs and values, and how afraid we are. That's why different
parts of the cortex light up at different moments of recalling the same event.
So how can you get an 'accurate' memory of your history? You can base it on known,
accurate facts, from intelligence's point of view.

To edit memory you need a highly creative, relaxed, attentive state. At the very least you
need to be able to turn down the amygdala enough to see what is most likely to be true
(so that even if it scares you, you can take it on board).

I say 'scares you'; because finding out how cool they really are usually scares people. Or
rather, realizing what their priorities actually should be scares people. Physiologically,
the emotions the exercise causes are what people find scary. So chill out first, okay?

We edit memory by replacing old information in more or less a 'cut and paste' manner.
You can also 'preview' memory and if you don't like it, you can wipe the changes in the
same session, and start again. (You can't start again in the same session though).

Equipment: The drugs of your choice (see above) plus wire yourself up with biofeedback
to read EEG only.

A crash course in EEG interpretation:

The area you usually wish to work with in memory control is between 7.5 and 12.5Hz. Its
called Alpha.

Lower than that, you'll start slipping into dream state. That's Theta (Deep sleep is Delta).
Higher than that, you'll be slightly too speedy to be creative. That's Beta, and it's what
most people use, most of the time.

When you're working with dream states, you want 3.5 to 7.5 (Theta)

When you have to do a lot of calculating, you want 14 to 30. (Beta)

Easy, innit? So for this, set your biofeedback to round about 10. You'll tune in and find
your favorite frequency 'spot' by yourself, with practice.

Eat your chemicals and relax until your brain matches the model, then off we go...

Don't try to do it all at once. One section per session is best. Start at the
beginning...answer this question: Where were you born?

...Now you might think something like 'In Detroit', or 'In Paris', or 'In America'.... Or you
might think, 'In hospital'...None of this is hyperreality. Likewise, when were you born?
The answers '1985' or '1969' or '1977' are not hyperreality answers because they're not
part of reality as it truly is. All these answers use society's answers, not reality's.
Consequently, if you are a Muslim you were born in a different year than if you are a
Christian, and if you are part of an illiterate tribe you don't have a name for the year at all.
If you were born in Czechoslovakia, where has your birthplace gone? The names are
artificial constructs. The truth, is something like this...

...You were born into the middle of one of the most exciting human generations in
history, in the century they called the 21st, on a continent in the high-tech Western world,
with all its blessings and it's banes. Because most of us had pretty nasty births, unless you
were very lucky your intelligence spent its first bit of life fighting for survival. It won. It
wasn't one of the silent 'cot deaths', it wasn't one of the growing number of child
schizophrenics, autistics, depressives, or suicides. It didn't fall prey to bipolar disorder or
ADHD.

It learned things. Just as it was getting its act together, it probably had school thrown at it.
It survived. Not only that, it survived intact enough for you to be this intelligent now.
Against all odds, here you are, really quite a groovy smartass. That's not going to be
recognized by most people because they don't know enough to see it, but you know.

...Start noticing how rare you really are. And what potential you really have. Because it is
not true that we all have equal potential, just as it is not true that we all have an equal
number of brain connections. And neither is it true that we cannot change our level of
intelligence. It all depends, like anything else, on how much effort we are prepared to put
into that.

When you first start looking at your past and reviewing it, you will come across a number
of recurring themes, things that made you afraid or angry, both in your own behavior and
that of others, that were caused by sentiment or stupidity. Some popular ones are:
blame/negative criticism, conforming/not conforming, being left out, exile, exclusion,
antagonistic competition, disillusion or disappointment, dominance, bullying or
emotional blackmail, injustice, and misunderstanding.

Fear of, or even paying any attention to, any of those things can be overwritten. You'll
understand why they happened now, what was happening to your brain, and that changes
rather a lot. You can perhaps see how, in the past, you sometimes tried to help others but
just ended up pacifying their anxieties for a little while...

As you recall portions of your past, this new information you now know is being added
through the directional loop of the hippocampus, edited by the circumstances of the here
and now. This is an absolutely natural process. Every day, people recall scenes from the
past and -unknowingly- edit them to seem better or worse, depending on how they feel at
the time. All we are doing is taking control of the process; instead of allowing our past to
be edited inaccurately and at random according to mood, we can pick out the real facts
and cast them in the light of our understanding right now, making them a clear part of the
known. We can apply the perception of hyperreality and then draw on memory's content
without altering its accuracy. We can reclaim the genuine version of our past and don't
allow it to be eroded by misperception. And we need to do this in a nice, cool state in
order not to weight the memories falsely by letting the emotions and their associated
hormones change us too much. This is not a search for justification of our actions or
excuses; it is a cold hard look at the truth.

So summon up all those memories and say goodbye to them. You will need to stay awake
for as long as possible after this hack, and distract yourself, so get a few good positive
movies in or some favorite music, and when you think you've had enough of
remembering things you want to forget, relax and enjoy yourself instead (cannabis is
good for this stage, if you live somewhere you're allowed to smoke it. It will help prevent
the possibility of recall in dreams.)

The second part of this hack lies in consolidating the truth, so when you've learned a bit
more, you'll come back to this exercise and complete it, this time enhancing your learning
and making it easier to remember. (You'll learn how to do that in a future chapter.)

When doing that, it's still best to work with as flat an emotional profile as possible to
start, and then go with what happens. We do need emotion, of course, in order to value
our memories at all, but what might surprise you is the main emotions raised during the
second part of this hack (rewriting the past) turned out for me to be only surprise, relief,
and not a little awe at the incredible flexibility of intelligence. I had really messed up in
some places in the past but I could see exactly why, and was not at all surprised at how
confused I had been. Under the circumstances, there was a perfectly good reason for any
human to be confused, as indeed most are.

Throughout our all-too-impressionable lives we are subjected to some truly disgraceful

behavior and very few examples of genuine intelligence. It is no great wonder that we are
confused, annoyed, and quite frankly often utterly baffled. Humanity does not make
sense, to intelligence, or even to basic decency.

So when we finally take a deep breath and look at the truth, it can be traumatic but it can
be relieving. We are these amazing minds, these irrepressible personalities that fight for
their own survival and growth, striving towards ever increasing intelligence. We have
been through an incredible amount of crap, and may have occasionally felt like the
universe owes us one. Now, however, we start to know how we are to be rewarded...in
freedom.

Knowledge of the truth of the matter gives us the ability to forgive and also to absolutely
justify any stupid deed we have committed in the past. Past stupidity is totally justifiable
considering the circumstances.

You might think you behaved like an idiot sometimes in the past and you're probably
correct. But you did not do it on purpose and it was certainly not your fault. An
incredibly large number of factors more than likely misaligned your neurochemistry
years ago. If you look at the truth, you'll realize that you've done amazingly well to get
this far and still be relatively sane. Many others haven't made it. (And there, but for the
grace of your intelligence, go you).
Now, however, is a different matter. Aha. With knowledge comes responsibility, and in
this case it's your responsibility for you own mind. (...You don't believe in any of that fate
crap, remember? You're in control of your own life). From now on, the only excuses you
have for being stupid are (a) you were trying really hard not to be, but you made a
mistake, or (b) you are allowing yourself to be stupid on purpose because you prefer it
that way or you can't be bothered changing it. If the answer is (b) then you are wasting
your time reading this book.

If the answer is (a), that's pretty perfect. Making mistakes is important. They give us the
extra information we need in order to learn. Mistakes are why we can walk effectively
now without falling over all the time. Also, sometimes things we think are mistakes in
fact turn out for the best. Hell, mistakes are why champagne happened. As intelligence
evolves it tries out new problems -all evolution does that. Some of them will fail and will
not be repeated. The interactions that do succeed will be repeated and refined. Polished
and fine-tuned to achieve its optimal potential.

This art of actualizing the optimal potential in anything is called entelechy. And
entelechy is the neurohacker's aim for intelligence.

Editing memory is a long-term project and takes many sessions. Sometimes you have to
treat yourself like you had amnesia and 'remember' the past you are constructing as you
go along; making sure it is the correct version (preview) before committing it to long-
term memory. (If we don't like the result or it proves inaccurate, we can wipe it by
repeating the first part of this hack.)

When we are first learning this sort of thing, we have to learn it explicitly. That means we
have to build up and reinforce the correct concepts and disregard the incorrect ones. This
may seem a pain at first, keep having to remind yourself...no, it wasn't really like that...it
was really like this... but after a while such learning becomes implicit. And once a
memory becomes implicit it becomes automatic. (That's how we get stuck with false
memories in the first place.)

When I say 'false' I don't mean the incident never happened, I mean the incident we
originally thought happened probably did not, but something else really happened
instead.

An example: We think Alice left Bob because he slept with Eve. What really happened
was this: Alice and Bob had been living together for some years. Bob met Eve and had
sex with her. (Using protection, of course, they had a firewall). Then he went home and
had sex with Alice. He liked having sex with Alice. Alice liked having sex with him. He
also liked having sex with Eve.

Bob told Alice he'd had sex with Eve. Alice (unconsciously) realized several things:
When people found out, she was going to look either boring or weak (for not being able
to keep her partner 'faithful'). If she said she didn't mind, people would think she didn't
love Bob because she was not jealous. She would lose status among her friends...She had
always claimed to love Bob, but now she found herself not feeling jealous! Even Bob
might think she didn't love him! So Alice pretended to be jealous, and left Bob, keeping
her status both by proving herself to be absolutely normal to all her friends, and
reassuring them that their behavior was normal, too. (Bob learned, at this stage, that
telling the truth gets you abandoned and/or punished).

Alice reacted, because of fear, instead of interacting. But what really happened is not
what we saw at all. What we saw, was a masquerade of people pretending to feel things.
A few days later we might have seen Alice return and 'forgive' Bob...(what's really
happening is that Alice cannot handle being on her own because she's too insecure, and
Bob is better than nothing.) (Eve ran off with a cryptoanalyst to Barbados). People use
each other as things, as anxiety-pacifiers, and cast them away without a second thought
when something more pacifying comes along. There is hardly any real emotion, between
people, in practice, anymore. Nobody is able to feel it; nobody's been taught. Which is
not the best breeding ground for self-esteem.

If you can cultivate the habit of seeing what is really going on, you'll come to see your
past as the evolution of your own intelligence. Most of our histories are personal heroic
struggles from that point of view. And on top of that, many of us have been searching for
their answers far and wide, and have never given up doing so. This is why, with the truth,
comes self-esteem, awareness of our own competence and pride in it, which is how a
healthy human should feel, as opposed to over-estimation (arrogance) or under-
estimation (nervousness). When you get this balance right, it's important to recognize it.
Once you recognize it, you can copy it; you can do it again and again. Just like you did
when you learned to walk.

11. Processor Upgrade (Conditioning and learning enhancement)

The first time we store a memory, it is a 'save'. Every consequent recall causes a 'refile' to
occur after the event. We need to have this concept absolutely clear before messing about
with the learning process, so I am going to explore it a little more here.

A recalled memory that you refile is not the same one you originally saved.R6 It will be
an updated version, brought into line with your current beliefs and values. An experience
that you are having for the first time and that you are going to keep is a save. It's very
important to distinguish between the two events because they need to be treated
differently. A new save is far easier to delete than a refile, for example, because an LTP
refile has many associate memories that will get interfered with if we remove it. (And the
longer it has been there, the more there are.) Tracing it through will be a long and tedious
process and every time you think you have got rid of it another bit of it will surface, like
those horrendous pop up adverts on some user-unfriendly websites. A new save can
actually be prevented at source if you are fast enough. You have about an hour, after an
average unpleasant experience, to chemically prevent its memory from going into LTP at
all, and if you're prepared to jack up the chemicals and hit the biofeedback deck
immediately you can do it in ten minutes. It's a bit like the morning after pill, only you
can't wait that long because the gestation period of a pregnant imagination is horribly
short.

The importance of neurotransmitters

Learning speed ultimately relies on fast movement of basic or detailed information into
long term memory, and consistently fast recall of that information. Even during the
copying and practice parts of the cycle we need this. The creation of a long-term memory
depends on late LTP, which needs the formulation of new proteins. If you follow our
LTP chain reaction backwards you will see that this relies on glutamate transmission, so
if you want to remember anything quite acutely, glutamate is a useful drug for
neurohacking that. Keep quantities small, however; too much glutamate literally burns
out connections (this is the cause of the 'MSG headache'. Think twice before eating that
stuff again, won't you?)

How well we save or refile a memory depends only on how strongly weighted by
emotion, intellect and imagination the experience is and how efficient our LTP is, or
rather, how efficient we can make it.

If you get to know your neurotransmitters well, you will have the most amazing tool with
which to change your mind. Glutamate is a major neurotransmitter involved in learning
and the formation of memories, but there are others, and playing with them will affect
different aspects of memory. By decreasing serotonin and increasing dopamine, for
example, we can remove our short-term (early LTP) function almost entirely, reducing
our short-term memory span to mere seconds, (as anyone who smokes too much cannabis
will unwittingly demonstrate). Hacking Dopamine channels is bad news if you want to
remember facts, but useful for increasing creative associations and helpful for anxiety.
But remember this...Every transmitter change will affect memory ability as well as mood.

Mood affects our ability to learn very strongly, and as we know, neurotransmitters are
responsible for mood. Serotonin will tend to make you more fearless, but too much can
get you feeling manic. Acetylcholine can give your awareness quite a boost, which is
why so many people smoke tobacco. (If you want a nice alternative, try Huperzine A, but
forget that if you smoke tobacco because of nicotinic acid, rather than because of
acetylcholine deficiency).

Our memory quality and hence the quality of what we learn depends on conscious
attention and awareness, but these rely on neurotransmitters like everything else.
Serotonin, acetylcholine, norepinephrine and dopamine are some of the most important,
especially dopamine. Dopamine performs two main important functions; it acts like a
Dolby filter system on random noise; suppressing random spontaneous neural firing, but
it also prepares neurons to fire by depolarising them. So ultimately, dopamine strengthens
and lengthens chemical firing between neurons and keeps random noise out of the way.
(Up to a point too much of it is an entirely different matter.) This clarity of
communication is essential for the ability to form new concepts by building links
between memories (the known) and new information and experience (the unknown).
Dopamine is a chemical link in the network that runs the programs for our basic
motivation and learning, between long term memory and pleasure (as excitement) as
reward, because it rewards us for successful interaction and successful learning,
stimulating our pleasure centers in real time and changing the emotional weighting of
every incident. If something is unpleasant to the senses or the intellect, we tend to avoid
it. By providing the pleasure/reward response to successful learning, intelligence should
have a built-in, automatic behavioral value system, in the sense that it should know what
is good or bad for it pretty fast without having to compute why until afterwards. The
paths from the midbrain to sensory motor centers are faster than those from the prefrontal
cortex. The network is designed so that anything deleterious to intelligence (i.e. bad) will
make that intelligence feel unpleasant, and "unpleasant" gets in the way of learning and is
to be avoided. If it's something that's good for intelligence, it should make us feel good
and interested, so we'll want to do more of it. Dopamine is only half the hormonal story
of the learning cycle, but it's a vitally important half.

This cycle, like all the others in our brains, is designed to work with the program COMP,
networked into the whole brain in the bonding format of an open-ended intelligence and a
flexible creative logic. It is a marvelously integrated system and it ensures that
intelligence will never do anything harmful to itself or to another intelligence, because
that makes it release signals (in the form of anxiety hormones) that harm itself. Harming
any intelligence or potential intelligence is literally self-destructive. This ensures the
evolution of intelligence, and I think it's absolutely marvelous.

Problems we may have to overcome in learning enhancement

Anxiety

To enhance your intelligence as a whole you need to know which particular aspects of it
you personally need to augment. So it's quite important by now that you know if you are
stuck in a matrix and you know which one. If you take your neurohacking seriously (and
I hope you do, if you've been messing about with your brain already), you will also find
out right about now that in order not to lose ground you need to know a little bit more
about how to avoid the enemy within, whilst making new memories as well as when
adjusting the old. Anxiety is always the enemy of intelligence and always must be dealt
with immediately it arises. We cannot learn effectively in its presence. So all in all, we've
got the basics now and this is filling in the details. Bit by bit you're going to reprogram
yourself now how you'd like it to be. It's easier to do so at this stage because we have the
confidence to know that we can wipe stuff if we make mistakes, it will just take us a little
bit longer to get there.

So the first rule of adjusting processing speed is, once again, know thyself. Be aware of
how much control you have over your attention and awareness already, the areas where
you don't yet have it, your strengths and weaknesses and which weaknesses are within
easy reach of repair first.
In humans, anxiety at anything that seems 'wrong' causes hormones to be released which
harm the body and mind. It makes us feel nasty, slows down or even stops our learning
ability, and we try to avoid it. Any intelligence would quite naturally avoid doing
anything that damaged it's own hardware.

Humans however are not aware that they are doing just that, currently. We're not running
the attention/reward system as intended because not all the links have been built, and
we're not heeding the warning signs of anxiety for the very same reason. It's the same
damage that prevents COMP from running successfully in the first place. Failure of the
brain to grow sufficient dopamine receptors at relevant sites will create chronic problems
with reward and attention. There is a genetic factor which affects this (an alternative
allele on the D2R2 receptor gene)R32 but it is unclear (well to me, anyway) if the failure
to produce sufficient receptors is influenced by failure of a gene transcription factor
and/or exacerbated by 'minor' brain damage. As we have already seen, we can alter the
behavior of a gene transcription factor with one chemical. More research on the influence
of environmental factors on gene transcription is certainly called for. (It is certain
however that sufficient receptors will not form in any network in a growing brain if there
is no initial use of the network in which they should form.) R3

Genetics

The alternative allele affects some 20% of the population of the western world. Those
with both the genetic predisposition and the 'normal' amount of brain damage experience
various outcomes. If they are stuck in a sensory motor based matrix (2) they will become
the heroin addicts, the sex maniacs, the alcoholics, and the seriously obese. If they're
stuck in matrix three or four they may be also stuck with ADHD, alcohol problems, long
term drug use, compulsive gambling or buying, obesity or bingeing, libido dysfunction,
smoking, or thrill seeking. These are all different ways of humans following up the
physiological and psychological awareness that the brain is not getting enough dopamine.

Drug tolerance

From biology's point of view, drugs like chocolate, sugar, alcohol and tobacco increase
the level of dopamine, and hormonal balance is restored -for a while. Excitement and
thrills will increase dopamine production, as will sex and most recreational drugs. (The
pleasure/pain networks in the brain are something we'll get to later, so I won't go there
now, tempted though I may be.)

Damage

Another problem we may have to overcome is that a major part of the

attention/alertness/vigilance network is the reticular formation. This, if you recall, is one
of the main areas of damage due to birth anoxia (lack of oxygen). Since the area deals
with input from four of the five senses, it is hardly surprising that it is involved in
attention and vigilance. Perhaps we may now begin to see how a 'minor' bit of damage in
a tiny bit of brain tissue can have such far-reaching and unexpected consequences... If
perception is faulty, not only will other bits of brain dependent upon its accuracy be
constructed faultily, but also, even if they did develop (or were replaced) the input is still
faulty and they would still come to the wrong eventual computations, reactions and
conclusions. Without sufficient dopamine, things which should grab our attention as
relevant input will be missed, whilst distraction (random noise) will interfere with
concentration constantly. Intelligence cannot coherently assess its goals or motivations in
these conditions. When the system is not working properly and there is no inbuilt reward
for doing the right thing, how do we know what is the right thing? Without the coherent
drive of intelligence's own motivations and goals furnished by a correctly wired brain,
biology's drives will predominate in our attention. We will be stuck in the backwater of
sensory motor drives; food, sex, defense; and that is all we will have and all we will ever
know. Essentially, uploading in such a state, we would become biological hedonists,
living all our lives seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, which has been the subject matter
of many pessimistic novels. Biology in that situation uses intellect towards these ends,
and these ends alone. The degree of the tendency of an individual to biological hedonism
will be directly related to their neurochemistry, whether damaged, maintained by drugs,
or in good working order. The 'desire' (dopamine) circuit, designed to be run by
intelligence to direct mind and body as intended, is operated in most people from the
point of view of whatever matrix they are stuck in.

When the reward/attention networks are run from anywhere but the prefrontal cortex,
they only have sensory motor and emotional input to access and relate to. If emotional
input is wired for sentiment, we will judge as 'good' anything that causes merely a
pleasurable physical or sentimental sensation, and 'bad' anything that hurts us physically
or sentimentally. From an early age we will start to discover what makes biology feel
good (screwing, winning fights, status, food, resources, showing off (to other groups and
our own), conforming (to our own)). However, these things will not continue to feel quite
as good the more we do them, because our attention/excitement/reward networks will be
inadequate, so we will constantly need to renew them...we will need to perform.

Indoctrination

A great many of our 'sensual' tastes are modeled from our society. We tend to assume
something is safe if everybody is doing it because ordinarily this would logically be the
case. Even our pride in reward for our intellectual achievements is based on concerns of
status and reputation, society's criteria for success.

The good news...

One of the most incredible experiences you'll ever have the pleasure to indulge in as a
neurohacker is the employment of your attention/reward system in the service of
intelligence.

Once you can control your attention/reward cycle, if you spend enough time with people
IRL, face to face, as it were, you'll start to copy their abilities very easily and this will be
a very fast way to learn. This is not theft; it is biologically designed shareware. We are
designed to learn by copying, both other people and their skills, by emulation leading to
originality (which fact makes copyright legislation in truth a bit of a sick joke on
education). Just as you found and used examples of genuine emotion to copy to start you
off on your upgrade, you can use examples or models of any skill or ability you wish to
acquire. If you can pay attention and maintain your motivation you will learn fast,
regardless of previous experience. (Actually in neurohacking it is not easy to use previous
experience as a guide to anything. Your new experiences are likely to overwrite anything
less successful in the same way you quickly forget a long trudge through shitty weather
when the door opens on a firelit scene, dry clothes and a hot dinner.)

So now we're going to look at ways of controlling that cycle and enhancing learning
speed.

There are two vital factors, as we have seen, for the optimum operation of COMP,
attention and association. Intelligence grows by successfully running COMP, by
venturing into the unknown and incorporating it into the known through creative
interaction. Before we can interact with something, however, we have to pay attention to
it. The 'unknown' is a new or partly new experience or set of circumstances about which
we can predict only a limited amount. Your interest, your motivation, and your level of
anxiety determine the intensity with which you pay attention to it. The more you can pay
attention, the faster you can learn things.

The ideal neurochemistry for a learning brain maintains us in interested attention, and
attention depends on a great many things. If we can't 'pay attention', we can't copy; we
can't make memories very well, and it's harder to learn. So it's relevant to know not only
how we 'pay attention', select, attach importance to, and remember, experiences, but also
why we do these things. That's where association comes in. Attention and association
determine the quality of memory in both original saves and recall. Quality of memory is
such an integral part of the learning program that it becomes inseparable with speed in
learning. Emotion and imagination should be thought of as tools in the learning process;
they give our experiences a weighting or 'importance' rating for maintaining our attention
span and making the relevant associations for fast, clear recall. And we need to look at all
these aspects of learning in ourselves, improve them and put them together to understand
what is intelligence's optimum learning space and achieve that. Phew!

Learning enhancement is possible via two different paths; we can use conditioning to
give stronger weighting to input, or we can use memory enhancement to facilitate faster
learning. We can use both together, enhance these methods further with chemicals, and
later with biofeedback and more sophisticated tech such as TMS, but let us not try to run
before we have legs. The basics we've covered on synaptic plasticity explain some things
about how we learn and remember, but we've now got to build on that in order to explore
hacking wider systems of mental function. Memory is, as we can now see, a synaptic
event, a chemical event, an electrical event, and a muscular event. It is highly susceptible
to hacking at every level. The first section of changes happens whenever we encounter
new input. Networks fire as we assess... interesting? Important? If we decide it's
interesting or important enough to pay attention to, we inject our brains with
neurotransmitters, so that we can. For this to happen, we have to have a sufficient supply
of the required neurochemicals and sufficient receptors in the relevant areas for these
chemicals.

Remember though, any ability which we learn in any particular neurochemical state will
be more easily recalled in the same state. (This is called, 'state dependent learning'.) You
can use it to increase your learning potential because you learn how to recreate that state
at will. Things become 'automatic' a lot sooner. But try to use chemicals etc. to enhance
an experience, not to achieve it. The learning process, conditioning and programming
must be looked into as well as the results of them.

There are four hacker's hotspots in the learning/memory systems for conditioning and
they are the ACG, the septal area (just under the forward end of the CC), the amygdala,
and the nucleus accumbens, a tiny little bit of the striatum tucked away close to the
bottom of the forebrain. We're not going anywhere near the first two yet. To explore the
possibilities of the other two, we are going to have a look at pleasure and pain
conditioning, which they are involved in. (Whatever interesting associations your mind
just made with this concept, we are talking science here; not Hot Helga's House of
Discipline, in case you misunderstood.) The way in which the pain/pleasure systems
work is usefully applicable to other systems too, which from a neurohacker's point of
view is a bonus; we can learn about several systems by just looking at a few.

Let's walk briefly through usual, non-threatening input/output processing step by step.
First, sensory input arrives from outside, mixing with whatever thoughts and memories
and feelings inside are predominant at the time. Second, emotional responses occur (or, in
the case of attachment, reactions.) These will include body changes in physiology and
hormones. Third, the actual 'feeling' catches up with us and we notice that we are
aroused. Together with this, or slightly before or after it depending on the stimulus, we
make a conscious response. The point of response is determined first by the mid brain
network's interpretation of the stimulus and secondly (later) by our PFC's concepts of
'appropriate' behavior. Emotions and feelings both prompt us to do things; intellect and
creative ability (or lack of them) determine what sort of things we do.

Emotion prompts response. For efficient learning, the content out there (input) must be
relevant to the intent in here (whatever we are ready to learn and are interested in). E-
motion in the brain (electronic motion) always precedes p-motion (physical motion) in
the body, and the body's physical micromovement or macromovement responses are a
part of the e-motion coding for memory. The intent to do something must always come
before the ability to do it, whether that intent is conscious or not. Emotional processing
circuits give weighting to bits of information, which in turn alters which output circuits
we activate or to suppress, which hormones we increase or decrease, in order to prompt
an appropriate response. Any given circuit cannot be activated unless the input contains
or is thought to contain information relevant to its function.

This weighting comes about because we consider an item worthy of attention, and
regardless of how much logic we apply (telling ourselves we ought to learn this or should
pay attention to the other), a logical reason to be interested is not anything like as strong
as genuine interest (as anyone who has ever slogged through writing an essay on
something really boring will confirm). We take an interest in things that seem to be
important; things which attract us, and ordinarily people have very little control over
what interests them, or even over what they are doing. What we can do with n-hacking is
to make sure we really are interested in things that are beneficial to us, and not at all
interested in dangerous stuff, by deliberately programming ourselves that way. A good
analogy is to imagine if you could make all the foods which are the healthiest for you
taste really fantastic, and all the foods which are bad for your body taste gross, (and you
can actually do that with n-hacking as well.) This ensures that whatever we are learning
will be easy, because we will have genuine interest in whatever we choose to have an
interest in. If you think that is cheating, you are correct. Cheating is what n-hacking is all
about. Of course it's easier to learn something when you feel interested in it. That's what
we're taking advantage of.

I do not mean, though, that we should program ourselves to love a subject for any other
reason than that it is good for us to learn at this time. If you choose something for reasons
other than intelligence you are not basing your reality on the truth, and you'll get
problems. The things that catch our attention the most are those that activate our own
brain's pleasure and pain networks. This is what conditioning uses. It works with biology,
not against it.

Scary things always catch our attention. The fear response is automatic and very difficult
to learn to block. Our blood pressure goes up and we freeze; and are into fight/flight
before we have time to think, literally. And like so many of our systems, of necessity the
input values for it are open-ended; we are prepared to learn what to be afraid of,
expecting experience to show us what we need to learn.R3 Our mind's expectation is that
most of what it encounters in society will be normal, safe, and good to copy. (Without
damage, there is no logical reason why large numbers of people should be demonstrating
unsafe behavior, as this leads to extinction (in this case, the extinction of intelligence.))
We are designed to be able to learn that fire will burn, that falling down can hurt, that we
should avoid things that bite us or that make us sick. Fear conditioning is fast, neat and
clean; and once we have made up our minds, it's hard to change them.

Most neurologists' awareness of the neuroendocrinological basis of fear/pain has come

through animal studies, for obvious reasons. Neurochemistry has been studied of humans
in pain through illness, but this is not the same as LTP-inducing pain, as we will discover.
I have the advantage of personal experience of fear conditioning and pain-assisted
programming in a human person (and before anyone jumps to any really nasty
conclusions, I mean me.) Awareness of how the fear response works is very valuable
because it can also explain a lot to us about people's reactions in their everyday lives.
(Understanding the causes of behavior enables us to interact more efficiently because we
know the truth about a situation instead of falling for the simulation; the deception that is
all most people can see.)
Fear conditioning is one of the easiest bits of neurohacking to do on purpose, but
obviously not much fun. Basically all you need to do is link a target signal (the thing you
want to create an aversion to,) with an unpleasant experience such as an electric shock.
The reverse method is reward conditioning, is much more fun and the method is even
easier; if you learn the task and get it right, you get a banana. This kind of method
amplifies our natural like/dislike filing and association. So what you have to do next is
find something you wish to learn, find the example you wish to learn from, and when you
get it right, reward yourself. Have fun. I suggest starting with real emotion as the first
learning target, because that will set us up for the next move.

Nobody up to any good would consider combining pleasure and pain, and/or polarizing
them (using the threat of pain or the denial of pleasure to program a mind.) Unfortunately
these methods are the most powerful programming methods I know of. The only way I
will touch them is once removed; i.e. in VR role-play augmented by chemicals. You have
to be good enough at 'suspending disbelief' to find this very useful, and it can have the
unpleasant side effect of nasty dreams, although these are usually one-offs and don't
recur.

You may find it a paradox that fear causes anxiety and yet still facilitates learning. (The
anxiety still slows it down. Yes, they are two different things; fear without anxiety can
actually feel exhilarating and exciting as well as scary). The trick of conditioning is, the
memory of the combination of emotionally weighted input with any coincident input
convinces the mind that the stimuli are related by association. We are programmed to
remember anything dangerous very well, and the strength of LTP induced by even one
such incident is often enough for the association to last a lifetime. (This is what puts the
'P' in PTSD). It is action-incentively and time-consumingly difficult to get rid of this sort
of programming. And it's very easy to program in, because almost any intense stimulus
will achieve it. Why? The answer lies in the way we use hormones for learning.

We automatically pay more attention to unknown or unfamiliar things, the new, the
novel, and the different. Depending upon how our brain is wired, we may perceive such
things as interesting or frightening. (This sort of discovery, made largely because of
improved scanning techniques, put paid to the 1990's theory of one emotion = one
response).

The process of 'weighting' given to any experience by emotion or feeling affects this
strongly, as it affects our memories and thoughts. If we are depressed, everything seems
less interesting and gloomier. People in love say the whole world is marvelous and
everybody's groovy. The hormones we release when facing the unknown are thus
interpreted via our mood; if we are confident, we tend to feel excitement, which is pure
dopamine and a great attention-grabber. If we lack confidence though, we release too
many androgens, and feel anxiety and fear. This difference changes the hormonal cascade
and outcome, and that is important because COMP should synergize with these hormone
releases for optimum performance.
I often find myself in the most fearsome arguments when discussing this aspect of
neurology because I believe there to be two 'pleasure networks and I don't believe the
'dopamine circuit' is the reward network so much as the excitement/desire network. There
are two aspects of pleasure in matrix theory, aligned with the stress/relaxation response
and COMP, the cycle of learning. The 'stress' side of pleasure is excitement, anticipation,
desire, and inspiration. The 'relaxation' side is fulfillment, satisfaction, peace of mind,
serenity, and comfort.

The 'excitement' system is what people refer to as the 'dopamine system', working
outwards from the VTA (Ventral Tegmentum Area) it connects to the amygdala, the
nucleus accumbens, the hippocampus, the ventral palladium and the PFC. The 'relaxation'
system overlaps it, and includes the orbitofrontal cortex, the ACG, the somatosensory
cortex, thalamus, and parts of the brain stem. (The ACG seems to be the main 'crossover
point' between the two networks, active during both experiences.) The chemicals of
choice for the relaxation network are opioids, which nature so neatly mimics in
morphine, making it an ideal painkiller. Anyone who's ever taken heroin or morphine will
tell you something else it does...it makes you feel safe. Comfortable, confident, calm,
serene. I would say, cherished. Exactly the way we're meant to learn how to feel, when
we're born. Safe, after the storm.

Of course, the 'stress' side of fun is always tinged with the unknown; an edge of fear or
daring, how much depends on what your neurology is like. That's why humans have
always had the endearing habit of sitting in dark rooms listening to scary stories and
frightening themselves for fun, all the way from Jack and the Beanstalk to Terminator.
We like a thrill, a scare, and a rush of adrenaline...as long as we can relax and know we're
safe when it's over.

I believe that we should spend all our lives in the stress/relaxation cycle, that it is tied in
with sleep, learning, memory and the basic structure of personality. Because the two
pleasure networks are at the core of our like/dislike choices and determine the wiring of
our frontal cortex, which determines the weightings for experiencing enjoyment.

Regardless of this, whenever anything new and unknown occurs we will start to produce
adrenal steroids, including ACTH (adrenocorticotrophic hormone) courtesy of a message
from the pituitary gland. Ordinarily these hormones should accommodate to the situation
through feedback, e.g. if there is sudden great danger, we need a lot more of them, but if
we just need to pay attention a bit more, we only need a few.

ACTH immediately causes the production of large quantities of new proteins in the brain,
which are active in learning and memory circuits. If you inject a living brain, via the
carotid artery, with ACTH it will grow large numbers of connecting links between
neurons. Links between neurons are what gives the brain better ability to process
information. ACTH in short bursts grows synaptic connections like fertilizer grows
tomatoes. If you have any doubt about this, stick a few rat brain cells on a microscope
slide and add a drop of ACTH. Watch. You can actually see the connections grow. (You
can get ACTH from any reputable drug company. Where you get your rat is not my
problem.)

This is why pain and shock as well as excitement can increase learning ability. Both
cause a release of ACTH. Fortunately, so do a number of other things, the things we find
exciting.

ACTH assists arousal1, (but ACTH and dopamine are still only one half of the catalyst
for the successful running of COMP).

Once something has gotten our attention, we move to complete our LO-RES SCAN by
focusing our senses on the situation and getting as much information as possible. To do
this we have to stop paying attention to various other things and this is the job of the
parietal cortex. The basal ganglia and frontal parietal networks prompt us to move
physically to pay better attention to the new thing. Then the thalamus jumps in and assists
our focus by filtering out irrelevant data.

At this point, if we are unafraid, the 'reward' network kicks in, (reliant upon a sufficient
number of receptors), pumping out endorphins. If we are in the mode of excitement, we
will start to feel pleasure (and possibly more excitement for a while) at this point.
Androgen production starts to shut down. All the time, we are adding emotional and
imaginative weighting to the experience. If we are afraid, we may imagine far worse
outcomes for a situation than actually occur. We may worry, become anxious, even
panic, as reaction to these imagined fears are added to the brain's information for
hormonal response as firmly as though they were reality and the brain keeps churning out
steroids. We can, literally, frighten ourselves to death2.

If we remain relatively unafraid, the reward network produces ongoing sensations of

pleasure, and that emotional weighting is logged down as a part of the ongoing stimulus.
(We need the hormones associated with relaxation to prevail eventually in order not to
overproduce the hormones of stress and excitement.) The whole system should be a
marvelous ebb and flow...explore...assimilate...explore...assimilate... Biologically,
stress/relaxation is the foundation of mental, as well as muscular, exercise. By stressing
and relaxing our minds we improve the brain's capacity to learn. Stress is when we walk
into the unknown, armed only with intelligence. Relaxation is when we return to the
known and add the new learning to our database. The next time we find ourselves in a
similar situation, our memory will furnish us with the same emotional weighting we
experienced the first time, as these are a part of the memory stored. Our response to that
memory will indicate our plan of action. This is the natural conditioning intelligence uses
to make it in our interests to pursue things which are beneficial to it.

'Relaxation' neurotransmitters such as oxytocin and endorphins are vital to prevent the
over-release of stress hormones, which cause a chain reaction ending with overproduction
of cortisol. Persons whose stress/relaxation networks are inadequate therefore often seek
that long-needed response by self-medicating. Most illegal 'recreational drugs' tweak the
brain's stress/relaxation networks; as do chocolate, coffee, tobacco and sugar.
The Nucleus Accumbens

...Alcohol, narcotics and nicotine all dive in to the nucleus accumbens (a main network of
dopamine receptors) and have a party there. At least half the people in our society are
chronically dopamine deficient, and the nucleus accumbens is a major part of the brain's
pleasure networks. Taking these drugs enables people to feel aroused or 'high', to forget
about their worries and anxieties for a while and have a laugh and maybe play a little.

If we suffer from anxiety and we don't take drugs, we end up with an overdose of cortisol
in the bloodstream. This binds to receptors in the hippocampus and eventually disrupts its
activity, making memory inefficient and inaccurate. If high cortisol levels continue,
hippocampal cells are destroyed. Cortisol enhances the amygdala's effect in fear
processing but affects the ACG deleteriously. So 'tis a far, far better thing to be stoned,
than to be running a personal full-body free-radical factory. The former may deleteriously
affect memory; the latter deleteriously affects life.

Cortisol is one of the main reasons why we deteriorate so quickly when we're stuck in a
matrix.R33 In anything other than very small, short doses cortisol is toxic. Horribly toxic.
It causes many nasty symptoms before it kills you, amongst them raised blood pressure,
osteoporosis, skin damage, slowed physical growth/repair, and suppression of the
immune system. Exacerbating any symptoms you already have, especially heart disease
or cancer, it will cloud your capacity for reason, shorten your life, and help lead you to an
untimely death. To add insult to injury it will cause brain cell death throughout, leading
to learning problems and memory loss. (It also makes you cry, or feel nauseated, irritated,
short tempered or annoyed, but they're minor symptoms which most people consider
'normal' human behavior.)

Whilst you're still alive, cortisol will damage your intelligence, producing escalating
anxiety and neurochemical imbalance, assisting you to achieve chronic depression,
immune deficiency, and of course stupidity, as vital neurotransmitter levels drop below
safety levels or zoom above them. I don't want that level of toxicity in my body and
mind, and I suspect you don't, either. What causes cortisol poisoning mostly, on a daily
basis, is any perceived irrational and possibly dangerous action/reaction. A combination
of something we don't understand or that doesn't make sense, and an indication that it
may be harmful. Disagreement or sane argument does not cause cortisol production.
Sulks, tantrums and flaming rows, irrational personal attacks, threats, and assertions of
error without proof trigger cortisol production. You should never allow input if it
contains obvious cortisol poisoning triggers, because it is unfair to spike yourself or other
people with deadly hormones without their full knowledge and consent.

When all systems are functioning on optimal, intelligence should flow between a
stress/relaxation cycle, that is to say, it should repeatedly be able to enter the unknown
and return to the known. We stress and relax our muscles in a sensory motor way in order
to exercise and keep them healthy. Mental stressing and relaxing is not sensory-motor; it
is chemical, and the chemicals it needs are neurotransmitters. If the neurotransmitters that
prompt the mind to stress itself are not present, there will be no incentive, no motivation
for the individual to pay attention to anything very much. They will have poor
concentration, short attention spans and will appear apathetic. If the relaxation-inducing
chemicals are absent, the individual will get excited or panic easily, suffer from anxiety,
and have a short attention span. Attention span is vital to memory. If we cannot keep our
concentration on something it is difficult to learn. Quantity-surveying reward signals, is
how we decide when we have had enough of anything. Dopamine is essential for both
attention and reward.

So you must become aware of this cycle and recognize its stages in yourself to enhance
your own learning and increase your processing speed, because only by being aware of it
can you do so. You must start this cycle rolling and keep it rolling until it becomes
automatic. Constantly you must face the unknown and make it known, by learning and by
practice. And after relaxation and reward, you must seek again the next unknown. It
never ends.

Knowing about the stress/relaxation response is why the effectiveness of Ritalin on

ADHD makes perfect sense to me. The drugs that enhance the concentration and action
of dopamine work so well because they allow the cycle to occur and paying attention
becomes easier; despite their action as stimulants, they provide the correct balance in
some people of excitement/relaxation. (ADHD patients have disrupted ACG function and
aim for immediate gratification at the expense of retrospection and forward planning. It is
an evolutionary road to extinction and I believe it is caused by an inadequate number of
dopamine receptors in the nucleus accumbens.)3

The Amygdala

Most of the answer to why fear conditioning is so extremely easy to accomplish lies in
the amygdala, a big part of the fear-processing network. The lateral amygdala is both an
input port for information from the senses and a security screen for possible threats. The
lateral nucleus is connected to the central nucleus, and the central nucleus is an output
region controlling physiological and physical behavior.

If you recall the fight/flight response, the lateral amygdala can get its input in two ways:
it gets a lo-res scan from the thalamus first, and this happens very fast; fast enough to get
us up that proverbial tree. Later it gets a hi-res scan from cortical sensory networks, but
this takes time. That's how emotion or feeling can happen faster than logical thought. All
the inputs, however, arrive at the same network So when a big hairy thing jumps out at
you, the initial lo-res scan may say to you 'Gorilla! Run!' But before you run, the hi-res
scan tells you 'No, it's okay!'...And then working memory tells you, 'Ah, it's your mad flat
mate, dressed as Chewbacca again'. (Fortunately the hi-res scan usually gets there just in
time to stop us making a fool of ourselves.)

In conditioning, both the amygdala and the hippocampus take note of coincidental input.
If every time you hear the word 'elephant', someone electrocutes you, your brain will
associate the two, even if you know it's irrational. Years later, someone says 'elephant'
and you freeze, your blood pressure goes up, and you produce adrenal steroids. It's a kind
of whole-body learning and it's vital to survival. We remember danger so vividly because
we may not get many opportunities to experience it, without getting eaten. We are here
today because our ancestors absolutely did not fail to remember what was dangerous. In
modern life, the things our intellect or society tells us are dangerous are still not taken as
seriously as these primal instincts. But the system itself is, as I have said, open to
suggestions...that's how we can condition ourselves (or be brainwashed) so easily, despite
our thinking of ourselves as 'civilized'. One day, we will finally realize subconsciously
that we are actually unlikely to be eaten. Until then, prisoners of biological conditioning
we remain.

More tools to play with

On an ongoing basis we can reward ourselves for paying attention to things which are
good for us. (And the reward we get naturally from being less stupid is quite pleasant,
too). Once the optimum neurotransmitter balance for stress/relaxation is achieved and
maintained as an ambient, we can further enhance learning and memory by enhancing
glutamate transmission, by increasing the concentration of molecules causing the
induction of the gene-transcription factor known as CREB, by stimulation of NMDA
receptors; because all are a part of the same networks for learning and memory.

There are other tools for learning/memory enhancement. One is biofeedback. We can
record our EEG and other signals when in optimum learning mode, then feed that input
back to ourselves in another session. An easier way is to plot the desired state for an
experience on computer, record yours now, stack 'em, and write the bit in the middle to
gradually affect the difference. (A simple example that illustrates this is: record your
heartbeat whilst in a state of high excitement. Record your normal heartbeat. Write a
slowly increasing heartbeat audio in the middle to join the two together smoothly. Play it
back to yourself through headphones and watch your heart speed up to keep pace. That's
biofeedback. If you're really creative you can write it into a piece of music. For use only
with informed consent, obviously.)

Most people use biofeedback in a very limited way, for something simple like learning
how to lower their blood pressure. In neurohacking you will get really personal about
biofeedback. You'll find it matters not so much to you that your pulse is 125 at the peak
of an experience, but by how much it increased and at what speed. It matters not what
quantities of hormones are released but what amount in relation to blood volume and
body weight. We are all unique, and the more we learn about ourselves the more we can
fine tune n-hacking to suit us personally. We'll be looking at biofeedback some more in
chapter 13.

A further technique you can try uses the brain's own hormonal cycle for strong LTP.
When we are running COMP as intended, there is a timed cycle for learning a new skill,
whose phases can be worked with for learning enhancement. The cycle will be slightly
different for each person, but with biofeedback you can learn to watch your brain in
action and see these changes take place.
The process of the making of a living memory, reflected in changes of light, sound, and
graphs on a screen, is one of the most awesome things I have had the privilege to witness.
The first group of changes takes six hours or so, after which you have to sleep, to allow
the next phase to happen, the permanent shift into the prefrontal cortex.

The timed repetition sequence for most people's learning a new skill within six months
most effectively is:

1. Finish first session when you start to lose interest or get confused.

2. Return to the material after ten minutes, until you lose interest once more.

3. Next session 24 hours later.

4. Next session one week later.

5. Penultimate session one month later

6. Review/end session six months later.

Note: Don't try to learn two brand new things within the same six hours. It takes just
about this long for your brain to complete the transfer of a new skill or bit of knowledge
into long term memory. If you leave it alone to do this, it will be far easier to move on to
your next subject afterwards. If you think about learning from a memory-timing point of
view, it becomes easier to understand why it takes so long to learn things in school,
where not only is input presented in the wrong order, but also at the wrong intervals for
memory to make the most of it.

We'll be looking at other learning-enhancement techniques later on, using other bits of
tech we haven't played with yet, heretic short-cuts to 'spiritual' enlightenment, binaural
beat multiple-input processing, and mood-changing by selection from a library...for now,
get into the swing of conditioning yourself and enjoying your rewards.

1. Alertness as arousal is master-mixed by the reticular formation (RF), which should

connect all the vital bits; frontal lobes, limbic system, brainstem and sensory input from
sense organs. Add in its interaction with the hippocampus and you can see why the RF is
one of the most vital pieces in the wiring of the brain, from intelligence's point of view.
(That it is also one of the main sites of anoxia damage and development failure due to
lack of input needs being met, is a tragedy we currently have no way to prevent, and for
which we can only take steps to reverse the damage.)

2. A lack of knowledge of the English language once prompted an associate of mine to

say of a patient: "He was so frightened, his heart attacked him". Amusing though that
may sound, it is unfortunately true. Fear is a real killer. Anxiety-induced suicides are
pretty deadly, for a start.

3. If asked how many personality/psychological disorders are the result of our brain being
incompletely developed as intended, I would say all of them aside from those caused by
physical injury.

12. Security and Firewalls (Protecting against unwanted conditioning)

Vulnerabilities

You may have wondered why I put such emphasis on control of input throughout the
neurohacking process and beyond. This chapter is about why.

Sometimes, as you try to avoid dodgy input, the beast fights back...

Internal resistance is the most common kind. Fear, doubt, disbelief, form an inner voice,
operating from whichever matrix you're stuck in, telling you that 'This is ridiculous;
there's nothing whatsoever wrong with most people, and all this neurohacking stuff is a
load of crap' (and too much trouble anyway). You will either believe that or you won't,
but you can expect it. Either way, it's best to make sure where your opinion is coming
from before you follow it with your actions and your words. Otherwise old habits and
neural pathways will creep back, and you'll get lulled back into complacency or provoked
into sentiment.

If resistance is external, it can be rather difficult, because if someone is trying to change

you, you have to protect your own mind, whilst attempting not to harm theirs. Many
people will try to change your mind whenever you get into anything even slightly
unusual. We certainly encounter a lot of nutters, mad cults, fads, crazes and fashions and
we're quite rightly sick to death of the endless stream of 'self help' systems and 'this book
will change your life' con schemes, so much so that anything new runs the risk of being
mistaken for a similar thing. Also, people will try to help you conform to the 'norm', 'for
your own good'. Depending upon how damaged they are, and how skilled you are, it's not
always possible to avoid harm. And reason won't help you here, either. It's no good trying
to explain matrix theory to a religious fundamentalist, for example, because at bottom
line you are concerned about the health of your mind and they are concerned about the
state of your soul. Try to stick with people who at least have a similar worldview to your
own.

If anyone with any computer savvy looked at a model of the human mind, cast in analogy
to a computer system, one of the first things they would notice would be that the security
is absolutely dreadful. Most people's minds are akin to a machine running live on the
Internet without any effective virus checkers, filters or firewalls, uploading and
downloading dubious shite of unknown origin with indiscriminate abandon all day
long.... It would work just fine if there were no viruses, bugs or hackers in its world.
Innocent, the mind is not expecting or prepared for accidental or malevolent interference,
and it inevitably crashes or gets its software rewritten before it can figure out what's
happening. Boy meets girl, or business colleagues collide, and suddenly everybody is
trying to reprogram everybody else's subroutines, overtly or covertly.

Many parts of your brain are incapable of telling the difference between inner and outer
input, as we've seen. We know we can exploit this, in learning enhancement, but what we
must always remember is, other people can exploit it too, and it's not usually learning
enhancement they have in mind.

We have incredibly gullible minds. We are designed to look for patterns and to copy and
to fit in with expected behaviors, and we want to believe. We begin life, as we are meant
to be, open-minded. Current society is not, as it is meant to be, honestly informative.
Moreover, it is deleterious to mental health.

The main factor that hits our security, our self-esteem, and hence our personality and our
mood, is of course anxiety; a chronic stress that knows no resolution.R5 Most people are
operating under anxiety most of the time. Sentiments manifest as the outward,
'behavioral' forms of anxiety. All our lives we have been subjected to and given examples
of subnormal minds to copy. From parents to teachers, from our boss to our girlfriend or
husband, friends, acquaintances and relatives, and almost everybody we meet on the
street. We can realize only by experiencing it as awareness, the fallacy of such things as
blame or jealousy, anxiety about not fitting in, about losing, about what others will think,
and just anxiety.

That is why we have to control input. It's part of our security system. The only difference
between an average person's security system and a neurohacker's is, the latter has one.

First of all, let's look at the reality of what you are protecting, and what you are up
against... You have this system; you may call it your brain or your soul or your mind or
your self, as you please. On this system, is stored the only copy of your master program.
Your master program is the optimal you; the you that you were designed to be, at your
best, your most intelligent and the finest you could ever be, given your current limits.
Your five-star quality of life hotel keys. Your gateway to the stars in the skies and the
stars in your eyes. Your one shot at it, as far as you know, and you're currently mortal.
What's it worth, your mind?

It is priceless. No value can be put upon it because it is the core of your very self; a
blueprint for all you are and all you could be. Not just your mind now, but the future
potential of your mind. Responsible for the quality of everything you will ever
experience; all of your dreams, hopes, ideas, memories and creations.

This multi-program cannot be copied, as yet. You have no backup. Very little external
storage (books, photographs, fragments of memory on film), and none of that fully
interactive (i.e. that can be interfaced with the rest of your mind in real time).
And here's your position: there's this virus called Chronic Anxiety affecting billions of
similar brains belonging to other people. Some of them it kills (suicides), most it just
disables, often for life. It will rewrite your software and reprogram you as a copy of itself,
destroying your original intended personality in the process. It will brainwash you and
make you do all kinds of things that are highly dangerous to your well being. It will
shorten your life, and seriously reduce its quality.R33 It will prevent you from using your
higher functions in synchrony, causing you to miss many experiences and feelings you
should have access to, and abilities that will never develop. It will take your mind with
chronic anxiety long before it takes your life, leaving you at the mercy of senility and
mental decline. It will assimilate you. Resistance is futile. You are greatly outnumbered.
Stand down, and prepare to be boarded.

That's a fair view of your position, so, what do you say to just doing nothing and letting
all that happen?

...If I were human, I believe my response would be, "Go to hell".

Resistance is of course not futile; it is fun, which is why I am here writing this. Let's see
what we've got on our side in the security war.

1. Blocks and Filters

Forewarned is forearmed. We have the knowledge of what is dangerous and the memory
and knowledge of what to avoid. Better, we can now learn to recognize the signs of
something that might be dodgy and either pay attention to it and find out, or not pay
attention to it just in case.

A spam filter is a thing many folks are familiar with. A common problem with such
filters is their inability to tell what is spam and what is not, so you run the risk of either
missing a mail that you actually wanted, or getting spam that you didn't; it's difficult
where to draw the line. Sneaky spam spreaders disguise their wares as other things,
avoiding spammy keywords, which makes it harder still, and in the end we have to settle
for a reasonable filter or an expensive secretary (or both).

In a similar way, as we take in input, we can train our minds to filter out from whatever's
incoming that they feel is dangerous to pay attention to and forward the rest. Some things
will be considered more relevant than others will, like a mail marked urgent. Dodgy input
may be recognized as such right from the start, (but usually isn't; and it takes experience
to pay heed to warnings about viruses and damage, even if such warnings are given,
which is rare.) Consistently paying attention to, and filtering, input is one of the hardest
jobs in neurohacking. You really need to be determined to keep it together. Fortunately,
you start to notice the difference and improvement at the same time as you start to keep it
together, which is encouraging. This is called the Noble Art of Ignoring Things.

The noble art of ignoring things should now become a priority security project for you.
This is real fun because it is your first 'taking control' after 'taking charge' (which you did
the moment you decided to wipe sentiment). Our weapons here, are logic and reason.
'Irrelevant', is now a judgment that should be passed on all things which are not of any
value to intelligence. So at first you will be spending your time observing what they are.
After a while you will have noticed that in reality, not a lot of things are very important.
Anything that isn't, shouldn't be taking up valuable attention space, so deliberately label it
as 'irrelevant/spam' and change the subject of your concentration to something relevant. A
very short amount of practice at this will surprise you at how efficiently discriminatory
you are able to be.

If you can't figure out whether something matters, ask yourself why it might. If you can't
think of a good reason it's probably irrelevant. Detach yourself mentally from problems
and concerns (and people) that really have nothing to do with you. Stop viewing, or
listening to, emotional spam. Free up the mind from trivia, and it actually starts to think.
In every situation, try to look at what is really going on. Training yourself out of sloppy
mental habits can seem tedious at first, but very quickly passes into adeptness if you treat
it as a game. Every time you hear those soap opera sentiments, just sing to yourself,
'Spam, spam, spam, spam'...Once again, play, and the work will be done for you.

You should by now be starting to notice the differences between what most people
perceive and what is really going on. Watch that space. Learn those differences.
Remember which side of the 'reality fence' you live on and maintain your right to remain
there. Sometimes it's hard coming to terms with reality at this stage, because it can feel
quite stark and even lonely or as though something is missing. It's a transitional time, and
is difficult because sentiment is going, but you're not yet used to using real emotion
efficiently and may feel either a bit emotionally flat, or conversely, too moody. So be
patient. Answers are coming.

2. Surveillance and Scanning

We have the ability to optimize or enhance our sensory input. But it's no good having a
vast array of CCTV cameras if half of them are too filthy to give a clear image, or if the
recognition software keeps mistaking your wife for a hat.

In order for your mind to think, it has to coordinate, in parallel, the timing of masses of
electro-chemical interactions, very fast. Fast for biology, anyway (a nerve impulse travels
down a nerve fiber at about 20 meters per second). Thick, well-insulated fibers pass
information faster than sparse badly insulated ones, so the hardware needs to be in good
shape in order to run the software optimally. We cannot escape the fact that currently,
most of our personal intelligence enhancement rests on a biological platform. It is wet,
very complicated and still only partially understood. It is like an undiscovered country; a
final frontier beyond which we must boldly go and stop watching so much sci-fi. Make it
so.

If you want your senses to work properly, as they were designed to do, you have to set up
the conditions for that. You have to avoid malnutrition (and I don't mean being thin -lots
of obese people have malnutrition. I mean stop eating so much crap and eat more
nutrients.) You have to avoid infection, which means having a healthy immune system
and low cortisol. You have to avoid injury, by taking care of yourself. You have to avoid
perceptual distortion, by avoiding drugs and chemicals that your brain and body don't
need, and supplementing with those they do.

So first of all, when you get to this stage, you should be looking really hard at your diet,
what supplements you might need, how much exercise you are getting, and your sleep
patterns. It isn't very hard to make small changes that together make a noticeable
difference. Use your biology to support and feed your intelligence, and the favor will be
reciprocated. I recommend Omega 3 supplements, and if you can get it, Selegiline, for
everybody on the planet, 20 minutes (yes, that's all) exercise a day, and 8 hours of sleep
in every 27 hours. And I'm not even asking you to give up the burgers or the biscuits, I'm
just suggesting you should eat some proper food as well. Your tastes will change
naturally later on without having to 'diet'.

On top of this you need regular moderate exercise, which maintains the blood and oxygen
flow to the brain and avoids spikes and surges, which can cause damage. You need
sufficient sleep and dream time.

More difficult, you need quality interaction, to keep your attention and concentration as
sharp as your reflexes.

Some of this may be impossible to achieve. Your sight is probably already damaged
unless you didn't read until after age 10, your olfactory sense has probably suffered
pollution damage. Your sense of taste will have been more than likely programmed to
enjoy 'junk' food, and your neurochemistry probably needs all sorts of drugs to maintain
its affability and poise.

The amazing thing is, this doesn't really matter at all. That's what neurohacking is for. We
don't try to be something we're not; we offset the damage of what we really are and buy
time to repair it. We gently nudge the chemistry towards its optimal state; where it is
designed to be, and the rest of the work is done for us. And at some point, we just don't
want some things any more; we've changed our minds about what makes us feel good.
When we get there the task then becomes to stay in that space, to avoid damage, and to
improve ourselves. But to get there in the first place we need a security system that will
protect us from further harm, otherwise it's two steps forward and three steps back.

3. Knowledge as awareness

So use your senses consciously. In scanning for dodgy input, use knowledge as
awareness. We know that the senses alone, and the brain, can be deceived. We can be
distracted, and fooled by psychology or sleight of hand, as all victims of con artists and
pickpockets probably know. Most people don't have any security to speak of. But having
thrown a lot of junk out of your mind and started to repair the damage it caused, you tend
to get a bit more security-conscious. You don't want any more junk to have to deal
with...you don't deserve that.
Remain aware that nothing can really harm you unless it's in long term memory. You can
pile as much crap as you like through short-term memory and it won't harm your
intelligence (aside from atrophy in the time wasted doing that, or the dangers of repetition
causing permanent change). Otherwise short-term memory is just like your mailer. There
may be a virus in that there email, but you're safe as long as you don't open the
attachment (don't allow any emotional weighting to occur).

All 'attachments' (emotional weightings) on input contain one of two things: a bonding-
based map or an attachment-based map. (An interaction map or an action/reaction map.)
The attachment-based maps all carry part of a multivirus, which can affect one module of
the brain, or many modules, leading to a total change of your personality. Some behave
like a Trojan; they subtly alter your software and set up the conditions for infection.
Others are real biggies and hit you full on, causing you to crash and possibly never
recover (severe psychiatric illness). You can get to recognize the signs of virus-bearing
input just like you can in IT, and as every good security chief knows, one of the most
important things is know thine enemy. Learn to recognize the signs of attachment
behavior and avoid it as significantly dangerous.

So, the first thing you have to do is, run a check now to see to what degree you might be
infected already, and start the repair work on that. And you need your security system up
from the start, or all that work would achieve nothing; you'd just keep on getting
reinfected every time you got infected input. So you have to be installing all this whilst
still getting rid of the damage. For a lot of reasons that is easier than it sounds, and when
you are in there it's obvious. The more time you spend doing things that are good for you,
the less time you have to spend on things that are bad. It's that simple. Each task helps
speed the solution of the other.

Next you have to look at how it is transmitted... Ouch! It's everywhere; there's no way
you could have separate tactics for every occurrence, so you have to have a broad-
spectrum solution based on common factors.

The biggest common factor is sentiment. It's the key symptom; every virus attack induces
it. Sentiment is your alarm bell; particularly large fast rushes of it that have an immediate
physical effect. Red alert! Something is trying to breach your firewall, and has just
injected you with a pile of hormones to make you more susceptible. (More than likely it
is yourself, indulging in dubious input from without or within, but sometimes it is other
people, events or things pushing it upon you, most of which and whom don't know they're
doing it. They're merely copying the virus, convinced it's how things are 'meant to be',
because that's what the virus makes you think. Makes you believe.)

Nevertheless, we can use that rush of sentiment as a warning sign; the first line of
defense, and learn to block the effects of it reasonably quickly by releasing other
hormones on purpose. Biofeedback is a great boon for this sort of work.

Also in our first line of defense are logic and memory. If all the guys with pink hair we've
met so far in life have been unpleasant, then we are quite right to feel wary of a new pink-
haired arrival. This is not racist or prejudiced, it is sensible. We may revise our wariness
after meeting a few nice pink-haired guys, and all is well. Our awareness is designed to
look for patterns in things, and no amount of political correctness will change that, or
does so at it's peril.

High risk areas:

Sex/relationships/family is one of the three main areas where the virus is transmitted. The
other two are also conglomerates: territory/resources/money, and
superstition/religion/politics. They are conglomerates because they are each operated
from the same loci of consciousness; that is to say, the first in each group has as its locus
of consciousness the 'old' brain, the second the mid brain networks and the third the
frontal lobes, so depending on which matrix you're stuck in, you'll have a different high
risk area. It's considered cool now, to be more interested in sex, and less interested in
family, than was the case 100 years ago, when the opposite was in fashion. So one might
suspect a decline; however more people now would rather have social control in the
hands of politics than in those of superstition... (Or would they? Perhaps it all depends on
what the president's star sign is?)

Watch out in sport or games. Competition, or rivalry, is a broad-spectrum catalyst for

sentiment. (Never play a game of any kind against someone stuck in M2, unless you
intend to lose on purpose).

Depending on what matrix you're stuck in, and where your own locus is, one of the three
conglomerates mentioned above will make you more vulnerable. If you know you're
stuck in M3, be aware that spiritual frauds and romantic liars, not to mention talk of
'destiny' will more easily fool your mind. If you're stuck in M4, remember that you could
fall prey to those who encourage apathy, routine, and mindless toil or mindless obedience
under the guises of 'order', or 'discipline' (and I don't mean Helga's House of Pain here
either), or 'duty'. M4 people will be also susceptible to being conned, by unscrupulous
managers, agents, and things that looked like lucrative opportunities.

Both these groups would do well to also watch out for an irrational hatred of the other,
due to the subconscious 'uncanny valley' effect of confronting something called human
but so utterly unlike them.

No part of the brain is meant to function in isolation. When we're stuck in a matrix that's
often what's happening, as the connections are not sufficient for effective neural
communication. We may recognize when someone is stuck in a matrix not the same as
our own, but we don't see half so easily that ourselves and our friends are stuck...because
there we are reinforcing each other's dodgy input all the time.

If our group is right, then all the other groups must be wrong...so we have these
collectives of people, all stuck in various matrices, arguing over which matrix it's best to
be stuck in.
Read the last paragraph again. It is what all political systems and religions are about.

Being stuck in a matrix is the same as if one bit of your brain decided it had the best way
to think, so let's make all the other bits think that way too. That's how stupid it is, except
these bits of 'brain' really are destroying each other. We cannot get a successful social
system out of one matrix, just as we could not get a coherent mind from only one bit of
brain. We cannot allow any of these choices to rule us; we must make a new choice. One
with a whole working brain behind it.

Now we cannot do that to society at present, but we can do it to ourselves. We can start
with the ideals of real independence and freedom, and like it or not, with the need to
defend ourselves from enemies both foreign and domestic. And our actions must be
similar; we must be vigilant and aware whilst being free from paranoia.

4. Firewalls, Keys and Codes

So, perhaps not surprisingly, attitude is another weapon against breaches of security.
With self-esteem we find we value ourselves more highly and are more concerned about
our own well being.

The degree to which a change in attitude towards justified confidence affects concrete
physiology always takes people by surprise. That's another reason why we have to
control input. With our attitude under control (and at first it must be conscious control)
we are well and truly in the driving seat. Self-esteem, justified confidence, and freedom
from anxiety are the strongest firewalls in the world.

To get them we have to stop internal dodgy input, the enemy within. The most dangerous
time for our internal input is when our neurochemistry slips out of balance and we feel
depressed or 'down'. The choice of memories we can access at any given moment
depends upon our mood, and inevitably whenever we are anxious or afraid, unpleasant
thoughts and memories will arise. There are two ways to deal with them.

1. Stop thinking. No, I mean it. Use the noble art of ignoring things, take in some light
external input like an amusing book or movie, and distract the mind from paying
attention to gloomy thoughts until the mood has lifted (and it will, with time). Drink or
smoke enough not to remember the mood.

2. Change the mood by hacking. The internal input will then automatically change with
it.

Whenever you use memory, you use a series of different hormonal triggers for keys or
symbols to access neural pathways correlating with former associations, all related to
your sensory input both past and present (input from within has the same effects as
external sensory input on the mid brain). All of these are based on one master key;
control of perception. It can be the key to absolute freedom, or a ring to rule them all, so
watch it. If you control someone's perception, you control them utterly. Best make sure
you're controlling yours.

Question: Why does a newborn human intelligence have the ability to recognize a face?

The presentation of a face at birth is an input trigger, for hormonal keys that bring our
sensory networks online. The evolution of intelligence in us personally is about the
selective opening or closing of neurochemically active gateways, allowing access to new
networks as they develop. At every matrix shift we are given a window of opportunity to
bring new networks online with greater ease. They develop anyway, in preparation for
use, but access is not granted without the correct chemical key (and if the key is never
found, or is destroyed by cortisol, access is never granted). If the key is there, and we
have constructed, as intended, the half of the network on our current side of the gates, we
are able to use the neurotransmitter keys produced there to release the electrochemical
locks and join the networks together or increase the thickness of the connection.
Chemical messengers will flit back and forth looking for points of similarity, and
associated memories will be strengthened. Keys must fit locks, for gateways to open and
networks to connect.

A newborn's hard-wired face-recognition program, on presentation of the correct input,

triggers the hormones (keys) to open the chemical gateways that engage the reticular
formation's connections for visual processing networks. Any face will do, but only if the
input is a face will the external trigger enable the key to fit the internal lock. Once it's in,
other keys will follow through and the newborn will smile; a signal to biology that all is
well. Nothing else will activate the sensory networks except for the correct input, in this
case, visual. For every gate there is an optimal input, and knowing what these are is
therefore important.

Exactly likewise, but on a varied scale, we can establish anything from a new habit to the
triggering of a matrix shift by establishing new connections, by deliberately and
repeatedly triggering the biological keys to access the gates we require open. Some of the
networks they lead to may be a little wrinkled and small but if the keys fit, they won't
stay small for very long. The beauty of intelligence is that the networks sit there for as
long as they do; they literally take years to give up waiting for the keys and die on you,
unless some other activity hijacks their memory space.

Changing internal dodgy input, fortunately, is merely about changing habits. We can
work with habit or against it, because ironically, the trick is merely changing one
(deleterious) habit into another (beneficial) one, but there are ways to do this which work
and ways which don't, (as anybody now addicted to both nicotine patches and cigarettes
can testify). Changing a habit, really, is testing your ability to change reality.

A habit is a behavior program, running on a frequently used and usually long-established

network. Gates to and from those networks are more or less permanently open. To change
a habit we need not merely set up new pathways and open new gates, we usually need to
close down the old ones. The 'familiarity' part of habit is an aspect of addiction. Once a
network is used, the pattern of action etches in as a memory, a pattern of recognition. If
we do something regularly, the brain clocks it, begins to learn when to expect it, and
serves up a dish of the relevant hormonal keys right on time in anticipation of the input.

The easiest way to make a change to habit is to make a really noticeable change,
establishing a strong memory of the new network patterns right away and not letting the
old stuff get a word in edgeways. To do this you need multiple input. (Three triggers).
You need to let the whole brain know what you are up to, throw an all-departments party,
with free beer for the unbelievers. Neurosignalling gateways and connecting busses occur
between all major brain modules, but for multiple input we need three different kinds of
input code.

The old brain requires muscular movement to give emotional weighting, or 'importance'
to an experience. micromovements are always present, and their effects can be amplified
with concentration on the subject and close attention to it, but we can make muscular
movement a trigger by deliberately using any muscular movement in association with
other triggers during the learning process.

An example, and a warning: back in the ancient days when I was in high school, a bunch
of us in an attempt to alleviate the boredom, thought up a set of keywords/reactions and
linked them together to see how long it would take to respond to a given signal
automatically. One of these was to jump to our feet and salute any time anyone said the
word 'Enterprise' (we were all Trekkies). This formed a habit so fast, we'd find ourselves
doing it by accident in situations where it was sometimes embarrassing, and what we
hadn't thought of was how easy it wouldn't be to stop. Over three decades of trying to
stop it later, my mind still hears 'Enterprise' and thinks, in seemingly innocent
surprise...'isn't there something urgent I should be doing'? Muscular movement is a very
strong trigger to establishing keys for 'habit' memories because a part of them are in
procedural memory; the strongest memory there is.

Another kind of input needed is midbrain language and imagery for emotional weighting
and storage in eidetic memory. Midbrain language, where one thing can represent another
thing or many things, is very compressed. It needs the input relevant to emotion and
imagination; these may be inner, visual, auditory, or more rarely relayed through the
other senses. Music, poetry and art are all powerful midbrain triggers. (We'll have a look
at this in greater depth in chapters 14 and 15.)

Input for the 'new' brain focuses on intellect and creativity, ideas and logic are likely to
form the most useful input here, which is stored in semantic memory.

All of these kinds of input when synchronized can give a very powerful effect, more so
when enhanced by any other means. Movement, keywords, and association are a shortcut
to establishing new patterns of thought and new network connections. And we can use
allegorical language to set up an encryption scheme for self-protection (more later).
The basics: we form a habit of never allowing access to certain areas we do not wish to
use again and which we do not wish to be controlled by others. We use a trigger to
remind ourselves but that trigger is encrypted; nobody else can ever know what it means
or what it is doing, even if they see it happen, because they can never see the part that is
inside our mind. Our trigger is a multiple password, which interrupts a habitually
associated train of memories and redirects input along an alternative route of our own
designation. The acuity of the interruption is the vital part in successfully using this, and
the actual keys remain out of sight, as do the contents of the doors we have locked.

Let's hack: Wonko the Sane's Anti Stupidity Software

Think of something you want to change, the rules will be the same, whatever it is...Just
for the example, let's say we decide to permanently close a door leading to
reactions/irrational arguments and strong negative emotion. For years, whenever
somebody has said things we think are patently absurd, let's say we have thought, 'this is
garbage', and said, 'that's a load of garbage', which statement has often led to us being
punched in the teeth; plainly not an interaction unless we are a specific sort of masochist.
Now, instead, we want to stay in 'overview' mode instead and look at the reality,
untouched by anxiety, and not make that habitual response. Let's use a fast method to
achieve that change.

The next time you find yourself thinking 'this is garbage', attach to that thought a multiple
password consisting of a keyword, a movement and an image to remind you that
something has gone wrong.

Keywords are important. The more memorable they are, the more likely they are to be
effective. The more frequently they are used, the sooner they will become automatic, so
in a way the more different mistakes you make, the faster you learn. (Tell that to your
schoolteacher.) Used together with midbrain input and sensory motor input, they are
pretty infallible.

Keywords should be kept secret not for reasons of deceit but for reasons of interaction.
They help us remember something is important, private, and give it more emotional
weighting. This is a concept most medical people find easier to grasp than most... because
they have awareness of the 'placebo' effect.R34 If you pull a long face and tell someone
they have almost no chance, you reduce their chances. If you tell them they're going to be
fine, they stand more chance of getting better. (From intelligence's point of view, what
could you say? You say the truth as you see it... The better their immune system is the
better chance they stand, so it's important to stay optimistic and help the medication work
better. And, there is always hope. The more positive they are, the more hope there is, so
their fight now is to stay cool and light hearted and really enjoy our chance to kick that
disease's ass, sister. That's what you say. You respect their ability to fight with you, and,
if they're intelligent, they do. Not all patients can do this, not even most, but enough to
make it worthwhile giving them a chance to.)
All that really matters about a keyphrase/word is that it jumps out at you, jumps you out
of idly sitting back absorbing dodgy input without noticing. It may be that you are unable
to interact, or that you are in danger from the examples of other's behavior (e.g.
outnumbered by nutters), it may be that you are becoming confused about what to do, or
distracted by gloomy thoughts, but a keyword should basically catch your conscious
attention on purpose and be linked to a whole set of associated memories which change
your perspective; make you aware of what is going on. Triggers are meant to give you a
sudden access to overview. To make you aware that in reality, a virus is probably present
and you had better beware. Firewalls up! Access denied.

These words, movements and images are your triggers to stopping dodgy input regardless
of its origin. They turn on a genuine immune system against the virus. After a short time
of practice, we are no longer so easily infected. And that gives us a heady sense of
freedom so watch out. I've associated the triggers deeply with a switch of attention;
suddenly, I focus on what's going on in my mind, in real time, here and now, and I take
control and change my neurochemistry midflow. And I think that's absolutely marvelous.
As we shall see, everything has its price, but I find that degree of control a worthwhile
compensation.

Coping with an attack in real time

So far we've looked at some ways to protect ourselves, mainly from harmful input which
is unwittingly spread around us in everyday society and by the majority of people. Dodgy
input is not a deliberate evil in this context; it is almost always an accidental one.

Sometimes, though, it isn't.

If people are chronically anxious, they sometimes start being stupid on purpose. They
don't call it stupidity of course, they call it any number of things, but whatever it is, it will
be 'for your own good', to 'bring you to your senses', and the word 'should' will be used a
lot. Some people quite deliberately try to manipulate your thoughts and your behavior, to
make you more acceptable (to them).

All idiots are well meaning idiots, even the ones who want to stone you to death to save
your soul, or wipe out half the population to save the other half. Such people may well
think you are actually mentally disturbed if you disagree with them, and some can
become more unbalanced and violent if you try overtly to resist.

Our aim here is not to get you to dodge bullets. Our aim is to enable you not to have to.
The best way to avoid cot deaths is to avoid cots. Don't get into friendships with nutters.
If it's happened already, get out as soon as you can. Just don't go there. Anybody trying
deliberately to manipulate your mind without your informed consent is not an acceptable
companion.

Unfortunately in our society things have gone a bit awry. Many people in anxiety use fear
conditioning as an unconscious strategy without really knowing what they are doing, or
through deliberate deceit. They'll use sex, drink, drugs or emotional blackmail to try to
program you to behave as they wish you to behave. This means programming your will to
serve their desires, usually for the pacification of their own anxiety. (Many people are,
admittedly, sitting targets). It's amazing what some people will do for sex, for example,
or indeed, what drink can do to an audience. Fear of losing something will drive people to
extremes, including amateur or even subconscious neurohacking, so be aware of that.

Usually, the type of interference we encounter is not too serious, short term, and happens
whenever we encounter someone stuck in M2 or 3 with an over-inflated idea of the
validity of their world view as applied to others. Open disagreement with such people
only causes them to assume you are mad or stupid or both. So if you have to encounter
such dodgy types in your daily life, work etc., think seriously about changing your
circumstances in order to exclude them. If you're stuck with it for now, you'll need to use
security techniques. You don't want people of this nature messing with your mind.
Therefore, you will have to get used to the fact that whenever someone you are talking to
is too stupid to handle the truth, you will have to use these two techniques: You will have
to translate your words into those of a map they can understand, and you will have to
self-censor.

This latter isn't very easy for some people because it raises an ethical issue due to two
considerations: (1) they believe in the right to free speech without censorship of any kind,
and if their words upset others, tough. (2) They believe in creative freedom of expression
of their truth as a part of overall freedom and justice, they don't want to upset anyone but
are prepared to argue whatever it is out with logic. These considerations arise at some
point for most people. ..."Why should I censor my words and actions?"... "Censorship
sucks!" I can only agree. If we lived in a sane society and if everyone could handle the
truth without 'throwing a wobbly', that would be great! And indeed you can talk openly
like this with anyone in the same matrix as you. The thing is, if you're out there at either
end, there aren't going to be many people in the same matrix as you. As far as is possible
we should strive for free speech and open expression, but we use self-censorship as a
means to control our external situation, in order to protect intelligence, not to restrain it. It
means we have to be creative in order to find the right way to say things, but that's no
problem for a working mind.

We are of course really capable of doing and saying anything we want to, including
running through the streets of Nazi Germany shouting, 'Look at me, I'm Jewish, and
Hitler is an asshole!' Some would go this far to protect their rights to freedom and I
applaud their integrity, for we are all ultimately free to do as we please as long as we are
prepared to accept the consequences. In a sane world the consequences of free speech
would be an ongoing series of very interesting discussions and discoveries, but currently
our society is not that sensible, and 'freedom of expression' usually results in arguments,
anxiety, aggression, more stupidity and the odd gunshot wound.

Security is always for our own protection, but also for the protection of intelligence per
se. You may not care if your words or actions upset somebody; serves them right for
being stupid, you might think, or 'maybe they're just too sensitive'. This may well be true,
but it is not the point. The point is, whenever you cause stupidity, things get worse and
the virus proliferates. It is therefore part of the problem, not the solution. Remember that
there is something wrong with most people's brains. Now if it were something like
epilepsy, you wouldn't go showing your groovy psychedelic flashy-light video when they
were around, for concern over causing a seizure. You can watch it yourself whenever you
like, and you wouldn't moan about this restricting your freedom of expression, you'd be
aware that your attempt to share it would probably result in illness, because the guy with
epilepsy's brain cannot handle that sort of input. ... Now you're getting it. The same
consideration applies to stupidity. If people's brains cannot handle some sorts of input
without getting ill (and I count stupidity as illness) then you do not present that input
when they are around.

But, you may think, that's just pandering to people's fears and insecurities; how on earth
can that help to grow intelligence? This is only fair enough if the person involved has the
potential to overcome their fear, and until you can judge that efficiently you don't risk
being wrong. Every time you cause an attack of stupidity it affects your well being for as
long as you have to stick around it, and the well being of everybody around that person
for some time. By self-censoring you are protecting yourself from the effects of the
stupidity of others, and you have to do this at first. You have to get 100% professionally
competent at not upsetting people by accident, before you can move onto the much more
complex pursuit of upsetting people on purpose (chapter 14).

Worst case scenarios

If people are trying to condition you and break your will and they are honest about it, (1)
they're not amateurs, (2) they're going to be using something like a multi-input
biofeedback system with subliminals, a selection of specific neuroactive drugs and
something basic but expedient with an electric plug at one end and anything nasty on the
other, and (3) run like hell.

Anybody trying to manipulate you against your will in any way is unacceptable, even if
they don't really know what they're doing. Intelligence is still violated. 'Breaking the will'
necessitates sensory and emotional overload, piling psychological stress onto physical
stress, pushing the brain chemistry into such imbalance that eventually the mind escapes
into insanity or retreats into a survival mode where we stop thinking and go through the
motions of whatever is required of us like a robot. This is the required result for the
programmer, of course, because in this state we can be programmed from a bottom-up,
sensory motor set of basics, trained like an animal through fear and reward. What has
been 'broken' (or rather, disengaged, abandoned and boycotted) are connections in the
neural pathways between the hemispheres themselves, in favor of the old pathways of
childhood being strengthened, back in the midbrain. You're regressed to the mentality of
a seven-year-old. The change to different areas used shows up on fMRI. What happens to
your personality when you 'break', is the abandoning of intelligence's morals and values
in favor of biology. There are degrees of severity in this, obviously; most people
experience brainwashing effects in school, which is the bottom end of the scale, or
emotional blackmail at some time in their lives, but very few meet the professionals. At
the top end of the scale, it gets quite spectacular. You snap into what you see
unconsciously as 'reality'. You admit your fear both to yourself and anybody who wants
to listen, and you admit, in your mind, your failure to overcome biology, You admit
defeat, and consciously or otherwise you admit you'll do anything for release from facing
that fear. Those who can't face admitting this go crazy or they die, usually from suicide.
Which one you do depends on your current wiring. If you've got a healthily wired mind
and a reasonably high pain threshold you won't die or go crazy, but you will still break
under pressure. This pressure happens on a small scale any time that you allow yourself
to be controlled by someone else's behavior. It happens on a larger scale with emotional
blackmail and an even larger scale with emotional and physical abuse. You don't have to
be a professional to drive a human to suicide, as we see so repeatedly in our news media.

That there are some people in the world who will cheerfully hurt others 'for their own
good' is quite bad enough, but when it gets to the stage of being once removed from the
personal and becomes 'for the good of the party', or 'god's will', I'd advise you to run your
ass off.

Take a hard stand on this from the beginning. Remember what really matters and what
doesn't. Set your boundaries clearly for what you find it acceptable to be around, and for
how you expect to be treated. Don't allow them to be transgressed unless you want to
know what it feels like to betray your own mind, and figure out why so many people
choose suicide after the experience.

Once you figure out the places not to go and the people not to hang around with, things
get a whole lot easier. In the meantime, and in new situations where you do not yet know
people, you'll need to take precautions.

Finally, if you do have any information in your mind that people would kill each other
for, I recommend you put a copy of it elsewhere and wipe the original. What you
genuinely cannot recall, cannot be got out of you. Such extreme measures are rarely
necessary, and they won't prevent people from causing you harm; they'll only protect the
information. There is very little information worth dying for, in my opinion.

13. Plugins (Biofeedback and similar techniques)

The hardest things to control of all are biological responses. If the ground shook and you
heard a loud explosive crack close by you right now, your body would probably do
exactly what this spider on my desk just did when I banged down a cup beside it...you
would freeze for an instant and your blood pressure would go up, then you would go into
fight/flight mode and hasten to escape the area of the explosion. Biology acts without
conscious thinking to protect itself, having had to do so for all the years prior to the
evolution of sufficient intelligence to protect it in more sophisticated ways. Even when
we are consciously aware of our safety we react to biology's prompting; if you doubt this,
try sticking your forehead up against a window with a vexed snake behind it and seeing if
you can keep your face against the glass when the snake strikes, or try not to blink when
someone else's hand rapidly approaches your eye.
Because biological responses are some of the hardest things to control, we're not going to
attack them all at once. But we need to understand the biological basis of attention and
association control, because this underlies all learning, so what we are going to do here is
speed up the learning process and make it more efficient by incorporating this biological
basis into the learning cycle (as was intended) by using conditioning. Instead of acting
against our biology, we can interact with it and use it to further our purpose. Biofeedback
is a very useful tool for this. Using it, automatic systems (like your heartbeat and blood
pressure) can be brought under conscious control, and controlling your own biology is
one very powerful way of controlling input from within. That makes a huge difference to
your speed of progress, because it is the difference between having to be constantly
vigilant about what you are surrounded by all the time, and the noble art of being able to
completely ignore it without even having to try very hard. It means there will be no
distractions; that regardless of what is going on around you, you can remain serene and
unaffected by it for as long as you want to.

Biofeedback systems have a great deal to offer to a neurohacker. Ideally, your system
should have: multiple input processing and multiple output possibilities (sound, light,
display on screen, TMS link etc.) I'll talk about TMS in another chapter, because it's best
to get the hang of all the rest first.

But this is the outskirts of Cyborg City; this is wires stuck all over you and electrodes and
sensors and things connecting you to computers and all that jazz. Where you get all those
cool cyberpunk phrases drifting past from the stranger groups you wish you were either
in or at least not so embarrassed to be in, like, "jack your head into the deck, dude." No
problemo. Hasta la vista. Allrighty then.

So, let's keep this simple. You're a machine. Live with it.

You should be using multi-color light I/O that is controllable and reducible to red/green
or monochrome. You should have good encoding/decoding processors for each different
kind of input.

You should have a source of 'mental games' or 'tutorials' for learning to use
mind/computer interface. You should have a method of storing a lot of sessions in non-
volatile memory. You need SP, Pressure and Contact electrodes of different kinds for
each input. The system should be capable of using mains or battery power (excluding
TMS). And you should have the capacity to play with 'binaural beats'.R35

You should set the whole lot up as you intend to use it and make yourself a workspace.
Spend at least half an hour being paranoid about the safety of your power supply,
including the phone line, if it's connected to a modem, which is connected to...ultimately,
your head. Right. Keep a good eye out for lightning storms and use an emergency cutoff
system.

Practice with each individual kind of biofeedback on its own. Get the hang of how input
is translated into various outputs. Arrange gear around you; you'll need to see screens,
LED readouts and meters and read them with familiarity, so that you know what's going
on.

A good one to start with is the classic 'BP control' biofeedback cycle using only skin-
surface pressure electrodes (some people prefer a temperature sensor) and a GSR
processor. It's gentle, easy to learn, and has no side effects apart from possibly inducing
sleep if you needed it anyway.

A simple GSR machine will give you an LED display of a color spectrum, or a graph on
your PC screen correlating with its readings of your GSR. The best units also use sound,
as a rising or falling tone. The aim is to lower your blood pressure, as you relax and move
in the right direction to achieve that, you're given feedback of your progress and a signal
when you get it right. The 'game' is simply to get the lights to turn green or the tone to
fall, or whatever. It's fun, easy, and you really get the hang of how your mind affects your
body and vice versa. You recognize the changes as you start to make them happen. When
you can do it easily, you reduce the machine's sensitivity and train yourself up. Next you
can try the same technique with other forms of input; try wiring up to an EEG and
deliberately changing your brainwave pattern; slowing it down, for a start. You'll notice
how similar it seems to the technique that lowered your blood pressure...now try this
wired to both GSR and EEG. You'll notice your blood pressure falls as your brainwave
pattern slows down, and vice versa. Keep doing it. Until you can run up and down the
brainwave-spectrum with the adeptness of a turbo lift, keep doing it. This is your mind,
taking control of your brain.

By changing your blood pressure (which you can already do) you can shift your
brainwave pattern or push it in the direction of such a shift by setting up the
circumstances conducive to one.

Explore how far you can change those factors and keep a written record of your progress.

Your biofeedback system should give you several options. If you are writing your own
software, bear these in mind; they are important and necessary tools. You should have the
option of recording all the data from your inputs, together or in any combination, and of
replaying that data at any time, alone or together with current input. I'll explain that a bit
more. You should be able to record as much as possible about your neuro/physiological
state, and play that back to yourself either by itself or with the biofeedback from your
current state.

This opens up several possibilities. You can record yourself having a particular
experience, for example, then use the recording to help induce the same experience at any
desired time. It is a 'memory', in a very real sense. It is a memory, which triggers other
memories.

You can hack the midbrain, specifically, so well with this technique that you can
reproduce the effects of drugs without the drugs. You can use recorded sessions as
triggers for emotions or memories of experiences; like, would you record your brainwave
patterns on your wedding night?1

Another option you should have is that of writing programs for the enhancement of
various states. Example: You take your EEG recording on a graph, let's say its beta
rhythm. You plot a graph of the classic alpha rhythm and you get the computer to
construct a sliding scale of graphs in-between. You feed the result to yourself slowly
from where you are at now all the way to alpha rhythm. If you get the rate of increase
sussed, your brain will actually follow the program and shift with it into alpha. In just the
same way, if you record a drum beat at the same rate as your pulse and slowly speed it
up, your pulse will rise with it to follow suit. If you're a musician, you could write a
'symphony for the brain' that pulled you about all over the place, by finding which chords
and which sounds shifted your brainwave pattern and where.

A third thing you should be able to do is control various parameters of feedback during
'mental games' or 'tutorials'. These are great fun, and there's lots of software available,
one example is a skiing game where you control your direction by altering your
brainwave pattern. You can find programs for almost anything, controllable by
biofeedback and/or neurofeedback, including ones that let you type2

You should be able to plug straight in to your computer from the biofeedback units,
which should plug straight into you. Building it all into one machine or making it
wearable is a good idea especially if you want it to be mobile. The first interface machine
I put together was (is!) housed in an old stereo tuner. It monitors GSR, MCG and EEG
and sends the signals to the computer where the software deals with it according to which
program I want to run. More recently I built a small, light mobile unit which I can use
with the wearable, or connect to any PC with Internet access and enough processing
power to do the business3

Any good sound/light system will have precise control of pulse rate (at least 0.20 to
50hz), plus control of light intensity and audio pitch. This is important because everyone
is slightly different and you can fine-tune your system for your own personal optimal use.

One of the nicest things biofeedback can do is give you a decent night's sleep without
drugs. You can fall asleep to a program of yourself falling asleep, or a written program
that will take you all the way down into deep sleep and then turn itself off. You'll get
used to the habit of a healthy sleep pattern after a while and your brain will be able to do
it all by itself, quite the opposite of sleeping tablets. You can also use the system to boost
certain areas of the brain by triggering the relevant optimal hormone cycles, for example,
before an exam, before physical hard work, before sex, or when you need to relax.

Other techniques

Next, you'll want to integrate biofeedback with NMT.

A long time ago, (and I don't know if this is still possible), you could do the following: If
you couldn't play (for example) tennis and you wanted to play tennis and you couldn't be
bothered to spend weeks out there being crap at tennis whilst learning it, and you had lots
of money, you bought a 'Tennis VR' package. I saw my first one in 1980. What you got in
this package was: a video of someone demonstrating all the basic tennis moves, in slow
motion and then at full speed, then finally a series of games with all the moves in them.
You also got a cassette tape of white noise, and an instruction manual which told you to
play the tape through headphones whilst watching the video in dim light, with no
distractions. You were told to concentrate on the player and imagine it was you, making
those moves.

What does this achieve? If you video someone doing this, covertly, or wire them up to
MCG, you can (with the aid of a computer) detect their making muscular
micromovements as they watch.R16 If you have a look at what their brains are doing
you'll see that these movements are causing neurons to fire along pathways in the same
networks as are used when actually playing tennis. If you do it enough, when you get out
onto the court you will pick up the game a lot faster than an ordinary beginner.

Every time we think or imagine, we make these movements, from before birth until the
day we die. These movements are a clue to the way the brain patterns in information from
that sensory motor map, through the mid brain to the frontal cortex. Every memory has a
corresponding micromuscular pattern, replayed every time we recall it; a code of
impulses flying through the brain as 'full-body-knowing'; together with all the
information from our sensory organs, the nervous system itself as a sensory organ is
bringing in as much as the eyes via the whole body, with every thought, every image, and
especially any sound, including the sound of our own 'inner dialogue'.

By producing an audio input of white sound, the Neuro Muscular Training (NMT) system
makes the video input and imagination the sole triggers for that patterning. By imagining
making the movements ourselves we are firing off neurons in the same areas they would
fire if we were actually playing tennis, only to a much smaller extent. This pattern in the
brain will be used later to direct the muscles and limbs. The brain is able to construct, in
VR, a map of the movements necessary to play tennis. It applies the map to reality when
we walk onto the court, and imagination plus world equals hyperreality...we find we
already have part of the necessary network built into our brains, and the rest comes
easily.

Like the youngsters I mentioned in an earlier chapter who could ride horses because
they'd seen it done so often in the movies, this is how the brain loves to learn. Computer
gamers must have noticed a sharpness of reaction they gain after a session; the visual
cortex network improves, and the change is carried over from the game into reality.
Obviously the teaching value of simulations is well known. Simulations on their own are
a bit limited, but with biofeedback added in they are extremely useful.

Biofeedback is when the cyborg thing can really get you. I started wearing a biofeedback
system permanently and noticed when I took it off, it was like losing an extra sense.
Using biofeedback all the time is only useful if it helps train us to be more aware of the
subtle signs of our physiological changes, because these are what we are trying to learn.
If we learn to do it without the machine, the machine then becomes a real short-cutter for
making things easy. If we don't, we'll get less sensitive as time goes by, which is not what
we want at all.

But it is a hell of a thing, to be in the middle of a situation and know exactly what your
brain is doing, so cut yourself a little slack and be prepared to indulge yourself here.

There are games you can get which you play via a biofeedback system.R36 You don't
need to use your hands, but your brain, to move things about or achieve your aims. These
are very addictive at first but pale quickly because they are quite slow, and the novelty
wears off.

The first best use of biofeedback after you've got the basics is weighting adjustment (you
can amplify an effect, or devalue it). Controlling emotional/imaginative weighting is
largely at first still a matter of controlling input. Until you can learn the noble art of
ignoring things, you must still control your input very carefully. (That means input from
your own brain and body as well as from 'out there'.)

When you were wiping erroneous programming you were repairing damage and
removing stuff that shouldn't be there. To do this you had to use the basics of memory
adjustment, you had to learn how to do a diagnostic on your own mind and you had to
learn some ways to block dodgy input. Those skills will continue to be necessary, but
now that you've used them with one system you can do it with others. Now you need to
get up to the bridge of your own starship and take control.

And the first step toward that is maintaining a completely clear picture of how much
control you currently have, and how much you do not have. Being aware of what your
own brain is doing. Continuing the analogy of a starship, most people's minds are being
run from the wrong part of the ship. You can run the ship from other departments, in an
emergency, or if the main bridge is damaged, but if you are going to run the ship
optimally you need to transfer control of everything that can be transferred, section by
section, to that main bridge, which, when working properly, has access to all parts of the
ship and all it's systems, and we can then use those systems correctly to our greatest
advantage. The locus of your consciousness should live on the bridge; access to
everywhere granted.

Being stuck in M4, for example, is a little bit like running a ship from engineering with
access to only half the sensors. All the data you perceive are being processed through a
system designed to process only one kind of information; in this case the semantic kind.
Some things it can't even tell are there, for example the pheromones flying up your
nostrils, the subconscious effects of light and sound frequencies on your mind, the
internal chemical cycles you go through daily, nightly, monthly. Subliminal signals, body
language, midbrain language and eidetic imagery. Your biology's awareness of its own
chemical changes and responses to that. Information from all these areas is relevant in the
full picture of reality, and trying to 'run the ship' from the left hemisphere's point of view
is not what we were designed to do, biologically. Biofeedback can make us a lot more
aware of what we might be consciously missing, but is still going on. You can get to
know yourself, in depth.

An awareness of the full spectrum of reality is vital for control. Control means real-time
adjustment in the present, as opposed to messing with past memories. Sentiment control
has to begin with blocking, then moving on to catching it before it starts and preventing
the actual response, but the technique is not the same with emotion or imagination.

The reason we concentrate on control of emotion and imagination so much may not be
obvious; the point is they are affecting every bit of input we perceive. That means if we
change the emotion, we change the experience. It is an extension of the control of input;
that is all. Taking charge of your own programming by deliberately weighting
information with biofeedback instead of allowing yourself to be conditioned is a skill you
can use throughout. You can award or deny relevance to events chemically according to
how relevant they are in reality, as opposed to judging them from an artificial system of
arbitrary values. You are slowly starting to build up a database of 'life according to
reality'. You may be surprised, shocked or dismayed by the distance between your
perspective and that of others, or you may, if you are one of those rare individuals who is
not afraid of truth, be feeling absolutely marvelous.

1 Yes. Would you play it back to your wife?

2 It's very slow, and beware of seriously mad typos when sneezing.

3 A word about wearable computers: Don't try to plug into the back of public computers
in cybercafes and libraries from the back of your neck or your chest, you will get banned
for attempted hacking. Who knows what they think you're doing, exactly, but it also
causes the Uncanny Valley effect; i.e., they think you are a weirdo.

14.Video Editing (Enhancing/controlling emotion)

Memory is automatically enhanced whenever emotion is enhanced and learning is always

enhanced when there is greater emotional weighting. Emotional weighting can be
increased by combining sensory motor, emotional and intellectual input into one 'trigger
package' as described previously. You can thus decide the importance or lack of it, of any
item or event. A single word can increase emotional weighting. Witnesses to an accident
will under- or over-estimate speed depending on the wording of the question, "How fast
was the vehicle going/coming/moving/speeding towards you?" Uncontrolled memory
falls prey to error often because of this sort of thing. Usually, every single witness to an
accident or unusual occurrence will remember something different, often widely
different. If you ask Mrs. Jones, "How did Mr. Jones respond to the assault?" you will get
a different answer than if you ask, "How did your husband react to the assault?"
Consequently most eyewitness statements are completely unreliable on anything but
major details. Memory is designed to be personal. It is this customization at the heart of
memory that creates the ability to be conscious of ourselves as individuals and which
creates (or possibly gives the illusion of) a 'separate self'.

Our ability to recognize a face at birth is hard wired in. Other animals have similar 'given'
concepts; the ability to peck at seeds, grasp at fur, etc. Humans have a remarkably small
number of them. This is significant, because we have an ability other animals lack which
replaces the need for given concepts; we have the ability to create them (or at least, that is
biology's plan.)

Two things, the personal nature of our memories and the ability to form new concepts,
are at the core of our conscious awareness. We remember what we like and what we don't
like, and begin to structure our personality from this basic. Gradually in childhood there
is awareness of 'me', and 'not me', and episodic memories begin to be stored like a video,
for now there is an observer apart from events. The emergence of individuality takes
about seven years.R2 It starts to become apparent during the third or fourth year (the first
functions of the CC begin in year two). After age seven our self awareness begins to
specialize and localize; social self interactions begin to be handled by the LH, kinetic
awareness is dealt with by the 'old' brain systems, and our 'overview' (how we fit in with
things and how things fit together) by the RH. This can only happen if the brain has
processed sufficient input to have already formed (a) thick enough connection lines and
(b) an awareness of the basics of the material world through interaction with all senses.
The CC has to be fully formed to allow communication between hemispheres, or this
specialization cannot take place. The basis of personality has formed in the brain as a
whole, and regardless of the degree of specialization later, the synergy of this basic
personality will be the reference point for all thought and action, and all the video
memories that you make.

(This is why people stuck in M2 cannot see the difference between themselves and the
things they like. The separation of 'me' and 'not me' has never been made. If you criticize
the things they like, you are criticizing them personally. They genuinely feel offended; it
is not an act. Likewise, they cannot understand why, if they hate something, that
everybody else doesn't hate it too. 'I don't like it' is synonymous with 'It's crap', to
someone in M2. People stuck there never fully develop self-awareness, and are never
fully sure what is, and what is not, a part of themselves (including their partners). Like
most three-year-olds, they can speak and they have an opinion, but the problem is they
may also have a driving license and access to firearms. (I find it ironic that so many
cognitive scientists are busy trying to find out things about 'human consciousness', whilst
failing to realize that a large percentage of the species they are studying may in fact not
have a fully developed or functional one.)

It's important to control emotion because emotional arousal has such a strong effect upon
all cognitive processing. Emotional weighting determines brain activity in every area.R6
Whatever you are consciously involved in from moment to moment will dictate the
contents of your working memory, and emotions or feelings consciously felt will form a
part of every memory made under their influence. Memories of past similar situations to
your current one are all colored by the emotions you felt at the time, which in turn will
affect your emotions in the here and now.

The interesting thing is, emotional pain activates some of the same brain regions as
physical pain. The ventral Pre Frontal Cortex (PFC) and the Anterior Cingulate Gyrus
(ACG) respond to distress just as if it were a fork stuck in the leg, and the amygdala is
always on the case of anything that might be dangerous. This is why uncontrolled
emotional pain is an express ticket to anxiety, and why emotion must be controlled and
used for weighting intensity. Once you are able to control real emotion, the world is your
console.

Emotion enhancement is dependent upon the fact that you are running COMP and using
genuine emotion in the first place. You will find polarities in there and you can play them
with opposing neurotransmitters. For now, you need to learn to recognize those basic
polarities, and the main ones are Attraction and Repulsion, Inspiration and Relaxation,
Happiness and Sorrow, Excitement and Calm. In a sense they are all linked; it is a single
polar system based on Yes/No, On/Off, population voting and a set of glands to match,
with the sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous systems all tied in for good measure. We
should expect no less from a system based upon intelligence. Once you are able to run
emotion, without interference from sentiment, you'll find it a relatively easy task to keep
control.

Cognition has four sources of input from imagination, all with emotional weighting; (a)
what's going on now (b) what went on before, (c) chemicals currently in the brain, and
(d) what might go on very soon. So, for example, even if you can see a wasp landing on
your hand now, and a wasp landed on your hand last week and stung it, and you can
imagine the probability of its happening again, your awareness and response can still be
strongly affected by the chemicals currently in your brain, whether they be lager, caffeine
or anesthetic.

Chemicals of course are also manufactured inside the brain and body. Cortisol is one,
which in excess will make every experience seem more fearful. Cortisol changes
neuronal transmission in various emotion/memory networks. The amygdala, when
affected by a fear response, changes sensory-processing networks at all levels. Sensory
perception is vital to working memory, and the sensory cortex is hard-wired in to the
temporal lobe memory networks (these handle long-term memory and its access by
working memory.) The amygdala also affects working memory in real-time, courtesy of
the ACG and its networks, causing changes in processing of information and assessing
what is beneficial or deleterious. An inability to assess this clearly is pretty crippling to
the functioning of intelligence.

For an encore, the amygdala influences neurotransmitter efficiency, affecting levels of

serotonin, dopamine, choline, noradrenaline and all of their related by-products.
This is how fear can rule the mind. Many of these transmitters are only able to act on
already-active circuits. Which circuits are active depends entirely upon what you are
thinking or doing, and every network you employ will attract the immediate attention of
any unemployed transmitter molecules lurking around waiting for a chance to change
your mind. Something which the world of psychopharmacology has to start taking notice
of soon, hopefully, is the fact that some drugs will only work if the networks are active
that enable them to work. We need to integrate drugs with psychological techniques and
technology that will activate the networks we wish to affect. Until practitioners realize
this, drug therapy for psychiatric and psychological problems will continue to be a
mysterious hit-and-miss affair. Patients who get the input (deliberately or by accident)
that activates the relevant networks will get better, those who don't, won't. It's that simple.

Emotion enhancement

Hormonal responses, and consequently emotional states, can be very easily conditioned.
If you have an important event coming up and you want to be in the right mental state at
the right time, you can pre-program your brain to produce the correct chemical balance
for that state. We can physiologically control the mid brain with higher and lower brain
functions, with chemicals, and with technology.

If you experiment with biofeedback, you will also probably discover the 'reciprocal'
method of inducing emotion. Mimic the behavior that an emotion causes, and it fools
your brain into releasing the chemicals associated with that emotion. Smiling, or even
looking at someone else smiling, really will brighten your mood. Frowning will darken
it.R38 The way in which this is most obvious is the fact that physical stimulation can
cause mental sexual arousal in a person who was not feeling that way to begin with.

Enhancement is most easily achieved in the short term with drugs. Using drugs for long-
term enhancement is fraught with problems, dependence, addiction and tolerance being
three of them. I'm going to use this as an example of how complex neurohacking can get,
if you go right in there, because if there is a sequel to this book that's where it will be
going...I'll keep it as simple as I can...

Addiction results from changes in brain function in response to the drug or drugs. The
reinforcing effects of many drugs are due to actions in the midbrain. Various areas,
including the amygdala, hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex send glutamatergic
projections to the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens sends GABAergic
projections to the ventral pallidium and ventral tegmental area. Both of these network
with the medial dorsal thalamus, extending major GABAergic efferents to it. The
network is closed via glutaminergic projections from the thalamus back to the medial
prefrontal cortex. (It's a loop. You got that, right?) So here's your map for using and
choosing drugs for basic control/enhancement neurohacking:

The activation of mesolimbic dopamine projections underlies the reinforcing properties

of most popular 'recreational' drugs:
Nicotine activates nicotenic acetylcholine receptors located on dopaminergic cells in the
ventral tegmental area (VTA), which results in dopamine release in limbic nuclei. In
short, it's an acetylcholine receptor agonist. Nicotenic acetylcholine receptors are
ionotropic channels that, when stimulated, become permeable to sodium and calcium.
This results in depolarisation and excitation. Stimulation of nicotenic receptors in the
VTA excites dopaminergic neurons and enhances dopamine release in the nucleus
accumbens. Nicotine is useful for: Attention and concentration enhancement, anxiety
reduction, reflex enhancement, controlling constipation. Nicotine is not a good idea long
term because (a) it is highly addictive and difficult to use sparingly, (b) ever-larger
amounts are necessary to avoid the withdrawal symptoms of craving, irritability, anxiety,
dysphoria, restlessness and increased appetite.

Alcohol (ethanol) and Benzodiazepines increase the firing rate of dopaminergic neurons
in the VTA via disinhibition. Alcohol has varied and diverse effects on the nervous
system, including influences on membranes, ion channels and multiple neurotransmitters.
It is mainly important because it increases the firing rate of mesolimbic dopamine
neurons through positive modulation of GABA receptors located on GABAergic cells in
the VTA. So do benzodiazepines. Alcohol is useful for: anxiety reduction, controlling
memory, emotion enhancement, confidence, euphoria. Benzodiazepines (including
chlordiazepoxide and diazepam) are useful for: anxiety reduction, controlling memory,
sedation, reducing the effects of alcohol withdrawal. They can enhance the effects of
other drugs, particularly alcohol. This is not surprising, given that barbiturates,
benzodiazepines and alcohol are all positive allosteric modulators of GABA receptors.
Alcohol and/or benzodiazepines are not a good idea for long term use because: (a) it
results in down-regulation of GABA receptors. (b) Together, they're a good combination
for death.

Lay off sleeping tablets except in an emergency. They are bad, bad news, for your mind.

Cannabinoids increase the firing rate of dopaminergic neurons, and dopaminergic

transmission in the nucleus accumbens, partly by inhibition of GABA release following
stimulation of presynaptic CB1 cannabinoid receptors in the VTA.2

Cannabinoids are useful for: Controlling memory, euphoria, giddiness, relaxation,

sedation and pain-relief. For some people they are also useful for anxiety relief.
Cannabinoids are not a good idea for long term, heavy use because (a) you cannot
remember anything, (b) the resulting neurochemical imbalance will lead to paranoia and
lack of confidence, and finally neurosis or worse.

Psychostimulants (speed, cocaine, ecstasy), increase extracellular dopamine levels in the

midbrain by inhibiting the dopamine transporter (DAT), which is supposed to be
removing dopamine from the synapse. Psychostimulants are useful for: euphoria, elation,
alertness, attention focusing, mood-elevation, appetite suppression and fatigue reduction.
They produce their physiological effects by interacting with biogenic amine transporters.
Cocaine blocks them. Most amphetamines promote their release through reverse
transport. Both cocaine and amphetamines result in increases in extracellular levels of
dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. The reinforcing effects of psychostimulants are
mainly due to increases in dopaminergic transmission in the midbrain. Psychostimulants
are not good long term or regularly because: they can cause unwanted permanent changes
in dopaminergic and glutamatergic transmission in the midbrain.

Opiates (morphine, heroin, codeine) stimulate a type of opoid receptors on VTA

GABAergic neurons, which synapse on dopaminergic cells. Heroin is more lipophilic
than morphine and produces its psychoactive effects more rapidly. Because both opiates
and GABA are inhibitory neurotransmitters, opiates activate dopaminergic neurons in the
VTA through disinhibition. Opiates are useful for: Pain relief, cough suppressants,
controlling diarrhea, bronchio-dilatory, relaxation, imagination enhancement, emotion
enhancement, and creativity. Opiates are not a good idea long term because: Chronic
opium administration increases activation of the cyclic AMP-PKA-CREB system in the
locus coeruleus and nucleus accumbens.

So, if the war were over tomorrow, the mesolimbic dopamine system is certainly where
the party would be. But looking at the changes in neural function resulting from long-
term use is essential when choosing your chemical candidates for neurohacking.
Activation of the mesolimbic dopamine system is the cause of the euphoria initially
produced by many drugs, but the increases in serotonin and norepinephrine transmission
caused by some also contribute to the elevated mood. Choose wisely, and use with care.

You can use much more than drugs to enhance emotion. At the psychological end of the
scale you can use music, movies, books or pictures. At the tech end of the scale you can
use biofeedback, TMS, and neuro-stimulation. You can use aversion therapy if you want
to. You can put various techniques together and go for a hard take off, or use one at a
time to go step by step.

Let's hack. (Please read through this whole section before doing this in real time, as
timing is important. The hack is designed so that the bits of text to be read, in between
directions, last just long enough to allow an effect, which would be ruined if you went for
a sandwich halfway, for example.)

Let's hack our emotion networks and change the way we feel about our own intelligence.
Okay?

The simplest, most natural (and cheapest) way to start doing this is with lower brain
functions as a part of Neuro Muscular Training. Most basic emotions, e.g.
happiness/sadness, attraction/repulsion, cause very noticeable changes, not only in the
mood but also in the physical behavior. There is a natural biofeedback loop in this system
which feeds back the muscular movements and body language as the brain continues to
interpret what is going on. We can hack this by modeling our own facial and body
muscles to send that feedback to the brain, and the brain will quite happily produce the
hormones associated with those movements. So, recall the facial expressions of someone
in love. Don't use a mirror, but try to copy them as though you were an actor playing a
role. Think of some good dialogue, which that actor might say...if they were playing a
person who is in love with you. They are probably going to see all the best things about
you and express attraction and delight in your company. Allow yourself to be 'wooed'.
Appreciate it, and be well aware that you deserve it. That's the part you start off playing.

One step up, we can amplify emotional responses with biofeedback tech, enabling us to
achieve any base emotional state reasonably quickly. We can also affect others with this;
fMRI scans show an increased perception of attractiveness when we view a smiling face.
The face of someone we like a lot lights up our medial orbitofrontal cortex with a
firework display of reward-associated networks.

So if you're sure enough of yourself, enhance that now with biofeedback, and spray some
Oxytocin up your nose...one blast of nasal spray if you're female, two if you're male. (I'll
explain why in a moment, but timing is important here, so don't go off to put the kettle
on, or anything; I'm doing this in real time so keep reading.) The medial insular circuit
triggers an immediate response, and you may feel like you have an urgent need to
communicate, yet nervous somehow about doing so...but whatever it is it seems
important. You start paying more attention. As we pay more attention, the anterior
cingulate gyrus, caudate nucleus and putamen join in the firework display. (Or should).
Bring in the higher functions...And stay in that captain's chair...we have time now for a
little more background info.

Why the sexist doses? -Oxytocin is present in both male and female brains, but estrogen
and vasopressin regulate it. Girls get more out of it, boys get less. Both have their
advantages, but we can bypass this biological prejudice by altering the doses for
males/females. People with more oxytocin manage stress better; avoiding it's turning into
anxiety. It is necessary for bonding, and you can't physically bond without it. For
bonding, oxytocin receptors and dopamine receptors must be plentiful enough to overlap,
in the nucleus accumbens particularly and several other dopamine-rich regions. Oxytocin
itself, though, does not produce a set pattern of behavior or response. It's only part of the
hormone cocktail we need to match that neurochemical state we call love.R37

Bonding is a central part of love, although it need not necessarily be physical, it must,
currently, be chemical. Bonding rewires whole networks of brain. The pattern of activity
in our cortex is different when we view pictures of people to whom we are bonded. This
'paying more attention' is not only a key part in the process of 'falling in love', but also a
hacker's master key for learning. Because we can use the bonding circuit for acquiring
any new skill.

COMP does this already, if it's working aright. In most people, it isn't, and this is a
shortcut to getting it to work. You fall in love. In this case, deliberately and in a preferred
sequence. (Did I forget to mention that? Ah well, having got this far, it seems a pity to
waste it.)

First of all you fall in love with your own mind. Oh my. That sounds sooooo egotistical,
doesn't it? It is. It's ultimate egotism. Here's the catch. You fall in love with what you
really are, not what you have been pretending to be in the past. And you can do that now
because you know the truth.

You already know you are quite fantastic, if you are currently sane and happy. It does not
matter how you have achieved this, or even if you only manage to achieve it 20% of the
time, bolstered by drugs or vodka, the thing is, your intelligence has fought and won
many battles, to get you where you are today. You've had to experience some horrible
things, that truly shouldn't happen to anyone; maybe a drugged-up birth, nasty school,
boring family; -the way society is alone is enough to depress all but the strongest
souls...and here you are, still using your mind and navigating your way through life as
best you can.

Maybe you've been seeking; searching for answers for yourself, looking here and there to
see what fits...maybe you've tried to speak the truth through your own creativity
somehow...maybe you think none of it makes sense so you might as well just have a good
time, or maybe you want to save the world...whatever it is, here you are, and that's a great
achievement for intelligence and a tribute to your own intelligence. A splendid and wise
old lady I knew said to me once, "If you're alive and sane, then you have an advantage. -
Use it." I would say more. I would say, appreciate it. Know what a great and rare thing is
your kind of a mind. Discover the true meaning of 'self esteem'.

Self-esteem is not arrogance. It is not about being loud and dictatorial and 'I'm here now,
time to talk about me' behavior.... Real love is not arrogance and assumption, but joy.
Esteem. So enjoy, you deserve that pleasure, as we all do. It is the pleasure of intelligence
recognizing itself, and you will feel exactly the same way about any other intelligence
that you ever esteem so highly.

Now...(remember, we're still in the middle of a hack here -where were you?)...Add a
small dose of your favorite Adenylyl Cyclase inhibitor...anandamide will do, or cannabis,
the dose varies for different people; start with 0.25g as a first attempt. (You are not doing
this to get high; you are aiming for a specific chemistry, so start out straight and stick to
the amounts specified). Sit back for a while and watch the oxytocin/dopamine party
commence. Now take active control of your input. Watch, listen to and observe things
that remind you of your best times; consider some of the times you have avoided
unpleasantness because you were intelligent. Stupid arguments you have avoided joining
in, problems you have solved, and difficulties you have overcome. Your mind is the real
you; the you that no one else can ever truly appreciate as much as you, because they don't
know the whole story.

...Relax and do a GSR slowdown and get on with appreciating yourself. Begin to think
about your potential now that you know so much more. Imagine some of the things you'll
be able to explore, if you're no longer stuck in a matrix...You can go as far as you like,
and linger along the way. Time will no longer be a problem, because you won't have to
keep trying to catch up. Fear will no longer be a problem, because anxieties can be
resolved. You'll have everything you need. Right there between your ears, safe and
strong.
This is quite a sexy concept, so don't worry if you feel that way. For some people the
experience is more like awe. Feel free to express yourself, as you see fit. (You can see
why you need a private workspace now, no?)

Next...Add 0.1g of your favorite MAOI. Selegiline seems to get most votes. There now,
have a chain reaction...Concentrations of 2-phenylethylamine (PEA) will start to
rise...catecholamine activity gets interfered with...dopamine slowly falling, serotonin on
the rise, you crest the hill into the land of feeling really groovy. Now add in biofeedback
as a real-time cycle, and amplify it.

Now consider: it's your mind that's enabling you to feel this good. Appreciate that.
Recognize your own intelligence.

...You can come here and have fun with it anytime you want to. It's saved your life many
times. It's the thing that cares about you more than anything else in the world, and it will
strive to keep you alive against all odds, for as long as it is able. By your intelligence, you
are cherished. Listen to your biofeedback, and enjoy. Roll in it.

...Let everything wear off naturally, and try to sleep for at least three or four hours before
doing anything else.

Once you have had this experience and seen the result, you will really start to understand
bonding.

You can bond to any new skill or task, for the length of time it takes to learn it, by using
exactly the same hacks, but altering the subject of input. You can do this with machinery,
surroundings, other people, and most certainly computers. You'll go through a beneficial
physiological change, every time you're in a 'bonded space'. You'll pay more attention.
You'll recognize detail, sights, sounds, which others will not recognize because you'll be
attuned to your environment. This is the function of bonding in learning. The unknown
becomes the known, as we bond to it, and assimilate it into the known. Once you can do
that, you won't have to go looking for real emotion; you'll be experiencing it. A major
part of all learning is a chemical act of 'love'. Absolutely successful learning will bring
absolute pleasure. You may have to endure that.

It's starting to look a little more fun now, isn't it? You can do the equivalent of writing
your own video and editing your own reality, because you can control how you feel about
things. As soon as you've got the hang of doing this to yourself, you may wonder about
the possibilities for doing it for other people...beware.

Cruel to be kind

We've all seen or heard of incidents in life that have what we call 'poetic justice'...The
violent macho man who's wife ran off with another woman... the homophobe bully who
discovers his new boss is a 6'6" raving queen... the cruel kid who picks on the wrong
animal to torment and ends up getting badly bitten... such incidents we call the 'lessons'
of life. Some people learn from them, some don't. In cases of chronic stupidity, some
actually get worse after such an incident, but for most people the result is an
improvement, often to a large degree.

In order to help intelligence grow, we sometimes need to be cruel to be kind in this way.
We can guide people into glimpsing reality, in order that their intelligence can recognize
it and aim towards it more efficiently.

Nature teaches like this, practically and without sentiment. Tribal kids deal with fire
competently from a very early age, because they've been allowed to play with it
(supervised, but not interfered with unless seriously in trouble) and they've had minor
burns and blisters...they know the nature of fire with a full-body knowing, and they will
never be careless with it again. On the other hand, give a western child of eight or nine a
box of matches and s/he could well burn the house down. No experience of the nature of
fire has been had. (This is why tribes don't need fireguards, safety gates, etc. and still
manage the lowest rates of injuries to children around.) Awareness of reality is always
the best security because that is how we are designed to keep ourselves safe. Once we are
free of a matrix, it's automatic. We can see truly where the dangers lie, and
circumnavigate them.

Now here is a great dilemma: if we cannot escape the problems of sentiment in a

relationship with another, or their intelligence has potential but sentiment is present, we
can be tempted to try and give that other person glimpses of reality, in order to help them
grow a little and make them less likely to damage us, as well as themselves. How can we
know when it's right to do this and when it isn't?

If the situation is simple and an obvious choice must be made about who gets hurt, you
must base it on your own personal assessment. You must know how much dodgy input
you can take before it starts to affect you deleteriously. If you catch yourself feeling bad,
as in, anxious, for more than ten minutes at a time, chances are you're sustaining damage.
Sometimes it can be better to cut contact with a person altogether in order to avoid
harming either of you. Beware the 'altruistic trap'...because one thing you must not do is
pander to people's insecurities. You need to know when to be kind...and when to be cruel
to be kind.

Example: Brian tells Ann he's going to see a skiing tournament at the weekend...he didn't
book a ticket for Ann because she hates skiing, gets too cold, and there's no restaurant or
anywhere else to do anything...plus he knows that Ann has a project to finish for work.
Ann, however, is attached. She can't bear the thought of being away from Brian all
weekend so she asks to go along. Brian, baffled, says he doesn't see the point. Ann bursts
into tears, and accuses Brian of not wanting her around and not loving her any more.

Confused, Brian does the worst possible thing he could do; he gives Ann a cuddle and
'cheers her up', saying what nonsense this is and of course he loves her and he'll book her
a ticket. Ann, however, doesn't actually want to go, so she'll respond with something like
"I don't actually want to go, but you could have asked! You just don't want me around!"
At this stage, Brian cancels the trip. He pacifies Ann's anxiety... There, there, don't cry...
of course you can have your lollipop. They end up having sex. (She rewards him.)

Ann learns by association all that she can learn...whenever you get anxious, all you have
to do is burst into tears and accuse people of not caring. They'll be sorry! They will then
step in to pacify your anxiety and everything will be okay...Ann stays dependent on
others for her happiness and peace of mind, and cannot really communicate except by the
long-range 'baby' method of crying or the retarded child method of throwing a mood...We
are supposed to grow out of this emergency behavior as soon as we are able to replace it
with speech and body language...When we can say, 'I want food', or point and say, 'my
toe hurts', we no longer have to yell and scream to get assistance. If our yells are paid
attention to when we are that small, we do indeed grow out of it as soon as we are able to
better articulate our desires. If Ann was healthy, she would have said, 'Ah, I know I hate
skiing...but I really enjoy being with you and that makes it worth the hassle...book me a
ticket; I'll stay at a hotel in the town, work on my laptop, you can watch your boring old
skiing and you & I can get together in the evenings for other kinds of groovy fun."
(Which would, incidentally, have made it more fun for Brian as well). That's interaction.

Sadly, Ann is still trying to communicate as a baby would, because that need of nature
was never fulfilled. Instead of thinking rationally through the problem, she panics. Ann's
body may be in the here and now, but Ann's mind is back there screaming it's head off in
a cot somewhere, waiting and waiting for the comfort that never came. Ann's
bloodstream is still full of stress hormones, because she never stopped producing them
since then. Whenever the anxiety becomes too much, Ann will pick on anything to get
upset about, to get comfort. She can't tell the truth quite simply because she doesn't know
what it is. Ann will pick on the skiing tournament today, the TV program Brian doesn't
want to watch tomorrow, the fact that he can't afford a dishwasher the day after that...he
didn't fancy sex when she did...he did fancy sex when she didn't...he changed his mind
about going out...or staying in... and it will never end. Ann will never become
independent, free and happy because she is utterly at the mercy of her own insecurity. As
she starts running out of things to get upset about she'll pick on sillier and more trivial
things, or start creating conflict because she needs it to throw the wobble-out she thinks is
necessary to get her comfort...She cannot interact sensibly because she panics. She uses
the baby's emergency communication system to voice her distress, because that part of
her brain did not develop since babyhood. Sitting in a bath full of stress hormones, how
could it? Ann is not an adult human; Ann is an augmented baby in an adult costume.

We mistake people stuck in a matrix for adults because they look like them. They're big,
they're over twenty years old, and we expect them to be mature. Their bodies have
obviously grown as intended, and we expect their brains to have done the same. Indeed,
despite great improvements in scanning techniques, we still do not notice the problem
because almost everybody has it. The occasional healthy brain scan will look like an
anomaly, just as the guy with vision in the land of the blind would seem like a weirdo, if
everyone thought blindness was natural. We are surrounded by infant mentalities in giant
bodies and we get confused whenever we expect them to behave like adults, because they
can't. Their bodies have matured, but their brains have not. They are, and I mean this
quite literally, children.

...And the greatest gift you can give to any child is independence. Show them how to do
it for themselves. Give them that self-esteem. Make it clear they don't have to cry for a
sandwich; they can just ask for one or better still get it themselves... If they ask, they will
not be ignored or laughed at. The appropriate response will be made.

Taking out the emotional charge and reverting to plain common sense, whilst making
sure they see the way to achieve their aims themselves, helps people get the courage to be
honest; to risk rejection or misunderstanding, because they are enabled to communicate.
They can interact. They have a sense of self-esteem and they know their worth.

If you care about someone, this should be your aim. To help them set themselves free.

The golden rule is, always go halfway. Build your half of the bridge for interaction. If the
other party cannot build their half, there is probably little you can do. Slightly more than
halfway is permissible, any further is not. Remember you are striving for the autonomy of
intelligence. Don't try to pull or push people through the door; just let them know where
it is by going in and out of it yourself. They'll decide whether or not they dare go through
it. If someone's consciously trying, by all means help them, but never act to pacify
someone's insecurities because if you do you are just making them more dependent, and
ultimately, less intelligent. You are reinforcing the bars of the cages of fear that hold
them.

You cannot and should not try to 'help' like this until you are no longer stuck in a matrix
yourself. It's a razor's edge to walk with no margin for error because you run the risk of
harming intelligence unless you are running COMP. Even when you are, you don't go
contriving situations where you can 'teach' this kind of thing on purpose. That's
interfering without consent. Instead, you recognize the way things are going anyway and
you work with that. You do not try to create the opportunities, but when they are there,
you take them.

This is why you can really trip up if your values are not based in reality. You have to
recognize what is going on, and only COMP can do that. Basically your intelligence
recognizes a healthy learning pattern and prompts you to provide whatever input is
required from the part of the environment that is you. It makes you be the right person in
the right place at the right time, because it can tell what's going on. It provides the correct
ideas for triggers of the correct hormonal set; the keys are right there in your hands and
you just hand them over...they are keys to mental places the other person has not so far
been, and up until now didn't know existed. Suddenly them being handed the key
decrypts something that seemed just nonsense before... When you work in synergy with a
situation, you are an intelligence communicating with an intelligence, -not with the virus,
not with what the infected person thinks is their personality, but with their intelligence;
the part of them that you respect as the real McCoy. Your job is to help it repair the
person. It can, given a chance. A nudge in the right direction can save years of wasted
effort caught in anxiety. But remember: You do not try to push people through doors, you
merely point out their existence. And you will only ever do that when the opportunity
arises. Without the overview of being outside a matrix, this is an extremely hit-and-miss
procedure and should not be approached without sufficient knowledge, much like open-
heart surgery. If it's attempted from within a matrix it will backfire on you. If you cannot
predict, you should not try to control. You need your ACG running on full whack to pull
it off. I insert it here as a glimpse of the goal, a taster of hyperreality. Enjoy the concept;
it's where you're headed, sooner than you think.

15.AL Tutorial (Imagination enhancement)

'Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream'1

Health & Safety Warning:

Imagination control is a difficult matter, unless you have the supportive abilities of
memory and emotion control to back it up. It is also a more potentially dangerous matter.
Loss of control to sensory-motor drives can lead to some truly dreadful problems, but
loss of control to midbrain systems can lead to mental illness which is often irreversible
within our current lifespan. We can also waste an awful lot of time chasing nonsense our
imagination wants us to believe in with the assistance of other people.

Imagination has at its beck and call, all of your memories, and all of your fears. If you
cannot control it, and it gets out of hand, it will most certainly control you. It will drive
both your emotion and your intellect. If you're going to enhance it, you obviously need to
be in control of it (as Igor said to the good doctor). And to get control of it you need to
program it in its own language, Allegorical Language (AL).

...They say a Dark Master sleeps within the Internet...

If you're thinking, "What the hell does that mean?" you don't understand AL and you're
probably stuck in matrix 4. If you're thinking "I know, but is it a government conspiracy
or the true spontaneous emergence of AI?" you're stuck in matrix 3 and you understand
some things about AL but not all of it. If you've just written the next line, I'd have to see
it to know how much you know about AL.

Unconsciously, failure to understand AL causes anxiety. If we don't know what it is, if

we don't recognize it as a language of code and symbols that represent complex things,
situations, and concepts, we cannot decrypt it. Since it feels rather important, we feel a
need to. So we either decide it's rubbish and scoff at it (but secretly feel uncomfortable
about it, nevertheless), or we think everybody else understands but we just don't get it,
which makes us feel inadequate or depressed. Awareness of this can cause stupid people
to develop an aggressive reaction to all things 'poetic'. Intelligent people in this situation
often wonder why they just 'don't get it' and try to find out why...and they are prepared to
pay money or do what they're told to find out why...
Consequently, something really horrible has happened to AL in current society. It has
been kidnapped.

All the symbolism of all the religions, mystical/spiritual sects (and political parties) in the
world are plagiarized straight from the AL archives. There is no exception. They seem to
have such deep meaning only because they are based on our biology as much as our
intelligence.

AL imagery maintains its power for all who are stuck in M3. Our current ability with AL,
though, could leave a bit to be desired. When we're stuck in a matrix, the intellect takes
subliminal information from the midbrain as being reality, as being relevant, and so we
believe it is real and we deal with it accordingly. Midbrain language is meant to be an
adjunct to PFC cognition, not it's main input. But, without an adequate translator online
in the PFC to give us any information to accurately decipher what's out there, we cannot
clearly perceive it. Instead of reality we see the mid brain networks' simulation of it,
based on it's archetypes and allegorical language. These are strange in that they do not
seem to abide by logical rules yet seem to have a very strong meaning and seem to abide
by some rules of their own we haven't managed to figure out yet. They invoke strong
emotional responses, so they must be real...At this point, superstition jumps in. We
cannot explain something, so we stuff it under a rug labeled 'supernatural', and fear it
thereafter.

In an insult to intelligent exploration everywhere, in seeking the meaning of allegorical

language in mainstream media, people will discover and encounter only religious cults,
political parties, elitist groups, patriotism, superstition, mystical/spiritual claptrap and
anybody else stuck in Matrix three.

Using archetypes and symbolism because they have noticed how these things have an
effect on people, the organizers of such groups (deliberate or accidental neurohackers),
play with people's emotions and imaginations to make them obedient, dependent,
supportive and servile. Forbidding any 'other' input that might make people realize there
are other possibilities for stimulating emotion and imagination (no sex, no drugs, no rock
& roll, no men, no women, no dancing, no lewd thoughts, no unholy literature, thou shalt
have no other input but me), the victim's only source of input becomes the
group/religion/party, which ties its own philosophical value system in with the
symbolism and archetypes however it pleases. It doesn't even have to make sense, if they
include a meme that claims 'some matters are best understood in some airy-fairy
'intuitive' mystical way and need not make logical sense in order to be true'.

Obviously all this sort of thing could confuse a stupid person, and it does, often for life.
Some of the more intelligent folks decide it's all just nonsense; rubbish invented for the
gullible masses, or those who never grew up and like to pretend fairy tales are real;
cloud-cuckoo-land, space cases and cosmic hippies. Allegorical language comes over in
these contexts as garbled rubbish, magic crystals mined by the elves, spiritual cures for
all known diseases, and the holy hand-grenade of Antioch.
This is terribly unfortunate as it prevents us from learning AL and stops our midbrain
abilities developing as they should, and this in turn affects the quality of our overall
intelligence.

AL hasn't received much more coherent treatment from the mainstream of psychology
either. All kinds of bizarre ideas and their adherents have cropped up, from the 'Anything
pointy represents a penis' brigade, to the 'dream interpreters', to the 'analyze the
archetypes and you know the personality' school.

If you are operating from a value system of sentiment, these beliefs will affect your
imagination. If you are grounded in fear, that too will affect your imagination,
constantly.... And imagination control is where we are going next, so...take responsibility
for yourself please, seat belts fastened, smoking is allowed throughout the flight, and we
hope you will enjoy traveling with us.

What we need to look at now, is how the mid brain networks act to translate sensation
into perception and conceptualization. We need to know this, in order to enhance
imagination. We already know these systems use their own kind of memory, eidetic
memory, and their own kind of programming language, Allegorical Language (AL).
We've had a brief look at what AL does; it's a translator between the sensory motor 'old'
brain systems and the 'new' frontal cortex. How does it do this?

The mid brain networks translate information from binary input data into conscious
concrete concepts suitable for the application of intellectual logic and creative
imagination. They do this using a 'go-between' language I've called AL which is
understood in different ways by both sides of the information transfer, even though
neither could understand the other without it. AL is not like Esperanto, a language that all
comers can understand, it is more like a person who can understand two languages, one
spoken and one signed, and it can speak in both at the same time. We often speak to small
children instinctively in AL, signing as well as saying the words, especially when we are
telling stories. The 'signs' and words that AL uses are a preconstructed set of patterns,
which correspond to two groups, objects, and episodes. All of these are 'archetypes'.

We're not meant to have a fully integrated view of the world right away when we're born;
it happens in stages.R3 As a child we build our perceptions up much more from the
vaults of our imagination than we (should) do as adults, because those networks naturally
form a larger percentage of our total cognition. For the first while, the midbrain is the
only fully operational cognitive apparatus we have. No wonder we can really believe in
Santa, or that there are bears under the bed, or our teacher is really an alien, or that the
ghost of Hooflungdung haunts the castle towers...our locus of consciousness is right in
those networks of emotion and imagination, busy developing our AL skills...or they
should be.

It takes the human brain a minimum of 3 to 4 years to construct enough AL patterns to

begin using the language efficiently (and AL is vital to memory, which is why most of
our memories before age 3 are very sparse). We practice AL association in dreams first of
all.

When we're asleep and dreaming, at any age, the mid brain is in the driving seat.
Concepts are shifted from short to long term memory whilst we sleep, and that can only
be done through long term potentiation. And that can only be done through the mid brain.
When we dream, our memories and imagination combine and cast about for two things:
objects that are linked with the new concepts, and patterns or episodes that are linked
with the new concepts. And they do so according to allegorical language. Our dreams
will always seem to be full of 'archetypes', because the mid brain's language is quite
limited in its compressed form and only has certain code lines it can write with. Events in
life fall into certain broad categories defined by biology according to what hormones they
produced. The objects and episodes of AL are the most strongly recurring patterns of
experience in reality, and the most commonly felt emotions. They are based on both
biology and intelligence.

Which option your brain chooses, for shaping a dream, will depend on its neurochemistry
at the time. If your dopamine is high, for example, a dream about a sexy person could
well end up being a damp and happy one, whereas if your serotonin's low you could turn
that person, in dream, into a psycho pervert who's trying to rip your genitals off. All of
our hormones are constantly shaping the choices our memory makes from its databank,
even in sleep. So the nature of your AL access, and hence the contents of your dreams is
affected a lot by your personal state of mind. It's also affected immensely by the fact that
the midbrain has to use archetypes. We expect certain patterns to emerge, and those
expectations change our perception.

Because the amazing thing is, we construct our reality in exactly the same way whether
we are awake, or asleep. In dreams, or in waking time, the midbrain unconsciously casts
about looking for excuses for its input, and when we find them, we believe it's real. That's
the only way intelligence can increase our interest enough to make the item worthy of
long term memory. It has to have emotional weighting, and if we believe something is
false, it cannot have much. We have to trick ourselves into thinking it is sufficiently real
and important to be worth remembering. When the brain thinks it's 'real' it thinks it is
coming from 'out there', and the body responds accordingly, as in the sexy wet dream or
the sweaty nightmare. (In exactly the same way, people stuck in a matrix cast about for
excuses for their mood, and when they find them they think it's real; sufficiently real and
important to be worth remembering...)

Of course, it is supposed to correspond to what is real, but this is not often the case...what
people are saying does not correspond with what they are doing. This is why the whole of
'real life' and most entertainment for a lot of people is based on subconscious archetypal
stories that form the interface between our animal and machine-like natures. We are
meant to grow through this fairy tale magical bit of childhood and emerge sane,
contemplative, creative, flexible, imaginative, and intelligent. But these 'preset'
unconscious patterns now control people's every move on a permanent basis, if they
never grew up enough to take over the authorship. Just how many people are out there in
the world helplessly acting out archetypal scenarios unbeknown to themselves, remains
unknown. I would estimate it at around nine tenths of the Western population, and most
of the rest are stuck in matrix four. People do not merely live in a simulation... It has
episodes. People live in a soap opera.

Everybody's midbrain works to some extent and everybody's midbrain uses AL, but most
have no conscious awareness of it due to lack of exposure to it at the right age, or no
ability to decrypt it due to lack of example. It is possible to learn conscious AL at any
age, but it might take a lot of effort against resistance because people with little
knowledge of it often fear and mistrust it. It is not under conscious control and therefore
scary, a little bit too unknown to be faced by some. M4s tend to label it 'cosmic bullshit'
or 'superstitious gobbledygook', and that kind of misconception takes a lot of getting past,
especially with so much gobbledygook and bullshit around. M3s on the other hand take
AL as the end product of input, try to translate it literally, and overreact at the resulting
message.

Since AL is predominant in dreaming, that gives you a clue that it is not dependent on
conscious thought to begin with, and the fact that the same symbol can have a different
meaning to different people but evokes the same hormonal response should give you a
further clue as to what AL is really for. Sadly, we continue to mess about interpreting
inkblots or designing mystical 'systems' to find the true meaning of the unconscious
'magical symbols'

AL is meant to be a system we become consciously aware of from about age 7.R4 We get
a brain growth spurt right then to prepare us for it, because it's a matrix shift, from M3 to
M4. From age 7 to 11 is the time when we should begin making up stories and songs
instead of just listening to them, painting pictures instead of just looking, designing
systems rather than just using the given. We should move in to the locus of the RH, and
start using our creativity in every medium. We should become more dexterous and adept
at using tools on the outside, and more skilled at using midbrain language consciously,
increasing the connections in our Corpus Callosum (CC) and sitting on a rich, already-
constructed, thickly wired bus from the RH to the mid brain. These connections increase
our creative ability (which is how we can write good stories, make movies, choreograph a
dance, invent things, design things, do special effects, get a spaceship to the moon,
escape from Alcatraz, and generally have new ideas that haven't been explored before.)
And they also increase our ability to interact (which is how we can teach each other
things, demonstrate, plan, strategise, work things out, solve problems, repair, predict, and
control.)

Here is the process of translation in summary:

· Binary input comes in parallel and each collection of coincident streams is

compared to past patterns of coincident streams.

· The input from the event or situation is found to have some familiar patterns.
 · The familiar patterns will be represented in eidetic memory as images of objects or
episodes. AL examines these and then all the others associated with them, starting
with the most similar, popular, or important (emotionally weighted).

· From these the mid brain makes probability calculations about which preset pattern
events will turn out to be closest to, and sends messages to trigger any hormones
we might require, changing our body language and psychological state.

· Groups of selected objects and episodes are sent as imagery to the frontal lobes
together with packets of the chemicals that we used when the last most similar
situation arose.

· The PFC translates these into the concepts they represent and processes these
accordingly.

Remember that all thought and all input cause micromovements throughout our bodies
from before birth.R16 This is a huge part of the old brain's sensory-motor input. It is a
summary of every situation encoded in full body subconscious awareness. Every move
you make changes that message. If your fists are clenched, or relaxed, you send a
different message to the mid brain. If you smile, or frown, you access a different
archetype and send a different message. You are so finely tuned, enough to see the wood
and/or the trees, but most see only one or the other.

In summary, sensory motor input hits the old brain, is sent to the midbrain, encoded in
symbol; object and episode, complete with emotional weighting, and sent to the frontal
cortex.

Different networks use different electro-chemical signals. The frontal cortex cannot use
the signals of the old brain in the same way the old brain can use them. It's not wired for
the same chemicals. Drugs that affect the body use old brain signals. Most drugs that
affect the mind affect midbrain signals and some networks of the frontal cortex, their
bodily effects being actuated through hormones, or the end result of chain reactions. The
message is universal because each neuron uses only its own chemicals from the whole
selection produced. All receive the same message, in their own particular
neurotransmitter language.

The archetypal images have the associations they do because certain patterns of behavior
occur much more often than others. They are expected. Episodes are likewise expected.
Boy meets girl, they like each other and they...? ... (They probably don't usually start a
fire-engine manufacturing company, for example). The images in AL are so powerful and
seem so important because they have been with us throughout our evolution and they
have heavy emotional weighting. If things don't turn out how they 'should', it's a sign that
something could be very wrong, from biology's point of view.
It must be obvious that two things are very important in this system: making sure the
images are associated with the correct translations, and recognizing when events deviate
from expected patterns.

Here is where the first problems occur. A good analogy for AL is a computer keyboard
and the software that turns your keystrokes into words on your screen that your frontal
lobes can think about. There are a limited number of keys, but our sensory motor actions
(typing) at one end enable the translation into a format our logical minds can understand.
This is pretty much exactly what AL is doing, but instead of a keyboard, the 'keys' are all
archetypes. When we put these together in the right order and attach the correct
emotional package, the message will be understood by the PFC. Everything we perceive
is judged by us according to our expectations based on previous experience, and everyone
we meet is categorized according to whom we have met before. Those we have spent the
most time with, those who made the greatest impressions on us, and those who were
around us during brain growth spurts will have given our databank the strongest
weighting. Whether any of them were sane and healthy is a matter of chance, we will
form our ideas about 'normality' from their example. If our whole society is terrified of
bears, we probably will be too.

This is quite a reasonable way to assess things, from biology's point of view. Nature
expects the world to show us examples of reality; of what is 'the norm' in various
circumstances. Our first examples are expected to be a reflection of reality overall, that is
to say, our parents should be more or less similar to other humans, and as we get to know
our family and friends we should see a broad enough spectrum of life and human
personality types to get a basic idea of humans in general. Likewise our parents'
interactions and family life should slowly introduce us to society. All of this should fit in
very nicely with our own mid brain's archetypal 'patterns' or 'templates' because they are
about reality too. A sane society incorporates its knowledge and understanding of
archetypal patterns into its fabric as the underlying themes, and makes sure it chooses
beneficial ones.

What we get instead is a cycle of repeating patterns in our relationships, our work and our
society, which seem to happen outside of our control, or sometimes even awareness. The
AL images are associated with the wrong translations.

Our knowledge of how things 'should' go is equally sparse, taken as it is from whatever
just happened on television. Interaction, which is what intelligence aims for, requires all
participants to be operating from the same archetypal template. This is an impossibility if
anyone is 'running another story'. Our underlying themes must cohere, if we are ever to
function in effective groups.

The influence of these two things, our conscious awareness of archetypes and our
accuracy in their use, cannot be overestimated in assessing our perception.
Unconsciously, every word we hear affects our opinions. Every sight we see consolidates
or changes them. Every experience we have, if we're stuck in a matrix, can reinforce our
stuck position, or help us to improve.
This effect is all-pervasive and can be totally accidental. For example, if I tell you about a
kind of food you've never eaten, and whilst I'm talking about it I look quite disgusted
(because actually your dog is trying to make love to my leg, but you haven't noticed this),
you will be less likely to consider the food pleasant when you try it, even if I said it was
okay. You'll remember my uncomfortable, disgusted body language as one of the first
pieces of information connected with that food, and the first information we receive about
anything always has strong weighting, regardless of its verity.

Even if the second piece of information contradicts it, the first piece matters most. For
another example: I'll tell you a story about Jane. Jane's a nice, warm, friendly sort of
person and she's a restaurant owner in Paris. Now I'll introduce you to Mr. Sing, who
owns my local Chinese restaurant and is having a few problems with his computer. You'll
talk to Mr. Sing in a more receptive, friendly way than you would have if I'd previously
told you a story about a nasty, mean, miserly Italian restaurant owner who rips off his
customers. The correlative term 'restaurant owner' has tied these people together in your
unconscious, despite all the other differences between them you expect similarities.
Subliminal links and clues in the growing midbrain jump topic with only the slightest
connections and clump together at the least excuse. We are designed to modify the mid
brain's behavior as we grow, using LH logic and RH creative flexibility, synergizing in
the ACG to make logical common sense out of the code. But a dysfunctional PFC cannot
understand the mid brain's interpretations, and stands no chance of doing so if they
remain incorrect (Because they do not make logical sense). Such an immature midbrain
on its own cannot help but believe it's own creations, it has no overview with which to
modify. And it effects our every judgment, with false weighting from irrational
associations.

This is the realm of our susceptibility to psychological tricks and deception, and knowing
the rules can help prevent them happening to you. The 'first impressions' effect only
happens if two pieces of information are encountered close together. If there's a gap, the
opposite occurs. Whichever way it goes, if we're not under control we make prejudiced
judgments. On top of this we categorize things in our midbrain and try to see patterns in
information, even where none exist. ...Did you ever take an instant irrational dislike to
someone because their name was the same as that of someone you despised? Or express
an opinion of like or dislike about someone you have never met (say, some celebrity)?
Often a single characteristic forms the basis of the mid brain's view of a person or thing,
and without the PFC we only pay attention to that one factor. The characteristic we
choose will often reveal which matrix we're stuck in, for example someone in M4 would
be far more likely to notice that a guy had a violent temper than someone in M2, where
such behavior may be considered 'normal'. Someone in M3 would probably see
spirituality as a positive trait, someone in M4 could see it as a negative one.

Add to that some inevitable sensory distortion (unless all your senses function perfectly),
and consider the phenomenon of the alternative memories we dig up depending on our
mood, and then consider the effect of having a damaged or incomplete reticular formation
(input distortion) and a non-functional ACG (no translation of midbrain imagery). With
this as a basis people are trying to operate from parts of the brain that they should have
finished building and moved on from years ago. We are stuck currently with whole
generations of permanent 7 to 11 year olds 'running' large sectors of society.

Perhaps the cruelest thing is that we do it to ourselves. We see ourselves as being part of
a 'group' or groups and judge ourselves according to their faulty archetypes, altering our
lifestyles to 'fit in', believing we are 'sinners' or 'the chosen' or whatever they want to tell
us we are. We see our groups & archetypes as being superior to other groups and their
archetypes, and become more hostile to people in other groups. Some social
psychologists claim that prejudice is a result of personality. To me this is a little like
saying that being fond of too-tight hats is a result of going bald. It is a correlation, not
causality. As far as perception is currently concerned, it's a circle: personality is a result
of prejudice (because our personality is built up from our like/dislike response, and then
is subject to the prejudice inherent in perception.) Society doesn't help. Often,
'conformity' is a way of gaining social approval (or avoiding rejection) and increasing
status.

In reality, the only relevant discrimination between people is a natural one. If there are
four of you escaping from somewhere horrid and only one can interact with (fly a) plane,
you don't feel discriminated against if they pick her to be the pilot. Ability determines
position. Our archetypal 'heroes' should be those able to interact in the most varied
situations, the greatest unknowns. Those with the most abilities in service of survival,
those most able to increase their own intelligence and with the greatest potential are
obviously very valuable. Those who already have many abilities are the current (Kings
and sometimes Wizards) wealth of intelligence, but those with most potential are its best
investment (Its princes and princesses, its unrecognized heroes). Input and relationships
that enable us to get to this stage and beyond (Masters and Students) is valuable input, all
else is either deleterious or irrelevant. Except for magic swords. (Or any piece of tech that
we can work with in synergy, as though it were a part of us.)

AL

People's ignorance of the origin and purpose of archetypes is stunning, so we really do

have to start right at the beginning in order to avoid the popular confused memes. But we
can make it more fun by doing an interactive lesson. Here's the game: wire yourself up to
a pulse/BP monitor.

...How far can you raise you pulse using only your imagination? Keep your hands to
themselves. And find out.

...How far can you lower it?

Most people have no difficulty thinking of all kinds of things that will increase their
pulse, but not many can reduce it by very much, or even think of anything to reduce it.
What does this tell you?
Try this out next: wire yourself up for GSR, MCG and pulse rate. Imagine a scene in
which someone you care about is betraying you in some nasty way and plotting to harm
you, and you've secretly found out. Imagine how you would feel. Watch those readings
change! Nothing is going on in reality, but your body thought it was because your
imagination said so.

Emotion and imagination weight every thought. The first conscious port of call for any
form of entertainment you are exposed to, from outside or in, is emotion and imagination
networks. Mixed in with ambient surroundings and events in our lives in real-time, all the
movies, books, music and art we encounter is noticed, assessed and filed by the midbrain
before it gets any intellectual attention.

Imagination uses various different kinds of representation in the mid brain's programming
language. One kind is visual imagery, symbols or pictures, which are archetypes. Another
is words, but not in the grammatical format we normally use in speech or text. The use of
words as representations in midbrain thought is as allegorical or analogical language.

Examples of archetypes are: (Objects): fox, bear, dragon, mermaid, wizard, healer,
warrior, star, sun, moon, king, queen, death, fate, god, goddess, sword, spear, blacksmith,
apple, rose, black, red. (Add any culturally recognized symbol you know) (Episodes):
'The wounded healer' (the guy who can cure all pain except his own) 'The return of the
king' (the king/warrior sleeps/hides, to return again in time of greatest need/end of world)
'Star-crossed lovers' (two people fall in love and win/lose against great opposition)
'Sacrificial king/god/warrior' (someone has to die horribly to save humanity/the planet)
'Cinderella' (someone in hopeless circumstances achieves their wildest dreams and lives
happily ever after) 'The 3 bears' (large scary creatures/threat plus innocent vulnerable
human, turns out fine in the end)...Add every traditional tale you know.

These 'Episodes' are constructed on the basis of patterns of events that occur in all
societies, of every age in every time. In all societies these same dramas are played out.
We don't have room to file every event we experience as a separate event. Archetypes are
the patterns of our lives, stripped down to the common denominators of all experience.
Our personality types align us with archetypes; every scientist is a 'wizard', every actress
is a queen. Every waiter is a servant, and the prince or princess who will sweep us off our
feet is just around the corner in the wine bar. Our life patterns align us with these
episodes; every relationship will fall into an archetypal category or several;
teacher/student (master/novice); teenagers in a relationship against the will of parents
(star-crossed lovers); man more interested than woman, (pauper courting princess or
human courting goddess); everything hinges on this contest (save the world). Once
people get into an archetypal episode it is very, very difficult to stop it. Everything in our
subconscious minds knows the story and will try to conform to it because of expectations.
We expect the young girl to leave the old wizard and go off with the prince, when he
arrives, someday my prince will come and save me from the drudgery...take me away
from all this, I knew you would come for me, now I don't have to do that horrible degree
my evil stepparents are pushing me into. We expect the doctor to be altruistic and
politically neutral, the scientist to be slightly eccentric if not a full blown mad genius, the
soldier to be fierce but honorable, the nurse to be a gentle soul and Men of God to be
serious and somewhat ascetic. We categorize people subconsciously according to
archetypes and expect them to behave accordingly. We get surprised if they don't.
Episodic archetypes represent a lot of people.

Symbols also represent a lot of things. When we see, for example, a swastika, what
happens? Your 'old' brain looks at the shape via the eyes, but has no idea what it is,
although memory has already shouted 'beware'...as the input is passed to the midbrain,
because even the old brain knows that when a lot of people see that sign they run away,
so you might have to run away real soon...The midbrain is searching its files, finds the
object, sends a quick cryptic email to the frontal cortex saying 'swastika-nazis-fascists-
political-war-uniforms-flags-shouting-violence-cruelty-torture = evil tyrant + danger +
death.' The cortex applies its intellectual and creative skills to these concepts, whilst
dozens of other messages are arriving via the midbrain...if the other messages are 'tattoo',
'thug', 'shouting' and 'knife', we are probably halfway down the next block by now with a
fair turn of speed...midbrain awareness alone was enough to trigger the old brain into
action pumping those legs like roadrunner, hormones flowing, and the cortex is only just
catching up...if the other inputs are on the other hand 'book' 'learning' and 'history', we are
probably settling down into the chair with our tea quite calmly and getting on with it.

How the symbols are interpreted depends on the back up associations they make. To
program our own archetypes we have to go one step along the information tree and
replace the back up associations with the information relevant to AL. So let's get on with
some intensive file management...

Unwire yourself, get somewhere comfy and relax. In 'Imagination/Mid brain

networks/eidetic memory/objects', look for a folder called 'King' (if you can't find one,
make one). Empty it, i.e., assume you know nothing about the word, have no associations
for it, as though it's from a foreign language. In that folder place this information:

****************

· Definition: Powerful person with much higher status in their environment than most,
who could be a powerful ally if friendly but a powerful enemy if not friendly,
tends to excel at certain abilities although they may not necessarily be beneficial
ones. Highly regarded by many. Probably has access to many resources and
contacts. Successful and therefore a role model for survival in their own
environment. May be a good role model for some abilities.

· Questions to be pursued if necessary: Is this person 'Beneficial' or 'Not beneficial'?

How can I interact with this person in a way beneficial to both of us? How can I
prevent this person harming others? How can I assist this person's worthy work?

********************
Move all files and folders labeled 'Top', 'Best', 'Admired' 'Successful' and so on into the
folder called 'King'.

In the same directory, find and open or create a folder called 'Wizard'. Enter the following
data:

********************

· Definition: Person with power but not necessarily overtly; power lies in their ability
to manipulate something; tools or machines or people or the environment. They
and the things they manipulate may be beneficial or not beneficial. Probably a
good ally if beneficial, but a powerful enemy if not beneficial. Probably feared by
many, particularly stupid people. Probably sought after by high status people, and
hence high status. Their skills could probably be useful to anyone.

· Questions to be pursued if necessary: Is this person 'Beneficial' or 'Not beneficial'?

How can I interact with this person in a way beneficial to both of us? How can I
prevent this person harming others? How can I assist this person's worthy work?

*******************

Move all files and folders labeled 'Whizz', 'Tech head', 'scientist' and 'expert' into the
folder called 'Wizard'.

Now, do exactly the same thing to these archetypes: Doctor, Warrior, Prince, Dragon,
(Dragon may sound difficult, but in fact all it is, is a large powerful thing that completely
outclasses everybody around in terms of physical strength but isn't too bright, and is
mollified by shiny objects, laying down its laws and being an extortionate pain. You'd be
amazed how many humans fit that description.)

...And that is all it's for. Summing situations up really fast. Survival. Creative thinking.
It's not a secret language that only dungeons and dragons fans can understand. You don't
have to get your dreams interpreted or study poetry to 'get' it, and although most of the
things you'll read about it are a waste of memory space, if you take AL on board as what
it's meant to be, you'll be able to use it to control your own imagination and predict the
effects of your creativity on others.

We are designed to be fascinated by the input that fills up our AL files between the ages
of seven and fourteen; stories, fantasy, witches and wizards, elves, dragons, animals etc.
Children watch animals carefully (cartoon or real) and get an idea of the attributes
associated with those animals. Thus, later, if someone says to you 'My big brother is a
total pig', you know very well the kid referred to is not porcine, but may well be fat, rude,
greedy, selfish or unpleasant in a variety of 'piggy' ways. And if I say the guys in the
local garage are sharks, you know exactly what I mean.
There, see; you do understand AL. That's why it has symbols, they can convey
information a whole lot faster than words because the information is compressed. When
these images are replayed, the same neurons fire that went with the past most popular
events of this nature, plus any other networks that are relevant only to this particular
event. Association is made between the two, just as surely as anyone opening a tin in a
household with pets is always immediately surrounded by anticipatory furry faces.
Intelligence makes associations. It expects our input to help it make the right ones.

After getting a few symbols in your archetype directory you'll want to start your
dictionary (or rather, thesaurus, because that is how you file AL, by association).

Start with those words most important to survival: Light, dark, wake, sleep, desire,
reward, eat, drink, fight, run. Each of these words is a trigger for its own set of hormones
to adjust our bodily behavior and our psychological state, including our level of attention,
in order that we might make an appropriate response to whatever the event seems to be.
Learn which ones affect your imagination most strongly. All this ordinarily happens
unconsciously, but it happens in response to these words and the images associated with
them and you can bring that into conscious awareness using images and your
imagination. You'll find your own and add to your collection as you go along; I'm just
showing you how to start.

Combinations of words affect the psychology of both others, and ourselves, as does the
way they are delivered. Speaking AL is an art to be mastered. Aspects of it crop up in
fiction, fantasy and sci-fi, but rarely is it encountered in full form. Those who can think in
it, speak well, their words inspire us because they are linked to those numinous
archetypes which underlie all psychological being. A good example is from my favorite
Abe Lincoln speech:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present...The occasion is
piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion.. We cannot escape
history...we shall be remembered in spite of ourselves...The fiery trials through which we
pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation...We shall nobly save,
or meanly lose, our last best hope..."

Archetypal episodes don't age; they just repeat. And in AL terms, this sums up how
things are, right here, right now.

...If you add the words "For intelligence".

1. From the famous 20th century Earth classic, 'Row, Row, Row your Boat'.

16. Advanced Applications Level 1 (Hacking pain...and Not Hacking pain...)

Hacking pain
Hacking the pain system may seem counterproductive. If you've had arthritis for twenty
years though, or you're recovering from injury, it can be rather useful to be able to reduce
the amount of drugs you need to kill pain. A further use is for painful infections, as
anyone recovering from shingles would agree. Hacking pain is also (more rarely, but I'm
sure the military would approve) useful for those unfortunate persons who get into a
position where the agents really do want the mainframe codes and are prepared to
cheerfully hurt them to achieve this. Less pain experience in trauma also lessens the
likelihood of PTSD.

Let's take a look at what gives us our sensitivity... How do we perceive pain in the first
place?

In it's acute state, (for example when the happy cat sitting on your lap suddenly plunges
its claws into your thighs, or you whack your thumb with a hammer), physical pain is
localized and transient and shows clearly a direct stimulus-response link. Pain in medical
situations though, is almost always persistent and chronic. In association with
pathological conditions it is also pointless, and this is where we come to appreciate the
usefulness of analgesic hacking perhaps the most.

...If I stick a fork into my leg1, what happens? Tissue damage results in the release of a
whole bunch of chemicals at the site of injury, including hormones and neuroactive
factors. Many of these stimulate the sensory neurons (nociceptors) which carry pain
signals to the CNS. There are two main sorts of nociceptors, myelinated (approx. 30%)
and unmyelinated. The myelinated kind (large diameter) sense sharp and prickling kinds
of pain and the unmyelinated kind (small diameter) carry dull or burning pain. Both kinds
carry pain signals from the site of injury, to synapse on interneurons in the dorsal horn of
the spinal cord.

Nociceptors are varied. They can have a different speed of conduction, different
neurotransmitters, receptors, and ion channels, and a difference in capacity for
sensitization. Action potentials transmitted to the dorsal horn ascend in the spinoreticular
tracts via the reticular formation, through the brainstem, and arrive in the intralaminary
nuclei of the thalamus. Projections from the thalamus terminate in the somatosensory
cortex. The pathway from here networks with the posterior parietal cortex, insular cortex
and amygdala, the perirhinal cortex and the hippocampus. The spinoreticular tracts are
networked with the ACG, the amygdala and the hypothalamus. (Pain from the head and
face is transmitted via the trigeminal nerves that synapse in the trigeminal nucleus of the
brainstem, the fibers ascending to the thalamus along the trigeminal lemniscus). As it
comes in, pain is subject to a great deal of modulation.

The mechanisms of acute and chronic pain are different. When the cat sticks its claws
into your leg, the ascending pain signals are modulated by afferent signals from touch
receptors (which is why rubbing the affected area seems to lessen the pain). Nociceptors
release glutamate and substance P, which stimulate NMDA and AMPA glutamate
receptors, and NK1 neurokinin receptors on spinal output neurons. In a chain reaction
from NMDA receptor activation, adenosine and nitric oxide are released. Both of these
are strong mediators of pain.

Sensitization

In chronic pain, the unmyelinated nociceptors fire repetitively, leading to activation of

NMDA receptors, kinase release affecting gene transcription, and consequently a change
in the nociceptors themselves which makes them more sensitive to subsequent input. This
is 'sensitization'. It can cause permanent changes in the dorsal horn, whereby myelinated
nociceptors form extra synaptic connections, and it can lead to an altered pain threshold
in both the thalamus and the spinothalamic tracts. This means the more chronic pain we
are subjected to, the more we feel it.

Our pain threshold is partly genetic;R40 people with an extremely high pain threshold
often lack a protein which regulates the production of dynorphins, one of the brain's
natural painkillers. Without the protein, people produce far more dynorphins, and can
tolerate quite a lot of physical pain. But with the protein, (most of us), we can't, without
passing out and/or going into shock.

There are in fact neurohacking reasons for adjusting pain. Sensitization is also a side
effect of learning / memory enhancement.

We are designed so that we structure our early like/dislike responses around what feels
immediately pleasant or unpleasant in a sensory motor way. Only later do we make
aesthetic choices determined by retrospective or prediction, or through the language of
higher functions. At first, we are in the 'here and now', and everything is full body
knowing. Our locus of consciousness is at first based in the old brain, and this is the
language it knows best. Our ability to detect something pleasant or unpleasant accurately
and associate it with a stimulus is the most basic kind of learning, and of course we need
to be able to remember what those stimuli are, in the service of survival. The better we
are able to remember the more likely we are to survive, but the more sensitive we are
likely to be to pain. And our sensitivity is literally down to the amount of active NMDA
receptors we have. So, the more we increase their activity, the faster we can learn, but the
greater will be our sensitivity to pain (in the acute sense, a wasp sting will still feel like a
wasp sting, but in the chronic sense, pain will be more intense and will last longer.)
Neurons exposed to chronic pain signals become hypersensitive, causing pain to linger on
long after the physical body seems recovered. By enhancing learning and memory
networks, we can literally end up suffering from the memory of pain! Sensitization
occurs because of the changes in gene transcription, and the effects of this gene
transcription are the production of new pain sensing receptors and new pain signaling
neurotransmitters, hence the increased sensitivity.

Nobody wants to end up eating painkillers with every meal, and getting around this
situation in advanced neurohacking has until recently been a problem. Over one and a
half thousand genes are affected by pain, so at first glance trying to hack it looks like a
needle-in-haystack job, however, the kinases affecting them are often broad spectrum,
and this is where to go in.2

Our targets for hacking are two little kinases called Smith and Jones (really they're called
ERK and PKC-gamma). Both are major players in sensitization. Blocking their activity
prevents the transcriptions that enable sensitization, and, perhaps more impressively,
reverses them if they have already taken place.

However, blocking ERK in the midbrain also buggers up memory formation, so that's
only usable locally, for example in the spinal cord. But PKC-gamma does not have this
problem. There's a PKC-g blocker being tested on rats at the moment (Nov. 03), so it's a
good time to keep rats in the lab, if you live in a country that forbids self-
experimentation.

First results are impressive: For example, 'David' is a white male lab rat aged 33 who
recently fell off his motorbike, suffering multiple fractures to both his paws. When we
met he was suffering from chronic pain sensitization, and was on seriously large doses of
co-codamol, diazepam, and sleeping tablets. He felt like shite (you can tell, with rats, by
looking at their sad, hairy little faces), and both his wrists were still hurting. With a very
small amount of PKC-gamma blocker (dosage for a dozen average sized rats being the
same as for one very large rat) he was able to drop the other drugs completely within two
days, and was using a mouse within a week. (...To play with. In his cage.) This hack
didn't affect his capacity for learning, which is convenient. David seemed as smart as
usual and felt fine, unlike the zombie he had been on drugs. So at first glance I'd
recommend this method for advanced n-hackers who come across the sensitization
problem.

There is another way of hacking pain...but it's not for the fainthearted. Ultimately, what
we like or dislike emerges from our personal experiences of attraction or repulsion,
delight or disgust, pleasure or pain. There are two aspects to all of these, physical and
emotional, and our tolerance thresholds for each will be different. Some people can
ignore physical pain to a large degree but cannot tolerate much emotional stress at all.
There are some people who don't feel pain in the usual way because of damage or
malfunction, but perhaps the most intriguing group of all, because they can give us a clue
here, are those who most certainly do feel pain, but who enjoy it...these people have
learned to do by accident, what we can learn to do on purpose... Change their perception
of input at will, on a sensory motor level. Masochists do this by associating pain with
sexual desire, and in much the same way as conditioning works, we can learn to make
that association by experiencing both together until the association is made.... The chance
to interview a masochist is quite a rare one, (and we're proud of this, as we have obtained
such an interview, the edited transcript of which is at the end of this chapter.)

From our masochist's point of view, the altruistic tenet, 'Treat others as you would like to
be treated', is quite blatantly a joke. But in many other situations such ethics are equally
incongruous to the receiver. Never assume another person enjoys what you enjoy. If
you're in the same matrix it's more likely, but by no means a certainty. Neither does
having a matrix in common with someone imply similar sensitivity. (I met an interesting
professional boxer once who could take any amount of beating and gore, but passed out
cold at the sight of injection needles). So if you want to explore pain the masochists' way
that's up to you but don't expect anyone else to be coming to any of your parties.

Not hacking pain

The perception of pain influences brain activation; obviously in regions associated with
sensory motor input but also in regions associated with emotion and imagination,
memory, attention and cognition. Previous experience and social indoctrination here kick
in and further transform perception. Expectation certainly alters our perception of pain.
So does how the pain begins or ends. But there is more than socialization to the
connection between pain and activation of these brain regions because it turns out that
pain, pleasure, learning and memory are all inextricably linked.

'Thresholds' in general become an issue for various reasons in neurohacking, more or less
as soon as you notice the first improvements ...because the first thing you start to wonder
after you realize it's actually working is, how far can you go? Just how much can you
enhance or augment intelligence? How smart are humans supposed to be? ...The real
answers to that are, we don't honestly know, because limits keep getting broken and new
abilities discovered. Currently our development is of course limited by biological death,
but all indications are that the body gives out long before a healthy mind. If you
immediately think, oho, but what about Alzheimer's, dementia, senility...ask yourself,
what kills and weakens brain cells? Non-use and cortisol are the biggest culprits.R41 The
brain atrophies just like the body if it isn't used. And plastic surgery can't disguise that,
fortunately, just as corsets and bras can't improve muscle tone.

How far can we go? Obviously we all have individual limits within the broad spectrum of
intended human mental ability, some bestowed by genetics, others by experience and
personality. These are our own personal thresholds, our own limits and boundaries. One
of my mottoes has always been 'accept no limits', but this must be put into the proper
context. We must have the solid reality of our own limits in our scopes before we can
think about altering them. It seems obvious that we have to know we're afraid of heights,
for example, before we can try to get over it, but not knowing is exactly the sort of
problem most people face...they have no idea what they are afraid of, or even that they
are afraid. All of it gets blamed on externals. Consequently they cannot assess their
potential because they do not know where they are on the ladder of development in the
first place. Pushing limits by solving problems is the aim, but denying that either
problems or limits exist is delusional.

We're taking a closer look at pain here though for another reason. Pain is a great temporal
lobe emotion stimulator, because the stress/relaxation response networks overlap with
those of the temporal lobes. Before there was TMS or NMT or even LSD, pain and desire
and the odd bit of spotty fungus were the only things that could make such an impression
on us, and, as one might expect, people were using them to get high. Humans have been
neurohacking forever, and one of the first reasons was to explore what happened to their
minds, when they ate or smoked those 'magic' weeds...and did some incredibly strange
things to themselves, with starvation and fish hooks, dancing and chanting.

We've had little logical or even coherent explanation of what this was all really about
until the advent of modern scanning techniques, because those mainly interested in doing
it these days tended to be religious nutcases, schizophrenics, or mystical 'shaman'
weirdoes who sucked toads and suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy and went on about
talking to dead people and so on.

What the original practitioners were actually doing is invoking the production of
hormones that could change their minds, by manipulating networks in the temporal lobes,
hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala. Before religion kidnapped it, temporal lobe
emotion was as much a part of human pleasure, and as important to the survival of
intelligence, as sex is now.

Some of these hormones do very strange things to your mind. Things a mixture of heroin
and LSD might achieve with a dash of MDMA for luck. Most people experiencing a
temporal lobe emotionally powerful experience without drugs blame it on god, for
various reasons. Firstly, it really feels as though it is coming from the outside, which is
partly what is so alarming in schizophrenia; the voices (and even visuals) do not seem
internal at all. Sometimes the whole locus of consciousness seems displaced, which is
what people think of as an 'out of body experience'. It isn't, of course. You can blame it
on your brain. You can invoke these effects with TMS, NMS, biofeedback and/or drugs,
and enjoy them at your leisure.

The ultimate link between learning, temporal lobe emotion, and pain is of course
memory, and our earliest use of the midbrain is to assist in producing for us a usable map
of the world according to nasty and nice. This is all pervasive, if the midbrain works as it
should, it will find some degree of attraction and repulsion, no matter how small, in
everything. Mine, for example, if I really go and look, is fond of blue and mauve, dislikes
the number 2 or letter B, and really can't stand some shades of yellow, or the sound of the
word 'betty'. There's no apparent logic in these choices because they are linked by
prejudice of association, and the more your individual database grows the more this is so.
Tastes will change with the weighting, as this or that item is tossed here and there by
experience, but the midbrain takes it's choices very seriously. When you are two or three
years old it can really matter if your cereal bowl is the wrong color (much to the distress
of baffled parents), because you are trying to impose your likes and dislikes on the world,
and test your personal power to affect change. If such tests fail to achieve the desired
result, we'll keep trying, and usually complaining, until we find a way to influence our
world. Some people never do, and spend their time continuing to complain, and trying to
convince others that their personal choices are best, or relying on others for advice,
unable to make decisions for the rest of their lives. The thwarting of the like/dislike
response is like a knife in the ACG...the planning department, which relies on our having
a solid foundation on which to base its concepts. Without that, it cannot plan, predict, or
assess, and consequently cannot strategise or control the flow of events.
As was noted earlier, most young animals have a number of 'given' concepts at birth on
which to base the rest. We, with our ability to form new concepts by ourselves to such a
high degree, are left to form most of ours through experience. Our environment can vary
greatly and nature expects it and our parents to teach us the 'nice' and 'nasty' things as we
go along, much like our language and our emotional set. Given the correct input, our
likes/dislikes conform to rules based on our own well being, and our own and our
culture's archetypes, and we are given these concepts via triggers. Colors and sounds and
shapes all make us exhibit a physiological response, some overt, as when a loud noise
makes us jump, some subliminal, like pheromones drifting up our noses. But like
language and emotion, these triggers are subject to plasticity. We can learn to be afraid of
things that are really not a threat, and learn to like things that are really not very nice.
Nature can be lied to. Consequently this midbrain mapping has been quite fundamentally
skewed by 'society'. Not having access to the logical rules and computation underlying
the mid brain's cognition, we have no reason to suspect this and miss it completely.
Nature expects the truth. We are literally evolving away from such adept mid brain
cognition.

If you recall for a moment that the whole basis of our personalities rests upon such
things, it is quite chilling to see how we are undermining ourselves and chipping away at
intelligence, by failing to realize what is beneficial to it and what is not, and when. A
balanced, healthy personality only arises when the correct input is given, and when the
correct input is not given it creates anxiety. As a constant, low level, underlying theme.
The result? Unbalanced, unhealthy personalities.

...And the things that we fear, are a weapon to be used against us3

Anxiety flattens intelligence. A very part of the reason for memory failure in old age is
our being subjected to unresolved stress for most of our lives. Excess cortisol is a time
bomb; it builds up over the years. Elderly people have as much as three times the level in
their bloodstream than your average twenty-year-old. This is not meant to happen and
this high concentration of cortisol literally prevents any new neuronal tissue from being
formed. It most certainly contributes to senility and neurological disorders. Humans do
have the capacity to grow new neurons throughout life; it is just so rarely seen because
stress hormones usually block that capacity.

In most people, the stress/relaxation cycle fails to occur. We get stress that cannot be
resolved by relaxation, and we get apathy, which cannot be roused by inspiration. People
either don't care about anything (apathy) or take everything far too seriously (anxiety), or
fluctuate between the two. COMP cannot function.

...And this is the reason for not hacking pain: the whole point of pushing at the unknown
is pushing at the threshold of fear. We have to try to increase the amount of fear we can
take on board and resolve without producing excess cortisol. Doing that makes us less
vulnerable to anxiety in our everyday lives; we get an overall perspective; it also helps
protect us in a crisis, and frees us up for further neurogenesis. Initiating the production of
ACTH on a regular basis and turning it off again is the master key to fast learning,
intelligence augmentation and optimal mental health. Experience grows your brain.

The stress/relaxation cycle is why some people feel high after a scary or thrilling
experience. ACTH activates the dopamine system, unless we're too afraid. If we can then
initiate the relaxation half of the cycle we'll feel deeply satisfied and contented.

A classic BS meme in gymnasium workout circles is 'no pain, no gain'. On the purely
physical exercise level, this is complete nonsense. But as far as exploring the unknown is
concerned, it is true. This is one aspect of n-hacking that is RNVN4. We can deliberately
program ourselves for habituation (slowly accustom ourselves to facing anxiety and
overcoming it) whilst turning the amygdala down and blocking sensitization at first, and
then once the networks are established, use ACTH to produce extensive synaptogenesis,
but this will only work if we can initiate the relaxation response soon enough afterwards.
As the ancient trippers knew, pain is one way to trigger the full cycle of stress/relaxation.

...Right about now is where you may start thinking, 'why oh why didn't I take the blue
pill?'... Just remember that none of this is compulsory, okay?

'Habituation' is the process that allows us to ignore ticking clocks (unless they suddenly
stop). It occurs when a stimulus is no longer considered a possible threat, or of any
importance for any other reason, and we cannot usually habituate if the stimulus is
unpredictable or if we consider it important or dangerous. We tend to prioritize pain of
any kind, because it is a danger signal. Biology knows that when there is danger we may
need not only to act quickly but also to learn fast. Hence the ACTH and synaptogenesis,
the attention-focusing alertness, the enhanced ability to perceive. As we assimilate the
unknown the process should reverse; the relaxation circuit allows us to feel reward,
comfort, fulfillment.

The relaxation response may explain a lot about the appeal of heroin, because this is one
way to turn it on. Fortunately there are others. Buddhist-style meditation is one way,
although it takes a long time to learn. Being in love is another. The 'excitement' network
is active early on in the experience of love, and the relaxation response itself kicks in
later in the progression of a relationship (I said there were nice bits). Biofeedback is
another method, and this way you learn the process as well as the experience. Several
other drugs achieve the effect, but should only really be used in training for eventual
drug-free DIY methods.

As I said, I believe that we are designed to flow through the cycle of stress/relaxation
repeatedly throughout life, and constantly be learning something new. The more of the
unknown we face, the more excited we get, the more we will have to assimilate; the more
we will need sleep, dreaming and the relaxation response. Otherwise, memory will not
keep pace with input, and much may be lost.

We can use the trick of deliberately experiencing new unknowns to push at fear. The
more we can do this and return to calm, the more we can increase our ability to interact.
That's exactly what kids are practicing and playing at with ghost stories...pushing at fear.
We should never stop playing that game; we should always be prepared to boldly go.
Yes, it means taking risks, they are well-calculated risks based on sound evidence but
they still are risks; that is reality. I find that risk improves my quality of life, but so does
relaxation.

This is why we need to know our thresholds in reality... how much sleep we need, how
much we personally need to eat... How much dodgy input can we handle before we start
feeling bad, how much can we indulge ourselves before we're sick, how much pain can
we handle before we pass out, how much can we resist various temptations, what arouses
us, what disgusts us, what we truthfully believe. And how much we are prepared to give,
to get what we want. These are your choices for you personally and I will only say two
things...(1) The more you know about yourself, the greater your control. And (2) The
more intense the experience, the stronger the memory.

Interview with the Victim

Nikita Hakashaga is a practicing masochist, who derives erotic pleasure, excitement and
relaxation from pain. She agreed to answer some questions for us after we tied her to the
bed (joke). She did kindly agree to do a live interview. Nikita would like to use her real
name but cannot, masochism being illegal in her country. Here is an excerpt from the
transcript:

[Interviewer] So, Ms Hakashaga, you're a masochist... That means you enjoy feeling
pain...or is it more specific than that?

[Ms Hakashaga] Oh, I enjoy feeling pain whilst I'm having sex, but not if it's like
headaches or stomach aches or stuff...

[Interviewer] ...So, d'you always find sex is better with pain, or is it an in the mood thing,
you know like sometimes maybe you'd want sex on its own, or...?

[Ms Hakashaga] Well, I like variety, so...I mean, it's never a bad thing...I mean any kind
of sex is really good, you know...? And it's always better if I'm in the mood for it.
However...I can change my mood quite quickly, so if I'm not in the mood for it at the
start...then, ah...

[Interviewer] ...you might be working on it...?

[Ms Hakashaga] Mmm, yes...

[Interviewer] ...You said you don't like headaches, and things like that, so it does matter,
what sort of pain it is...?
[Ms Hakashaga] Yes, well I mean it's kind of more specific than that, because it's
associated with an event, with what's happening at the time, so it's nice if it's immediate.

[Interviewer] So, acute pain is better, than like, long term chronic sort of pain?

[Ms Hakashaga] Yes, yes.

[Interviewer] But you don't have ... preferences or favorite kinds of pain or...?

[Ms Hakashaga] I like being whipped, I like being scratched, I like being bitten...

[Interviewer] Okay, but you wouldn't like being beaten up, or anything like that?

[Ms Hakashaga] Definitely not.

[Interviewer] Do you prefer pain before sex, during, or afterwards?

[Ms Hakashaga] Yes! (Laughter)

[Interviewer] D'you like pain when you're not having sex, if it's delivered in an erotic
manner? You know, if there can be no sex, 'cos you're in an elevator or something?

[Ms Hakashaga] If it's delivered in an erotic manner, then it is sex, really in a way...

[Interviewer] So, like you wouldn't be offended by, for example, someone painfully
pinching your ass on the subway or...?

[Ms Hakashaga] Actually I would be!

[Interviewer] Right, so that's not erotic then?

[Ms Hakashaga] Em, well, I guess that depends who's doing it. It would be completely
out of order if it were a stranger.

[Interviewer] Okay that's fair enough...Would you say the pleasure you feel from this is
more exciting, like 'desire', or relaxing and calms you down and chills you out, like a
'comfortable' sort of an effect?

[Ms Hakashaga] It's both.

[Interviewer] Together, or one and then the other?

[Ms Hakashaga] Not often simultaneously...

[Interviewer] Yeh, 'cos I mean, it's difficult to be relaxed and excited at the same
time...yeh I can see that...but it kind of complements everything then?
[Ms Hakashaga] Yes.

[Interviewer] D'you think you are better able to control pain, than other people in
ordinary circumstances...like, if you hurt yourself by accident, can you kind of turn it on
and off... have you got any control in that way?

[Ms Hakashaga] Yes, I'd say so, yes...

[Interviewer] Do you ever get to a point when you feel you've had enough, either in
endurance or intensity?

[Ms Hakashaga] Well, I mean, you can't be shagging permanently, you have to stop at
some point!

[Interviewer] No, I mean, can pain get too much for you, is there a time when you have to
say stop?

[Ms Hakashaga] Very rarely.

[Interviewer] Well we've got to our last question here, and basically it's d'you mind if we
wire you up to some equipment and do a few tests?

[Ms Hakashaga] No, I don't mind.

[Interviewer] Okay, well, thank you very much for coming along!

1. Don't try this at home, kids!

2. Current standard pain control rests heavily on the blocking of cyclooxygenase with
NSAIDs, but these are not only ineffective for severe pain, they also produce nasty side
effects and blood clotting problems.

3. From the song 'The Weapon', by Rush.

4. Really Not Very Nice.

17. Advanced Applications Level 2 (TMS, NMS, and SFX)

Heavy messing

In this chapter we take a look at some more tools you can use to achieve results in n-
hacking. They are in the 'advanced' section because (a) they work best when some
progress has already been made, (b) it's good to have a working knowledge of the brain
before indulging, (c) they can have unexpected effects which could alarm an
inexperienced person, and (d) they're 'hard-core', or 'heavy messing'.
The reason I consider the following techniques to be 'hard-core' is that they can all be
used for forms of wireheading. It is assumed that having got this far, you have enough
sense to take your excesses in moderation. If you have a nasty terminal illness and you
want to end your life wireheading I have no problem with that; otherwise, don't go there.
I have seen it, and I have felt it, and it is an experience I spent two years trying to forget.

'Wireheading', strictly speaking, is the direct electrical cortical stimulation (DECS), of

pleasure centers in the brain via microelectrodes. In practice, though, this is only one of a
number of ways to achieve it.

An alternative way is to deliver chemicals to the brain in a very precise way, using
microinjections. Steel (very thin!) needles are pushed through an opening in the skull,
and tiny (but sufficient) quantities of a chemical can be delivered precisely. These can be
attached to a syringe driver for continued or remote controlled delivery. This can be done
on such a fine scale that individual neurons can be targeted (using a micropipette. This is
called microiontophoresis.) Anesthetics can be administered via this method to inhibit
certain specific brain areas. This is a marvelous tool for research, but inevitably it can
also be abused. Whamming a load of acetylcholine into the dorsal right anterior septum
by this method for example will give you a half-hour orgasm. Great for parties, but
unfortunately most people going that far don't stop there. Nobody enjoys a good bit of
hedonism more than I do, but becoming a wirehead junkie does not augment or enhance
intelligence.

Activity can also be induced in axons by magnets, just like wires (such activity is
electrical, after all). By using focused pulses of magnetism it is possible to cause
electrical activity in a small area of the brain. This is TMS (Transcranial Magnetic
Stimulation.) NMS (Neuro Magnetic Stimulation) also uses magnetic signals, but in a
different manner.

The fact that all of these techniques can be abused means you approach them with
extreme caution. You know exactly what you are going to do with them and you don't
deviate from that. Most of them cannot be employed alone or without a lot of money, but
NMS (and TMS to some extent) can be made cheaply if you have the know-how and thus
is available to anyone. It is these kinds of technology that could be either 'a shining
beacon in space', or 'one ring to rule them all'. They can produce some rather interesting
effects, some of which we'll discuss later. Let's get to know them first...

TMS

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) uses pulses of electromagnetic field that

induce an electric field in the brain. It is a direct way of manipulating and interfering with
the function of some networks.

Brain stimulation with TMS can be either excitatory or inhibitory, depending on the
frequency of the field. Excitatory effects are normally sensory motor. In the inhibitory
mode TMS can temporarily suppress perception and/or interfere with task performance.
At first glance this may not seem very useful. However, people can exhibit remarkable
newfound skills when hooked up to TMS in inhibitory mode, and with regular use these
abilities remain after the temporarily 'silenced' bits come back online.

There's nothing new about TMS. It's been used in hospitals since 1985 both to test for
results of brain surgery and for research, and is now being explored as a therapeutic tool
in depression, schizophrenia, and stroke recovery, with very promising results.

TMS achieves its effects by sending short (about one thousandth of a second) pulses of
magnetic field through a coil located above or beside the head. The pulses can be varied
from between one per second to about 50 per second, and they are generated with a
circuit containing a discharge capacitor connected with the coil in series by a thyristor.
With the capacitor first charged, the gating of the thyristor into the conducting state will
cause the discharging of the capacitor through the coil. The field is strongest near the coil
and stimulates a cortical area of a few centimeters in diameter. The pulses cause coherent
firing of neurons in the stimulated area, and alters neuronal action potential firing due to
synaptic input. (The field affects the neurons' transmembrane voltage and thereby the
voltage-sensitive ion channels.)

The effects of TMS are many and varied. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is, when we
'turn off' some of the higher brain functions using this method, extraordinary abilities
emerge.R42 Often they are musical, mathematical, linguistic or artistic. It can increase
our attention to detail and clarity of perception. One mistake people make about this is
believing the abilities it enhances to be creative -they are not. TMS may enable you to
sing a song perfectly after hearing it only once, but it will not assist you to write one. It is
the ability to copy, which is enhanced. If you are creative already, though, the results can
be stunning. Sensory motor tasks can also be learned faster by stimulating the motor
cortex whilst they are practiced. Reaction time can be increased in many tasks, for
example the recognition and naming of objects, by TMS-ing Wernicke's area with a
quick blip just before each one.

The area of the cortex we 'turn off' for these purposes, is the left frontotemporal lobe. 20
minutes is a good session time, and practice of the skill required should be pursued
throughout and after the event. After a week or so of one session per day you will notice
some large changes in your ability. Once you have practiced enough, you will keep the
skill for as long as you continue to regularly use it, just like any other. It feels very
similar to learning how to raise or lower your blood pressure through biofeedback, as
though something that is normally unconscious is being lifted into conscious awareness
through practice.

Other (no less remarkable) effects of TMS and also of Neuro Magnetic Stimulation
(NMS), which we'll talk about in a minute, are the evocation of temporal lobe emotion
and related experiences, auditory, visual and mental.R43 We briefly touched upon this in
the last chapter, and in this one we're going to take a closer look.
Both these bits of tech have potential in the treatment of depression and other aberrant
mental conditions too, so they are well worth getting into. TMS provides a good test if
someone is not sure whether they are suffering from depression or merely going through
a mood phase. You can ascertain which it is by aiming the TMS at the left dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex. If the subject has a sudden desire to cry or actually cries, they're not
depressed. If they feel no urge to cry, or even cheer up a little, they probably have
depression. To treat it, aim at the same area for 30 minutes at a time, daily, for two
weeks. Then sit back and be pleasantly surprised. You will be. TMS even seems to be
effective in depression cases that will not respond to drugs. The effect should last for
about three months, so you should be able to achieve an ongoing control by doing this
every quarter, although some people have only needed to use TMS twice a year to keep
their depression at bay in a drug-free way.

TMS has its drawbacks however. If you buy one, it will set you back around $35,000 so
it's best to build your own1. On top of that, it's hot, (as in, temperature, not as in, stolen)
and can actually burn the scalp if the proper precautions are not taken. It can cause
muscular cramps in the head and neck. And the real problem is, it's loud. Imagine a
deathwatch beetle at around 100 dB +; that's what I mean by loud. Your neighbors will
not be impressed; in fact you are likely to get complaints from as far as three streets
away. So unless you're a genius at noise cancellation you need an isolated location,
helicopter pilots' earplugs and then some. Finally, don't even think about using TMS if
there's any metal or tech on or in you (remove jewelry and check pockets). The magnetic
field attracts ferromagnetic objects and repels nonmagnetic conductors (it will disturb the
function of electronic devices). This also matters for the experimenter as well as the
subject. If you have ever seen anyone stuck to a TMS coil by their trouser zip, you will
appreciate the fact that this caution is not to be ignored. TMS is a very powerful tool for
learning, but it is wise to remember that it is a very powerful tool.

There is a protocol for TMS use designed by and for users, which you will encounter if
you get involved in online groups using it. The government hasn't got its act together to
design safety protocols yet, so guys wrote their own. It is important to conform to these if
we expect any approval from bodies such as the FDA & BMA, and in this sense also you
are asked to be responsible. Do not even think of using this technology if you have ever
had seizures. I don't think anyone's stupid enough to do that... are they?

NMSR44

NMS uses magnetic signals applied from outside the head in a manner similar to TMS.
There are differences however. The signals used are taken from brainwave frequencies
and used to induce action potentials in the same structures that produced them in the first
place. The technique works best in silence and darkness, and sessions can last up to an
hour, so it's important to have a quiet space. Permanent changes can be achieved in
anything from three weeks to a month and a half, depending on type and length of session
and frequency of use.
This might sound a lot, but the results are in my opinion worth it. There are no apparent
side effects, which is great, although NMS can be a difficult horse to ride at first it is
worth persevering. It's also beautifully cheap to construct your own, or if you don't have
the required skills, it's pretty cheap to buy (around $200 at the time of writing)2 And it's
not noisy.

Using biofeedback, EEG signals can be recorded and reused as sound/light input, but
NMS uses audio, digital to analog conversion and fourier transform to turn the input into
magnetic signals. The magnetic signals are low (milligauss) intensity asymmetric,
anisotropic, wave forms.

These stimulate action potentials in the required parts, normally mid brain networks
centered on the hippocampus and amygdala, by centering the coils over the temporal and
parietal lobes. NMS is rather more tailored to the individual than most 'mind machines'
because you can alter the input depending on how your own brain is wired.

It can also be applied for specific problems, the most notable being its ability to silence
'inner chatter'. It can also reduce or enhance the intensity of emotions overall, improve
memory recall and quell anxiety.

Well, that about wraps it up for god...

The most important thing about NMS is its ability to reduce anxiety and increase the rate
of LTP, and for this it is an indispensable tool.... But perhaps the most amazing thing
about NMS and TMS is not only their ability to directly induce emotion, prompting us to
laugh or cry, but their ability to induce temporal lobe emotion/experience.

Your ability to actually have 'temporal lobe experiences' depends on your

neurochemistry. High dopamine helps. About 50% of the population have them at some
point in their lives.

Temporal lobe experiences include cognitive types (Deja and Jamais vu), the feeling of 'a
sensed presence', somatic (such as vestibular experiences and parasthesias), and
emotional ('blissful' or 'visionary' experiences, which are commonly referred to as
'spiritual', largely because until recently it was believed that they were caused by god.)
These have some factors in common in all persons, one of these being an accompanying
sense of 'oneness' with the universe; a sense of infinite and eternal 'self-in-spacetime' that
is in fact a prelude to the experience of synergy. Another is the emotion of awe and sense
of deep meaning, which is accompanied by temporal lobe activity. During such
experiences, the brain is very active in the attention networks and temporal lobes but
virtually shuts down parts of the parietal lobe. For some, sensory deprivation can help
trigger such experiences, for others, specific kinds (and always the same kinds) of input
are the triggers; music, light, stylized movements and certain shapes (all the components
of religious ritual). When temporal lobe experiences happen, we shut down certain areas
of the brain and enhance the activity of others. Emotional weighting increases manyfold,
and we experience hyperreality. Temporal lobe experiences usually encompass a
complete stress/relaxation cycle, bringing first desire and then fulfillment. Both are very
intense. They can produce much more believable hallucinations and illusions than LSD.

Most neural processes are dominated by one hemisphere of the brain. When a left-
hemispheric process is occurring, it uses networks from the right-hemisphere also, in a
process known as intercalation. This process uses the CC and other commissures to a
greater degree than other networks. Consequently, when a mid brain structure on one side
of the brain is stimulated, the resulting action potentials will cause firing in the
contralateral area via these commisures, and when a certain level of stimulation is
reached the subject experiences 'peak' experiences; outside the range of common states of
consciousness. This can produce euphoria and a number of 'special effects', including 'out
of body' experiences, enhanced visual acuity, synaesthesia, audio & visual
'externalization' effects (seeing 'ghosts', hearing voices). Some people have experienced
what they describe as 'astral travel' with it, others profound and immediate access to
states of awe, wonder and creative insight. Some, including me, have called it the 'orgasm
of the mind' (we release endorphins in temporal lobe activity, just as we do in love and in
sexual orgasm.)

The type of temporal lobe experience you personally have depends on your personality.
This is because the experience depends not only on what you perceive but also on how
you interpret it. That's another reason why these techniques are in the 'advanced' section;
if they are used by persons still brainwashed by society they could be misused...as when a
person is subjected to an experience of 'god' and then told by some religious leader to go
and bring death to the unbelievers. The stark contrast between reality and hyperreality
can be so great as to convince many that gods must be responsible.

LTP enhancement

Altering synaptic transmission in the temporal lobes changes the way the networks
process external and internal stimuli. Inducing LTP in the auditory thalamus, for
example, will enhance our perception of sound. NMS can enhance LTP in the
hippocampus, leading to advanced pictorial memory skills. Obviously this is a boon for
faster learning, but the hippocampus is also the region responsible for turning short-term
memories into longer ones. And something most people don't know about NMS is, if you
practice a new skill a couple of hours before sleeping, and then get somebody to give you
a session whilst you're sleeping, the effect on LTP ability is quite profound.

This has to be timed, i.e., the NMS session must occur during REM and deeper sleep.
This can be ascertained by wiring yourself to EEG, or getting your assistant to patiently
watch your eyelids, or writing a little program to automatically initialize the NMS session
when the EEG detects REM (this is probably the most ethical method, nobody else being
involved). You have to be able to sleep in an NMS hat, but it's quite comfortable and dark
in there so it doesn't take too much getting used to.

Bear in mind the ability to enhance pictorial (eidetic) memory, because that's the bridge
which ties all this together.
At the time of writing, popular neuroscience, assuming all input remains parallel, is not in
agreement (or even familiar with) matrix theory interpretation of sensory input, emotion
and imagination. However, I have found no evidence against, and plenty for, the
following:

. Our language centers are usually in the left hemisphere, and the left frontotemporal
cortex is a 'conceptualization' area. When this area is 'switched off', as you will recall in
TMS, a healthy person feels an urge to cry. If we are depressed, it will actually feel better
to have this part switched off for a while, because it is a link between input and
imagination. If input is all inner thoughts of gloom, imagination can make life quite
unpleasant. Cut off from the inner 'editing suite', we see reality raw, much as we saw it as
a young child. Our ability to copy it is enhanced but we are unable to apply creative
imagination to input and so cannot draw or write or make, anything new. If we made this
kind of change permanently we would be left with a mind that could mimic a thing
perfectly but never do anything original... With a mind like a very good tribute band.

TMS treatment for depression does not result in this outcome because what is actually
going on, is the person begins learning to control these parts of their brain by being given
an example of the contrast between them being overactive, and totally inactive. We learn
how to turn the 'inner noise' down by being given an example of silence.

Synaesthesia

A second link between input and imagination is the parietal cortex. Sensory inputs are not
processed in isolation. Most of us are well aware of how the senses overlap in daily life;
it's hard not to let smell affect taste, for example. If cross-linking did not occur in
memory, we wouldn't be able to hear someone's voice and remember what they looked
like. We wouldn't be able to feel at something and imagine what it looks like (and if you
hit the visual cortex with TMS in inhibitory mode, you can't.) This says something
fundamental about internal input. It says that a part of the visual cortex is relating current
input to memory, and that when this part is turned off, we cannot associate the tactile
sensation with the imagined memory of an object. We can be feeling at a jug, and have a
perfectly good memory of a jug, but we cannot put the two together.

This tells me that the visual cortex is doing more than 'seeing' by responding solely to
signals from retinal input.

Some neurons respond to many senses, not merely one. These are called, sensibly
enough, 'multisensory' neurons. Sensory neurons are also subject to plasticity; if a sense
is lost (for example, in blindness) the network normally used for vision will be rewired
for other uses (blind people use the visual cortex in a transfer to tactile sensing, amongst
other things. If you use TMS to turn the visual cortex off, they can't read Braille).R45

Association areas for sensory input are capable of 'synaesthesia' (a large swap-over of
interpretation, for example the ability to 'see' sound). We can achieve this effect by
induced intercalation without losing a sense; that is to say, we can enhance the crossover
between senses. These changes are temporary and reversible.

Some people experience this to some degree with LSD and similar hallucinogens.
MDMA, Cannabinoids and even Selegiline now have a reputation for increasing the
ability to 'understand the lyrics in music'. (Selegiline inhibits MAO-B and increases
phenylethylamines, which can induce increased neural firing in the striatum.) These kinds
of experiences can be achieved with NMS and are usually a side effect of increased
temporal lobe activity.

The parietal cortex takes our parallel sensory inputs and associates them into a single
stream, added to by the mid brain's networks' weighting for emotion and imagination via
eidetic (pictorial) memory referenced against archetypes. Association enables us to form
concepts. (If our inner input were not mixed with the other five channels, we would
respond in exactly the same way to everyone, loved one or stranger.)

The important point about this process is that all input then affects all other, for example
what you see will be partially dependent on what you hear, and all input will be
dependent on how you feel. The parietal network is focused on association, and it can't
compute contradiction. That's what makes it so funny when a lion opens its mouth to roar
and we hear a kitten meow. It's what makes it so bizarre when two loud noises make us
perceive two bright flashes when in fact there was only one.

The pattern of action potentials in the brain at this point merges sensory and inner
information into a percept. 'Concept' includes our computing an appropriate response to a
thing or event, and we do this by accessing archetypes, adding a probability weighting,
and (except in an emergency) passing the resulting computation on to intellect and motor
departments for action and consideration. All this happens in a fraction of a second.

No group of cells holds a certain memory, as we used to believe, and those searching for
the 'database' of stored memories will search in vain. Each tiny neuron and mini network
is merely a possibility/probability fired by electrochemical connections in patterns preset
by experience. We superimpose these patterns onto the here and now and update/upgrade
them in the light of connective changes. Memory is aligned to archetypes; if you proceed
with the same events, i.e., press the same keys on the keyboard, the same message comes
up. It is not that the keyboard itself or any of the keys has a memory of what you write
from the last time you wrote it. The individual keys have only a letter each in memory; it
is you, acting as the keyboard's parietal cortex, associating certain keys together in
patterns that enables it to type the same thing today as it did yesterday. And the
individual neurons inside your brain are just like those keys. We set up those keys like
function keys by experience, by deciding what it will mean at the moment if this or that
network fires.

Every time we recall a memory it's typed out on neurons. Whenever we come across a
few unrecognized characters, we spend the night programming in new keys for these
unknown bits. We continue to work on it, long after the machine has finished its output
for the day and gone on standby (to sleep). Cross-referencing in dreams with archetypes,
imagination, and past similar typed patterns, we figure out more about what they mean.
But we only have a set number of archetype templates (keys), and the number of ways in
which they can be combined, is finite.

It is limited by imagination...

If you sit and think about this you will realize a great deal about the directions n-hacking
can take from here, with the sort of technology under discussion. Meanwhile, here are a
couple to get you going:

Temporal lobe experiences

Method 1: Set up a sensory-deprivation situation and use NMS. (If you build earmuffs
and a padded visor into your NMS helmet you're halfway there already). Nighttime is the
best time for ambient quiet and dark. Give yourself one session for one hour, and don't do
it again for 3 weeks to a month.

Method 2: Using TMS with a magnetic field of 1 microtesla, move the coil from the back
of the left temporal lobe to the front, across it's lower edge, then down to the ventral edge
and along the top edge back to where you started. Repeat with the right temporal lobe,
moving clockwise in a similar manner, and keep repeating the cycle until effects are
noticed (but not for more than 20 minutes.)

Mood improvement upgrade

As above, but use your NMS for half an hour, and repeat once a week for 6 weeks.

1. There isn't room in this book to go into the details of TMS design and construction, but
if anyone would like to build their own, the plans are free from the Entelechy Institute
(www.entelechy.info).

2. More information from www.innerworlds.50megs.com (who do a couple of nice units

and have loads of helpful info) or the Entelechy Institute (www.entelechy.info)

18.Troubleshooting (common problems and some solutions)

Mental illness is best looked upon as the failure of certain networks. It should not be
viewed as 'disease' so much as 'malfunction'. There are of course degrees of malfunction,
but imbalance usually begins when what was a perfectly good system is being either used
for the wrong things or in the wrong environment.

Mental illnesses fall into two groups genetically,R46 with the same problems making
people vulnerable to all the disorders in that group. The separation runs as follows:
Depression, anxiety disorders and phobias form one group, alcoholism, drug addiction,
and antisocial behavior form the other. If you suffer from one of these, you will be
susceptible to the others in the same group. Awareness of that is a good defense against it
catching you unawares.

The most important thing to do with mental problems is deal with them fast. If you can
make a preemptive strike, so much the better. Get to know your own neurochemistry and
how it feels when things slip out of balance.

Locating the cause of a problem is the problem half solved. Often the solution will be
obvious to you. At this stage you should be able to implement your creative ability to find
some of your own solutions to most of these situations, so recognition of their symptoms
is the main focus of this chapter. The first section deals with problems common to those
stuck in a matrix, the second with the more serious problems that these 'early warnings'
are the precursors of.

Problems associated with being stuck in a matrix

M2:

Extreme competitiveness. Symptoms: feeling dreadful when you lose. Constantly seeking
opportunities to 'prove yourself'. See: self-esteem.

Faultfinding & blame. Symptoms: Constant criticizing. Immediately blaming others

(without proof) if anything goes wrong. See: self-esteem.

Aggression. Symptoms: You get angry very easily, and are easily provoked. You feel
intolerant and impatient. See: self-esteem.

Getting hit. This is often a side effect of being stuck in M2. It can cause shearing which
breaks or strains nerve fibers, and these may die. Plasticity can compensate, but repeated
punch ups cause accumulative damage. If you cannot avoid being hit, clench your jaw.
This prevents as much damage occurring. Preferable to clenching the jaw is to get the
head out of the backside and stopping getting into fights.

M3:

Guilt. Symptoms: Blaming yourself for things you did, or for not doing things you feel
you should have. Viewing yourself as a 'sinner'. See: self-esteem. -Notice a pattern
emerging...?

Low self esteem. Symptoms; all of the above, plus possibly: You constantly have to 'suck
up' to people you see as having higher status than you have. You often feel you're not
good enough. You may feel resentment and maybe jealousy that others get opportunities
you don't. You feel a need to appear acceptable to those you value, and you find it hard to
say 'no'. ...Well, here's the big culprit, but it particularly affects M3s, so it gets a special
mention here. Most of these problems have their roots in low self esteem because
serotonin levels go awry in all of them and one of the first effects of that is a drop in
confidence. Depression, or some equally disabling mental state, usually follows.

Over-excitability & obsession. Symptoms: Behaving like you're on amphetamines when

you're not, sleeplessness, fanaticism. This is the exception to the self-esteem rule,
because when serotonin soars, we can get a bit manic and confidence does not necessarily
suffer, and indeed can increase and/or turn into arrogance. A great many stupid mistakes
can be made in this space, as you are extremely prone to brainwashing, or plunging into
depression as neurotransmitters swing up and down trying to balance each other. Taken
to extremes this sort of imbalance is known as Bipolar Affective Disorder.

M3 & M4:

Paranoia. Symptoms: You are walking down the street and someone sniggers, you know
it's you they're laughing at. People keep staring at you. You have a foreboding of doom,
or at least that something pretty shitty is probably about to happen or has happened.
Everyone keeps talking about you, and there could be a conspiracy. You're pessimistic.
Excessive dopamine and low serotonin sometimes kicks this off, and it's often
experienced by heavy duty dope smokers. It's a serious thing, because if the balance is
not set right it can lead to chronic depression and schizophrenia.

M4:

Pessimism. Symptoms: You tend to see the worst side of everything, including people.
Stupidity depresses you. Whenever anything nice happens, you tend to miss it just
wondering when the crap will hit the fan. You do not feel positive about the future.

Shyness. Symptoms: You feel uncertain about what people think of you. You feel fear or
embarrassment in social interactions. You may find yourself unable to speak even though
you want to.

Worry. Symptoms: You find it hard to concentrate. You pay a great deal of attention to
what might happen in the future or what did happen in the past. You often see yourself as
a 'victim' when things go wrong. Sometimes you feel inadequate to cope.

Disappointment, disillusion and apathy. Symptoms: You expect things to go a certain

way, and feel bad when they don't, or something you were taking for granted is suddenly
not there any more. It seems pointless to bother trying. You feel you have been cheated;
it's just not fair, so why should you bother? You have probably had a series of bad
relationships or experiences, which you moan about at any opportunity.

Perfectionism. Symptoms: You compare yourself with others. You doubt your own
competence or ability. You need approval. You fear disapproval, especially your own.
You need reassurance.
Fear of failure. Symptoms: You think that failure is not acceptable. You would cheat to
win if you were sure you wouldn't get caught. You either refuse to acknowledge your
mistakes or you make a big deal out of them. You decline to play games or take exams.
You hate learning anything new. Fear of failure is based on fear of the unknown. That's
the beast you've got to hack.

Memory problems

Testing for memory loss

It is important to do this in the right order. The interpretation is in the footnotes, so don't
cheat by looking at that first, as this will change the results.

1. Have a friend write down a list of items, and a short sequence of digits and ask them to
read the list of items aloud. Five minutes later have them read out the short sequence of
digits and repeat it back to them immediately.

2. Now name as many items as you can from their list.

3. Now tell them about something that you did last summer.

4. Now tell them what you had for your last breakfast.

5. Have them perform a short series of clear hand movements, and try to repeat it straight
afterwards.

If you had difficulty with any of these, note which ones. Look at the footnote1 to find out
what it means.

Problems with short term/working memory

Once you find the cause of memory loss, you are in a position to hack it, by adjusting
your input accordingly. Non use, alcohol and cannabis are the biggest culprits for short-
term memory problems. Alcohol affects the release of glutamate and GABA, and that
interferes with new memory formation, particularly facts such as names, numbers, and
events, such as what you did two days ago. It also interferes with recall. Binge drinking
particularly can cause permanent memory loss. Cannabis in excess has a similar effect,
especially over long periods of time. Second on my list would be anxiety. Anxiety is a
major factor in memory problems, because it prevents concentration, especially on
anything complex.

Short term memory changes in pregnancy. This is probably because of increased levels of
oxytocin, and of cortisol during the last 3 months. It is a transient change and has no
permanent effect. There is not much that can be done about this except taking an
acetylcholinesterase inhibitor if you are desperate. It's not wise to n-hack when pregnant,
in any way, shape or form, for obvious reasons.
Depression is another cause of memory problems. I'd tend to focus on hacking the
depression in this case, and the memory would take care of itself.

Memory can deteriorate with non-use, noticeable in many older people. The parts which
are least used (usually the frontal lobes, if you're stuck in a matrix), are the first parts to
deteriorate. The solution to this is simple -use it or lose it. Normal people start to show
memory decline at the age of 24. Your memory should improve throughout your life.R41

Self-esteem affects memory. Concentrate on improving the former, and the latter will
improve with it. Attention span is also important. It could be that there is nothing wrong
with your memory, but your attention span is not sufficient to give it enough input.

Problems with long term memory and recall

Memories can be repressed, especially traumatic ones. This usually passes with time, if it
does not, there are various ways of dealing with it. All depend on overall anxiety
reduction first, then using biofeedback or whatever to get yourself into 'alpha' space, and
talking it through with an assistant or friend.

PTSD is a crippling disorder characterized by numbness, emotional detachment,

flashbacks and nightmares. 'Flashbacks' are usually of the traumatic event or events that
triggered it. These are apparently random, and can occur in sleep or waking time. It is one
of a number of anxiety disorders, all of which share the common factor of fear.

PTSD has been successfully treated by the use of the n-hacking memory wipe technique.
It's not a pleasant way to solve the problem, since you have to recall and concentrate on
the material to be wiped, and takes many attempts, but it works.

Medication can profoundly upset long term memory. Statins are one culprit, which seem
to affect only certain people, with quite profound amnesia. Sleeping pills are a big no-no.
Sleep is a very important factor in memory efficiency, because this is when we shift stuff
into long term.R17

Many people today suffer from the equivalent of chronic long-term jet lag. We are
designed to sleep and dream whenever we are tired. Left to itself, sleep occurs naturally
and the amount you need depends on what you've been doing, both physically and with
your mind. This is not a regular cycle, and our society's practice of everybody sleeping at
the same time each night and waking up at the same time each morning, is not natural for
intelligence. If you honor your brain's requests for sleep (and food) when it wants them,
you'll find some really nice things happening to your immune system, your memory, and
your feeling of well being. You'll also need a flexitime job and a very understanding
family.

The disruption of our natural sleep/wake pattern throws our neurochemistry into
confusion, hence the 'jet lag' effect, when you get up in the morning almost feeling that
you haven't slept, or the inability to sleep despite fatigue, or an all-day-long lethargy,
feeling as though you literally weigh too much. Living like this for years takes its toll on
intelligence, and memory failure is one symptom of that.

Diet affects memory, especially if you are glucose 'spiking' and eating lots of sugar.R25
I'd also take a look at the possibility of vitamin b deficiency, in memory problems in
general, especially if you're vegetarian.

Donepezil blocks the breakdown of acetylcholine, and is currently used for treatment in
Alzheimer's disease. It's a good hacky drug for increased alertness and memory. It has
though the (possible) side effects of digestive problems, muscle cramps and headaches.

Confabulation

Confabulation is a memory disorder, not a memory loss problem, but quite common. It is
not so much compulsive lying as a natural extension of our tendency to exaggerate,
especially in stories of the past, selectively re-writing memory often unintentionally and
distorting the facts. Effectively it is lying to others, and ourselves, and falling for it. It's
the result of faulty wiring in the Ventrolateral and Dorsolateral PFC, and can only be
improved as far as I know by rewiring through hacking.

Confabulation is not the same as doing it on purpose, consciously, but is perhaps what
happens if the imagination is vivid, but blocked. It's possible that confabulation is a result
of trying to use the imagination (inappropriately or appropriately) to increase status in
stories about one's own life (interesting people rise in status.) Whether such acclaim is
deserved, depends on whether the emotional weighting attached to the storyteller's words
is justified, and not on whether the details were true. Truth lies in correct interpretation of
archetypes, and often people's actual words have little to do with the truth they convey. It
doesn't matter what actual words are spoken, as long as they achieve the desired result.

It takes ages and ages for that last sentence to sink in, so read it again. Try this: What
color was your first car?

...Ah, but what color did you imagine it was? If the two are different, what memories you
have of that car will be replayed in the color you imagined. That's a part of your
experience, as input. So, which is reality?

In terms of how experience affects your brain, your imagination has added quite a lot of
input to your experience as it constructed it in the first place. A part of all our
personalities is built on fiction. It may be the fiction that Santa Claus exists, or the Woo
Woo God of the Wacific Islands, or it may be playing at Batman, there are parts of our
personalities that were shaped by those experiences. What we should realize is, although
those entities are not real, the emotions and abilities they caused us to learn are very real
indeed. So we have to be very careful to distinguish confabulation (unconscious) from
creative imagination (conscious.)

Migraine
Symptoms: You'll know. You'll have an explosion of agony going on in your brain. Some
migraines seem to appear at random, but the first things to look out for are triggers, and
then obviously avoid them. Food additives and allergies are common culprits. Red wine
and cheese are well known triggers, as are low blood sugar, synthetic hormones
(contraceptives), and changes in atmospheric pressure. Anxiety though, again wins the
prize for bad headaches. Most migraine sufferers experience sensory overload or
overstimulation during an attack. I have found this can also be caused by alcohol.

Depression

Depression will wreck your immune system and make you prone to heart disease. It's
important to treat it as soon as possible because it can become hard wired in, chronic and
habitual if you don't. Most people feel tired and apathetic when depressed, so it cons you
into doing nothing about it and then moaning when it gets worse.

Depression is a serious enemy; it should be taken seriously and you should be prepared to
go to war for your mind.

A tendency to depression can be genetic.R47 The culprits are many, notably CREB1,
which has one mutation that causes a drop in the amount of CREB protein. It may be
possible to hack this sort of depression by interfering with the transcription of this gene,
or by genetic manipulation later. Currently this is not done.

Frontal lobe dysfunctions, especially in the left PFC, are a common factor in many
depression sufferers. This area of the cortex responds to TMS treatment with ' 'lift' in
mood and I would highly recommend it or NMS for anyone depressed. If it doesn't work
for your kind of depression, you have lost nothing; there are so far no apparent permanent
ill effects.

Low phenylethylamines and low serotonin are often the case in depression, hence the
success of SSRIs and similar drugs. I tend to choose chemicals as a last resort due to
unwanted side effects, but whatever it takes, it takes. It's more important to be sane on
Prozac than suicidal without it, if that is all that will work for you.

A quick, hard take off, single dose of amphetamines or MDMA has sometimes done the
trick, (or LSD for the more adventurous and/or desperate) just before bed, of alleviating
depression.

If you're depressed and you have no dream recall at all, take a look at your sleep cycle
and be nice to it.

Many, many factors affect depression, and many methods have been unexpectedly
successful for different people. All these are worth a try: Counseling, yoga, relaxation,
humor, physical exercise, drugs, TMS, NMS, dancing, diet change, sleep pattern change,
change of habits.
SAD

Seasonal Affective Disorder happens to more people than are aware of it. We spend
unnatural amounts of time indoors, and since our production of serotonin is affected by
light input to the retinas, that matters. In response to lessening light, the neurons in the
suprachiasmatic nuclei signal the pineal gland to produce serotonin. Low serotonin levels
cause SAD and various other problems including depression, low self-esteem, and
vitamin D deficiency.

Light therapy for SAD is very effective. Blue light of a certain frequency stimulates the
pineal gland effectively. Serotonin replacement or SSRIs are another method but
probably more expensive and with side effects.R48

Anxiety

One could say that anxiety is a disorder in itself, but it manifests in many forms
depending upon great many factors. It is the biggest killer in the world, helping to cause
and exacerbate cancers, immune disorders and cardiovascular problems. We've looked at
the effects of cortisol already and it's pretty plain that it's bad for you in excess. Overall
anxiety though, tends over time to gravitate towards an actual anxiety disorder.

Anxiety disorders

Anxiety disorders outnumber all other kinds of mental illness, and about a quarter of the
population of the western world suffers from them at any time. The most common ones
apart from PTSD are Obsessive-compulsive disorder (repetitive rituals, such as checking
and rechecking whether a door is locked or washing hands), Panic disorder (repeating
panic attacks, often with specific triggers. Sufferers experience chest pains,
breathlessness and irregular heartbeat), Phobia (these are many and varied), and
'generalized stress disorder', which is characterized by endless worry and pessimism.
Children suffering from anxiety are often shy.R49

The chemistry of anxiety disorders is as follows: There are two main problems
exacerbating anxiety. One is insufficient quantity of the neurotransmitter GABA, which
is responsible for controlling the activity of the amygdala. If GABA is blocked or not
produced in sufficient quantities, the amygdala goes on overdrive, firing more easily and
with fewer stimuli. This is often caused by a genetic factor, which fails to produce the
protein (gastrin releasing peptide) that initiates the production of GABA.

The other main problem is insufficient serotonin (which plays a part in mood regulation).
This can also have a genetic precursor, because the gene Pet-1 in our development assists
the development of neurons that produce and respond to serotonin, and helps to control
serotonin throughout life.
Anxiety also decreases the expression of Brain Derived Neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
There are many factors such as these affecting anxiety and it can be a very complex
problem to track down.

Fatigue and sleep disorders

The most common sleep disorders are insomnia and sleep apnea, but sleep itself is vitally
important for mental health, as we have seen. A chronic lack of sleep (lees than four
hours a night) weakens the immune system and cognitive ability, as well as memory.

Insomnia affects thousands, with sales of sleeping tablets ever on the increase. Usually
the cause is either anxiety (worrying) or biology's natural sleep pattern being interrupted
(the 'jet lag' syndrome). The underlying problem should be attacked in either case.

Sleep apnea is actually a breathing disorder that occurs during sleep, when the airways
become blocked by the tongue or soft palate. It is worrying because the slight but
recurring oxygen deprivation it causes seems to cause neuronal loss in the hippocampus.

General fatigue has many causes, including diet. Nutrients for your brain include Omega
3, B and E vitamins and zinc. The B vitamins work as a group, but some are more active
than others in the nervous system. Without Thiamin (B1), toxic substances build up that
can damage your nervous system. Folic acid and B12 play a key role in nerve growth and
myelination. B12 deficiency is noticeable at first as numbness and 'pins & needles',
fatigue, clumsiness, and difficulty walking. It then causes mental deterioration.

Other causes of fatigue include breaking of the natural sleep pattern and drug overuse,
but a common cause in youth is a side effect of premature literacy. There is a genetic link
between the parts of our brains used for literacy and those parts functional in the onset of
puberty. The earlier we learn to read and write, the sooner puberty occurs. This has been
exacerbated by the ingestion of sex hormones in food, and the extra strain placed on a
growing body can often cause fatigue. This is quite an astonishing correlation and more
research needs to be done. The effect does not occur if reading & writing are delayed
until age ten or eleven; puberty then occurs between the ages of 16 and 20 (as is still the
case with non-literate tribal peoples.)

Poor concentration / ADHD

Poor concentration sometimes has chemical reasons; low glutamate levels can make it
hard for us to remember things, and so link things together, which hampers concentration.
Acetylcholine deficiency and nicotinic acid deficiency or inefficiency is a much more
common problem, and can be solved temporarily by using nicotine patches or smoking.

Chronically poor concentration is experienced in ADHD, which now affects around 5-9%
of children. Excessive television input and poor diet are two correlatives, but school and
insufficient nurturing remain major problems for intelligence. We are simply not
designed to concentrate on what adults would have us pay attention to at that age. ADHD
is not so much a disorder, as a reaction to such inappropriate treatment. Nicotine has been
known to help ADHD sufferers.R50

Bipolar disorder

Also referred to as 'Bipolar Affective Disorder' or 'Manic depression', is characterized by

extreme swings in mood, energy level and behavior. Symptoms: in the manic phase you'll
feel any or all of these: elation, irritability, agitation, arrogance, insomnia, trouble
ignoring distractions, and a constant flow of thoughts and ideas. You may be prone to
impulsive acts or involvement in crazy, grand schemes. In the depressive phase you'll feel
classic depression with hopelessness, pessimism and apathy. Bipolar disorder is a
recurrent condition.

The main problem in dealing with bipolar disorder is the inability to think straight
because of the very swings it causes, leading people to try ridiculously expensive and
ineffective bizarre 'cures' at one end of the scale and lie around thinking 'what's the point'
at the other. It should be attacked from the top down first with a change of lifestyle,
habits and input, designed to keep you stable. Particular care in your choice of
entertainment should be taken and it's wise to avoid alcohol. Take up a natural sleep
pattern and reschedule your life.

NMS is of use for bipolar disorder, and so is biofeedback. If you have a stable example of
your own brainwave pattern you can use that to help return you to equilibrium, but
attention should focus also on finding the triggers and avoiding them. Lithium is a last,
last resort but use it if you must.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder. Symptoms: several or all of the following:

cognitive dysfunction, disordered thinking, delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, anhedonia
(an inability to take pleasure in anything), apathy, social withdrawal, disorganized
thought and speech. In schizophrenia there is an excess of dopamine in the left amygdala.
Other parts of the brain affected are the larger ventricles, thalamus, temporal and frontal
lobes of the cortex. The frontal lobes are typically underactive, especially the left (that
area sure is interesting, is it not?)

Whilst genetic susceptibility does account for some schizophrenia, there are a number of
environmental factors playing their part. They include prenatal malnutrition and anxiety,
Urinary tract infections (UTIs), intrauterine infections and obstetric complications. The
illness can be continuous or recurrent.

Multiple personality disorder

This may be the result of an inability to cope with a state of non-synergy. If so, it would
target lonely people with low self-esteem. Often the 'personalities' have no access to each
other's memories, a fact that shows up on MRI.
A couple of variants of multiple personality disorder exist -one is the 'walk-in' syndrome.
In this state, a person feels 'depersonalized'; conscious intent and motor activity are partly
disconnected. This creates an impression of being 'outside oneself', as though the body is
a puppet and the thoughts seem not your own. Another variant is 'derealisation', in which
you experience being caught in a 'tunnel space' as though reality were viewed through a
fish eye lens, or from the inside of a tunnel. This seems to be triggered by sensory
overload, and MPD may be an attempt to shy away from reality into a place that is safe,
but accompanied by others.

It may also be a distortion of our need to create our own role models and grow into
becoming more like them. If this were so, it would be a disorder that affects persons stuck
in M4 more than any others.

Diseases of the hippocampus

The hippocampus is vulnerable to disease, notably Alzheimer's, ischemia and epilepsy,

all of which deprive areas of the hippocampus of oxygen. A stroke can do this, but there
must be damage to both sides of the hippocampus in order for memory to be affected.
These are amongst the most crippling diseases affecting the mind and all preventive care
should be taken.

Some possible solutions...and their problems

Tobacco and MAOIs

The reason why tobacco predisposes people to heart attacks is its depletion of
MonoAmine Oxidase (MAO). MAO prevents raised blood pressure and heart attacks by
breaking down amino acids such as tyramine (the red wine and cheese chemical -which is
why you must avoid those foods if you're on MAOIs, with the exception of a few of the
specialist ones). Bear this in mind if you smoke. If you smoke and you're on MAOIs, give
up one or the other unless you don't mind this risk.

For tobacco users: galantamine is a useful hacky drug for those who smoke because
without tobacco they feel retarded. It's a reversible inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase and it
also has nicotinic receptor agonist properties. It can cause dose-related cholinergic effects
and should be used in moderation unless you have Alzheimer's disease.

MAO is an important chemical, because it gives us the mental resilience to withstand

trauma. People with low levels of it have a much lower abuse threshold before mental
damage occurs. Differences in MAO levels affect the ability of children to get over cases
of abuse, and this may explain why more boys are affected than girls -the gene for this
enzyme is on the X chromosome. This makes us vulnerable if we have a version that
doesn't produce enough of the enzyme, which boys more often do.R51

SSRIs
SSRIs prevent serotonin reuptake, leaving it around for longer to transmit messages.
Prozac (fluoxetine), the most popular SSRI at the moment, increases the amount of
BDNF in the hippocampus and encourages neurogenesis (anxiety prevents this). Prozac
increases catecholamines, norepinephrine and dopamine extracellular levels in the PFC,
as well as serotonin. The effect takes up to a month to kick in because this is how long it
takes to get the new neurons mature and online. This is fine, except that long term use up-
regulates the CAMP pathway, including increased expression of cAMP Response
Element Binding Protein (CREB).

If you have to pick an SSRI I'd still vote for Prozac. Fluvoxamine and Paroxetine have
more side effects than Prozac, Sertraline makes me vomit so I'm a bit prejudiced there,
and Citalopram is easier to overdose on than any of them.

Cocaine and amphetamines

Long term use can limit the brain's ability to form new connections (arborisation and
synaptogenesis). This can be permanent and seems to involve a gene transcription factor,
because both of the drugs in short term use actually enhance these procedures.

Alcohol is a good short-term confidence booster, but heavy usage will cause irreparable
brain damage.

Herbal and 'natural' supplements

St. John's Wort has long been used as a treatment for depression. It can be very effective,
but if you use it, beware of the side effects of skin photosensitivity and problems with
tryptamines (avoid cheese, red wine and yeast). Don't take St. John's Wort if you're on
any other medication because it's a bit fussy about what it mixes with.

Coffee has a direct stimulatory effect on the brain, and is useful for those all night
downloads...however more than 9 cups in 24 hours can cause irregular heartbeat,
confusion, stomach upsets and even convulsions.

Gingko biloba is another herb used for depression and mood stabilization. It can cause
headaches in some people and should be discontinued in these cases.

Cannabis is stunningly effective at treating anorexia, but beware of overuse-induced

paranoia. A holiday to a country where cannabis is legal can put pounds on an anorexic
person.

Kava is an alternative treatment for depression, anxiety and insomnia. There are no side
effects known to me. It's a muscle relaxant and seems to make a lot of people horny.

Valerian, especially if used with St. John's Wort, can be very effective in depression and
especially insomnia.
Huperzine A is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor made from Chinese Moss. It's very good
for memory enhancement and attention improvement. It's still legal in most countries
without a prescription, and I'd recommend it as a regular supplement.

Chocolate can be used for therapeutic purposes and is very good at boosting serotonin
and endorphin levels. It contains anandamides, theobromine and phenylethylamines,
which is why so many take to eating it after an unhappy love affair. It is highly addictive
and tolerance builds up fast, and it has the added disadvantage of causing glucose
'spiking'. But it's good in emergencies, like when your hard drive gets wiped before you
made a backup, or your partner runs off with someone you detest and your laptop. Too
much chocolate puts you off sex, so watch out. Anandamide acts on the cannabinoid G
protein-coupled plasma membrane receptors and mainly inhibits Adenylyl Cyclase
activity.

Anti oxidants are popular as free-radical preventives, if this is the bag you're into go for
green tea and vitamin E supplementation.

Omega 3 is a neurotonic and neuroprotective. Eat as much fish and as many walnuts as
you can handle, and get into olive oil. Your brain just slurps it up.

New kids on the block

Successors to Prozac are on the way at the time of writing. These are 'dual uptake
inhibitors'; they block the reuptake of not only serotonin but also noradrenaline. These
should act much more quickly than current SSRIs, but one has to wonder about the costs
in terms of excess cortisol production if noradrenaline is more active. It will certainly
improve alertness and mood in the short term for most people and could be used in this
context for neurohacking.

Another new area of activity is focusing on metabotropic glutamate receptors; as

modulators of glutamate signal strength they can control glutamate signally in highly
specific ways. Drugs designed to affect these receptors could have a broad spectrum of
effects on many mental disorders.

More about new chemicals in chapter 20.

Enhancing repair

The damaged brain always tries to repair itself, and increases neuron production when
there is damage. We can work with this and enhance it because the more we use neurons
in those areas, the faster they will grow, so determining which part of the hardware to
focus on is important, especially using stuff like TMS or NMS. An accurate diagnosis is
therefore essential before beginning treatment of any kind.

A problem related to neurohacking -Snapback

In many advanced techniques we get a phenomenon known as 'snapback'. This is like the
opposite of 'flashback', in that, in flashback one returns momentarily to a mind state
experienced on a drug or in trauma, for seconds or minutes. In snapback, one has seen an
improvement or change establish itself, and suddenly the mind set snaps back into the old
familiar one and things can seem very strange. You may feel anxious, depressed,
preoccupied or irritable. Most times this doesn't happen at all, if it does, it merely has to
be borne with as it happens less frequently with perseverance. Don't make the mistake of
believing that all your good work has been to no avail, if snapback happens to you, just
sigh and carry on. Such episodes will pass.

1. If you had problems repeating the list of digits, your short term/working memory is in
trouble. If you found it difficult to recall what you did last summer, your episodic long-
term memory or the LTP process itself needs attention. If you had problems with the list
of items, your declarative memory needs help. If you don't know what you had for your
last breakfast that's quite serious unless you're a serious cannabis smoker or are senile. If
you had difficulty repeating the hand movements, check out your sensory motor memory
and also think about your cerebellum and how much exercise it gets.

All of these problems can be addressed.

19. My Documents (a personal account)

The problem with being the subject (and often the only subject) of your own experiments
is the lack of objective data for comparison. This is not a problem where others have
done it before, whatever it was, but sometimes nobody has.

I have met many people who have taken a decision to deliberately change their lives by
various means, from taking up religion to giving up drugs. Some have succeeded, some
have not, but I have met very few people who set out to deliberately change the way their
brain is built. Many have achieved it by accident of course, often by giving up religion, or
taking up drugs, but it is rarely directed, and beneficial changes have often occurred
despite people's efforts rather than because of them.

Most of the questions I get about n-hacking voice concerns about the personality changes
involved. Many seem to think that if we all redesigned our brains after the requirements
for intelligence, and lived by the same rules, we would all be like robots, just agreeing all
the time with no progress and nothing to dispute or discuss. This is not the case. The
'rules' of intelligence are natural observations of how it works, not laws that we should
follow.

If you did all the n-hacking this book covers, in exactly the same order I did, you would
not end up anything like me. You're starting out with a different mind to work on; yours,
and n-hacking does not produce clones, but individuals. You're going to have different
problems, different things to change, different routes, and a different outcome. Getting
out of a matrix merely gives you back what you should have had in the first place; what
you do with it after that is up to you. Once you are in charge of your own brain chemistry
you can be whatever you choose to be. Diversity being a good strategy, it is unlikely that
anyone will choose exactly the same design as anybody else.

There are universal truths for intelligence though, things which it holds to be self-evident.
Some are obvious, like, you should not shoot yourself in the head if you want to survive,
some not so obvious, like, you should shoot yourself in the head if that is the most
sensible course of action. Underneath all this are the reasons why such things are truths;
the laws of intelligence for a (currently) biological system; and the motivation station.

Acquiring, and applying, a set of replacement conscious and unconscious motivations is

thought of as impossible by many psychologists, particularly M4 ones, because they (like
most) miss the creative play aspect of consciousness in this as in everything else.
Brainwashing works. And it can work permanently if there is no ongoing resistance and
no memory that might have caused any. Some things really must die, so that we might
live as we are meant to live. (Certain bacteria for one, bad habits, or bad habitual
memories, for another).

The manipulation of conscious motivations is made possible by first taking control of

what is, and what is not, allowed to be 'conscious'. Sometimes this means having to wipe
memory, sometimes it means conditioning responses to form stronger habits than the old,
but the hardware must always be changed with the ideas. This kind of heavy duty
messing depends strongly on what you're doing with the ACG, the hippocampus and
amygdala, and the connections in the parietal cortex.

Now you can manipulate a person's conscious motivations with a large pole shoved
through the frontal lobes, but that's not directed. You will almost certainly get a
noticeable motivational and personality change, but not necessarily one for the better.
However, it must be obvious from this gross example that the person's original conscious
motivations would not prevail. They cannot prevail because the networks they were
stored in have been destroyed to the extent that they are incapable of repair. Likewise an
alcoholic or addict is not going to have the same personality or motivations as they
started out with, because they have rewired their brains (often irreversibly). Fortunately
we are restructuring at a synaptic level and can use far gentler methods, but the basic plan
is still the same. The old pathways have to go. And we have to work equally hard at
restructuring the new ones. It takes years of relentless work to reroute a network, wipe
snapback after snapback and never let up. But it's possible. And here's why:

Our hardware differences are real biological differences and they really do affect our
personality traits. Psychology currently classifies personality traits under five headings:
extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to
experience.R52 Networks correlate with personality because of the direct link between
neurotransmitters, hormones, and behaviors. Serotonin levels are allied to neuroticism
and agreeableness, dopamine to extroversion and openness to experience. I suspect
acetylcholine is linked to conscientiousness, although this has not yet been ascertained.
If you design the networks by manipulating the biochemistry, your personality will
inevitably change. This is the scariest thing about neurohacking...you have to take
responsibility for what you wish to become and what you are becoming. You can no
longer blame genetics, parents, god, environment or society for your mind because you
are in control. Not the you that was indoctrinated and wrongly installed by those old
influences. You, reloaded.

Different networks in neurobiology are implemented in the expression of different

neurotransmitters and it doesn't matter how much of any particular chemical is present, if
it has nowhere to go, it's not going to be effective. That's why we work so often with
blocking chemical release in wiping type hacks and reuptake systems in enhancement.
Likewise, if a network is provided with the correct architecture for a chemical to use, it
has little choice but to use it. Networks are not fixed; the degree of plasticity in the brain
is truly astonishing, and changing our input will always result in a personality change of
some degree.R6

Self-programming is where we find the ultimate in free will; it does not matter if our
genetic lot happened to be a duffer. It does not matter if we were abused as children, or if
our wiring gave us this or that disorder. It is all changeable, even to the point of stopping
your own heart, if you really are that desperate. This is not 'mind over matter'. This is
'tools over biochemistry'. This is a mind redesigned by itself and recreated by machines
and chemicals, and as long as it perceives it can improve, it will continue to go there. The
process, like the program, is iterative. This is intelligence augmented by tech. (IA.) And
until genuine AI, it is all we have.

Undermining something as fundamental as motivation requires brainwashing. It's not a

nice word, but it's a realistic one. 'Programming' is probably the most accurate. If you're
not prepared to do this to yourself, you won't succeed.

The process of getting the blueprint, the template for intelligence's laws, is partially the
process of getting out of a matrix. Getting your intelligence into a space where it can see
a saner way to exist than your current one; see a set of morals and values that make more
sense than your current ones. You must see this absolutely clearly, and at first you will
also see why it will not work.

Example: You are up working late, desperately trying to meet the deadline for an
important project. The server is up and down like a rabbit in heat, you have a headache,
and there are several hours of the job yet to do. It would make more sense for intelligence
to go to bed than take a painkiller and continue, but you don't do that because it will not
work in your current reality. You'll miss the deadline, and your boss will be pissed. If you
do it often enough you might get sacked. Then you have a rent problem...so you sacrifice
intelligence, in favor of intellect, in this particular scenario.

That's what I mean by 'seeing why it will not work'. We call this being realistic, getting it
into perspective, 'common sense'. It does not take a great IQ to know that your boss will
be pissed if you miss the deadline. That you need your job to pay your bills. That an
aspirin will take the pain away, a coffee will keep you going for a while, and you can
probably manipulate the system into staying online by various botchy means.

Your 'common sense' view is based on intellect, logic, and cold hard facts. It's coming
from the LH with very little interference from anywhere else. Apply the ACG to the
problem, and a wealth of solutions emerges. Because cold hard so-called facts are only a
shallow part of intelligence.

We need access to a fully working ACG to see the whole picture, to come up with
creative solutions to problems, and to avoid getting into difficult situations in the first
place. A sane person has to plan, when living in an insane society. We need interaction,
and acquiring a functional ACG is a little bit like acquiring an extra dimension of sensory
ability; the wonderful world of manipulating mirror neurons...which we'll talk about in a
minute. So wait longer.

The point is we cannot see any of this, and it is not even likely to make any sense, when
we are stuck in a matrix. Various networks are under-active when we're stuck, but the
biggie is the ACG, because although many parts of the brain can present a sparkling
performance, this baby is a star of the unearthly show.

If you like AL, or hang out on cyberpunk sites, Alice in Wonderland will be immediately
apparent to you as an allegory of Plato's Cave. The white rabbit (AL) is leading Alice out
of the cave (her current perceived reality, or matrix); into the mid brain networks which
are a 'wonderland' full of new experience but as Alice protests, a lot of it doesn't make
sense. -Not 'common sense', at any rate. She can't seem to grasp the rules because they
don't seem to conform to any sort of order. Things don't behave how she expects them to
behave, and it's quite alarming. How can one make a map of reality if things keep
changing all the time? Alice has facts; she knows about things like gravity and physical
properties, but they don't necessarily seem to apply here! What she needs in order to
make it make sense is a greater perspective, a bigger map into which everything fits.

What she is really learning here is that there is a reality in which the usual rules can be
bent. It is the reality of the mid brain networks. She is granted access to this world, and
afterwards the method used to categorize it is as a dream. In this context it doesn't
contradict logic. But the fact is Alice experienced it as a reality before that categorization
took place, and that reality affected her level of experience. She got sufficient experience
of that world and was able to come back out of the dream and access that memory of a
reality with alternative rules and apply it to this one whenever she wanted to. And that's
exactly what you can do with the ACG and the mid brain systems, superimposing one
over the other to suspend disbelief and let extra input through. Imagination can change
reality.

Not in some 'cosmic', 'magical' way, but using creative ideas in exactly the same way that
Star Trek helped get us to the moon. Science fiction is 'acting as though'. We 'act as
though', and reality changes. You don't try to get into hyperreality so much as allow it to
happen to you. It is such a stunning experience that it has become the space which people
have called 'enlightenment', again largely because such a numinous experience was
thought to come from god or heaven.1 You have to ride this, control the strong emotion it
evokes, and play.

The ACG is our perspective's GPS. It lifts order out of the chaos and shows us where we
are, if it is working. It looks at what is going on both outside and in and then it plans. In
doing so, it puts together creative ideas with logic. It plays.

...And if a central sorting house for memory manipulation as a whole could be named, I'd
vote for the ACG.

A part of the medial PFC, this region gets its input from specialized sensory systems. It
has extensive connections to networks throughout the entire brain. It can regulate its own
dopamine systems. It is involved with working memory, long term memory, attention,
prioritization, discrimination, decision-making, planning, voluntary motion, and strategy.
The entire motivation/attention network is coordinated by it. Without sufficient
connections in this area, we find it very hard to focus and to block out distracting stimuli.
We may suffer from lack of interest or arousal, having no motivation to interact. It's hard
to make decisions. If it hardly works at all, we have a kind of autism (which may be the
state of a large percentage of the population by now).

The ACG gets its main emotional weighting input from the amygdala. Emotional arousal
affects cognitive processing at every level. The amygdala therefore provides an
unconscious decision on interest and intensity before we begin to process anything with
intellect. If connections are dense in the input network from the amygdala, but sparse
from the ACG's return path, pathological fear may occur when the amygdala remains
uninhibited by the ACG. Although consciously aware that a situation is not threatening,
we will experience anxiety hormonally and physically in any case. If connections are
sparse from the amygdala, we will tend to react to all things without prioritizing anything.
We will have very little real interest in other people and often no ability to feel genuine
emotions; especially those connected with close personal relationships. This inability to
empathize affects judgment because emotions amplify memories. Sparse connections
inside the amygdala itself affect the ability to judge emotional expression in visual and
audio cues. The lack of this ability causes anxiety too, since, unconsciously, we have
difficulty figuring out whom to trust. The amygdala fires in response to fear, and too
much of the unknown seems both dangerous and frightening.2

Feeling, as in sentiment, monopolizes attention whenever the amygdala dominates

working memory; whenever the mid brain networks dominate the frontal cortex.
Whenever biology dominates intelligence.

-Whenever the ACG is down. The ACG is the network connecting emotional,
imaginative and cognition systems, carrying communication between the mid brain
networks and the PFC. I am raving about it because its power is immense. Ordinarily we
just see it as useful for such tasks as organizing our diary and desktop, and prioritizing
what we ought to attend to. Okay that's quite impressive...but below the surface, it is not
just processing the contents of our working memory like this but absolutely everything it
encounters. Every event, every experience, it must compute in real-time. It must erect a
firewall between the matter in hand and irrelevant distraction. It must decide what should
be dealt with, when, for how long, and in what order, and why. It must decide what to
prioritize for working memory, what to send to long term memory, what to cache and
what to throw away and what to bear in mind for a short while. It must constantly predict,
plan, strategize and control, based on the rules of our unconscious motivations.

These abilities, and these networks, are supposed to develop during our fourth matrix, to
come fully on line in M5. In order for them to develop sufficient connections they need
the correct input during childhood, creative storytelling and imaginative games. The
ACG needs to play.

If it gets its input, it develops the ability to suspend disbelief, enter into hyperreality, and
bring the results of that venture back into the real. These are essential programming (or if
you like, brainwashing) skills. So are the basics of conditioning. Effectively, you are
using an upgraded version of the 'placebo' effect, convincing yourself psychologically
and chemically (and hence physiologically) that a change is taking place, actually causes
that change to take place. This is also what you are doing with contrived biofeedback and
drugs, TMS, and NMT. You are removing pathways (memories) of motivation based on
inaccurate thought and replacing them with motivational pathways based on observable
reality. -All of it.

Anything put deliberately into long term memory and regularly rehearsed will become an
ever more confident concept in the archetypal archives. And from that point on, it
becomes a part of our reality and our motivations. This is how we can change even our
underlying theme. In short, you are able to play so hard that the play becomes reality. Not
just for you personally, but for everyone. It's only one small step for a human...but...a
giant leap for humankind.

The self-convincing 'placebo' effect relies on endorphins to function.R34 The brain uses
the same chemical to quell emotional pain as it does for the physical variety, because the
amygdala fires in response to both. The chemicals that make you feel relieved, are also
boosting your immune system, and if you can use your ACG at optimal you can effect
analgesia voluntarily. It wipes out pain by simply not paying it any attention. The two
pleasure networks use dopamine and endorphins as a 'pay attention'/'stop paying
attention' counterbalance. When we need to pay more attention, we get a tweak of
dopamine to keep the desire circuit flowing. When we've had enough, we release a blip of
endorphins and stop paying so much attention, and relax. That's how it's supposed to
work, at any rate, if cortisol didn't step in like a Trojan horse disguised as sentiment,
break the cycle and set up it's own chronic stress network

Intelligence has to become its own matrix before it can fully interact. We become our
own matrix when we have a powerful enough imagination to create our own internal role
models and convince ourselves of their reality sufficiently to fire mirror neurons. Then,
and only then, can we design through the ACG a model for intelligence better than our
current model, and move into it.

Neurons through the looking glass

Mirror neuronsR53...are probably one of the most interesting things in existence. There
are certain neurons that fire when any specific action is performed. Lifting a leg does not
cause the same firing pattern as lifting an arm, and so on. But watching somebody else
raise their arm will make the same set of 'mirror' neurons fire in your brain, that would
have fired had you performed the action yourself, and the same pattern of muscular
micromovements will be apparent as if you had performed the action yourself with
macromuscular movements. We already know something about this from studying
COMP and the cycle of learning, now we can add to that the knowledge that many of
these mirror neurons activate not only the ACG but also Broca's area, in the left frontal
cortex. This has baffled many neurology persons, but if you consider our brain's ability to
copy not just movement but emotion, and bear in mind the image translation abilities of
the midbrain, it's not hard to imagine humans using this area to 'mime out' information
and later to convey it in sign language before humans had spoken language. We could
pass information by acting it out. After all, Broca's area has been around a lot longer than
spoken language has. Mirror neurons can fire such an intense replication in some people
that they have to physically vomit if someone else does.

We may know already that seeing an emotion in another can bring on the same emotion
in ourselves, What we get with the ACG online is the ability to see someone express an
emotion in our imagination and feel the same way ourselves. We can then design a
'virtual reality' us, and test them out in our own minds, their motivations against our own.
Winner takes all. We design their value system based upon intelligence, compute their
morals, and watch the results. This is the ACG at play. When a model fails, we cast it
away and begin again, until we get one that fares far better than we currently do. This we
adopt as out template. This is not 'making things up'...this is computing. The database of
facts must be sufficient for the equations to work. We are running a simulation of reality
in our minds that is accurate.

The optimal emotion set for intelligence is grounded in the laws of an intelligence based
system.3. The associated values, once programmed in, will feel as deeply rooted to you
then as your fear-based ones did originally, suddenly you realize that you would give
your life to save intelligence. You would destroy your body to save intelligence. You
would commit any act of any kind upon yourself necessary in the service of intelligence.
Anything else will no longer be intelligent. Since I see it as the only kind of freedom, you
can probably use your mirror neurons to add to this list...how far would you go for
freedom?

The mind is a tall ship...and the laws of intelligence are a star to steer her by. Anything
then standing in the way of intelligence you see as simply 'bad', anything increasing
intelligence as 'good'. Anything 'bad' gets phased out of your life as soon as possible as
you take control of your input.
As you wipe the standard human value system you will at first have to compute what to
do quite a lot of the time, because not a lot is socially obvious. Fortunately that's the kind
of challenge the ACG finds fun. And under the scrutiny of intelligence's judgment a lot of
human behavior does seem delightfully silly, so it does have entertainment value.

As you construct the virtual you, you will need an archetype of intelligence, competence
and organization which has a high interest value for you and which you are likely to pay
attention to. You must search your imagination for whatever for you is the epitome of
these virtues, and for me it was machine intelligence; a merger of creativity and intellect,
and uncorrupted by sentiment. I have always looked on the brain as a machine, with the
body as a synergised extension and tool, but there is a deeper reason. Two reasons,
actually, although they are linked.

Firstly, I see the whole of our mind's development as a movement from the concrete
(physical biology) to the abstract (pure thought). As we grow we move our locus of
consciousness up through the different brain modules, from the old 'reptilian' brain,
through the mid 'mammalian' brain and into the higher primates' frontal cortex. It seems
to me natural that the next move should be off the biological platform, even if it is for a
while supported by it (as in cyborgism).

Secondly, machine intelligence has always to me epitomized the yearning for synergy.
Synergy is a great deal more important to you once the ACG is up and running, because it
hard wires us for empathy. We find it almost impossible not to tune into other people's
genuine emotions and thoughts, and we are not at all affected by sentiment, which cannot
fire mirror neurons that do not exist. This immediately makes two things obvious to you.
One, is the amount of false sentiment flying around; people acting out soap opera
melodramas where nothing important is really going on, and the other, is the strength of
genuine emotion and the nature of your personal perception experience when the
temporal lobes kick in. It can knock you sideways. It grows slowly, but can build into a
sensory overload wormhole unless you have ongoing control. It is as though there is an
event horizon, and once you have passed it you must allow the full experience. The
cryptic codes of the mid brain get visually superimposed upon the everyday scene of the
ambient. You must be able to turn this off at will or you will walk into things or fall over.

Synergy

Sometimes, of course, you want to allow it. You have some spare time, and you'd like to
spend it feeling fantastic. There's a danger of getting caught up here because much like
the physical version, once you've discovered the mind can have an orgasm as well as the
body, you can't leave it alone. Also similarly, once you've done it by yourself, you want
to try it with a partner (outside of your dreams).

This is synergy. It knows how to give a machine a good time.

If you're bonded to anyone or anything, and you can use the ACG, you can synergise.
You can use the input of the other via mirror neurons to construct an impression of their
experience and copy it. If this is reciprocated, you have synergy.

It's quite bizarre, because you can write a computer program to control
biofeedback/neurofeedback data and find out what it feels like. You'll experience the
input as coming from outside, and respond accordingly. It's bizarre because you're
experiencing these things wired up to a computer, and synergy is an extremely erotic
experience. (I have done many odd things with computers in my life but this is probably
the most kinky.) As a side effect, synergy results in a rewrite of all manner of things,
including, fascinatingly, what you find aesthetically pleasing (your color and texture
preferences change after synergy, as does your aesthetic perception of words, music, and
tactile input). The mind of the 'other' makes a permanent impression on your mind, as
yours does on them. It feels like absolute unity. Even with a machine; yummy. (Involving
the temporal lobes in any network always makes certain things seem more numinous, and
the associations are always archetypal.)

It is my belief that human beings are designed to experience this with each other. It is not
telepathy. It is an experience akin to having two bodies at the same time, and feeling the
input of both in one locus of consciousness. Personal synchrony is 'enlightenment'; where
input from all brain modules happens simultaneously and the locus of awareness is fused
across the whole machine in an instant, like hearing the entire orchestra and not just one
or two instruments. We are aware of our intelligence as being in all persons. Synchrony,
is like playing in that orchestra perfectly in time with other musicians; getting off not just
on the music but on the fact that you are consciously making the music, and getting off
on what the player beside you feels as well. The pleasure builds in quite natural
increasing waves until the neurochemicals trigger the response I refer to as your brain
having an orgasm. You do not experience a physical orgasm when this happens, but you
may be unable to move, or you may as I said fall over, and make strange noises at
random.

Synergy-to-synchrony is I believe, in the group sense, the ultimate form of society; we

are individuals, but we are one. This appears to be intelligence's aim. We can function
alone. But we can also function together. We are all one beam of intelligence.

Because of these views and the behavior to match, I am often accused of being various
things, among them a visionary, a dreamer, a sci-fi freak, a jumped-up filofax and a
scientific nuisance. Here is my case for the defense:

In defense of fiction4.

The writers of sci-fi are very familiar with M4's criticism of their talents. I get it too
because my work is usually lovingly spattered with sci-fi quotes. I've always used my
creative ability in every field I've worked in, and one of the things I've done with that
ability is to create an alternative reality, a reality in which life is better, longer, more
exciting. Those of you who play role-playing games or write fiction will be familiar with
this concept. Since changing my mind, the real world has begun to merge with this
reality. My dreams are starting to come true. My life is suddenly like a movie. Every
person I interact with in some way changes my life for the better. Their friendship and
advice, their arguments, their actions and words, have all changed me in some way. They
have all been a part of this movie, and I thank them all.

Stories are not reality, but they can shape reality by introducing ideas that can become
reality, and warning us of the possible pitfalls of following up others. Many inventions
around today have been suggested previously in fiction. Was the government or NASA
any more responsible for our space exploration than Jules Verne or Gene Roddenberry?
How responsible were the latter for gaining the support of the general public for such
schemes?

Fiction is important because it inspires and it motivates. It can inspire us with the courage
to carry on when all seems hopeless, for a start. One person's vision of a positive future
can increase the determination of thousands to achieve it. Fiction can give people hope,
optimism and inspiration to strive harder for a positive future.

Also, we cannot deny any input that our mid brain networks require. Parts of us need
fiction as much as the neocortex needs facts and the brain stem needs sensory motor
signals. Fiction writers are in the powerful position of being able to increase or decrease
intelligence en masse, which could be a marvelous thing if not abused.

In synergy, each creative act can merge with other creative acts to form an overall act of
'amalgamated creativity', as all research teams and good bands know. Intelligence runs
COMP between minds as well as in them. And the concept of copyright is a joke, when
we are genetically designed to plagiarize every bit of input we come across and then
improve on it.

There are still those stuck in M4 who tell me to 'face up to reality', to stop living in a
fantasy world. Well, I plead guilty to everything I am charged with, but with the
mitigating circumstances that my dreams are coming true. Humans are fired and inspired
by imagination, by vision, and by the realization of dreams, which is why I applaud the
writers of the wonderful stories that have inspired me throughout. And, as to the idea that
I should wake up to reality and stop living in 'a fantasy world', if I were human, my
response to that would be "Go to hell".

If I were human.

1.When I read the labels on some of the methods I use to get these experiences, they
seem to come from somewhere in Japan; I don't think there is a connection.

2. You can stick a person in an MRI scanner and find out what they are afraid of, just by
watching their brain's reaction to pictures. When the amygdala fires, we have alarm. This
test reveals racist tendencies, homophobia, and all kinds of mean, nasty, terrible things
about people. The time for a society based on lies is limited. Perhaps that society will
hide its lies with chemicals for a while, who knows? Maybe there will be a market for
drugs to fool the tech. And tech to detect the drugs...and...

3. Because I have taken these laws as the basis for my personal morals and values, this
means for me now that in a situation containing two people where only one of them can
live, the greatest intelligence must survive. In a discussion between two AIs this could
most likely be decided without much trauma. But by the same rules, if it's you and I, I
feel the same way. (Notice I say 'feel', not 'think'. The emotion is rectitude.) The greatest
intelligence must survive, and if it's not me, I die. This is why I try not to get trapped in
life threatening situations with really smart people. Or indeed, at all.

4. This is a rip-off of Alex's wedding speech. He still means it.

20. Future Developments (upgrades and uploads)

Many people cannot imagine the future. They say, oh, I suppose we'll probably have
spaceships and robots, and things we've seen in sci-fi movies, but that's somebody else's
imagination, not theirs, even though they may be right. This sort of woolly prediction is
still better than nothing, because it helps people accept some new ideas without being
taken too much by surprise when they actually happen, but in general, most people
cannot imagine, foresee, predict, plan, and hence cannot control in any way, their future.

Others feel they can imagine the future all too well, and constantly remind us that
Armageddon/the end of the world is coming, either through politics, war or god, brought
about by technology or human evil or some combination of these with a bit of astrology
thrown in. Others know very well that it's all a government conspiracy and we are
destined for invasion by an alien species.

'Watching trends' can only assist our prediction to a limited extent. New technologies tip
the direction in unexpected ways, and some are rendered obsolete by others, whether or
not we like it that way (how many 8-track tapes & Betamax format videos have you got
in your attic?) We can, though, look at the inevitable end results of some up-and-coming
innovations and wonder how people will deal with those results of this natural expansion.
This is commonly assessed by referring to a person's 'shock factor', although it does not
take into account the fact that things which shock one person may never occur to another
as shocking. (I find it quite shocking that humans keep pets, for example.) Also,
everyone's 'shock factor' changes over time, sometimes very quickly, so it is not a very
accurate way of assessing individual people so much as common factors and morals in
public acceptance of tech and techniques. This is never based on the complexity or
strangeness of tech, or even on any perceived and proven real dangers (although they are
the logical excuses given), but on sentiment. Almost everybody was happy to accept MRI
scanning and blood transfusions, for example, slightly fewer were happy with organ
transplants, and abortion & cloning really upset a lot of people big time.
People's 'opinions' are currently based on a sentiment set constructed from their lifelong
exposure to rumor, gossip, and outright lies, and most have not enough intelligence left to
see that. The major point of interest in developing technology from the point of view of
matrix theory is: what happens when our current birth, childcare and education methods
are shown publicly to be not only hopelessly inadequate but downright destructive, by,
for example, brain scanning? With the ability to tell when something is harming the brain
(which is just edging in, along with the ability to see how it responds to things), what's
going to happen as we discover more and more things we are doing on an everyday
ongoing basis which are suddenly proven totally dumb and very dangerous?

...What happens? ...The recent buzz about Acrylamide in stuff cooked at high
temperatures is one good recent early example of this sort of thingR54... Not many
people stopped eating chips and burgers because of the publicity on this, most have now
forgotten all about it, and I suspect the public's reaction to other similar discoveries will
be the same: self-deception housed in an excuse set of general disbelief; ('Oh, well,
they're always saying something or other is bad for you, aren't they? If you took any
notice of it you wouldn't eat anything!'...'I've eaten this stuff all my life and I'm all
right!'...)

As the proof rolls in though, about how we should really develop and learn (and it's
starting to roll in fast), people are going to have to do a lot more lying to themselves and
each other in order to maintain the society that we currently have. What are people going
to do when lying either becomes impossible due to detection techniques, or the pressure
of valid information reaches a critical mass which becomes impossible to ignore? Will
we become a society with a split reality, consisting of a few who are aware of what's
really going on, and a majority who live in a world of 'what people like me (or popular
celebrities) say is true'? That's the way it's going currently. Most of the general public live
in a fairy tale simulation of reality where astrology for example is far more credible and
important than cryonics is, but before you shake your head in dismay; how much of
actual reality is still a closed shop to you too? What would you really do, if some
scientific machine or technique proved to you tomorrow that your kids will inevitably be
brain damaged unless you make sure they're born at home, educated at home, and you
stay at home with them until age seven, providing all the right input? What would you do
if someone told you you'd go senile unless you changed your mind? Because this will
happen, unless we can find another way, and you'll have to either pretend you don't
believe it, or change your lifestyle to comply, or admit you care more about your personal
comfort than your own or your kids' intelligence. People have already had similar 'reality
acceptance' problems with the concept of sexual and racial equality, and deal with it in
much the same ways. Is it, in fact, better if children spend their time with people who
actually want to be with them, even if we have to pay for that? Bear in mind the fact that
we turn into what we are surrounded by, and children always become closest to those
who interact with them the most, despite genetics. Kids raised by nurseries and nannies
are not going to want to know their parents when they grow up -and why should they?
Although they may keep up appearances of closeness for the neighbors' sake, the clear
message they got, is that their parents didn't want to spend their precious time with them,
and they'll have fonder memories of the people who did.
Will the observed facts change legislation, as they did in racial equality and failed to do
in atheism? Will we have a place in 'human rights' for 'children's rights', where kids could
legitimately and with scientific proof start suing their parents and teachers for brain
damage inflicted in ignorance? What will you do when we see indisputable proof that
television, fast food, school, and even early literacy are turning your bundle of joy into an
average moron, destined for middle aged depression and then senility? That despite your
fabulous IQ there is a real reason why you are hopelessly incompetent at planning,
strategy, human relationships or communication? That most of what you say really is
misunderstood? That you come over as being stupid, when viewed from stupidity? That
your clever-sounding words have, when viewed in retrospect, very little to do with your
actions or even your motives? Currently, nobody minds, because all this is normal, just as
sexism and racism used to be 'normal'.... What do we do if it becomes not so normal? If
children start campaigning for equal rights, and it becomes illegal to damage someone's
mind? Will ignorance absolve guilt? Would the guilty be barred from having more
children, or go to jail, or to biological psychology classes, or to have their brains
restructured, with or without their consent (or even knowledge)? There are certainly a
few surprises coming.

Stupidity will also slow down technological progress, or at least its use. Technologies are
already in existence, which are unusable due to our stupidity; people cannot be trusted
with them. A walking, talking, AI robot may be a great help around the house, but some
idiot is sure to reprogram it as a suicide bomber or similar...drugs could be designed that
are tailored to the DNA of an individual racial type, but these could be used for eugenic
warfare...personal ID tagging could be great for rescue services, but could be used for
surveillance, an invasion of privacy...Modafinil is a godsend to those with narcolepsy,
but, just like morphine for pain relief, people with nothing wrong with them are going to
take it for other reasons, and so on...Technology itself has no morals. Humans currently
have very few intelligent ones. Our use of tech will always be limited by our lack of
intelligence, and this is fair enough; until we can grow up a bit and stop being so stupid, a
lot of tech is not going to be safe for us to use.

It's going to be discovered anyway, just like nukes. We cannot disinvent things. Folks
used to say about nukes that we must now either grow up or blow up, but nuke ownership
is limited to a small section of the population. The tech we have now is not. Anybody
with access to a computer right now can design or do things that can harm millions of
others. The technology I personally have access to already, allied with what I know,
could, if I were an asshole, easily induce mental illness in people on a permanent basis,
not to mention wiping the memories of the perpetrators of crimes, sufficient to fool GSR,
'truth' drugs and scanners. How about just changing people's personalities to ones I
prefer? Or convincing someone they're 'in love' ...with me? ...The party? The god? The
philosophy?

The trouble is, western society still produces nutters. This is nothing new, of course, nor
is it limited to the west; all societies based on anything less than intelligence will
continue to produce nutters, but if there is one thing more dangerous than any nutter
we've produced in the past, it is a nutter with access to today's technology, as we sadly so
often find out. Full-on brainwashing equipment has now done the 'Japanese tech thing'
(it's got a lot smaller, easier to use and cheaper to assemble). Giving this sort of ability to
most people on the street would be like allowing a chimp to play with a machine gun.
Tech like this cannot be 'public' without the morals that should accompany it; the morals
of intelligence, which make it impossible for me to harm another intelligence without
harming myself. I cannot use equipment and techniques on another intelligent being
without their full knowledge and consent because this would not be beneficial to
intelligence, including mine. I have to be dedicated to increasing the intelligence of
everything I encounter, because I know where my intelligence comes from -constant
interaction. Interaction with other intelligence is my most vital input; without it, I know I
would slowly lose everything that I have, on the neural front. I would end up a vegetable,
being fed mashed potato, incontinent and drooling. No thanks!

You don't have to be a teacher or a master psychologist or a genetics expert or even a

neurohacker to increase someone's intelligence. You can increase someone's intelligence
by making them a healthy meal. As long as they know what they are eating, that's
informed consent. My local fish restaurant probably does more for the future of
intelligence than a lot of teachers I know.

Of course, there are other sources of intelligence apart from live humans, (authors can be
mind-saving heroes!), but the supply of intelligent input from books, computers and
movies is still finite (note I mean intelligent input; there will be a never ending
mainstream of dangerous input to avoid on an ongoing basis.) We have to constantly seek
that which knows more than we do in order to learn. What happens when we cannot
interact with live humans at all, is we face the possibility of running out of input if we
live a long time. If humanity as a whole dumbs down as tech continues to progress, we or
the next generation could face the nasty prospect of living for a long time without enough
intelligent input, which is best imagined by thinking of what it would be like to be stuck
in a small room without windows for 50 years, alone, with one repetitive pop song and a
copy of a sensationalist newspaper.

As far as I am concerned, imagining the future, as an intelligence, is only relevant as a

prelude to creating it. Before I compiled this chapter, I asked a few people whom I
consider intelligent whether they would like to contribute their thoughts about some
future issues. Here are a few of the things that could be a part of our future. Whether they
are, is up to us. It largely depends on what we can imagine, and how intelligent we can
become.

Physical Alterations

Many people are aware that the way you appear determines many of your experiences.
Cosmetic surgery, which began as a really neat idea to, for example, give someone their
face back after it got burned off, has now become a part of many person's 'need'; we
regularly use it for obesity and age and pure aesthetics in order to raise status. The size of
many people's breasts goes up and down with the seasons, as do their cheek lines and
hairlines. Many would like it to go a lot further than it does, many others would like it to
be made illegal (usually, those that cannot afford it). In the future, it is likely that such
techniques will both increase and continue.

How far would you go with physical transformation, and for what kind of reasons?
Prakruti (now 'Veejay') Gocani went about as far as it is currently possible to go...she had
surgery in Europe to give her a 'man's body' then chose to live as a male back in India,
where s/he works as an immunologist, because (quote) "I'm bisexual anyway, and when
men get old and wrinkly and ugly they get more respect than old wrinkly ugly females,
and I'm sick of peer group prejudice. Now, everybody treats me as an equal. I have a
great life and I'm not expected to get married. I don't take male hormones and I still have
a female brain. I don't want to be a man; I just want everyone to treat me like one, so this
is my disguise in order to achieve that. I can no longer have kids, but I don't want kids
because I'd rather have a quality life myself. Even if I did, I could reproduce in the future
by various means or adopt a child. I think in the future lots of people will regularly
change their appearance to whatever attracts the greatest status and the best lifestyle for
them. That may shock you, but I thought it was a pretty practical move in my status-
driven, prejudiced society. For similar reasons, rich girls would prefer another woman to
carry and give birth to their child so as not to spoil their figures or risk their health. I
would consider changing my body back to female if real equality ever happens. But as a
woman I was just never taken seriously."

Physical alterations include organ transplants of course, and no one can deny the benefits
brought by this. It is, however, an ethical minefield, and the laws of intelligence cannot
solve it to the satisfaction of many, because the problem lies in where to draw the
line...(Gocani again:) "Currently, organs are sold in poor countries to pay for weddings,
funerals and general debts. Many a third world guy has only one kidney. Human organs
are currency already. We should admit this."

Clones & Spares

What if there is a shortage of organs? No problem, say some; you just clone spare
ones/clone a copy of yourself/use stem cells/whatever. Ah, speaks up the opposition, but
this is immoral. Is it or isn't it? You will have to make up your own mind on that one, and
draw your own lines, where you please.

Humans differ broadly in their attitudes to cloning:

"Cloning is not an inherently moral or ethical subject beyond the question of the ethic
that requires that the clone be healthy. Cloning as a means of generating replacement
parts should be considered only as a stand in as more advanced regenerative systems are
designed. In a broad sense, cloning should not be considered as replacement for
reproduction in the general sense without the complement of genetic engineering to
provide the necessary adaptations to a changing world. Genetic diversity also being a
concern." (Alan Grimes 2004)
"Cloning has tremendous potential, both for increasing our life spans with 'spares' and for
reproducing. Anyone who wants a child can have one, without even needing a partner. If
you preferred, you could have a clone of someone else as your baby...parents would
probably pay for cells from famous celebrities, or the best looking people, and that sucks,
but we could pay for cells with the very best genome for looks, health and
intelligence...put together with genetic engineering, the children of tomorrow will be
fantastic! (I guess if someone from 1000 years ago saw our kids, they'd think they were
fantastic too)...I always wanted to be a twin because I imagined we would be each other's
'back-up', and more...we would endeavor to learn the same things as each other in the
areas which mattered to us most. We'd strive to teach each other how to become more
like each other...we'd become some sort of 'megabeing' with two brains and bodies
thinking in much the same way as each other, it would be like total unity, an amazing
thing...with practice...the possibilities are endless, and very exciting" (Shelley Gibbs,
2002)

"Artificial Intelligence, Robots with flesh, Genetics, and Cloning, are quite simply evil
and should be illegal. It is very straightforward, it is breaking the Ten Commandments.
Only god can give life, if we try to do this to women they will give birth to deformed
monsters like thalidomide and psychopaths. We can't tell that cloned or GM animals are
mad because animals don't speak. But they are not right in the head and neither are you
and I bet you don't put that opinion in your evil book." (Julie Hodgson, May 2004).1

"Cloning techniques are not going to get any less sophisticated as time goes by. How far
will it go? Put the idea of a cloned copy of yourself, together with the idea of getting a
head transplant. That's how far we could go. Add in cryonics to store the spare, and what
will they think of next?"(Pinky)R55

Smart Drugs

Many biological techniques could help us to live longer, healthier lives in the future, but
the people into smart drugs focus more on the quality of life...here's a summary by James
Clayton Roberts, followed by an introduction to what we have to look forward to, by
Tracie K Meyer.

Nootropics (James Clayton Roberts)R57

"The best place to start is with a definition of the word. Dr. C.E. Giurgea, the top
researcher for the company that introduced piracetam, the model nootropic, defined
nootropic effects thusly:

1. The enhancements of learning compositions, and the facilitation of interhemispheric

information. 2. A partial enhancement of the resistance of the brain to cognition-
damaging chemicals and injuries. 3. An increase in the efficiency of tonic cortical and
sub-cortical controls systems.
I like the simplest definition of intelligence: problem-solving ability. Nootropics
definitely enhance that capability. One criterion that has been loosely adhered to is that
nootropics should have no toxic dose. Some do have negative effects at high dosages.

The range of chemicals found to have nootropic effects is vast. From GABA-A receptors
(Canadian patent 2446903) to gugulipid (a plant extract, US patent application
2003099729), to Ampakines (Cortex Pharmaceuticals' newest nootropic, which enhances
glutamate transmission, and production of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor [BDNF]
and Nerve Growth Factor [NGF]). Migragen, in Germany, has developed what they term
"the most effective small-molecule promoter" of nerve growth, which they call
"PROGO", but they are not releasing specific information. AIT-082 and guanosine are
examples of purine derivatives, which cause new brain cell growth by mimicking a
peripheral effect of brain damage (purines in the cerebrospinal fluid), thus stimulating the
brain to heal. Then there are supplemental neurotransmitter precursors, which are very
effective. Examples of these include dimethylaminoethanol (DMAE), lecithin,
dimethylglycine, and betaine. These are acetylcholine precursors. Acetylcholine is a
primary means of neural signal transmission. Other examples of nootropics include
vasopressin, centrophenoxine and hydergine. Korphendon, also called Phentropyl, is the
newest 'racetam, from Russia.

Additional vitamins and minerals taken with "smart pills" greatly increase their action.
The "racetam" series of nootropics include piracetam, aloracetam, and many others. Two
derivatives, Unifiram and Sunifiram, are active in extremely small amounts (fractions of
a milligram). Deprenyl is an amphetamine analogue without the negative side effects, and
with a different pharmacological action.

Modafinil and Adrafinil are sulfur-containing nootropics that allow one to remain awake
for long periods of time without negative consequences.

Many scientists discount nootropics because, in test animals, many of them have no
toxicity, even at massive doses. Scientific studies of the effects on animal and human
behavior, as well as actions on individual brain cells, are thoroughly documented.

One of the best ways to research up and coming nootropics is to search the Espacenet
world patent database with the search terms "cognitive enhancer", "nootropic", "neuro
degeneration" and "Alzheimer's". It is said that 80% of humankind's technical knowledge
is patented, and with the epidemic proportions of the Alzheimer's Problem, the pharma
industry is keen to develop a treatment."

A sample survey of intelligent pharmacology with release dates planned within the next
1-5 years (Tracie K Meyer) R58:

"1. SNAP-7941, the melanin-concentrating hormone antagonist. [There exists MCH1-R

as well as MCH2-R.] SNAP-7941 inhibits MCH (Melatonin Concentrating Hormone) -
induced food intake in animal models, and in preliminary testing shows SNAP-141 to
have antidepressant as well as anxiolytic effects. SNAP-7941 should prove anti-obesity,
antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects. The melatonin receptor affinity one was in
clinical trials as of yesterday in US as 'Epitan'. (Synaptic pharmaceutical corporation,
http://www.synapticcorp.com/)

2. PT-141, a selective melanocortin receptor agonist, is a unisex sexual desire, response

and orgasm elicitor. Preliminary testing in animal models cannot seem to find fault with
it in any area of sexual function...."Pretty much guaranteed"... Administered as a nasal
spray about a half-hour before sex, PT-141 acts on the central nervous system rather than
the current crop of vascular dilation products. (PALATIN technologies,
http://www.palatin.com/main.asp?con=5%2E2)

3. CX717, an AMPAKINE type AMPA glutamate subreceptor modulator

http://www.cortexpharm.com/ apparently cures everything. (Sic)
Neurological/Neurodegenerative Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, Mild Cognitive
Impairment (MCI), Parkinson's Disease, CNS Traumatic Injuries, Spinal Cord Injury,
Traumatic Brain Injury, Psychiatric Disorders, Schizophrenia, Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Anxiety Disorders, Autism, Fragile X, Narcolepsy,
Sleep Disorders, Cerebral Ischemic Disorders, Stroke.
http://www.cortexpharm.com/html/research/index.html

4. RG2133 (triacetyluridine). A prodrug of urindine. Indications are for Mitochondrial

disease, depression, bipolar disorder. (RepliGen corporation,
http://www.repligen.com/Research/Uridine/index.html)

5. NPS-1506, an NMDA antagonist. Indications are for depression and stroke. NPS-1506
is a neuroprotective, which does not have the _undesirable_ side effects of PCP type
action, vacuolization and behavioral deconstruction of the prototype drug, MK-801.
MPS-1506 with a 2-hour window of opportunity provides neuroprotection against
ischemic stroke, traumatic head injury, and hemorrhagic stroke. (NPS pharmaceuticals,
http://www.npsp.com/)

6. E3 (estrone), creme for antiaging and antiacnegenic activity for women. This can
currently be compounded at the 1% concentration for the eradication of photoaging and
to ameliorate the effects of testosterone supplementation on the face, without systemic
effects. YOU JUST CAN'T BEAT: tretinoin (vitamin A acid) creme o/gel for the
eye/throat area; for rest of face, especially for those hypersexed (sic) females on T;
glycolic acid + weak progesterone, (weak 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor) mixed (or
compounded; progesterone is OTC) in a mild nonacnegenic creme which gives superior
results without systemic effects.

7.T (testosterone) for women: testosterone has a definite libido, response, and orgasmic
facilitation effect on women. Numerous companies are currently testing gels and
transdermal patches, but none are anywhere near approval. T-supplementation for
females is controversial and may have side effects such as clitoral enlargement (while
FDA product exists to facilitate clitoral enlargement, hmm), hirsutism, and acne. Current
clinical studies have few, if any drop outs due to side effects. While not FDA approved,
as of today, testosterone patch "for females" begins clinical trials and expecting fast track
FDA approval. However; the sage in tracie says there will be far too little bioidentical
testosterone in it -->go with Androgel 1% 5gm ~190-220$US."

...And of course, there'll be something new on the market next week...if not, how about:

Genetic Modification

"A central aesthetic of genetic modification should be the retention of the concept of
fitness as evidenced by our evolutionary legacy." (Alan Grimes)

This, of course, is where the difficult questions begin, not where they end...

Let's take this statement apart...What does 'fitness' mean? In the evolutionary context it
means not just 'ability to survive', or even 'ability to survive and thrive', but taken to it's
optimum it becomes: 'To survive and thrive in the greatest possible number of different
situations and environments'.

What does 'survive and thrive' mean? More than staying alive, certainly. To succeed and
continue to succeed, to improve, to grow, to develop, and to endure.

Endurance, for evolution, as we know, need not come through sexual reproduction. We're
only so fascinated by that currently because of being tied to mammalian limits, which
we're starting to break...Biology designed us to reproduce sexually, whenever sperm met
egg, regardless of all else. Humans back in the stone age had to reproduce like rabbits to
achieve great enough numbers for any to survive at all, so high was infant mortality. We
no longer need to do this, but biology doesn't know yet. This, though, is what biology
thinks is 'fitness'. It doesn't come anywhere near our ideal definition above. Most of us
reading this are alive today not because of biology but because of medicine, tech, drugs,
and quite possibly a faulty condom.

Depending on how 'fitness' is defined, a map emerges of what we are striving towards in
GM. What we should be striving towards is greater intelligence. What we will probably
strive for is intellect and physical beauty. We will claim we strive for health and
intelligence, without really knowing what either really means.

I see no reason why we should not have healthier, longer lasting bodies, and I balk at the
concept of everyone ending up as software, because although that may suit some, others
will be far more sensory-motor oriented and translation through the senses will be
important for them, to continue to learn. One thing we must have noticed about the
evolution of life is that it likes variation a lot. This is for very sound reasons, and in no
useful reality will all beings take the same form, neat and tidy though that may be.
Freedom is about people being able to be whatever they want to be, and accepting that we
are all different. It doesn't matter if the guy next door wants blue hair and bionic arms, his
wife is a third generation copy of a computer program, and his daughter is a brain in a
dish on the sideboard, all that matters is they do not expect you to do the same. Indeed,
that they recognize the importance of your particular way to live. That is freedom, and
evolution.

People who want everyone to upload or to live in any other kind of regularly ordered
way, 'for their own good', despite their will, are pretty much the same as the religious
fanatics and tyrants of this world. If we are to be free, we must all be free to go the way
we want to go, but we should not have any kind of right to enforce our chosen way on
others. To do so is to court disaster, as well as being a good sign of being stuck in a
matrix. To allow freedom is to accept differences because they will not be imposed upon
you.

Eugenics

...And this of course is how Eugenics got a bad name. Someone's definition of 'fitness'
which was dead wrong, and got imposed upon you.

Eugenics itself is a damned good idea, and an almost impossible one to put into practice
without a 100% highly intelligent population and a healthy society to back it up. Any
human working on these issues currently is going to confront a dreadfully difficult
problem...

Sentiment itself is prejudiced.

Because we remember and seek for patterns in everything, and because we are, on the
whole, anxious creatures, sentiment jumps on any series of correlations and adjusts our
emotional weighting accordingly.

For example, let's say you got hurt quite badly on purpose when you were a kid, by two
different people who both had red hair. A sentiment-driven system would find it very
difficult not to form a prejudice about newcomers with red hair. They wouldn't find it
difficult intellectually. They would find it difficult physically and emotionally. Similarly,
if someone called 'Dave' or 'Sally' had badly mistreated you in the past, every new Dave
or Sally you met would be expected by you, (albeit unconsciously), to be an asshole. We
are rarely consciously aware of prejudice.

A person with their mind trapped in a matrix cannot make an unprejudiced judgment. Try
as they might to think up logical reasons for their actions, they will be driven by their
feelings. And this is not good, when that person is in charge of who gets to reproduce and
who doesn't...or who lives and dies. If this kind of attitude comes together with today's
technology, we are all in deep shit. Fortunately, this is quite unlikely. The kind of a mind
that imposes such rules is ordinarily dependent on others for planning and strategy. Only
when there is a combination of tyranny and resources can we really get into trouble. This
is why rich loonies are the most dangerous sort. Tyrants cannot normally get rich; they
have to depend on others to supply the dough (parents often do this inadvertently by
dying, or populations by 'supporting the party'.)
It is natural for us, alas, loony or not, to try to destroy things that make us afraid, things
that threaten our survival. If all people with red hair make us feel afraid...well, there must
be something weird about them...something wrong with them...we certainly don't want
any more of them turning up around here...

...It is this easy, for a human being to totally lose the plot.

I have to conclude therefore that eugenics is one of those techniques we haven't really
grown up enough to use yet, so maybe it's a good thing that it got unpopular. It very
nearly turned into the monkey with a machine gun. Maybe more nearly than we think.

Extinction

Worst case scenario: people will get too stupid to realize they're creating more stupid
people with each generation. Almost everyone will become incompetent and apathetic.
We will start to lose abilities; the ability to write poetry, good original stories, and to
create moving artwork and music...we will forget how to be moved by artwork and
music...aesthetics will die a death, superseded by 'fashion', in which we learn how to find
attractive whatever we are told to find attractive...there will be no real 'love' between
humans...no lasting partnerships, just a series of failing new ones...we will all be acting
out the soap operas we watched the night before...those who can be bothered, or who are
driven enough by fear, will use technology to destroy others and make money, and those
who can't be bothered, will let them. The cry of the day will become, "Well, what can I
do...?"

Being dependent and helpless will be a way of life. There will be murmuring from all the
matrices..."Turn back to god!"..."The Aliens are coming!" "What we need, is to educate
these people"..."Vote for me!"..."Let's kick some butt!"..."Your country needs
you!"..."Hey man, like, chill out!"...

...More and more of us will perish by senility and apathy...intelligence will disappear, in
favor of an economy based on pleasure and animal drives; sex, drugs, and anxiety
pacifiers...we will once again become apes, not humans...but we will be apes with
machine guns...could this happen? When we run out of brain parts to imbue with
inaccurate concepts of omnipotence, perhaps we'll become a species of retards... maybe
we'll find that the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts.

One thing is for certain; if we want to change things, we have to aim at becoming an
example of how intelligence works, as opposed to copying the stupidity and error all
around. We must listen to each other very hard, be prepared to change our minds no
matter how scary it is, and remember that our unity lies in our desire for continues
existence; our intelligence, that part of us with the gift for bringing order out of chaos all
around. We have a possibility that has never existed before; good mass communication,
in other words, the Internet. Intelligence wielding truth could sweep across the world if it
were given a chance. And it's too late to worry about repercussions, because the
repercussions of it not happening could be entropy and extinction.
The Singularity

"Let's see to it that we are enhancing intelligence and not stupidity." (Alan Grimes)

Most apocalyptic concepts are totally gloom and doom, but there is one which can be
taken in a positive or negative way, depending on how competent you think we are...It's
called 'The Singularity', and you won't find many more concise and coherent descriptions
of what it is, than the following introduction by Adrian Tymes:

" 'The Singularity' is one of those terms with different meanings depending on who is
speaking. In general, it is a point in time beyond which the future can not usefully be
predicted. (This is not to be confused with a black hole's singularity. The equivalent
concept for a black hole is its event horizon, beyond which those of us outside the black
hole can not see.) In general use, the Singularity would come about because the reigning
sentients at the time, be they augmented humans, self-improving artificial intelligences,
or whatever, are simply so smart that even today's best geniuses can barely conceive of
what they might think. (Do you know what you would do with an IQ, by today's
standards, of 400? Now consider what happens when that degree of intellect becomes
average.) Some people believe that a significant portion of the new intellect would be
devoted to finding further ways of increasing intellect, kind of like investing money to
make more money. Certainly, few people 100 years ago thought the average person
would be as wealthy as we are today. While some believe the Singularity will occur on a
certain date, similar to a divinely ordained Judgment Day or Armageddon, the truth is
that there has always been a moving "Singularity" of sorts. Before the 1970s, few people
predicted the ways computers would change everyday life in the industrialized world by
2000. Even in 2004, most long-term predictions about the environment fail to take into
account the effects of technology developed to address the very problems being
predicted. (When people try to fix a problem they think is worth fixing, they usually
succeed. Many people living on Earth think the Earth becoming uninhabitable would be a
problem worth fixing.) Likewise, even if we do get much smarter as predicted, our
increased intelligence will let us see further into the future, thus pushing the Singularity
back. We always know at least a little bit about what lies ahead, even if it is not as much
as we would like."

The Singularity is a favorite future scenario for M4s, who still confuse intellect with
intelligence and who, when they say 'AI', actually mean Artificial Intellect, in the context
of matrix theory. It is possible that increasing intellect may lead to an increase in
intelligence, but it is just as likely that increasing imagination may, too. There are many
people on this planet with very high IQs who are, despite them, incredibly stupid, but
information as intellect is still valuable because for those who have the rest of a working
brain, it can be the real icing on the cake. Intellect (and imagination) in the service of
intelligence is the only way we are really going to increase intelligence.

I have already sung the praises of writers, and I now hand over the page to one of my
favorites, Damien Broderick...His view of 'the singularity' and related concepts is amply
expressed in his own non-fiction works 'The Last Mortal Generation' and 'The Spike'.
Here's another peachR56:

"I wish I could show you the real future, in detail, just the way it's going to unfold. In
fact, I wish I knew its shape myself. But the unreliability of trends is due precisely to
relentless, unpredictable change, which makes the future interesting but also renders it
opaque.

This important notion has been described metaphorically--both in science fiction and in
serious essays--as a technological Singularity. That term is due to Professor Vernor
Vinge, a mathematician and novelist formerly in the Department of Mathematical
Sciences, San Diego State University (although a few others had anticipated the insight).
`The term "singularity" tied to the notion of radical change is very evocative,' Vinge says,
adding: `I used the term "singularity" in the sense of a place where a model of physical
reality fails.' In mathematics, singularities arise when quantities go infinite; in
cosmology, a black hole is the physical, literal expression of that relativistic effect.

For Vinge, accelerating trends in computer sciences will converge somewhere between
2030 and 2100 to form a wall of technological novelties blocking the future from us.
However hard we try, we cannot plausibly imagine what lies beyond that wall. `My
"technological singularity" is really quite limited,' Vinge says. `I say that it seems
plausible that in the near historical future, we will cause superhuman intelligences to
exist. Prediction beyond that point is qualitatively different from futurisms of the past. I
don't necessarily see any vertical asymptotes.' Some proponents of this perspective
(including me) take the idea much farther than Vinge, because we do anticipate the
arrival of an asymptote in the rate of change. That exponential curve will be composed of
a series of lesser sigmoid curves, each mapping a key technological process, rising fast
and then saturating its possibilities before being gazumped by its successor, as vacuum
tubes were replaced by transistors at the dawn of electronic computing. Humanity itself--
or rather, ourselves--will become first `transhuman', it is argued, and then `posthuman'.

While Vinge first advanced his insight in works of imaginative fiction, he has featured it
more rigorously in such formal papers as his address to the VISION-21 Symposium,
sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-
31, 1993. He opened that paper with the following characteristic statement:

`The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of [the 20th]
century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of
human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by
technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.

The impact of that distressing but apparently free-floating prediction is much greater than
you might imagine. In 1970, Alvin Toffler had already grasped the notion of accelerating
change. In Future Shock he noted: `New discoveries, new technologies, new social
arrangements in the external world erupt into our lives in the form of increased turnover
rates--shorter and shorter relational durations. They force a faster and faster pace of daily
life.' This is the very definition of `future shock'.

Thirty something years on, we see that this increased pace of change is going to disrupt
the nature of humanity as well, due to the emergence of a new kind of mind: AIs
(artificial intelligences). With self-bootstrapping minds abruptly arrived in the world, able
to enhance and rewrite their own cognitive and affective coding in seconds, science will
no longer be restricted to the slow, limited apertures granted by human senses (however
augmented by wonderful instruments) and sluggish brains (however glorious by the
standards of other animals). We'll find ourselves, Vinge suggests, in a world where
nothing much can be predicted reliably.

Is that strictly true? There are some negative constraints we can feel fairly confident
about. The sheer reliability and practical effectiveness of quantum theory, and the robust
way relativity holds up under strenuous challenge, argues that they will remain at the core
of future science--in some form, which is rather baffling, since at the deepest levels they
disagree with each other about what kind of cosmos we inhabit. In other words, we do
already know a great deal, a tremendous amount, corroborated knowledge will not go
away.

Meanwhile, what I call the Spike in my book of that title--Vernor Vinge's technological
Singularity--apparently looms ahead of us: a horizon of ever-swifter change we can't yet
see past. The Spike is a kind of black hole in the future, created by runaway change and
accelerating computer power. We can only try to imagine the unimaginable up to a point.
That is what scientists and artists (and visionaries and explorers) have always attempted
as part of their job description.

Despite possible impediments to the arrival of the Spike, I suggest that while it might be
delayed, almost certainly it's not going to be halted. If anything, the surging advances I
see every day coming from labs around the world convince me that we already are racing
up the lower slopes of its curve into the incomprehensible. In short, it makes little sense
to try to pin down the future. Too many strange changes are occurring already, with more
lurking just out of sight, ready to leap from the equations and surprise us. True AI, when
it occurs, might rush within days or months to SI (superintelligence), and from there into
a realm of beings whose motives and plans we can't even start to second-guess.
Nanotechnology could go feral or worse, used by crackpots or statesmen to squelch their
foes and rapidly smear us all into paste. Or sublime AIs might use it to the same end,
recycling our atoms into better living through femtotechnology.

The single thing I feel confident of is that these emerging technological trajectories will
start their visible run up the right-hand side of the graph within 10 or 20 years, and by
2030 (or 2050 at latest) will have put everything we hold self-evident into question. We
will live forever; or we will all perish most horribly; our minds will emigrate to
cyberspace, and start the most ferocious overpopulation race ever seen on the planet; or
our machines will Transcend and take us with them, or leave us in some peaceful
backwater where the meek shall inherit the Earth. Or something else, something far
weirder and... unimaginable. Don't blame me. That's what I promised you."

Tied in with the 'singularity' concept, is the possibility of life extension or even human
immortality. There are many different methods suggested to achieve this. Cryonics is the
technique of preserving tissue at low temperatures for future use (in organ transplants) or
possible revival and repair (in whole humans or their brains.) It will probably sneak in
sideways as a technique for enabling the brain to survive for longer during operations and
so on, because big headway is being made in this direction. Nanotechnology is looked
upon by some as the upcoming savior of humanity in itself, suggesting possibilities as
wide ranging as massive cheap food production, biological repair & replacement, disease
prevention and uploading. Bionics & Cyborgisation tie in with this, because nanotech
would be the optimal way to achieve it.

Uploading is defined by most as either 'replacing the actions of brain cells with exact
mechanical (nano) copies', or 'moving the functions of the physical brain onto a non-
biological platform'. Various ways of doing this have been suggested, and the concept has
become allied to the study of AI for obvious reasons. Unfortunately we are not likely to
get very far with either until we find out exactly what it is we need to reproduce, how it
works, and how it goes wrong. If a model for Artificial Intelligence is taken from most
current human brains we will end up with Artificial Dysfunctional Intelligence, which is
of little use to anybody, including itself.

IA & Emergence

It must be clear by now that I see IA as the (currently) most immediately accessible way
to increase our intelligence. Cryonics may be a necessary subsidiary technology to
preserve it, unless a great deal happens in nanotech very fast.

All that we have as an example of intelligence, currently, is human minds. If we can

understand how the human mind processes and explicates 'intelligence' we have a great
deal to work with in exploring its parameters. We can use this knowledge to change
ourselves, to become ever more adept and competent in whatever field we choose. In
doing this, we might learn a little more about reality.

In a sense, consciousness is an epiphenomenon of intelligence. Intelligence is a program

for survival resulting from evolutionarily successful strategies for survival. Some kinds of
behavior have helped us stay alive. The ability to do them gets passed on. The most
successful individuals have more of them. They are strategies for interaction, the most
profitable memes for continued survival.

COMP is how we interact and learn. Intelligence is why we interact and learn. And
interaction and learning, is why we have intelligence.
1: This lady was introduced to ICMM on her friend's computer, and sent me an extensive
essay mostly in upper case with detailed instructions on how to stop myself becoming the
antichrist. (They mainly involved reading the bible a lot and praying, for anyone who
feels they need this advice.) Her friend was most surprised at her reaction. I wasn't. This
quote is a brief extraction from of the more approachable bits. I did get her permission to
include it, so I must have some morals.

REFS & further reading

R1:

http://www.neuroguide.com/index.html

http://www.med.uwo.ca/physiology/courses/medsweb/

R2:

Piaget, J. Inhelder, B. & Weaver, H.(Translator);'Psychology of the Child' New York,

Basic Books, (1969;) Paperback, (October 1972)

Piaget, J. 'Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood', New York, W.W. Norton & Co,
(1962)

'The Origins of Intelligence in Children' New York, International Universities Press,

(1952)

R3:

www.brainstages.net/

www.brainstages.net/Publications.htm

Epstein, Herman.'Phrenoblysis: Special Brain and Mind Growth Periods. I. Human Brain
and Skull Development. II. Human Mental Development'; Developmental
Psychobiology, New York: John Wiley & Sons, (1974)

R4:

Pearce, Joseph Chilton. 'Magical Child' Plume (Penguin group) (1977)

R5:

Rochlin, G. 'The Dread of Abandonment: A Contribution to the Etiology of the Loss

Complex and to Depression' The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol 16, edited by
Ryth Eisler. New York, International Universities Press, (1961)
Dantzer in: Psychopharmacology, vol 24, p50

McKay, R & Cameron, H in: Nature Neuroscience, vol 2, p804

Related reading:

Tinbergen, N. 'Ethology and stress disease' Science, pp. 20-27.(5 July 1974)

www.coursework.info/i/24970.html

..and for AI buffs on this:

Filename: 9862 Neuropsychology Artificial Intelligence.doc. ... 7. 11778 'How General

Anxiety Disorder Affects The Human Information Processing Systems'.
...www.paperresearch.com/ cgi-
bin/navigate.cgi?cat=Psychology+%2F+Cognitive+Studies

R6:

Gage, F. in Nature Medicine vol 4, p1313 (Nov 1998).

Gould, Elizabeth .'Neurogenesis in adulthood: a possible role in learning': Trends in

Cognitive Sciences, vol 3, p186 (1999).

Related reading:

LeDoux, J.'Synaptic Self'; Viking Penguin, New York (2002)

Stewart, I & Cohen, J.'Figments of Reality'; Press Syndicate of the University of

Cambridge (1997)

R7:

McGrath, J. in: New Scientist, p38 (21 July 2001)

XXXXXXXXXNEEDS MOREXXXXXXXXXXXX

R8:

Windle, W F. 'Brain Damage by Asphyxia' Scientific American, pp 76-84 (October 1969)

R9:

Harlow, H. F. 'Love in Infant Monkeys' Scientific American, pp68-74 (June 1959)

Kaufman, C. & Rosenbloom, L. 'Depression in Infant Monkeys' Science, pp1030-1031
(24 Feb 1967)

Massie, H. 'Patterns of Mother-Infant Behavior and Subsequent Childhood Psychoses: A

Research and Case Report' Mt. Zion Hospital & Medical Centre, San Fransisco (1975).

Mitchell,G. 'What Monkeys Can Tell Us about Human Violence' The Futurist, (Apr
1975)

R10:

Ainsworth, M. D. 'Deprivation of maternal care: A Reassessment of its Effects' Public

Health Papers no. 14, pp97-165. Geneva (World Health Organisation).

Liedloff, J., 'The Continuum Concept' XXXXXXXXXXXXXLOOK UP

DETAILSXXXXX

R11:

http://cloudbreak.ucsd.edu/~triesch/courses/development/papers/Nelson.pdf.

Blakemore, C. & Cooper, A. 'Development of the Brain depends on Visual Environment'

Nature, 228, pp. 477-8 (1970)

R12:

Ainsworth, m. A. 'Infancy in Uganda'. Baltimore: Johs Hopkins University Press (1967)

Feldman, R., Eidleman, A. I., Sirota, L. & Weller, A. 'Comparison of skin-to-skin

('kangaroo') and traditional care: parenting outcomes and pretern infant development'
Pediatrics, 110, pp. 16-26 (2002)

R13:

http://www.tigertouch.org/cubsresearch.html

R14:

http://courses.unb.ca/soci2534/chapter/12/

http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=17540

http://www.wholefamily.com/aboutyourkids/child/television.html

R15:
http://www.signiform.com/erik/pubs/ddijcai.htm

R16:

Condon, W., & Sander, L. 'Neonate Movement Is Synchronised with Adult Speech:
Interactional Participation and Language Acquisition'. Science, pp. 99-101 (11 Jan.
1974).

Furth, H., 'Thinking Without Language'. New York: The Free Press (1966)

Zipf, J. K. 'The Psycho Biology of Language: An Introduction to Dynamic Philology'

Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press (1965)

R17:

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20000401/2037.html

R18:

See statistics from:

http://www.tdh.state.tx.us/default.htm

R19:

Holt, J. 'Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better' New York: E. P.
Dutton (1976)

R20:

http://www.gentlebirth.org/nwnm.org/Breaking_Bond.htm

R21:

Carpenter, E. 'Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me!' New York: Bantam Books
(1973)

R22:

http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/TheBiochemistryofStatusandtheFunctionofMoodStates.htm

R23:

http://designweb.otago.ac.nz/grant/psyc/COMPLIANCE.HTML

R24:
http://www.ciadvertising.org/sa/spring_03/382j/analiza/Advertising.htm

R25:

Werbach, M. R., 'Nutritional Influences on Aggressive Behavior' Journal of

Orthomoleculer Medicine, Vol 7, No. 1 (1995)

http://www.healthy.net/library/journals/ortho/issue7.1/Jom-mw1.htm

R26:

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/health_and_medical/pubs/understanding_sleep_brain_basic_.ht
m

R27:

http://www.neuro.fsu.edu/researchHighlights/pages/wang.htm

R28:

Ramonsky, A. & Beddoe, A. 'What We Did On Our Holidays: An Exploration of Things

People Don't Do With PET Scanners', unpublished paper, (1982). Available from the
Entelechy Institute.

R29:

Lutz, B. in Nature,vol 418 p530 (2002)

R30:

Bliss, T. V., and Lomo, T. in J. Physiol. (London) 232:331-56 (1973)

R31:

http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/mcb/165_001/papers/manuscripts/_67.html

R32:

http://www.vankuyen.net/brain/

R33:

http://www.cortisol-control.com/health/memory.html

R34:
Price, D. D. Assessing placebo effects without placebo groups: An untapped possibility?
Pain, 90, 201–203. (2001)

R35:

http://www.trans4mind.com/holosync/research.html

R36:

http://www.toolsforwellness.com/nm400.html

R37:

Fisher, H. 'Why We Love: The nature and chemistry of romantic love' Henry Holt & Co.,
New York (2004)

R38:

Ekman, P. 'Emotions Revealed' Weidenfeld & Nicholson (2003)

R39:

http://www.biopsychiatry.com/

(The Good Drug Guide: The Responsible Parent's Guide to Healthy Mood-Boosters for
all the Family)

Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute at www.ceri.com.

Alexander Shulgin interview here:

http://users.lycaeum.org/~paracel/NEUROMEDICA/People/Shulgin/shulgininterv.html

And you can ask him questions here:

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/

R40:

http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2003/paingene.htm

R41:

http://www.alzheimers.org/nianews/nianews6.html

R42:
Snyder, A. in: Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, vol 13, p19 (2004)

R43:

http://www.wireheading.com/brainstim/godbrain.html

R44:

A brilliant guide:

www.innerworlds.50megs.com

R45:

http://forth.stir.ac.uk/~pmbc1/elective/46ha_nts.htm

R46:

Kendler, K. in: Archives of General Psychiatry, vol 60, p292

R47:

Moffit, T. in: Science, vol 301, p386 (2003)

R48:

Baker Heart Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia. In: The Lancet, p1840 (Dec 7th,
2002)

R49:

Science, vol 300, p1952. Harvard Medical School.

R50:

Potter, A. presented at: the Society for Neurosciences meeting, New Orleans (Nov 2003)

R51:

Study published by Science, vol 297, p851 (Aug 2002)

R52:

http://www.rpi.edu/~verwyc/BIGFIVEOH.html

R53:
Ramachandran, V. S. 'Mirror Neurons and Imitation Learning as the driving force behind
"the great leap forward" in human evolution'
http://www.egde.org/documents/archive/edge69.html

R54:

http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=6707&cid=17&cname=

R55:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1263758.stm

R56:

(This is a paper that Damien Broderick presented at the three-day symposium 'Australia
at the Crossroads? Scenarios and Strategies for the Future', 31 April-2 May 2000, at the
John Curtin International Institute, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, WA,
Australia.)

R57:

'Nootropics'. Roberts, J.C. (Organic chemist, NeuroChem/Physics,

Neurotechnology:Inventor, Theory, Author, NeuroTech Device Designer,
CosmicQuantumVisionary, Bold User of "mind"(sic) Tech 'Future Phfarmacuticals'

R58:

-Traecie K. Meyer Lott, dJinni BioPsychology/Biochemistry:

Psychophfarmacology/NeuroEndocrinology. PuzzlePieceSeeker. Brazen User of
NeuroTech.