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 Rene 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).