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.

CMM REFS & further reading PDF Print E-mail

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Workshop - I've Changed My Mind

Written by Alex

Tuesday, 25 August 2009 23:11

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)