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

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

The degree of this fear will determine our willingness to approach the unknown throughout our childhood. Our willingness to learn. If further shocks occur each time we try to learn, that fear will grow deeper and more difficult to overcome.

All of it can be overcome by intelligence however if biology's needs for bonding are met. That is why the greatest damage of all occurs when baby animals are separated from their mothers and isolated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KF12: Lack of full sensory interaction with environment

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

The evolution of biological intelligence

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

Biological hardware has evolved in almost a nesting system.

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

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

The brain you have now is not the same one you were born with. The neocortex comes in two matching halves at birth, and they are completely separated. They are joined together only later by the corpus callosum (CC) which starts growing at about the age of one and is not completed until around age four. Before this, the only way the two hemispheres can communicate with each other is via the mid brain networks.

Once the CC is up and running, the two halves have a direct neighborhood network and can talk about the midbrain behind its back; this independence is what leads to the autonomy of pure abstract thought. The significance of this genetically timed growth will become apparent as we progress, because there is something very odd about the neocortex. It is almost as though intelligence has plans...

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