I say 'a' path, because there are quite likely several. Matrix theory is the one I have chosen to go down.

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

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

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

The brain has some marvelous abilities, and one of them is its ability to fool itself, and others. I believe that human emotion is learned in much the same way language is –as children we have an open-ended value system and are happy to learn any emotion. The examples given to us in all our interactions will determine what we will copy and learn. Those examples seen more often or those most intense will be copied more accurately. If we are only given sentiment to copy, we will copy sentiment; just as if we would eat bread and water if it were all we were given to eat.

Like language, the window of opportunity for quick, easy learning of emotion (or sentiment) is limited. The good news is that unlike language, once we have learned a feeling, it is reasonably easy to overwrite and erase the original. This is because of its weighting link to memory.

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

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

Attachment behavior and sentiment

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

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

Even when people grow bored with cultural achievements, feeling (rightly) that they are really quite shallow and meaningless, when they sense (correctly) that something is missing, because they are still looking outside themselves for the problem they can fall into the greatest trap of all; thinking of 'spirituality' as that missing thing in their life and going looking for it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

An interesting recent development is the current proliferation of 'tribute' bands. Tribute bands are bands who model or copy a famous band and provide access to that material for those who would otherwise be unable to see it live quite so often.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obviously, interaction is only possible if both parties have sufficient intelligence. If a tiger or a lunatic attacks you it is no use trying to talk about it. Run your ass off...and then remember not to go to places where violent animals hang out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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