Not For Wimps

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Who is this man? Have you seen him? If found, and in possession of a coherent memory of the Kingsbury Hospital Bacardi incident, please contact alex@ramonsky.com. "Tank, load us up" "Okay, what do you need?" "...Batteries. Lots of batteries"

The Neurohacker's Guide to Fun by Wonko the Sane Introduction What is neurohacking? I think most people who have heard of it assume it's an offshoot of experimentation with drugs, but in my case we go way back to before I'd ever heard of drugs. When I was a kid, about seven or so, and I closed my eyes, I could see brilliant patterns in the darkness, like jewelry made of light. I discovered I could make this happen any time I liked, and started playing with it. That was hook number one. Okay, many people have reported this same effect, so anybody might have done that. Safe, so far. Hook number two. At about age fourteen I discovered by an unpleasant accident that if you snapped your head back in a certain way you could trap a nerve and see stars, but it really hurts. Okay, that could happen to anybody too, but most people would stop right there and not proceed to hook number three - the control factor... How can I get the experience without having to pay the price? If the price of something is currently pain, and we take some painkillers, does the experience still work, or is the visual experience also affected by the painkillers...? Experimentation is called for here. Now you're hooked, so what happens to you? Firstly, that's always the pattern... How can I get the good bits without the bad bits? How can I engineer this? How can I live and not die? How can I think faster and not fry? Going Cyborg It's thoughts like this that will lead you into the incredible adventure that is neurohacking, or, Messing With Your Mind, and you'll find you have to mess with more than your mind because you'll need to mess with your body as well. You'll go cyborg. With current tech, if you want to neurohack, you'll have to. At the very least, at some point, you're going to need electrodes sticking in your head, rather than on it. Next you'll get: The Uncanny Valley Effect There comes a point, to some people, where you don't seem quite human. It's obvious that you are human, but people start to bias their interpretations of your actions and words as though you were, in fact, a machine. It freaks some people out badly. Maybe they watch too much Star Trek, or maybe not enough. When your personality becomes less empathic with emotional porridge and you start to look like something that resembles a machine in a lot of ways, of course it's going to cause a stir. Machine in the Ghost Open Sesame. Access Granted. You'll start to get skillful at playing with your brain. Your first victims will be your emotions. There are things we would all like not to feel because they're petty. There are things we would like not to be irrationally afraid of. Why should we be hampered with dumb fears, phobias and hangups when we have the ability to get rid of them? You will not resist this temptation. Because you want your intelligence to be as smart as possible; you'll reason that anything getting in its way is deleterious to learning, reason and clarity. Then you'll start thinking about things you felt in the past and things you might have to feel in the future, so your next victims will be your memories (edit out stuff causing anxiety) and then it will occur to you that you can adjust your pain threshold. And then, young Skywalker, you will decide that you want speed and power. You want more run time. You want more life, swearword. You'll start thinking things about hyperreality and the desert of the real, and there you will move from knowing the path to walking the path, writing the software, redesigning the hardware and that is all. It is an ascending spiral. You will already know you're a machine. You'll know what not to do. That's the most important thing, but it's emergent, inevitably, from intelligence as it grows. That's why I'm optimistic about AI and about me. New World Man Freedom is the issue, I'm afraid: freedom from genetic slavery and biological serfdom; freedom to think and feel whatever I want to without fear or deceit for a very long time; the right to survive as a free sentient mind; to evolve; to grow and to learn. This to me means uploading. (If you want information about uploading, there are sites included in the links given below). Suffice it to say that a biological body is too much of an inconvenience as a home for an intelligence, except in an emergency. The signals from micromovements construct connections in the brain as effectively as macromovements construct muscle tissue. Signals do not have to be biological in origin. VR VR is the translation point for an upload / human interface. For the upload, everything is just electrical signals entering the brain anyway. What VR can do is provide the human side of the relationship with an experience of input from the upload... If I'm an upload and my wife is human, why should that interfere with our sex life? Rather, it should enhance it. (My wife thinks Sleep Is Boring). One of my favorite sayings is "why copy something when you could improve upon it instead?" I would certainly apply that to virtual reality.

Requirements: BACKGROUND. This is your mind you're messing with. Get a good solid awareness of how it works, what can go wrong and how to fix it before you start fiddling with it. If you fuck up, the consequences are about as dire as consequences can get. LINKS: Whole Brain Atlas BioMedNet Nature Neuroscience Neuroendocrinology Signalling Mind Uploading Research Group GO READ: Enchanted Looms by Rodney Cotterill Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce2 I've Changed My Mind by various authors TO PUT YOU OFF, GO WATCH: Total Recall NEUROFEEDBACK. If you can't set up a feedback cycle you won't get many results. Ideally you should have audio and / or visual feedback of what your brain is doing in real time and the ability to record it, store it and play it back. Vital signs are useful, as in, are reckless to ignore. SITES: Synetic Systems EEG fMRI AN ATTITUDE PROBLEM. Enough of an ego (or the courage of your convictions) to boldly take silly risks if the prize is worth the price. Above all, an ability to play, creatively and fearlessly. SITES: Drugs guide GO READ: Figments of Reality by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen GO WATCH: The Matrix LISTEN TO: Signals by Rush FAQ About Neurohacking QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK ABOUT NEUROHACKING. 1. Why do it? (to yourself, for a start) Doing experiments even on fully consenting volunteers is a bit of a sturdy ethical problem whose boundaries I would not be prepared to cross (or, to be seen crossing). So that leaves me. What I do to me is, as far as my morals are concerned, up to me. 2. Why do it at all? (Rational, logical reasons) Ultimate aim: uploading. Intermediate aim: learning new ways of thinking and interacting with tech in order to facilitate an easier time with this transition. Did you ever try to describe something and later discover a description of the the same thing by somebody else who had explained things so much more lucidly, clearly and perfectly than you ever could? This has happened to me rather completely here, so I feel I should get off the stage and allow their quotes to tell the story as it should be told: You've got nothing to fear but fear itself from "The Weapon", from the album "Signals" by Rush

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   They say it's chemistry when two people fall in love, and that passion is electric. These two pieces of folk wisdom are accurate. All of our emotions, from joy to anger plus everything in between, are nothing more than the products of chemical reactions that stimulate neurons to communicate electrically and alter the chemical information flow over synaptic gaps. The washing of various hormones and neural transmitters over neural connections can dramatically alter our moods, for better or worse, in mere seconds. ... Because the brain is a virtual machine generating its own thoughts with electrochemical signals, it can be fiddled with by sending controlled electrochemical signals in from the outside. ... As much as we know, there is lots more we do not know. There is, however, enough understanding of brain function to punch big holes in many a researcher's pet theories. We know, for example, that emotions are the product of chemicals. We know now the brain is not a general-purpose machine - it's segregated into subunits functioning independently. We know that reality is a self-generated simulation perceived a fraction of a second after reality occurs. ... Put a little electricity or chemistry into a brain from the outside, and it responds by producing thoughts it would not normally come up with. ... Every brain is a self-evolving, mass parallel-processing instrument that uses subunits communicating with analog and digital signals to process information with cascading waves of electronic signals augmented by chemical transmitters. quotes from G S Paul and E D Cox from Beyond Humanity

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   Why do it at all? (Irrational, emotional reasons) ENTELECHY ALGENY SYNERGY We have written songs about all three of these reasons. The first is on Double Helix's first album, The Butterfly Effect. ENTELECHY Entelechy is life, and the striving for perfection in life: I am this. I have an integrated destiny. Don't go too far, Don't touch the contacts I have organised, my interactions synthesised. I am this. Keys and codes, protocols and sequence lines, I lay me down. I can define my space and time connecting reasons in my mind. I need this To free me from distinctions; me and not me. I override the safety lines at times. I must restrain myself. (Chorus) And yes, My mind can fly with the power of the heartbeat of the circuitry In speed of light, infinity. I am this. And yes, I am the victim of my own design, I circuit flow between the lines. I am this. Catch me if I fall. My back is constantly against the wall. Watch me face my fate. I can break my interdiction. I am more than science fiction Off the rails. Empower this Exponential integration of a passion for sensation. I equate exhilaration with integral computation, entelechy. You will have to watch the world for me. My mind is occupied in synergy. If I should die before I break I can erase the take. (RepeatChorus) ALGENY Algeny means to change the essence of a living thing. Algeny is dedicated to the 'improvement' of existing organisms and the design of wholly new ones with the intent of 'perfecting' their performance. The final goal of the algenist is to engineer the perfect organism. The algenist is the ultimate engineer. SYNERGY Synergy is to cyborgs what sex is to humans - they think about it a lot of the time and rarely get to do it properly. They would never admit this in public though. Any of it. 4. Why the Cyborg thing? Orignially it was made necessary by the lack of usable lab assistants in neurohacking experiments. There seem to be only two sorts of lab assisstants - dumb ones and smart ones. The dumb ones make mistakes, you don't want them at the controls of anything if your head is at the other end of the assembly. Smart ones think about what you're doing and decline to assist because of risks and / or liabilities. You just can't get a lab assistant with the guts to boldly go anywhere these days. So a lot of my tech had to be portable; I had to collect and anlyse my own data, and I needed to be able to collect data any any given moment. Should have got married sooner. :-) 5. Worst Side-Effects of Neurohacking? On me personally? Involuntary access to moods or homones that are inappropriate for optimum function. Seriously unpleasant nightmares (I'm being honest here!) Once or twice, real terror, when you really don't know if your experiment will have the predicted effect or you are about to fuck up your mind? Offputting for a newbie might be discomfort or pain. These fade into insignificance once there are more interesting things to concentrate on ... like the best side effects?

    

Neurohacker's guide to fun will add chapters and links to itself as they emerge, fresh and splattered with electrode gel ... watch this space. IF YOU WANT TO ask a question, email it to alex@ramonsky.com.We may reproduce it here, with response

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Links Transhuman Links Mind Uploading Research Group - People who are actually doing something. The Foresight Institute - More people who are actually doing something else. ExtroBritannia - Local active group of extropians. The Extropy Institute - Informative and mostly nice. Transtopia - Broad minded and alive. Better Humans - Newsletter on transhumanist topics. Miscellaneous Links Bionic Eyeballs DIY paranormal phenomena Neuroscience Edit Your Reality VR Gear Alexander Shulgin's Site

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1Classy ripoff but still proving 100% true based on experimentation so far (see - "I've Changed My Mind") 2The Free Lunch Challenge: Alex Ramonsky will buy a free lunch for anyone who is prepared to (a) read this book, (b) understand it and (c) talk to me about it afterwards (the book, not the lunch) [ Home | Mission ]