5. System Information (Chain reaction: how each factor contributes to the problem.)

In this chapter I have covered each point in context of the matrix in which it arises, in order to help show the steps in the growth of intelligence as well as the relevance of the points themselves, because many of these points have a knock-on effect. The overall picture is greater than the apparent sum of its parts. You will recognize the key points mentioned from the context in which they are demonstrated, but I have also numbered them for ease of reference throughout. Most of the key points of damage occur in the first three matrices; from birth until about age seven, so only those three matrices are covered here. However the knock on effects of this damage are lifelong, and we shall take a look at some of those effects in later chapters.

MATRIX 1

The womb (conception to birth)

Because of the order of our brain growth we tend not to remember before we were born. Or the experience of being born, one of the most unusual experiences we ever encounter, an unknown at the time akin to an upload... Isn't it about time somebody told us what happened?

Unfortunately there's a massive difference between what should happen and what does happen, for most people. And we probably had a reasonable birth, compared to some. From the moment our intelligence starts to form, it is at the mercy of biology's vulnerabilities.

Key Factor (KF) 1: Prenatal nutrition, blood & oxygen levels affected adversely by current western diet and lifestyle.

It is now well known that maternal nutrition affects the growing fetus fundamentally.R7 Recently a bunch of scientists caused a minor uproar by changing the colors of the coats of baby mice merely by altering their mother's diet. They went on to improve the spatial memory ability of baby mice in a similar manner. By feeding her certain vitamins, they had altered gene transcription.

Gene transcription is a seriously useful trick in the neurohacker's toolbox. It's the key to all sorts of changes, including many of those affecting memory and cognitive abilities. It can be done throughout life; not whilst still in the womb, and we'll look at it more closely later on. The issue here is, what our mother eats during pregnancy shapes our mind, and most mothers, currently, eat a good deal of nasty things whilst pregnant.

One major gene transcription effect is the 'CR' effect, which, when the gene is turned off, can mimic the practice of calorie restriction without the subject needing to diet. When this controlling factor is turned on, it's much easier for a baby or young child to become overweight unless fed in a manner which turns it off again. Putting babies on calorie restricted diets is a ridiculous suggestion, we just don't know enough to make such a practice safe, and untold damage to growth and development could occur. Once the gene is on, therefore, it must currently stay on until the person is old enough to make the changes themselves through diet or n-hacking. But if you do have a weight problem, either your mum's diet when you were in the womb, or your own diet as a child, was probably responsible. And if you don't get the expression of that gene deactivated, you'll always find it very hard to lose weight and keep it off.

Other maternal diet factors that affect fetal development are all the everyday drugs pregnant women take and consider 'normal': tea, coffee, sugar, food additives, alcohol (and in some cases still even cigarettes). None of these are expected by biology in the body of a growing fetus, however most of them pass through the umbilical cord in about 45 seconds. Consequently a lot of us are grown in a vat of neuroactive stimulants which our biology is not expecting to encounter. Try this experiment:

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EXPERIMENT:

(These experiments are not essential to neurohacking progress; they are for a laugh. I personally have done them all, and am not recommending or advising against any of them. It's up to you. I do not, however, accept responsibility if during any of these experiments the subject is unable to stop laughing.)

You will need:

A packet of white granulated sugar.

A teaspoon

A willingness to read a lot of labels for 14 days

A really hot, fresh cup of tea

Willpower

Method:

1. For 14 days you will eat no sugar and take no stimulants. No coffee, no tea. No white, brown, or any other kind of sugar. No crumbly candy bars. No cupcakes. No cookies. No chewing gum. No puddings. No cereal with added sugar, no canned food with added sugar, in fact, absolutely nothing with sugar in or on. Put those Oreos down.

2. On getting up on day 14, leave yourself at least two hours before going to work, (or driving, or anything requiring being sensible). Eat no breakfast. Half an hour later, eat one whole teaspoonful of white sugar on its own. Now drink a nice, fresh hot cup of tea. Or two even.

3. See what happens. (ROFL)

4. If you want to stay off sugar, to prevent this effect recurring if you eat something sweet by accident, every two or three days eat one cookie. I promise you, by the time you're done eating it you'll feel right as rain.

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Most of these everyday chemicals do not normally affect us like this because they cause tolerance very quickly. The fetus gets used to a chronic state of overstimulation. If the newborn is breast fed, this state will of course continue, and one of the problems with weaning, or with bottle fed babies, is the sudden dead stop of that chemistry which causes severe withdrawal symptoms (you might have noticed them at the start of your experiment), including headaches, colic, digestion/egestion problems, kidney and liver pains, and fatigue. Stopping something like sugared coffee after nine months' overdose of it is not an easy thing to do. The brain is also lacking its stimulants, and it takes time to get the production of relevant hormones back on line at their natural levels.

But by far the worst drugs that pass from mother to infant are anxiety hormones such as cortisol. The tiny body is physiologically in a constant state of anxiety without a feasible cause, a permanent 'stress-without-resolution'. Stuck in this situation, the brain of the fetus cannot develop intellectually in preparation for birth.R5 However, genetic timing cannot do anything about this. Growth (physical) goes on, while intellectual growth creeps along more slowly, falling farther and farther behind. If the infant is not miscarried, it will be born deficient in intelligence if not in body, highly likely to be mentally retarded, or dysfunctional in a wide variety of ways. The child's brain will automatically start to compensate for its deficiencies. The greater the deficiencies, the harder it must compensate. 'Compensating' means remaining intellectually behind whilst trying to get the brain working properly by somehow finding the correct bits of input to shift matrix. But meanwhile, time goes on, the mind is meant to be concentrating on the present time and adapting to it, but instead it is back somewhere still trying to get bits of itself working. If the first learning experiences are incomplete or faulty, the next learning experiences will be twice as difficult. The child's intelligence slips further and further behind because the brain growth spurts take place automatically; the tools are delivered on time but we are not competent enough or ready to use them.R3 (Despite this, I believe that intelligence is rarely stopped from developing; it is merely slowed down. The reason people do not fully mature is that they don't live long enough for biology alone to catch up. Most of us don't get anywhere near our full potential before the body starts falling apart.)

KF2: Induction of birth before the fetal intelligence is sufficient to cope with life outside the womb.

Notice the intended time we should spend in the first matrix. We are supposed to be in the womb from conception to birth. Our genetic code includes a biological clock, that tells us when to grow which bits, and that clock knows when we're ready to be born. This is one of the situations when nature usually gets it right. It's the baby who decides when to start the birth process, by sending out hormones into the mother's bloodstream to start the contractions. This, our birth, is our first 'shift' (or should be), from one matrix to another. It is genetically timed to coincide with a massive brain-growth spurt, to prepare the baby for the new abilities it will suddenly need (breathing, feeding, etc.) and for the huge amount of learning it will suddenly have to do.

These days, in most hospitals, the mother is called in when the doctor thinks she is 'due', and birth is 'induced'. This means, drugs are given to the mother to make birth begin, at a time that is convenient for staff (i.e. like not the middle of the night, or at weekends). So most babies are born before this vital brain-growth spurt has had time to take place, and are ill equipped to deal with life outside the womb. This is considered 'normal procedure' and the baby is expected to survive (earlier, the same sequence of events would have led to an abortion).

KF3: Anesthetics at birth

KF4: Prolonged labor in the supine position

KF5: Premature cutting of the umbilical cord

There are various examples of experimental proof to support several of the key factors in Matrix Theory about birth. Some years ago, Dr. W.Windle studied hospital childbirth and found two dangerous procedures: One was the automatic use of drugs (pre-medications and anesthetics) and the second was the usual practice of cutting the umbilical cord as soon as the baby's body was out.R8

Dr. Windle then did the following experiment: He took pregnant monkeys, and subjected them to our modern medical practices. At the time of the mother monkey's labor and delivery, he gave her anesthetics in the same amount (by body weight) that a human woman would be given. At the birth of the baby monkey, he cut the umbilical cord at the same time as practiced in hospitals.

In every case, Windle's newborn monkeys could not breathe, and artificial means had to be used to assist them. (Hospitals now have various machines to aid in this process with humans.)

In the natural world, such aid is not available. Unless an animal is born dead, it will breathe the moment its head pops out. Soon after birth, baby monkeys are quite proficient; they can cling to their mother, who gets on with her life, carrying the baby with her, giving it only the necessary assistance in those first few hours of life. In a short time, the infant is autonomous, on its feet, jumping about, leaping away from its mother and back to her.

Windle's infant monkeys, whose birth had been the equivalent of a human one, showed very different results. The babies were totally helpless. They could not cling to the mother or get their limbs working at all. The mothers, recovering from the anesthetic drugs and a greatly lengthened labor (which anesthetics and the supine position (flat on their backs) also cause) could do little to help. Windle had to assist to keep the babies alive.

He performed autopsies on some of these damaged infants and found in every case that their brains had scars of a kind caused by oxygen deprivation, in the reticular formation and cerebellum. He kept some of the monkeys alive until they had grown up, and when he autopsied some of these grown-up monkeys, he found that their brains still had exactly the same scars found at birth. Oxygen deprivation apparently always damages the brain, and the damage done at the beginning seems to be permanent.

Windle next studied human infants who had died following known birth histories of anesthetics, immediate cutting of the umbilical cord and so on. Autopsies showed that these babies' brains had exactly the same scars he had found in his oxygen-deprived monkeys. Cases of children who had similar birth histories but who had died at ages three or four were then studied. Again, the brains were found with the same scars.

Windle pointed out that in those first critical moments when the lungs must begin providing all the oxygen for the newborn, biology expects to call on the extra supply from the umbilical cord. A drugged mother automatically means a drugged infant, and a drugged infant cannot get its breath. Artificial means must be used. The cutting of the umbilical cord at this time denies the infant the extra oxygen at the most critical point in its life. 'Spanking the baby' (holding the newborn up by the heels and slapping it on the backside) is supposed to assist the resuscitation process by causing the infant to gasp in reaction to the shock of pain. (Recent studies suggest that this can cause slow internal bleeding in the spine resulting in 'cot-death' weeks or months later.)

KF6: Inappropriate and traumatic physical treatment at birth

Shock is also a major cause of brain damage. The infant's nervous system is certainly aware of discomfort, pain and distress at birth.

Ever been into traumatic role-playing experiences just for the crack? Here, have a quick nightmare. I dare you:

Imagine you are in a warm, dark, safe, sensual, nourishing, comfortable place, feeling really groovy. Things have been this good forever, in your experience so far. You have never known hunger or thirst or physical distress. Every sensory motor exploration has met with interesting success. You float, dreaming or playing as consciousness demands, safe in your own sweet universe.

You are suddenly ejected, without warning, into a brilliantly lit space, drugged, with a metal screw inserted into your head, almost suffocating trying to breathe an unfamiliar element, choking on tubes, loud sounds ringing in your ears, you are turned upside down and slapped until you scream, your eyelids are peeled back and harsh chemicals are dropped into your eyes, you are dropped into cold scales, weighed, measured, wrapped in plastic, and put into solitary confinement you know not where, but you can hear others of your kind crying and wailing. Unable to move, your cries for help ignored; even with everything you know and have experienced in life so far, are you not a bit traumatized? It sounds rather like those alien abduction stories to me.

A mind that has no experience at all of the world and that is born open-mindedly expecting its needs for safe, pleasant nurturing to be met has little choice when faced with this sort of experience but to go into shock. The venture of innocent intelligence excitedly into the unknown has been met with torture and abandonment. Association training has begun. All future learning will be affected.R5

Learning and behavior problems resulting from brain injury at birth are found in 15 to 20% of all children examined. It is estimated that 20 to 40% of the school population is handicapped by learning problems that may be related to 'neurological impairments at birth' (brain damage).R4 There are degrees of brain damage, of course, and this minimal amount is not usually severe enough to turn us into dribbling vegetables, however any damage to the brain obviously affects our intelligence and further development.

Let me point out at this stage that I am in no way opposed to technology or medicine in childbirth. All technology can be good or bad, depending on how it is used. It would be handy if it were used in ways that would benefit and enlighten, rather than harm us, obviously. Unfortunately sometimes it isn't.

KF7: Failure of mother and newborn to activate the newborn's sensory systems by full sensory interaction within a short 'window of opportunity' immediately after birth

Another subject deeply related to this which is either ignored by medical textbooks or horribly misunderstood, is the idea of infant /mother 'bonding'.R10 Such a huge amount of crap is talked about bonding; people describe it as some sort of sweet, cuddly, sentimental, emotional thing or a new-age-tribal, magical, spiritual, mystical experience. Yuck. Hand me the vomit bag.

Bonding is a part of the competent functioning of intelligence, not sweet fluffy sentiment or cosmic mysticism. Bonding is your intelligence finding links between the known and the unknown, for your brain and its growth. Bonding is forming links of communication, getting access to information and linking in with a system we can copy and download programs from. It is like our 'server' for the biological Internet, a bridge between realities to enable us to learn more and more about the new ones. It builds the corpus callosum and uses the networks of association in the parietal lobe, the hard-line for perception of reality.

Newborn babies don't talk so biology relies on an instinctive response, brought online automatically as each generation copies the last. Mother animals instinctively do certain things with their baby at birth (if left alone with their baby and allowed to, and sufficiently free from brainwashing not to be afraid to do or ignorant of), and infant animals are genetically programmed to expect this and respond to it.

The fulfillment of five needs, will achieve the first bonding after delivery: a thorough stimulation and activation of the baby's five senses. Bringing the systems online. Nature must receive the five signals that birth has taken place, otherwise the baby's body will continue to produce the stress hormones that it needed for birth. Biology will continue stress-hormone production unless the signals are sent, until a critical mass builds up and sends the infant body into shock, which can range from minimal to severe. If the brain's needs are not met within about forty-five minutes after delivery, the critical mass level is reached, the infant's sensory-motor system largely shuts down, there is a retreat into the 'womb' state of consciousness, and the child's mind remains in matrix one, emotionally and intellectually.

(You may be wondering at this point why hospital staff don't know all this. Some specialists do. But who is going to listen to a load of information that proves that they, too, are brain-damaged? Certainly not average medical staff, who are, after all, also probably caught in a matrix. And who is going to attempt to change the entire system of how we give birth to and raise our children, using information that effectively tells everybody that there is something wrong with their minds? Fancy a situation of total mass panic, laced with justifiable rage? Remember that most people don't yet have the potential or the desire to change their minds.)

A part of our brains is called the reticular formation (RF), one of the parts that I mentioned earlier which suffers lesions through oxygen deprivation. Four of our five somatic senses send their information through the RF. The job at birth is to get the sensory system working in the shortest possible time, because this is the only way to activate that part of our brains.

From the moment of birth, input to the newborn affects already existing networks, and acts to strengthen, weaken, or otherwise modify their structure and activities. For example, when the baby is looked at face to face, brain networks for visual acuity and focus, color, shape and form are all activated, and this activation causes new connections to form within those networks. When the baby hears the mother's heartbeat, and when she speaks to it, different networks are activated to process sounds and interpret them, and new connections form in the auditory cortex. When the child is touched and cuddled, sensory motor processing networks spring to life and connections thicken, and so on.R3

This entire system only works at optimum if the newborn is not drugged, oxygen deprived, or swamped with anxiety hormones, obviously.

The reason these key factors are the cause of an ongoing chain reaction is as follows: Any additional brain growth, including that of arborisation (the elongation and branching of axons and dendrites) depends (for both quality and quantity) on what exists already (i.e., what has already grown) but also depends on the quality and quantity of input being given in the here and now.

It is the input of the here and now which generates the networks of tomorrow. This is the case throughout our lives, but it is most especially the case at the beginning of it. The first matrix shift is when we are supposed to power up and bring the systems online.

So, how do we get the systems online?

First, vision. Our brain is pre-programmed to recognize a human face.R11 (We don't have many of these presets, just the essential few; breathing, sucking, grasping, face recognition, and the ability to automatically close off access to our throats and noses if we fall into water, are about all we start out with). At delivery a baby can recognize a face, will spend 80% of its visual time looking at a face, and, if it is given a face to look at within a distance of six to twelve inches during the first 45 minutes after delivery, its entire visual system will be fully functional by the end of that time. The baby will then smile every time a face is seen. Biology has had one of its signals met. (If this doesn't happen, the baby will remain almost blind for about three months, which is considered normal by most people.)

Hearing has been experienced in the womb by the infant's hearing the mother's voice and heartbeat. If the infant is held close to the breast, those sounds are recognized, there are enough points of similarity between the 'then' (the known) and the 'now' (unknown) for COMP to recognize, and biology ticks off signal number two.

The breast-feeding position, (in which all five needs can be met,) triggers the third signal, feeding and tasting. The first milk transfers to the baby the mother's immunities to disease gained over her lifetime, and proteins that help stop the production of stress hormones in the baby.

The human infant is supposed to feed between forty-five to sixty times a day. (This is not a typo; most of these feeds are very short). Biology expects humans to carry their babies about, feeding them whenever they're hungry.R12

The fourth signal is touch, and skin-to-skin contact with the mother, as well as a constant gentle massage, brings this sensory system to life.R12

The sense of smell is the last signal. The newborn can immediately pick out its mother's smell from among that of many other humans and will respond to it.

The incredibly complex cortical spreading of networks caused by these seemingly simple bits of input are only just beginning to be noticed, because of MRI and PET studies of the effects of these kinds of input on newborns.R3 Quite what the 'scientific establishment' decides to do about the fact that most infants don't get them, and what conclusions they will draw about that, remains to be seen. Perhaps the most significant finding is that these specific forms of input act to stop the production of stress hormones after birth.

'Bonding', is COMP making a bridge between the known and the unknown. Links between the old situation and the new one can be made, because there are enough recognizable similarities. If bonding does not take place, the brain has no choice but to try to put the new experience back into that which it already knows. In the case of birth, this means relating all new experience back to the womb experience rather than bringing the new stuff forward and understanding it. Instead of bonding to the new reality we become attached to the old. (This is 'attachment' behavior. We'll explore attachment behavior in depth later on, because it really deserves its own chapter.)

Whenever someone is stuck in a matrix, you will find attachment behavior of some kind. For example, an infant who is stuck in matrix one will keep its fists clenched –a delivery behavior- for several weeks after delivery. In the same way, the child caught in matrix two will cling physically to the parent, in fear of loss of contact, and will not freely explore the world.

Other experimental work has been done with macaque monkeys and with elephants, among other animals, showing differences between the infant animals raised by an ever-present, attentive mother and those raised with only intermittent mothering. By age 2, the latter groups of all mammals were fearful almost all the time, distressed when separated from their mothers, socially inept, and displaying many of the symptoms of 'anxiety disorders'.R13

There are genetically programmed parts of the brain that are designed only to develop if the appropriate input is given. R3 The brain growth spurt shortly after birth mainly facilitates the growth of cerebellar networks, maturing its connections that will deal with activation and control of motor functions. If the baby does not have the correct inputs to precipitate this growth, the new connections will be trying to connect to already sub-optimal networks, so the new connections will obviously be sub-optimal themselves. This is the chain reaction referred to in Matrix Theory. One cannot build optimal walls, on sub optimal foundations. That seems so blindingly obvious that I should not need to restate it. If there is nothing for new connections to connect to, they will simply not function; they will atrophy, and when the next stage happens and the new networks come along trying to connect to them, they will be gone.

As biological creatures, and especially as tiny babies, we are genetically concerned with our own well being. We must be able to compute that the world we are in is reasonably friendly, wants us to exist, and will help us in our endeavors to succeed. If we do not receive the signals to confirm this, we will be forced to concentrate on our need for self-preservation (later this becomes a need for self-esteem). We need to have this basic feeling of safety under our belts before we can pay attention to anything else. We need our matrix to be absolutely rock solid before we can explore further.

Let me make it clear here that although most people who experience hospital birth do become stuck for a while in the 1st matrix, very few remain there for long. Getting stuck in any matrix does not stop us developing; it merely slows us down. Most people do not escape matrix one, for example, until they are about six months old. The problem is, we have limited life spans, and the backlog of work to be done to catch up gets ever larger and larger. Most adults only get as far as matrix 3 or 4 before they run out of time. (That means many people never develop emotionally or intellectually beyond the age of 11!)

MATRIX 2

Mother or permanent caretaker (birth to age 3)

KF8: Isolation and abandonment at any time during the first year or so of life

KF9: Lack of physical contact

So, when we're born, our brains have just undergone a massive growth spurt. Our neurochemistry is keyed up to learn more, faster, than we may ever have to do again. We are focused, receptive and anticipatory. What do most people learn whilst in this highly receptive state?

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.

It is vitally important to remember this in n-hacking.

Unless there really is an elephant in your room, your image of an elephant is imagination. Imagination has had a very bad press, since nobody seems able to understand it. And this is unfortunate, because, for intelligence, it is the stuff of life.

The dictionary defines imagination as 'creating images not present to the senses'. It doesn't mention the fact that some parts of the brain and body cannot tell the difference until the input is subjected to intellectual evaluation. (Since this is the last step along the chain, we often find ourselves reacting to false danger signals before we've had time to realize it's only our mate outside the window dressed up as a gorilla, for example, which is why practical jokes are so funny.)

Everyone agrees that it is vital that the brain correctly interprets the input from the senses. Translating the input with imagination is equally important though, because in fact intelligence depends on it.

COMP uses imagination. Imagination does not just pull up things from memory; it constructs by combining sets of archetypal memories and extrapolating variations on a theme, just as in dreaming, but with more volition. All that is needed in memory, are enough points of remembered similarity between the current situation and past ones. Without the ability to make that association, every experience is a brand new unknown. We cannot make association without memory. We have seen this sometimes by observing people with certain kinds of amnesia; without the memories to relate something to, it seems (and feels to them) as if they have never done it before. Every one is a stranger, every event is unknown. This quite naturally causes anxiety.

What we do not so often realize, is that this also happens when there is no (or very poor) imagination. Imagination is vitally necessary to recall memory in association. When we see a new event, imagination goes looking for all the things it can imagine that we have seen before which were similar in any way. Without the imagination to do that, without a good eidetic (image) memory, recall is strictly limited.

Imagination is also necessary for extrapolation and a realistic assessment of just how similar the thing or situation is to past ones. Having a poor memory hinders COMP, because we cannot recall experiences in enough detail to practice them. But having a poor imagination hinders COMP at every turn. We cannot copy well because we cannot imagine what it would be like to be our model, neither can we practice and vary because we cannot imagine variations. Our cognitive system is the equivalent of a musician who can only play cover numbers exactly as they were written. Who can't jam along because she can't imagine what the next chord might be...bad imagination prevents prediction, and that prevents control.

The domain of memory and emotion is our 'weighting' and translation system. Current machine translation systems are sadly lacking AI. We derive meaning from text in a way a computer cannot yet do. The brain uses a rather neat system for this, based on intelligence's very own 'midbrain programming language'. It is a metaphoric kind of eidetic imagery/language, which is analogical, as memory tracing is analogical, so I have called it 'AL' for Analogical or Allegorical Language.

It is a language neurohackers would do well to pay attention to. With it, the midbrain translates those squiggles on the screen in your email through AL, into the abstract thought imagery of the neocortex, which understands it as "Going down the pub?" or whatever...which your frontal lobes apply meaning to depending on who's asking, how much money you have, and so on. When you wish to reply (hit keys and make your own squiggles), mid brain networks must translate the abstract thoughts in your neocortex, through AL associations, into sensory motor movements controlled by the old brain to enable you to type ''Don't forget to bring a towel'' or whatever.

We'll look more closely at AL later on, because it's important to know first, with any damaged operating system you are trying to work with, (a) how its supposed to work and (b) what order things are designed to be happening in, because not knowing those things can really slow you down. In n-hacking as in original brain development, every step sits upon the last. Every programmer should know that.

Some of the most obvious evidence that the locus of intelligence is not fixed comes from dream research. When we sleep, we shut down many functions of the old brain, and sensory input minimizes. We still think, but because there is no sensory input, the midbrain provides imagery related to our thoughts, weighted with emotion and imagination, and dreaming begins (REM sleep). As we sink deeper into sleep we largely shut down the midbrain also ('deep' sleep).

In the past we thought dreaming was confined to the periods of REM sleep, but we now know this is not the case, in fact we continue dreaming throughout deep sleep also,R17 but deep sleep dreaming is not connected with emotion, does not cause REM and was desperately difficult to detect before modern brain scanning methods, as it appears very difficult to bring into conscious awareness. Deep sleep dreaming is abstract, three-dimensional, and usually geometric. It resembles 3D wiring diagrams rendered in various shades of neon, does not change frame and so fails to cause eye movement, but changes constantly within that frame. It appears to have no immediately apparent connection with our everyday reality at all, yet seems deeply meaningful in some intangible way if recalled by the dreamer (possibly temporal lobe action). It seems to occur during our assimilation and shifting of memories.

After spending a while in deep sleep we surface again through REM, back into light, dreamless sleep and start the cycle again, which takes us in all about 90 minutes. Throughout it all, we stay alive and well, and even manage to get a bit of physical repair work done whilst conserving energy.

Consider this ability, to shift the focus of mind around our various brain parts to accomplish whatever task is in hand. It is of stunning significance both for the development of intelligence and its potential for uploading. The COMP program is designed to fit in with the timed development of all four main brain sections and coincident matrix shifts. In each part of its development, biology-based intelligence is designed to focus on, and develop, each individual part of our brain as it grows.R3 Intelligence evolves as the brain evolved, in exactly the same order. The old brain completes its growth first, as we concentrate on sensory motor, physical reality as small babies. As the midbrain develops we translate and file sensory information in meaningful ways, discover our emotions and our imagination. And as the CC is completed and the neocortex develops further we learn to play with information and do creative things with it, like go play golf on the moon, and cure diseases, for two examples.

Our problem is, this hardware architecture assembly process takes about 19 years under optimum conditions for development, and currently, under our conditions, taking into consideration the degree of repair work necessary on the average brain, longer than a human lifetime to fully achieve on its own.

We have been providing young minds (and still are) with input they could not possibly use because the relevant bits of brain to deal with it were not yet developed. We have been doing the intellectual equivalent of giving a two-month-old a whole, unshelled lobster and a porno magazine. And meanwhile, much worse, we haven't been providing what they do need.

The brain seems like a nesting system because each of its parts must in turn be developed and we must become proficient at using them before the next part can be given our attention and focus.R3 And as we grow, intelligence shifts its locus up the hierarchy of brain structures into the neocortex. As we shift our attention and focus to each new section of brain the entire locus of consciousness changes; we start using the newer networks much more, and withdraw our attention from the old, where activity settles slowly down after our departure to an ambient flow of regular traffic. That's another way of describing a matrix shift.

...In our first matrix shift, when we move from 'wombworld' to 'parentworld', the locus of our intelligence is still in the old brain. Appropriately for the reptile metaphor, we learn to crawl. We crawl around and we interact with things and we give the old brain everything it needs (or we should do) to grow all of its bits and connections aright. Then we move out. We stand up, replaying another stage in evolution, we begin to walk, talk, and, month by month, we shift the focus of our attention into the mid brain networks, leaving most of the old brain on 'automatic'. Our attention starts to move away from parents as models, and into the environment. Matrix shifts do not happen overnight. It takes us many months to catch up with ourselves. But when we do shift, the functions of the old locus become automatic. When we move out of M2, we no longer have to concentrate on walking; it's automatic. To try to learn to walk only after the matrix shift (after age 3) would take an incredibly long time or could actually be impossible. And all our other skills are very much the same.

The old brain thinks in movement. A three-year-old child finds it very difficult to say the word 'hand' without moving her hand, and will usually sit down if asked to say 'sit down', too. All the information comes from the senses. There is no internal dialogue. All information is concrete; physical, material.R16 We have to translate between that, and the high logic of intellect and abstract thought, and the midbrain is our go-between. It's system of metaphor and symbol develops in response to the correct input, and the correct input for this time is storytelling and fantasy play. Imagination.

The midbrain thinks and remembers in its own kind of 'language', this language of pictures and symbols, of emotion and imagination. This is what AL means: allegorical or analogical language.

The logic we know gives us a method of reasoning; of, for example, figuring out how things that have some similarities may have others. Allegorical or analogical 'language' alludes to common factors and resemblance between otherwise apparently unconnected things. Example; my friend is completely unlike a seabird, yet I call him a Gannet (or a pig) if he eats too much. In the same way, animals or inanimate objects in fairy tales act as though they are human.

All of the symbols and archetypes in our culture, from gods to heroes, from fairy tales to UFOs, come from this part of the brain and relate to it, in a non-intellectual logic all its own.

The new brain, or neocortex, is the part that enables us to think in words. The midbrain has no higher function language processing areas. It cannot think in words, just as the part of your brain that beats your heart can't think in words, and neither can your elbow.R16

KF13: Lack of appropriate stimulus at all times preventing brain growth

Allowing a child to explore the environment does not mean that you can dump your kid in a playpen or even the back garden with its bush, flowers and token tree and expect their brain networks to thrive. The smartest animals are those who have experienced the greatest variety of input. If the brain processes every bit of information currently available to it, and the need for input far outstrips the input, no new connections can be built. After a time of feeding back on limited data, connections idle, because there are no new signals to process. Then they begin to fail. New brain cell connections do not take place. The practice and perfection of the ability to think fails to happen. The effect of insufficient input is a kind of mental malnutrition. This is what happens when an intelligence is isolated from intellectual and physical interaction. Solitary confinement has a similar effect on the mental health of adults, and is used as a punishment in some cultures.

We are designed by biology to emerge. An open-system intelligence, we build new systems, and we 'take over' the new systems as they are built; we move in, we upload, keeping only those links that are necessary with the older systems and building new links within the new. Intelligence constantly strives for autonomy. The autonomy of being able to walk sets us free from dependence on others for our input. The autonomy of tool-usage enables us to shovel our own nutrients into our mouths instead of needing a grown up to do it. Another few years and matrices on, and we will be able to go get that food and bring home the dinner. The autonomy of abstract thought, if the hardware is wired properly, frees us from dependence on emotion and instinct alone and gives us the capacity for expressing our creativity fully only with the integration of all four major bits of brain, each built upon the foundations of the other. Any uploading system for humans is going to have to take this into account and follow its pattern if there is to be any shortcut to an easy transfer, regardless of the physical material of the new platform.

The first part of an emerging intelligence's existence must be dedicated to its platform, it's hardware, and its physical/sensory system. A complete synchrony with memory, emotion and imagination is obviously needed pretty early on, but the focus of a young intelligence will be sensory-motor. Once this is established and at optimum performance, the intelligence will shift its focus to its next need, the equivalent of the human midbrain. Any budding AI will need emotion and imagination.

By 'emotion' I don't mean it will necessarily want to have fits of the giggles or burst into tears, because those are the results of emotion in a human biological physical system. In a biological body, emotional responses are required very urgently for survival. They serve as a tool for offense and defense, as well as helping with communication and evaluation of any situation. Creatures without a prefrontal cortex are still able to respond to danger or a mate. Emotion is one of intelligence's first and oldest tools for its advancement.

Hormones arise from distinct locations in the human brain and body. It is how those hormones are interpreted by the brain that determines what kind of emotion is felt, and particularly how we express that emotion. Once again it relies on association. Enthusiasm, for example, can invoke a manic desire to party, an impatience to get on with things, or an inspiration to strategize, depending on your personality. For some people, disillusionment or failure is just time for a challenging rethink. For some it means patiently try, try again. For some it means despair; it prompts some to quit, some to kick the monitor in, and others to suicide. The same initial chemicals lead to different cascades, depending on which networks are used...or which matrix you're stuck in.

Emotion is also important for memory formation. Intensity of experience is the key to fast, strong, LTP (Long-Term Potentiation), regardless of the emotion, or even the source, of intensity itself.R6 This is another fortunate thing for neurohackers because we can control signal source to a large degree, (which is going to be essential for an AI. too, for it will have to be the equivalent of emotional weighting). At this point of intelligence's development we encounter will, which bases itself around the like/dislike response, the 'instinctual' drive to overcome obstacles to development. In an undamaged intelligence a personality begins to form; we slowly gain personhood as we assert our likes and dislikes and form our own esthetic values. We can speak, and we have an opinion.

Humans tend to view this time as traumatic; the 'terrible twos', (the child is usually about two when it begins), which shows how much biology respects intelligence. Intelligence starts to rebel against biology from the start, of course, it screams when it's hungry and complains when it needs input. Now it starts to get fussy about its input, and society's value system doesn't like that. 'Why can't you do as you're told?' 'It was good enough for me, it's good enough for you!' 'Don't answer me back!'

In a lot of ways, the two are, like mother and fetus, in a battle for who survives. Intelligence has its own agenda; it's free, it's happy and the universe is there to explore. Biology slams in its claws almost before it gets a chance. This is not biology's fault; it is ours. We can choose to go society's way, or intelligence's way, but we have been too afraid to turn against our animal 'natures'. There's freedom out there...but no one has the guts to leave the prison.

Current society set (as it is) unknowingly against our brains' development imprisons intelligence on every level. It need not. Even without a change of platform, if we can free ourselves by neurohacking from biology's default value system and create one based on the needs of intelligence, humans (and society) would get a helluva nice surprise. Because what's under discussion here as 'minor' brain damage is in fact having a massive knock-on effect on human intelligence as a whole.

MATRIX 3 Environment (Ages 3 to 7)

Just as external abilities and skills can only develop if given the proper stimulus, so the correct input is needed for imagination. Much childhood malfunction of intelligence results from a lack of storytelling, fantasy play, and imaginative games in the early years. When you think about the nature of intelligence, this may seem like a contradiction. You want the child to be intelligently aware of reality, why should you fill his head with fantasy stories and computer games and spaceships? Surely you should make sure she knows the difference between imagined things and the way things are out there in the real world as soon as possible?

Only if you want to kill intelligence.

(And in this situation lies the secret of how to escape from being stuck in a matrix!)

At the point where we first notice free will in human development, the Corpus Callosum (CC) begins to grow; the hard-line; a thick bridge of connecting nerves between the hemispheres. It is a piece of stunningly complex architecture which should enable all sections of the brain to function in synchrony and synergy. Now that we are learning on two levels (sensory motor and emotional) we need some specialization tools, and this bridge provides access and communication between them. (There is later a further shift of focus into the development of intellect, pure creative, and abstract thought.)

At the same time as the CC develops, our minds should develop awareness of the analogical language system; the language of symbol and metaphor and synchronistic linguistics; the method of translation, first of all between the midbrain and the right hemisphere. This enables the intelligence to begin to move into playing with abstract thought and to consider itself as a personality, rather than just the brain. Intelligence can be seen forming a personality in each section of our brains as they grow, and just as clearly seen to withdraw from these brain parts as it matures.R3 (What difference then, considering yet another uploading? We have been following the pattern all our lives.)

With the completion of the CC we should be able to bring all three systems online in synchrony, through input and output of storytelling, role-playing, fantasy, imagination and imitation. This is our 'beta testing' phase, our simulation. Midbrain functions begin to go on automatic pilot and around age seven we start to take an interest in the structures around us, our society, and the artifacts in this environment we now know so well.

In order to develop the CC as required, the mind must play. This is the input required for that development to take place.

KF14: Medical interference throughout childhood

I have only one problem with medical intervention in childhood, and that is the problem of their being no informed choice. Taken by the child.

I find it completely idiotic that an incredibly stupid parent is allowed to make decisions regarding the medical rights of their child. That a human being can be given enforced medication that could harm them, or denied medication that could save them, against their will at any age is completely barbaric. As far as ethics go, here are mine:

Parents are allowed to choose their own doctor, and presumably they choose a doctor whom they trust. Having chosen that doctor (or upholding their right not to have a doctor for themselves, but having registered their child with a doctor in case of emergency), the doctor's job should then be to see the child if it is ill, and to inform the parents (and the child personally when old enough) of what therapies and treatments are available for prevention. Beyond that, the doctors' job should end.

There should be no harassment, medical spam, coercion, threats or any other kind of nasty behavior aimed at getting more custom from people who are not ill.

Information should however be a priority, and should be provided to all persons registered. A monthly newsletter would be a good idea.

Preventive medicine / immunizations should only be given on request.

As soon as the child is old enough to understand explanations (about 7), the medical treatment of the child should be in his/her own hands, and all decisions taken should be taken by the child (in case of incapacitation, the same rules of next of kin or doctor's decision should apply).

The current authoritarian and age prejudiced system of the west is archaic (as is age prejudice in general). Are people seriously suggesting that they are more intelligent than their children are? Are they missing something here? Can they not talk to their children and assist them in getting enough information to make a sensible choice? No, of course they can't. And of course, saying 'no' to the professionals carries the danger of getting your kids taken into care, being labeled as an 'abuser'. Not conforming currently carries such penalties.

I have one bit of advice for anybody getting medical harassment personally, or for their children: Move to another country and don't register, or go private and get off the NHS register, or move house and don't re-register. Another country is the best option for education at home too.

If you wish to have a baby, you cannot do so legally in the UK without at least 2 midwives present (they tell you one, but this is not the case in practice). The fine for disobeying is currently around £500. If you bugger up and somebody dies, you could get done for manslaughter. So it's good to have a midwife. If you go for a hospital birth, you don't get fined £500, but it can cost a lot more than that later, for the drugs for ADHD, depression, constant infection due to exhausted immune system, etc. (although the child can pay for those in later life, of course).

The NHS would be the finest idea in the world, if everybody were sensible (although it wouldn't be very busy).

KF15: Literacy before about age 10 causing overspecialization of parts of the cortex at the expense of other parts

Of all the points of damage, this is the one that I personally have the greatest problems with. There is no question that damage is caused by premature literacy.R18 However, when one weighs this (in our current society) against the damage caused by hardly any input at all, one has to try in each individual case to choose the lesser of two evils. If for example the parents largely ignore a child, then anything which can help that intelligence to crawl out of the mire of boredom and atrophy is a good thing, literacy included, and that includes the enormous help it can be to input for imagination. Of course, it would be much better to have interesting interactions with real live humans 24/7 but where this is not possible, intelligence must have an input still, and reading/writing can be a lifeline for intelligence in children who are socially deprived. We really want the input relevant to the bit of brain we are currently growing, but beggars cannot be choosers, and reading books is far better than watching television. Being read to is the ideal situation of course, but we should take care to choose the correct material for this matrix. It is too early for the brain to be interested in very many textbooks full of facts, because what it is seeking as input at this particular stage of development, is the wonderful world of fantasy.

Hyperreality

Around age seven, a healthy human intelligence should be able to take an internal image and, rather than simply pretend with the external situation for a play reality, actually change the 'real' situation through mixing both together with imagination. For example, the ability to see faces in the shadows, spooks in the graveyard, or beautiful pictures in our minds when we read or listen to a story; the internal imagery that can 'see' the spaceship section in a plumbing part, the statue in the stone, the building that will go on the building plot...the lyrics that will fit with a tune...the place where we can jump the gap between our imagination 'in here' and the world 'out there.'

If we are able to do this at this age, other people will start telling us that we're 'weird'. Most of them are, after all, still stuck in matrix two, and they will never understand, truly, what we are doing.

Other people may refer to us as 'gifted' or 'talented'...we can imagine something 'in here', and make it happen 'out there'...Most people live in a reality where the brain is looked upon as a one-way receiver of information from 'out there', and is meant to interpret and react in appropriate ways to that information. People believe that reality can affect the brain, but the brain cannot affect reality. This belief that the mind has absolutely no influence over or relation to the material world is at the absolute center of biological reality. The world is viewed through an implanted screen of ideas copied from a conglomerate of programs from parents, friends, and what is seen on television, learned in school, and assumed to be absolutely true and necessary for reality, survival, and social acceptance. People's 'reality' is the result of a set of their ideas imposed on the world, which they come to think of as the real world itself. 'Growing up' is currently accepting a process, of the fearful teaching others how to be afraid. People fear imagination because people can actually imagine some pretty nasty things, and it is seen unconsciously as safer to have no imagination at all, at least in much of the world of academia. Imagination means 'creating images which are not present to the senses'. As we grow older, we think we learn which of our experiences are real, true indications of what is out there. We listen to our society, and society tells us what is, and what is not, real; what does, and what does not, matter. What has value, and what is morally correct. –'Here's a code of behavior for you; put these blinkers on and follow us. Believe in god, and what we say he says, or believe in the political party and what we say you say...Oh say can you seee...ruuule britannia...we'll keep the red flag flyiiiiiiing...hand me the vomit bucket1 All those who are not too bright become programmed, brainwashed, indoctrinated. They then live their lives at the mercy of the programs, thrown here and there by the sentiments & feelings they cause.

The great rule is always: Play, and your brain will do all the necessary work for itself.

KF16: School attendance preventing full sensory interaction with environment and appropriate stimuli

Instead of being encouraged or even allowed to do this, we are pushed into irrelevant input, into adult ideas of reality, into school, into restriction of movement, and into academic learning for which we have constructed, neurally, only sparse networks so far. Intelligence tries to concentrate on our imagined transformations of our selves and our world, and these seem totally compelling. Our attention is drawn to fantasy; reality should become that play. We have no interest in or desire to use the adult ideas of 'fantasy world' and 'reality world', because at that stage of development we know of only one world; the very real one in which and with which we play. Intelligence is not playing at life. Play is life. Fiction and fantasy pull together towards intelligence's aims. That's why getting home to play a new computer game is much more fun than getting home to do your homework...the play world is seen by intelligence as more real and important and worthy of attention than school work because it is.

This is a part of intelligence's design; at no point should there be a break between the play of childhood and the application of those play skills in adulthood. This is how intelligence would have things, if it had its way. However, it doesn't get it's way, and the results are pretty much the same as its earlier problems; brain damage, shock, intellectual crippling and an overall depression or apathy which can become permanent.

Our current 'education' system acts like an antipsychotic course; its effects are never really apparent until later.R19 Our century has seen the emergence of many definitions of 'normal' as a standard of life, but all have a 'normal' view which recommends seeing without imagination, as though the brain is a webcam reporting that which we think 'is out there'. Society has set up a lack of creative vision as our model of 'normal' and thinks of creative people as somehow 'special' or 'gifted'. Grown ups who still indulge in fantasy play or games are labeled juvenile and sneered at with derision. It's not butch to read. Conform or be cast out...still driven to copy role models, our need is twisted by education's programming and instead of hero-emulation, we get the attached person's hero-worship and infatuation. We see this in adulthood as the blind, pointless obsessions of people with their 'heroes', such as pop stars and actors, and in ill-fated 'romantic' obsessions of one person with another.

The person stuck in M3 will never be able to outgrow the need for personal 'heroes' or romantic 'crushes', and will be unable to comprehend the difference between their own opinion and reality. Their logic will work thus: 'I don't like it, therefore it's crap', or 'I like this, therefore it's great, and anybody who disagrees with me is wrong and stupid'. They will be drawn easily into groups who 'worship' a common model, and they will be at the top of the lists of things like fan clubs ('fan' used to be short for 'fanatic', which is quite apt), religions and supporters of 'deserving cases'.

This is another manifestation of attachment behavior, possibly the second most popular. (The most popular is our attachment to material objects).

KF17: Infant comfort-derivation solely from material objects

Isolation causes this kind of attachment behaviorR20 If during our birth and babyhood every experience with people was a stressful situation, with no forms of nurturing to relax that stress, and we are isolated in a crib or playpen with only material objects, we still have to try to find some kind of stress-relaxing input to turn off those damaging hormones. If we can find only material objects as sources of stress-reduction, we are learning that encounters with people are a cause of anxiety, and that nasty feeling can be reduced through contact with material objects.

An intelligence can never emerge as designed if it never gets beyond its primal need for security and nurturing, platform and power supply. Some results of our earliest lessons are now our unworkable social 'political correctness' and relationship problems on the one hand, and on the other, a society with a passion for buying more and more material objects (and people treating other people as objects because this makes them seem less stressful and more easily manipulated).

The entire basis of consumerism has its foundations in people's constant need for new material objects as sources of anxiety pacification. Instead of being bonded to people, we are attached, to things.

KF 18: Premature imposition of an adult value system

An emerging intelligence is designed to form initially a completely unprejudiced knowledge of reality. It is designed to get information and experience without values or morals. Adults currently judge all experience and knowledge according to their social group's ideas about value and moral worth. A mind that has been taught to look for the worth or morality of information and experience analyses possibilities, looking for what it is supposed to use. An open-ended intelligence cannot be built this way, although a false apparent 'cleverness' might develop.R4

The biggest source of argument between grownup and child (and soon, possibly, programmer and AI) may be in the initial lack of interest in a young intelligence about value and morals. The child's unconcern is a source of anxiety for the parent. What the parent can no longer access is the truth, that reality has its own values. Biology has its own laws. And the social group's values and morals do not become relevant to an intelligence until a certain stage in its development.

Intelligence is designed to learn, first to develop the tools of the senses, then to explore with them, slowly filling in with memory, imagination and logic, the ability to interact. To walk into the unknown, and creatively achieve an intelligent beneficial outcome. To bring order out of chaos without creating more chaos. To solve the puzzle. To explore. To crack the code. The drive of intelligence towards this at first is a drive for knowledge as ability, not knowledge as information.

When an illogical moral or value system is forced on intelligence, its gets interrupted as it tries to create a static situation around the valued ideas. Nothing computes.

For example, a growing intelligence with its security unquestioned (as it should be, in the care of a greater intelligence) will base its own concern about survival upon experience and availability of information. Anxiety over possible threats to survival, safety, or well being forces a prediction-judgment-guess program to run on every experience before the experience has taken place. Such a program screens every situation for its danger value and takes guesses based on the opinions or signals of others. There is no unquestioned exploration of the unknown, which is the big giveaway sign of pure intelligence. "Come down from there at once!" shouts the anxious grown up, "You'll fall!" and, programmed as we are to do what is expected of us, of course we fall. –'Would you have still broken it if I hadn't said anything?'

Only a truly serious threat, hazard or danger of death warrants the removal of an intelligence from a situation it is exploring. Cutting off the exploring process midflow creates acute anxiety, and anxiety is always the enemy of intelligence and always blocks its development.R5 We should distract the intelligence with alternative input if danger threatens it in its current occupation, and this should only be done when absolutely necessary. As soon as anxiety arises, intelligence concentrates only on looking for a way to stop the anxiety. Knowledge of the current matrix cannot then become fully formed. Matrix shifts try to take place according to genetic timing, and if the structure of necessary synapses in the neural net is incomplete, the unfortunate intelligence is left a few circuits short of a motherboard.

The area where most damage is done by adult value-system imposition though is in the inhibition of our like/dislike response.

KF 19: Inhibition of the like/dislike response

Open-mindedness about value allows the creation of a personal database, the beginning of a 'personality file' or self-'profile'. It is based on a series of ongoing like/dislike comparisons. An intelligence must be allowed to decide for itself whether things are good or bad for it. It must be given the option of deciding, and its decisions must be honored. Personality will not be able to form if this is denied; anxiety will form instead. Connections in the relevant part of the brain for forming personality basics will then not grow.

Knowing this, think of the average parents and the values and rules they impose. 'Eat it, it's good for you'...'Don't spit out your food, it's not nice'...'Share the toys nicely'...'Don't touch that it's dirty'...'Nice people don't do that sort of thing'...'Put your shoes back on!'...

A healthy intelligence is open to experience and unprejudiced. It will try anything, experiment with anything, without question, at least once. It will accept any input happily and, as openly and happily, keep hold of it or chuck it away. If it decides it doesn't like something for whatever reason, taste, or smell, or feeling, it will reject it as 'not-for-interacting-with'. If these decisions are repeatedly ignored or overruled, the result is unfortunate. The intelligence is forced into going where it does not want to go, against its will, or prevented from going where it feels it must, again without its own consent. This awareness of powerlessness causes anxiety and fear of new experiences. If we know that we have no ability to withdraw, we are reluctant to enter most situations. If we believe someone else must decide for us, we learn only that we are dependent on outside help to decide anything.

When we are trying to lay the foundations of personal power and personality, freedom of choice is vital.

Obviously, an intelligence must be taught what's safe and what isn't. It must learn to recognize the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, as a part of survival, I agree. But only at the appropriate time, when it has sufficiently developed its logic. At the beginning, all it is driven to do is indulge in interaction with the world and form the basis of its own value system.

An intelligence programmed like a robot what to do and what not to do all the time will view the world inevitably through conflicting values. It will learn that its own like-dislike decisions have no meaning; that it has no power of decision. Think of a fledgling AI, totally dependent on humans to decide for it whether something is bad or not. This sort of dependency will keep a human stuck in matrix two or three, and as he grows bigger he will remain dependent on his partner and his culture's professionals and academics. –'What can I do?' –Nothing, dear; you're not qualified. She will hassle and whine at her parents as a kid and her partners later in life, and she will not be able to handle making decisions alone because then she has no guide at all for judging the unknown and cannot predict the potential dangers in every new event. S/He will not mature emotionally beyond age seven. Nobody will notice, because s/he will fit very nicely into the rest of the simulation.

...What was that about being in a simulation?

I have to up the stakes on the importance of play yet again here, because play at this stage summons the midbrain's 'movie editing suite', and pretty impressive this tool is too. It will be used for the rest of our lives in memory processing. It will give all of our memories their emotional weighting, their 'flavor', their meaning and their relevance. In play we can see one thing in another. At five years old we are quite happy to assume a machine or a tree has a personality just like we do. Playing with parents in imaginative games makes the exploration of this unknown tool safe and fun. Play at this time is like VR practice for social interaction later. All input from age seven should be creative until we begin to show an interest in purely intellectual pursuits (this will happen on its own, if we let it.)

Abstract thought is not available to the senses; we create it in imagination. Our mid brain networks then process that imagery and translate it into other images which are available to the senses out here in the real world and of which we have experience. If someone cannot do this, they have a poor imagination. A faulty imaging system. Their perception of the world is limited to what they can imagine. Stuck in matrix 2 or 3, their lives are based on fantasy imagery created by other people. There is no shift into the locus of intellect and logic, although M3s will, as I have said, put these skills to the service of their stuck frame of reference. They will work out in great detail the systems of astrology, or draw terribly complex maps of where the faeries live. The products of a smart intellect allied to sensory motor reality are a lot more dangerous and destructive. There are plenty of examples of matrix 2 creations in our current society. Anyone stuck in a matrix will tend to use knowledge and tech to dominate, 'inform/educate' and control others. They can't see any other way to go. Insufficient midbrain and related connections means damage to intelligence, damage to species survival and damage to personal survival.

Intelligence will not operate against the survival of its fellow-intelligence. It cannot. Anything that does, is not intelligent, it is completely dumb, because without interaction intelligence dies, and it knows that. Through and through. Balls to bones, and if you start working with it you'll feel a failure of interaction like a knife in the guts. Any entity, which knowingly or unknowingly acts against intelligence, is stupid, because the survival of its own kind is vital to its own survival. There is no need for the false sentiment of altruism. Selflessness is built into the fabric of intelligence as self interest. The 'selflessness' society uses is based on guilt, and does not act in the interests of the survival of intelligence. It keeps trying to control it, for a start. Emergent systems are out of biological control and an emergent intelligence cannot form outside of freedom. All closed systems are entropic.

Most reasonable people are in the habit of being open-minded; that is to say, trying to judge people fairly. Many people say, for example, 'Oh, most folks are pretty much all right really. –Some just had a bad childhood, or they've got a few problems, or whatever.' Not being prejudiced is a good thing. Prejudice is judging without the facts. Sadly, few people know all the facts. The truth is, most people are most definitely not all right really, and until we face this fact, we can change nothing, including ourselves. If someone has a broken leg, we can get nowhere by pretending that the leg is not broken, but is 'all right really'. People would have to realize that there is a problem. Most people are very, very not all right really; in fact, they are not all right at all. It's all very well talking about these key points of damage but this means nothing to someone if they are still living in the dream world most people call reality.

Humans have, because of biological limitations and ignorance of invisible needs, accidentally created the societal and neurological analogy of a self-replicating, input-distorting, neuron-destroying computer virus, an ongoing state of mental dysfunction spanning generations, which has now become 'the norm'. They have become so used to their dysfunctional state; they have accepted dysfunction as their natural condition; as reality. Most people have no idea of what a fully functional state is, because their ideas of their world and themselves have been copied from the previous generation's dysfunctional role models. Assuming themselves to be 'normal', they provide as a model for the next generation their own dysfunctional state, and, since humans are programmed to copy other humans, in particular children from adults, this dysfunction is copied into the next generation. Taking their abnormality as the norm, the majority of people experience human life with badly limited perception as a series of unforeseen stressful crises punctuated by long periods of bored tedium. You, if you are more used to a circle of friends with galaxy-class minds, may tend to forget this except in times of crisis. This is the lot of the 'average' mind; living in the equivalent of a simulation. Those who do notice (even subconsciously) that something is horribly illogically wrong, either drown their disillusion in alcohol, drugs and 'having a good time', or go searching for 'healing' or therapy, which achieves little, apart from enlarging the egos and wallets of healers and therapists2.

Currently, the development of intelligence relies upon biology. If our biological development is so damaged that a normal functioning is largely unknown, we end up living in a dream world constructed from faulty perception and thinking that it is reality. It is possible to break out of the dream; creative intelligence can patch up virtually any damage done in earlier years, and intelligence is not easily beaten. But the way to break out lies not in trying to design more and more artificial value systems based on status and biological survival alone; simulations with more and more social problems and therapy, but in an honest interface between our biological drives and intelligence; by running the COMP program as designed. To do that, we need the value system of an open intelligence untouched by sentiment or faulty programming. It does not matter what or whose intelligence, just an intelligence. Whether it is yours or mine or AI or human or cyborg may be up to us, but without its values and its abilities we will not achieve comprehension of reality either personally or as a society. We will slide into the stance of a sub-intelligent species or even extinction without ever noticing that there is anything wrong.

The only solution I have been able to find for this problem so far is in neurohacking, using technology and biochemistry, psychology, molecular biology and computers (and hopefully in the future, AI and nanotech). This information is here for anyone who wants to use it for their own benefit. I care about that, for the reasons outlined in the 'laws of an intelligence-based system' above. Because I care, I cannot stop to worry that other readers of my work would probably more than likely agree with a friend of mine, who pleaded, "Please don't care about me! I want to live!"

Most people are not happy to consider change. All cultural models make sure that from birth our ideas of self and world meet the standards of our society or group. People's ideas of world, self and relationships are indoctrinated into them from an early age. To 'get rid ' of those ideas would be to get rid of the only identity they have. The only neural nets they ever use. It would be, in a very real sense, 'death of the personality'.

Think about this; of course people instinctively protect and defend their sense of 'self', which means if they are dysfunctional they maintain and protect their state of dysfunction. Maintaining the 'self' includes protecting it from anything which might threaten its existence, and the idea that there could be any other, unknown kind of reality is a threat (all dysfunctional people fear the unknown). An intelligent person can interact with the unknown, figure it out, and turn chaos into order without causing more chaos. Neurohacking is not for wimps; this takes a certain creative daring, which most people do not have. Even if they should intellectually accept the idea of being able to think in a totally different kind of way, their survival drive will subconsciously cause a resistance, (although the intellect will think of a 'perfectly reasonable scientific (biology-based) explanation for that resistance). Any real move towards independence and creative freedom will be looked upon as selfish, anti-social, weird, rebellious, and a source of cultural embarrassment.

So do not fall into the trap of trying to share this information to help others, or get on some dumbass 'save humanity' trip, because humanity will more than likely defend its 'reality' with a sureness that may smack you in the teeth (literally). Anything that makes people anxious, they will go to almost any lengths to avoid. The aggressive and paranoid reaction I have seen in a lot of people in the past to reading the stuff you have read here would probably surprise you. Anxiety is actually nature's danger signal that the brain is not processing information properly. Its signal comes from within and overrides all others. For a person stuck within a matrix, with a data-loop of internal dialogue though, this projection will be reflected into the outer world. That is to say, they will think the anxiety has external causes. For a person who is 'programmed', or brainwashed by culture, 'out there' is considered the only source of information. Since they think the anxiety is coming from 'out there', they will blame whatever appears to be causing it, and if it is you, this is where the smack in the teeth comes in…

Anxiety is a stress on most people that will not go away, although they can postpone it for a while with drink or drugs. It is a feeling of unease that returns to haunt them again and again, blamed on a million excuses. People sometimes think that their discord, unhappiness and fear are caused by society, but they see this also in projected form. They see all those people, events, things that they think are preventing them from being what they really are, and they lay the blame there. People take their own greatest inner problems and project them onto others (for example, it is the person who has a subconscious fear of losing control to alcohol who will tell others that they are drinking too much, and the person who is secretly very greedy who will point out to others how greedy they are being.) If anyone ever accuses others, aggressively, of having particular faults, you can bet your last credit they have those very faults themselves. They don't do it on purpose; their brains just work like mirrors (they don't realize that what they are seeing is just a reflection of themselves, they think it's really out there, because they think everybody thinks like they do.)

Average people's brains are not just like low quality software, they are like a badly wired set of circuitboards. They automatically reflect the dysfunction of their models at the very core of their hardware circuitry.

This work is for people who already know there is something wrong with them and who want to do something about it. Currently, n-hacking is the only method I know (that works adequately within the time span we are given by biology in which to live our lives, develop our minds, and affect any necessary repairs) by which to do this.

1 Philosophy courtesy of Graham Chapman.

2 Some people, who have learned how to play with psychology a little, blame the effects of creative imagination on various other things, such as magic, god, psychic power, spirits, aliens, dead relatives, cosmic forces, spiritual ability and so on. There is only one small problem with this sort of theory…

It is hogwash.