Seeking a Definition for Neurohacking...?

Rather than giving you one strict definition, which is never the truth for everyone, we asked group members: “How would you explain what neurohacking is, and why do you do it?” The comments below are their replies:

“I see neurohacking simply as neuroscience-based self-improvement, and I do it to narrow the gap between the life I have and the life I want.” 

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“Neurohacking teaches you how your brain works and how you can improve your mood and health. For me it was a way to repair some problems because I got rid of migraine and backaches by learning one of the first things, the relaxation response. Then I got into biofeedback because that way I didn’t need tablets for blood pressure because I can control it. I notice that my confidence has got better as well.”

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“Neurohacking is about ways of keeping your mind healthy and your brain performing at its best. I do it for maintaining and improving my mental health and partly to avoid decline with age, the same reasons I go to the gym for health of my body.

Why have a fit healthy body and a weak confused mind?”

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“Neurohacking helps you to understand yourself. When doing NH you can go beyond "I must have got out of bed on the wrong side" way of thinking and figure out which side exactly is better to get out of bed on.”

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“The Matrix had me. Neurohacking was the Red pill.”

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“Neurohacking is changing your mind by changing your brain chemistry and learning how to control these states and work with them. Sometimes we humans do this just for fun, but it is what shamans have been doing since ages past. I like experimenting with drugs and methods of changing perception. I’m also interested in intelligence augmentation or as I would call it the pursuit of Wisdom and enhancing our creativity and imagination, basically expanding all the frontiers of our minds, working with nature and our biology.”

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"Neurohacking is… The act of evolving from a simple lab-rat to a pandimensional being."

"Self-Help gone right."

"Trying to keep the fragile balance required to be a sturdy human being."

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“To me, neurohacking begins with the acknowledgement that you are your bodybrain. From there, it's just a system of practical advice designed to reground yourself in the physical and mental capabilities that you were born with. It's not 'hacking' in the sense of overclocking, but in the sense of 'lifting the hood, understanding what's going on, and making obvious and natural improvements'. It's open-source and voluntary.”

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"The culmination of millenia old philosophy, psychology, physiology and more, in one little red pill. The fastest means to achieve the most valuable human resource: Freedom. Why do I do it? There is no way not to do it, I only get it (right)." (Marcos Rojas)

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For me, neurohacking (the concept as it has evolved for me, as a part of this forum), is simply having some knowledge and techniques for improving the functioning of my body/mind/emotions,  to improve the overall quality of my life, including longevity, health/vitality, mental functioning, emotional balance, as well as interpersonal communication, cooperative ventures, including art, music, poetry/prose/ songwriting, etc., and even on-line discussion. 

For me, knowing things and learning things are not the ultimate achievements in my life, however they can help me to create a much better foundation and framework, (or matrix) for what I do value most. ( a synergy of physical emotional, mental and spiritual growth or evolution of consciousness, interaction/communication,  and expression.)”

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“Neurohacking is the 'practical' to the 'theory' of neuroscience. Neuroscience gives you knowledge as facts about the brain and mind and intelligence. Neurohacking gives you knowledge as ability to use that information to improve yourself.”

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“Neurohacking is another word for 'entelechy' for me –that means learning how to do the most beneficial things for the good of intelligence, and that has fulfilled me personally as well. I have always been interested in how intelligence works. The more I learn, the more interested I get. I now see NH as a path to imaginative creativity in all things, interactions and relationships. I am hoping to learn enough to start running workshops and courses in the future.”

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“I would say that neurohacking is having a conscious awareness of the forces shaping your consciousness, and consciously altering those forces in order to improve the interaction between your consciousness and the outside world.  Neurohacking is inherently recursive, since the system doing the altering is also the system being altered, and I would say that any form of 'self-improvement' that has that feature probably qualifies as a neurohacking technique.”

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“Neurohacking is just like computer hacking –you change the system to do something better, to perform better, or sometimes to stop someone doing something nasty to you. I’m interested in "Artificial Intelligence" and biotechnology stuff like mind/brain-computer interface and uploading, virtual reality. Intelligence is like the most important thing that humans (and machines) have access to, but most of them don’t really even have a clue what it is and what it can do.”

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"Hacking is often associated with the quest for efficiency, expanding the concept to the ultimate machine, our own brains, seems to encompass much more than just brain efficiency, since the brain can assimilate the real world and expand its domain over it. True freedom of choice is impossible without knowing the full spectrum of your choices.

Expanding your mind is a requirement to fit that spectrum in, and start to glance its magnificence.

NGI = Natural General Intelligence.   (contrasting with the search for AGI)”

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"Neurohacking is any act of intentionally altering/modifying your bodybrain state resulting in either temporary or long-term effects. The primary goal of NH is developing a bodybrain in full health with access to all it's functions in all networks, and in the process repairing any pre-existing damage and building the potential for experiencing an extraordinary life."

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“There’s a formal definition of Neurohacking (NH) here:

Wiki Page

I like being able to learn the latest discoveries about intelligence and discuss it. My reasons are various: intellectually & scientific interest, improving my intelligence and to keep my mind sharp as I get older, personally because the “relief” at being free from anxiety and really feeling personal power in my life has made me a much happier person and my life much happier (and much better organized!) I can only describe the process as like ‘stepping out of a cloud’ and it’s a clear day.”

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“Neurohacking for me is used for a spiritual path, but I know it can be used for many more purposes. The Dalai Lama’s talks got me interested in neuroscience. I use some biofeedback to aid my meditation progress and I plan my diet and things like Tai Chi exercises. I also do NH techniques to support emotional stability and clarity of perception. My goal is I seek wisdom, understanding, and unity.”

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“Neurohacking is any ability distilled by knowledge that deliberately seeks to promote the growth of complexity in any intelligent system."

A Couple of Personal Accounts:

“To be completely honest, neurohacking is the story of my life; as long as I can remember I've been fighting those dragons: beings, institutions and ideas that wanted to implant in my head the seeds of their controlled universe. Yes, way back to the times when even the word "hacking" was not part of my vocabulary, I remember... I remember the terrible shock of their blades, I remember the dry sound of their shields blocking my sword, I remember the smell of my skin burning under the repeated assaults of their fire-breathing steeds, and I remember the loneliness. I remember how I could have felt so alone in this never ending struggle, desperately seeking to meet some other brave knights out there, ready to stand and fight at my side. It took me 34 long years to find the first one, his name was Sir Alexander Ramonsky...

So yeah, maybe you can now better understand what kind of relief it was for me to find a neuroscientist who actually confirmed the righteousness of my holy war. And it might explain why, at first, I was rather focused on the will to build something like the New Camelot, reforming the old Round Table, and living in that golden stronghold with young and strong and brave knights, patiently furbishing our weapons, preparing for the day of revenge... I was so hurt, so weary, I needed a place for retreat. Although the quest for a 100% hassle-free zone was like another unattainable Holy Grail unworthy of our - quite limited - time. Avalon is the resting place of the dead, it is not made for the living.

So these days are over now. Today, my own neurohacking practice have led me to the land where Voltaire spent his late years, or as Candide himself did put it: "we must cultivate our garden". And then I understood that even if I spent so many years wondering what was my true mission on this planet, still I've always fulfilled it by being true to myself, by being the living example that one can refuse all the bullshit they pretend to seriously care about. What has changed, though, is that today I know why by cultivating my own garden I'm doing precisely the only best thing I can do to utterly slain all the dragons...

That's what neurohacking has done in my case, that's what neurohacking does anyway, because it simply allows Intelligence to blossom naturally; and if Intelligence speaks many languages, it speaks only in one voice. Hence the delicious feeling of unity in which my mind is increasingly wandering these days.

So from now on, my focus will simply be on participating in this wide movement which - somehow - will consist in offering to the Spirit of Candide, of Voltaire and of the Enlightenment philosophers, but above all to any living dude who'll be smart enough to really care about it, what I would dare to call: a 'Science of Gardening'..." - Scalino Corleone di Napoli

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“I work in Biological Psychology and I got into Neurohacking as part of a search for the truth about what intelligence really is and what’s happened to most people’s minds. I searched because I had to; I was driven, because for my life to have personal meaning it has to make sense to me, and the way my society was structured and the way that most people behaved did not make sense to me.

I searched because I knew there was something wrong, and that it was hidden from our eyes, like a computer virus running in the undercurrents of society, running in the unconscious minds of people going about their conscious business, living out their lives like duped slaves in a mindless soap-opera-in-the-matrix existence, oblivious to any real truth or any real satisfaction, and because I knew that whatever was wrong was going wrong in epidemic proportions.

I searched because I knew there was something more. Along the way I met others, potential explorers driven by their own needs, people baffled by their own experiences that did not make sense, thrown off balance by sentiments and anxieties that should not exist in healthy human intelligence (and to be truly human, or truly intelligent, I have now come to believe is the very thing humans may have to fight for). Chronic anxiety rules the world, creating the very problem that makes people unable to face it.

I went looking for the causes of humanity’s dysfunctional state and my own, and I found them, in the hard, undeniable evidence of human science. The truth is way too much to swallow, for the ‘many’. Trying to think intelligently with anxiety is like trying to swim in quicksand. You can get out if you stop struggling and let intelligence save you, but most people really do not want to be unplugged. Most people are too busy hiding from, rather than looking for, the answers.

But nevertheless, I’m here because it’s in biological psychology that I found my answers, and through neurohacking I managed to change my mind.

I am not Morpheus  If people want to be unplugged, seek to understand the truth about intelligence, and want to free their minds, I’m here to work with them, but if they want to 'stay in the matrix', they can stay by all means. Neurohacking is not for wimps. It's Red Pillsville, buckle your seatbelt, and Kansas is about to go bye bye. There are lots of potentials (‘the many’) but very few actuals (‘the few').

And now it’s a part of my life to work with the few, wherever I can. Mend the wires. Stop the virus. Make healthy intelligence 'software' and mental health information open source. Create a space for intelligent people to get on with real things. I make no predictions about what I’ll be doing next, because from my point of view it’s as simple as "whatever's necessary".

Why are we here? "Because there is still some good in the world, Mr Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for"."

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Now… Perhaps you can empathize with some of the views above or perhaps you will discover your own definitions and reasons; whatever they are you are welcome aboard  

We hope you now have a clearer idea of what NH is about and what we are doing here.