The same stuff I normally do, except with less Akrasia and procrastinating, and more rapid research and self-correction.
So, basically, “Be a functional human being”, rather than “sit around trying to do cool things, but cycle through Facebook and Lesswrong and a couple other sites all day instead”.
Learn every human language (and invent one that is more pleasant, more practical and more efficient than them all), free up bytes by deleting my entire MP3 collection and playing all my music inside my head (I can already do this to some degree), go to bookstores and consume dozens of books at a sitting by flipping the pages and remembering every word, catch up with my pending movies by watching them all at the same time, periodically look at HD photographs of the night sky to scan for differences that might point to supernovas or incoming asteroids, and donate my spare processing power to run both LHC@home and SETI@home in my head.
Hmm. Can you elaborate on how that would look? it sounds like you wan tot view your own source code, but I don’t see why memory palaces are the best format (unless I don’t understand how memory palaces can be used ).
This is primarily inspired by Blink by Malcolm Gladwell combined with the cliche math teacher insisting that you show your work instead of jumping to the solution.
The goal would be to inspect your own snap judgements to understand the conclusions reached while screening for biases. So not exactly the source code but a print out of every variable the code writes, if the metaphor holds up.
A common example: you step out your door, and know it is going to rain today. You know it is going to rain because of a lifetime of experience in the region combined with the perceived cloud cover, humidity, air pressure all give you the strong hunch it will rain. However if asked to defend the hunch consciously, you would have a hard time even noticing the changes in humidity and air pressure.
Well, here I meant the entirely traditional concepts of moksha or nirvana. The relevant abilities include escape from the bonds of the material world and ability to see things as they truly are :-)
Definitely take over the world. Study enough psychology to be able to guess other people’s passwords, then hack into the NSA, then download their secret blackmail stash. I now have near-complete control over almost anyone who’s been online for any significant amount of time including politicians.
My university network has password requirements strict enough that when I had to make a new one, I generated a random 8-digit string and it disallowed it because it looked too much like a real word or phrase (I have no idea what), and I had to pick a string it generated for me that was “random enough”. The NSA probably doesn’t have much looser standards for its employees’ passwords than my university has for its students’, so I expect your advanced psychology skills approaching the level of mindreading would just tell you who’s annoyed they weren’t allowed to use “password”, and who’s got an even longer string of random digits than usual.
I’m reasonably sure there’s somewhere along the chain that I’d be able to figure out how to get in at 100% control of my own brain. Maybe not specifically passwords, but if I hacked some top employees emails, I should be able to build on that. Or add myself to the top-secret clearance list and do it that way.
If the NSA used common passwords, they’d already be hacked many times over. I’m talking about getting their secure passwords, which should be a lot easier than doing it now. Social engineering when you can think many times faster than the person you’re talking to would be a game-changer. The method doesn’t matter, specifically, especially on a hypothetical.
Are you taking the position that with a perfect brain, it would still be impractical to get into NSA databases? What about multiple brains, then?
Proper security (nowadays) usually depends on a mix of three things—what you know (passwords), what you have (physical tokens), and what you are (biometrics).
with a perfect brain
Not sure which capabilities do you think a “perfect” brain will have. You still won’t become an X-man.
Proper security (nowadays) usually depends on a mix of three things—what you know (passwords), what you have (physical tokens), and what you are (biometrics).
Do you think it’s possible to get into the NSA at some point along the security chain with only “what you know (passwords)”? Just curious.
Not sure which capabilities do you think a “perfect” brain will have. You still won’t become an X-man.
I would assume that that means no more cognitive biases, perfect memory, no logical errors, etc. The increase in processing speed that would come from no longer having to deal with the corresponding mental garbage would no doubt be quite impressive. Furthermore, if you have “perfect control” as specified by the OP, you ought to be able to simulate people just by forcing your mind to act like theirs. It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch that you might be able to guess some NSA workers’ passwords while simulating them with near-perfect fidelity.
Do you think it’s possible to get into the NSA at some point along the security chain with only “what you know (passwrods)”? Just curious.
Depends on what do you mean by “get into the NSA”, of course, but I’d rate your chances as very low, especially post-Snowden.
To start with, I assume their sensitive information is air-gapped.
The increase in processing speed that would come from no longer having to deal with the corresponding mental garbage would no doubt be quite impressive.
Not sure about that. You still have the same underlying biology, you don’t get to optimize your neuron topology, and neurons are slow.
you ought to be able to simulate people just by forcing your mind to act like theirs.
No, that wouldn’t work because you don’t have enough information about their mind in order to simulate it.
you might be able to guess some NSA workers’ passwords
I’d crank up the pleasure center of my brain until the handle broke off.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned this yet? I’m sad to see that others would sacrifice greatly just to be more capable or powerful.
Hopefully, self-deception is to blame; others want to want to improve themselves instead, but if they were able to sample bliss, they wouldn’t trade it for anything.
If you could have perfect control of your own mind, what would you do with it?
(I realize the question is a bit vague. Please try and answer anyway.)
The same stuff I normally do, except with less Akrasia and procrastinating, and more rapid research and self-correction.
So, basically, “Be a functional human being”, rather than “sit around trying to do cool things, but cycle through Facebook and Lesswrong and a couple other sites all day instead”.
Learn every human language (and invent one that is more pleasant, more practical and more efficient than them all), free up bytes by deleting my entire MP3 collection and playing all my music inside my head (I can already do this to some degree), go to bookstores and consume dozens of books at a sitting by flipping the pages and remembering every word, catch up with my pending movies by watching them all at the same time, periodically look at HD photographs of the night sky to scan for differences that might point to supernovas or incoming asteroids, and donate my spare processing power to run both LHC@home and SETI@home in my head.
Have you already invested effort into language invention?
Yes, but so far the results have been too Eurocentric.
Pain and “ugh field” asymbolia. That would be pretty awesome...
Ugh field asymbolia would be the state in which you perceive the sensations attached to “ugh fields” but do the things anyway.
Set up the subconscious to cache its processes in memory palaces, so its work can be reviewed much like a debug file.
Hmm. Can you elaborate on how that would look? it sounds like you wan tot view your own source code, but I don’t see why memory palaces are the best format (unless I don’t understand how memory palaces can be used ).
This is primarily inspired by Blink by Malcolm Gladwell combined with the cliche math teacher insisting that you show your work instead of jumping to the solution.
The goal would be to inspect your own snap judgements to understand the conclusions reached while screening for biases. So not exactly the source code but a print out of every variable the code writes, if the metaphor holds up.
A common example: you step out your door, and know it is going to rain today. You know it is going to rain because of a lifetime of experience in the region combined with the perceived cloud cover, humidity, air pressure all give you the strong hunch it will rain. However if asked to defend the hunch consciously, you would have a hard time even noticing the changes in humidity and air pressure.
Why in form of memory palaces instead of mentally visualized printouts?
The memory palace was just the first idea for storing large amounts of unconnected information.
I have no experience with memory palaces.
Achieve enlightenment.
I know my question was vague, but would you elaborate on what that means?
Well, here I meant the entirely traditional concepts of moksha or nirvana. The relevant abilities include escape from the bonds of the material world and ability to see things as they truly are :-)
Definitely take over the world. Study enough psychology to be able to guess other people’s passwords, then hack into the NSA, then download their secret blackmail stash. I now have near-complete control over almost anyone who’s been online for any significant amount of time including politicians.
My university network has password requirements strict enough that when I had to make a new one, I generated a random 8-digit string and it disallowed it because it looked too much like a real word or phrase (I have no idea what), and I had to pick a string it generated for me that was “random enough”. The NSA probably doesn’t have much looser standards for its employees’ passwords than my university has for its students’, so I expect your advanced psychology skills approaching the level of mindreading would just tell you who’s annoyed they weren’t allowed to use “password”, and who’s got an even longer string of random digits than usual.
You don’t need to study psychology for that. The lists of common passwords are freely available along with tools to apply them.
You don’t imagine they rely on text passwords, do you..?
I’m reasonably sure there’s somewhere along the chain that I’d be able to figure out how to get in at 100% control of my own brain. Maybe not specifically passwords, but if I hacked some top employees emails, I should be able to build on that. Or add myself to the top-secret clearance list and do it that way.
If the NSA used common passwords, they’d already be hacked many times over. I’m talking about getting their secure passwords, which should be a lot easier than doing it now. Social engineering when you can think many times faster than the person you’re talking to would be a game-changer. The method doesn’t matter, specifically, especially on a hypothetical.
Are you taking the position that with a perfect brain, it would still be impractical to get into NSA databases? What about multiple brains, then?
Proper security (nowadays) usually depends on a mix of three things—what you know (passwords), what you have (physical tokens), and what you are (biometrics).
Not sure which capabilities do you think a “perfect” brain will have. You still won’t become an X-man.
Do you think it’s possible to get into the NSA at some point along the security chain with only “what you know (passwords)”? Just curious.
I would assume that that means no more cognitive biases, perfect memory, no logical errors, etc. The increase in processing speed that would come from no longer having to deal with the corresponding mental garbage would no doubt be quite impressive. Furthermore, if you have “perfect control” as specified by the OP, you ought to be able to simulate people just by forcing your mind to act like theirs. It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch that you might be able to guess some NSA workers’ passwords while simulating them with near-perfect fidelity.
Depends on what do you mean by “get into the NSA”, of course, but I’d rate your chances as very low, especially post-Snowden.
To start with, I assume their sensitive information is air-gapped.
Not sure about that. You still have the same underlying biology, you don’t get to optimize your neuron topology, and neurons are slow.
No, that wouldn’t work because you don’t have enough information about their mind in order to simulate it.
Guessing passwords is not the hard part :-)
Attacking the NSA is very high risk and probably still a dumb move.
I’d crank up the pleasure center of my brain until the handle broke off.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned this yet? I’m sad to see that others would sacrifice greatly just to be more capable or powerful.
Hopefully, self-deception is to blame; others want to want to improve themselves instead, but if they were able to sample bliss, they wouldn’t trade it for anything.