Self-hacking 101: Systems Theory

[toranin]

This is the first in what may or may not become a series of posts on topics related to what I will call "self-hacking." You can call it "self-help," but I think that's a more limiting paradigm. The techniques that work for self-help (i.e. fixing perceived problems in oneself) also work for almost any kind of directed self-change.Today, I'm going

Comments

[heartexalted]

Very intriguing idea. I, too, am drawn to the idea of changing the "inputs" rather than one's internal state -- or, ideally, a combination of the two. In terms of your own argument, I think some concrete examples would be very beneficial for illustrative purposes.

[4min33sec]

Self-hacking's a good way to phrase it.

John Lilly called it metaprogramming.

I've met a number of people who do this.

The most famous, and in my opinion quality, person who wrote about this, of course...

Both myself and Mr. Wilson like this practice.

Of course, people have been working on methods of metaprogramming for thousands of years.

This stuff is a lot of fun. :-)

[toranin]

Thanks for the links. I'm more or less completely unfamiliar with all of that, though I think I've heard the word metaprogramming used in that context before.

I'm not inclined to use the term "metaprogramming" myself, though. For one, as a programmer I already use the word for something else. For another, my thoughts arise from a potpourri of personal experience and other sources, and I'd rather not lead someone to think I'm talking about the exactly the same thing. (I know, I know, someone who groks General Semantics is unlikely to, but that person probably doesn't need these posts anyway.)

[playfuleye]

I have a similar way of thinking, and I agree with your thoughts here.

Another big thing I've been thinking about is regarding myself as not just a human, but also an animal. As with all animals, to survive and to thrive I need food, air, water, exercise, and sleep. (As a human I can choose to go without for a time or I can adopt unhealthy habits, but they will undoubtedly have adverse effects.) ... I think a lot of people forget that.

[toranin]

I think you've got a good view there. I may expand on this later, but I tend to view a person's mind as a big pattern-recognition/conditioned-stimulus-response engine with a little sprinkling of self-awareness strewn throughout. Perhaps somewhat more of a sprinkling than most animals have, but still far less than certain former selves of mine would have wanted to admit. The self-aware bit can only control so many levers on the "machine" at a time; the rest of what happens is just the cogs turning and reconfiguring themselves in the process.