This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis

The NY Times has a piece on hypnosis, looking at a little of the history, uses, some stats from the general population, and some new research that studies the patterns of the brain as it undergoes through the Stroop Effect.

Some especially interesting thoughts on the interplay between "bottom-up", sensorial-led reporting of the world vs "top-down" almost-consciousness-led interpretation. A reliance on a dual-part system makes sense to me, between the observed and the observer. Hypnosis (along with other mentral control mechanisms) may be a way to place more weight on one than the other.

Brain blocks out Ad Overloads

This weekend's Guardian has an article on ad blindness, using a newly-developed pair of spectacles to monitor what ads the wearer looks at, for how long. A round of questions then links that up to what brands and products you actually remember, and surprisingly (or perhaps not) they find that 99% of adverts have no effect.

Note that this is probably quite contextual - when bombarded with 130 adverts in 45 minutes, the brain is probably quite effective at filtering the whole lot out. If you saw 2 or 3 in the same amount of time, they might stand out more. Still, the point is that an entire landscape of massvertisement really doesn't help much. What good, then, does all that billboard budget do?

Dotty

Neat optical illusion... Inverting your colour-o-vision

(via Blahsploitation)

Out-of-body or all in the mind?

The BBC has an article on research into Out of Body Experiences.

Banished by Beethoven

The small town of Worthing in the UK is employing classical music fully soon, to deter gatherings of kids with nothing better to do than get drunk. The BBC covered this back in January.

In an age of iPods and fragmented, individualistic music habits, this is interesting on two fronts. Firstly, the obvious counter-culture attack as intended. Secondly though, music isn't broadcast publically very much at all these days. Could this be swung to encourage other people to gather together and listen to the same thing? A kind of "community broadcast"?

The Self as Metaprogrammer

Just found Chris Arkenberg's article "The Self as Metaprogrammer" which delves a little into what the brain is, what its relation to the self and the mind is, and different ways in which people attempt to break through the natural "setting" of our neural connections.

(via Technoccult)

Video: Gilmore on Politics of Psychedelia

From this Reality Hackers tribe thread...

Hacker con 'What the Hack' is over, but they have full video downloads for all the talks (a bit faster than HAL 2001 got theirs up :)

Most of them are techie, obviously, but this one might be relevant here. John Gilmore on drugs and the mind in science and politics.

Scientists vs Dalai Lama

There's apparently some controversy over the fact that the Dalai Lama will be lecturing at a neuroscientist conference. The religious aspects that the Dalai Lama subscribes to are supposed to be "unscientific" - yet the effects of these beliefs - meditation, et al - clearly overlap with the field studied by neuroscience. There is, in effect, a clash between what the scientists see, and the methods they choose to adopt.

Is this a rational move on behalf of the opposed scientists? Half of the point of science is to explain the things we don't understand. Yet we can achieve things, even if we don't understand the mechanisms behind it, through a variety of other techniques.

Personally, I think a healthy mix of belief and rationale is essential - the latter to provide the explanation and answers to our innate curiosity, and the former to prevent ourselves from going crazy and to settle the very same curiosity. My 2 bits, anyway.

Reality Mining @ MIT

Large scale (and anonymous, hopefully) sociological tracking in MIT Media Lab: Reality Mining:

By the end of the experiment, this dataset will contain over 500,000 hours (~60 years) of continuous data on daily human behavior.

Change or Die

Change or Die:

So instead of trying to motivate them with the "fear of dying," Ornish reframes the issue. He inspires a new vision of the "joy of living" -- convincing them they can feel better, not just live longer. That means enjoying the things that make daily life pleasurable, like making love or even taking long walks without the pain caused by their disease. "Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear," he says.

[Tribe discussion]

What are Lovemarks

Branding is no longer enough, apparently. Now companies must become loved as if part of the family. Welcome to Lovemarks.

MI6 Manipulation of the Media

MI6 Manipulation of the Media

Music to deter yobs by

The Beeb reports on Music to deter yobs by.

Hooking into social trends and the inherent insecurity of them in order to manipulate a particular demographic. How else could this technique be used? Hint: Social fashions aren't just limited to music. This could be an inverse kind of "attraction psychology" as used in many shops to lure people in...

Hello Laziness

France is entertaining the idea of slacking as a discorporate activity - a rebellious act to go against the idea of working for no reward. How is this hacking reality? Because of the way it picks apart and goes against the methods used to keep us doing something without good reason:

"Workers remain at their jobs until retirement, stymieing the promotion of those below them, she argues, yet a system of patronage and stiff legal protections make it difficult for employers to fire anyone. Years of such stagnation in France's hierarchy-obsessed society have produced elaborate rituals to keep people busy."

Anything that breaks through such systems is worthy.

WTF *is* RH?

Just posted to the Reality Hackers tribe...

In starting this group, I've been kind of forced to assess just what is meant by "reality hacking." The problem is, of course, that as everything is real, the scope could be rather large and diverse, without having any real focus and so becoming a non-entity.

But what I don't want to do is necessarily define what reality hacking *is*. My approach so far is that it alludes to an attitude, to be identified in certain people, and that all manner of thoughts and activity emerges from such an attitude.

At best, I can narrow the attitude down to: "a yearning to understand and to experiment with the world". Any more than this, and I start getting into difficulties :)

I hope, in a way, that people with such an attitude will inherently realise it - in themselves, and in others. Just as there are great computer hackers around, but a definition of the term itself remains wholesomely elusive.

So, off the top of my head, here's a list of concepts that I may consider as falling under this theme...

- anything academic that attempts to explain how the world works, although I find the closer to ourselves this research is, the closer it could be considered to "reality". Thus psychology and philosophy may be of more "interest" than chemistry and maths.

- anything that sets out to discover what can be achieved physically - ranging from tasks such as juggling et al, to martial arts, etc. These things take much practice, and a certain way of looking at the world in order to make progress.

- anything that sets out to discover what can be achieved mentally - this includes attempts and actions to break from the channels of normal behaviour initiated by society. Drugs are an obvious example, but I also take into account things like meditation, puzzles and beer.

- anything that challenges existing, accepted means. This may overlap with criminal means in places, but the extent to which these are "hacking" depends on the situation, and intent. Again, no definition forthcoming on this...

Whether that narrows the field down is somewhat dubious, but it's a start. I'd definitely be interested to find out what other people think...

Wendy's Drive-up Order System Information Disclosure

Only just found out about this, as it got turned down by the mods on BugTraq, but it's a fine example of both parody and just what we take for granted, too.

FullDisclosure: Wendy's Drive-up Order System Information Disclosure

"As proof of concept, this attack was carried out against mi2g
CEO DK Matai. It was disclosed that he ordered a grilled chicken
sandwich, large fries and a large Coca-Cola."

DEF CON 11 on-line

Media from DEF CON 11 is up on-line, including hackreal-relevant talks like "Manyonymity", "Hacker Generations", more on HavenCo, "Mimicry" and loads of other stuff ranging from the technical to the political. Find it all in the DEF CON Media Archives.

Oxford hackers face punishment

Oxford Uni's student paper had the scoop on just how insecure campus networks are, with users easily able to snoop (via traffic-sniffing, I assume) instant-messenger conversations and (non-https?) webmail passwords. The extra-interesting bit is the access to CCTV monitoring - remember kids, every day more of our actions get turned into little 1s and 0s and stored somewhere "safe".

Oh, and BBC News reports that the perps now face discipline. If you're going to highlight inherent dangers in the system, make sure you're your own guinea pig/monkey/other experimental creature.

Casino Easter Eggs

'Easter egg' cheats cracking casinos? Even things that are assumed to be intregrally completely random have holes in them - often for good reason:

"Mr. Haase had his own programmers install hidden codes in products he sold to a casino in the Caribbean as a special feature the casino operator could activate for the amusement of valued customers."

Hacking Reality. Take 1.

This blog has no particular aim other than an audience, or perhaps simply members. It is for people who are not just interested, but almost obsessed with figuring out who they are, and how the world around them works. It is for a mindset and an attitude, that is perhaps best described in this O'Reilly article:

What is the essence of Hacking?

Watch this space.