My berry code

Entry #492
Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Whenever I get into a discussion about the way our brains work, I always start talking in computer terms. When I can't remember something that I know I know, my file allocation tables are messed up so I can't locate the data on my hard drive and throw it into my random access memory.

One thing I've been thinking about taking a whack at is the art of hacking some of the applications in my neural code. Not the BIOS or anything that crazy, but the user-level code. For instance, somewhere in my code I need to hack the function that returns an error when I eat berries. Have you ever heard of anyone who doesn't like berries? I don't like them. I never have. "I can't eat anything ending in the suffix berry," I tell people. Most people have real trouble understanding this, and since most people don't understand programming analagies, I explain it like this: my berry wires got plugged into the wrong plug.

I'm sure you can reprogram your neural code. And not in a pavlonian sense; I'm talking conscious hacking. I've yet to figure it out, but I'm sure it's doable.

Some of the code in my head I'm sometimes amazed at. For instance, when I get home from work, I sit around all night doing really boring stuff like campaign finance reports and legal research. I also design propaganda and read library books, but most stuff isn't nearly that exciting. I do this almost every day, almost every hour I'm not at work or sleeping. Most peoples' neural code spits out errors on this sort of stuff, but mine happily processes.

I think you're always unconsciously hacking your code. Like the functions that tell me to do my taxes when I'm stoned probably evolved over time without me even being aware they existed. A lot of the code I'm pretty happy with, but some of it needs some serious auditing -- like the berry function. I'm sure it's doable, I just haven't figured it out yet.

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Programming and Metaprograrmming in the Human Biocomputer, by John C. Lilly, M.D., (c) 1972