# Unhackable
_by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _

## Chapter 1
## Somebody Knows You Better Than You Do

We are at a point in human history where we can all be known by someone else better than we know ourselves.

The amount of data that we generate, combined with the technologies to gather and process this data, reached a threshold at which our behavioral patterns are recognizable beyond our own capacity to do so.

Even more, these patterns have now, for those who own the data models, a level pf predictability which we ourselves cannot consciously reach anymore.

In simpler words, we really are known by social media algorithms better than we know ourselves.

This fact has a number of consequences. The most important one is that our “freedom”, as we know it, drastically diminished, and, for some of us, completely vanished in this cloud of algorithms (notice the quotation marks around “freedom”). Because our actions can now be predicted without our awareness (let alone our consent) we are simply manipulated into doing what the algorithms aim to do.

Our minds are literally hacked (more about this in the next chapter).

This whole hacking process is subtle, though, almost imperceptible. And it’s still happening as we speak, hidden in plain sight.

Let’s start with a very simple example to illustrate the attack vector.

Think about what happens when you use a movie streaming platform, or while shopping online. As you use the platform, you notice a stream of product recommendations, based on what you previously searched for. It’s a basic feature of almost any online shopping platform.

These personalized recommendations, most of the time, are “correct”, meaning they “understand” what you’re looking for. And one of the most important things about these recommendation engines is that you reinforce their algorithms every time you accept _or refuse_ that choice. Beware: even if you tell the algorithm you didn’t like a recommendation, you are giving away precious information about yourself. With every yes or no, you’re feeding data to the algorithm, improving it.

Ironically, you tend to evaluate the simplicity, or the “utility” of the platform by _how good it gets at knowing what you want_. Doesn’t this sounds weird, already?

You feel “supported” and “understood”, but what really happens is that you trade simplicity and utility for significant chunks of personal data. As a result, an algorithm learns something about you, based on the data you willfully gave away, simply by performing searches in a database.

A streaming movie platform or an online shopping experience may be seen as benign, and, in many cases, it is benign. The amount of data you give away is very small. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that it adds up. Online data networks tend to be incredibly interconnected. They can create bridges between your shopping likes and dislikes, your political affiliations, your food choices, your travel preferences, and so on, in less than a second. They are constantly feeding a living “profile” of you, a digital set of behaviors living inside “the cloud” which, in time, tends to overtake your own real life choices.

And this happens in more complex, and significantly more toxic setups.

For instance, when we’re subtly nudged towards thought patterns that will elicit a specific action, like a political vote. Or when we’re put in front of some blurry public position, with consequences we’re not immediately aware of, but which will considerably change the social fabric.

Resisting this process of subtle hacking is called “being unhackable”.

### What Does It Mean To Be Unhackable

Beyond the rather opaque word, unhackability means two things:

You don’t _automatically_ believe everything you observe.

You don’t _automatically_ act on everything you think.

By “everything you observe” I understand everything you see, hear, touch, smell, read or you’re somehow made aware of.

By “everything you think” I understand your own thought patterns, your gut reactions, your core values.

An unhackable mind knows that your position towards the information flow is always negotiable.

An unhackable mind is always questioning, aware and ready to adjust.

An unhackable mind also knows that everything happens in a context, and this context is changing continuously. Hence, there is no final definition to anything. Things are constantly evolving, they aren’t, and they cannot become fixed. If you understand that, you understand that every “fixed” opinion we hold is in fact a hack that we suffered.

But more on that later.

# Unhackable
_by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _

## Chapter 2
## Owner Of A Hacked Mind

What does it actually mean to be hacked? How does a hacked mind behaves?

Owning a hacked mind means that somebody else (a person, a community, a trend, an ideology) is using your resources (your time, your money, you attention) without you being aware of it.

And, obviously, without your consent.

Most of the time, against your own interests, too.

It’s exactly what happens when a computer is hacked. An external program is taking control over the computing resources. From the outside, the computer looks and might even act the same - and most of the time, to camouflage the hack, the computer will act very similar with its previous patterns. But from the inside, there’s somebody else using that machine.

The main characteristics of a hack are:
- lack of consent for giving up resources
- unawareness that we’re under the control of an external entity
- spending resources predominantly for the external entity benefit

An online shopping experience is the easiest example: as you browse an e-commerce site, the site changes itself in order to maximize the resources you spend there, from attention to money. The site learns about your mind patterns and rearranges itself, becoming more and more attractive to your specific patterns. It’s an attempt to hack your mind, in order for you to spend more.

This is, like I said before, rather benign. Everybody knows that, and, to a certain extent, this is considered a normal practice. We consider these situations mild hacks, candid viruses, comfort enhancers.

But if the hack touches on deeper sides of the psyche, triggering behaviors related to survival, for instance, then we’re dealing with a far more dangerous virus.

### Toxic Mind Hacking - A Real Life Example

Let’s have a look at a fairly recent example, and then, in the next chapter, will break this down into a more accurate anatomy of the hacking process.

Imagine a situation in which a new, biological virus, appears. Just like they always did. Viruses, and their constant mutations, have been a part of Earth biosphere for the last 3.5 billion years.

Here’s how a _mind hack_ built on top of the biological virus it will unfold.

First, the danger of getting sick as the result of catching the virus is clearly described, instilling fear.

In and by itself, fear is a fundamental survival asset. If you see a snake, you should be afraid, because the snake can really kill you. But if the snake turns out to be a coiled rope, then fear is unnecessary. The coiled rope is harmless.

At this point, though, because the biological virus is not very well known, we can’t really say if it’s a snake or a coiled rope. So fear is justified.

The first thing we learn about the virus is that it’s airborne. Knowing this, the logical way forward would be to manage social contact. Minimizing the attack surface minimizes the chances for contagion. It also gives time to investigate and apply antidotes.

The obvious reaction would be at the individual level: try and minimize contact with other people, just like you do when you get the flu.

We’re dealing with a mind hack, though, so the obvious reaction is inhibited.

Instead, the mind hack perpetrators (governments, in this case) are stepping in and enforce this surface attack mitigation at a higher level, in the form of a lockdown. Instead of empowering people and leaving this social contact mitigation at the individual level, they step in with a very comforting message: “just to be sure, we’re making it compulsory”.

The first consequence is that governments are painted as rescuers. The majority of people know that, traditionally, governments are corrupt and incapable, but the mind virus takes over and replace that belief.

The second consequence is that people are giving up their ability to act independently. Subtly, that part is invalidated. You shouldn’t do as you want, as a responsible adult, even if you’re actively minimizing the social contact surface, because you’re not fit for it. We, the government, know better.

From this point on, the virus takes over many other parts, exacerbating fear, turning people against each other, with consequences rippling further in societal and economical patterns.

The whole thing started when we saw something that could have been a snake. Instead of using our own resources to establish what was it, we’ve been hacked (the vulnerability being exploited: fear) and handled control of our reality to someone else.

That someone else was incentivized to make us believe it was a snake, because there were significant benefits to extract from the situation. So that someone kept telling us it’s a snake and we ended up acting like it was actually a snake.

After the mind hack vanishes, we’re all realizing it was just a coiled rope. The real danger was way smaller than it was made look like, and, in some cases, the antidote prescribed - the insufficiently tested vaccine - was more dangerous than the virus itself.

But now it’s too late.

To get back to the characteristics of the mind hack:

- no one openly agreed to any of the compulsory measures, from lockdown to vaccination, it was all imposed by the mind virus - lack of consent
- no one realized (at least for a few good months or, in some cases, years) that they’ve been hacked - lack of awareness
- everybody spent resources (attention, money) in the direction imposed by the hack (compulsory medical treatment, even if you’re not ill yet, jobs lost if you don’t comply, hatred, poverty, social exclusion) - giving up resources to the entity owning and instrumenting the mind virus

### How To Know You’ve Been Hacked

An unhacked mind knows that everything is negotiable.

If you get to a point where your situation is un-negotiable, or advances very fast into an un-negotiable direction, you’re running a high risk of being hacked.

Let’s go even deeper, in the next chapter, into the anatomy of a mind hack.

# Unhackable
_by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _

## Chapter 3
## The Anatomy Of A Mind Hack

A mind hack is the process by which an external entity takes control over your mind.

In order to have a better understanding of this process, let’s dig a bit deeper into the analogies with computer viruses.

First, for a hack to even be possible, your mind must be online, must be connected to other minds. Just like an air gapped computer is considered, theoretically, uncompromisable, if you are not exposed to other people, your attack surface is zero.

In real life, of course, we cannot function like that. We need connection for a variety of reasons, including survival.

Second, the virus should be concealed into an unsuspicious packaging. Even more, it should be so familiar, that you will take it for granted. Computer viruses are disguised into normal software, the kind that you use every day. That’s very important, and we will see down the road how this “familiarity” is constructed (hint: it’s related to the attack surface your reveal during your connections).

Third, the virus must elicit a specific reaction. That reaction is used as an evaluation of the person defenses. For instance, a computer virus first tries to copy certain files in certain locations. If the computer is well secured, if there is some sort of vault, or a sandboxed approach to external apps, the virus will receive a strong reaction. Something like “copying files outside the vault is forbidden”, for instance. Then, depending on how sophisticated the virus is, it tries other locations, or it tries to disguise itself differently, until it reaches the goal of taking over the host. Obviously, if the computer is well secured, the virus never achieves its goal.

The same happens during a mind hack, and if the mind is not well secured, the virus will spread around, it will take control over core beliefs and approaches, and it will start identifying with them, eventually blending into the very psyche of the individual. At this point, the host is compromised, the virus is using the resources (time, money, attention) for the benefit of the virus creator.

That’s a very basic, schematic description of the process. In practice, there are countless mind viruses, with countless approaches and levels of damage they can inflict.

Recently, the rise of social media, with its ability to reveal and measure so many data points about discrete identities (hence, enlarging their attack surface enormously), made it the preferred vehicle for spreading mind viruses.

A recent example of a mind hack is the Covid-19 pandemic, and we already talked about it. In that case, the entry point was fear of death from a biological virus.

Another example, still unfolding, would be the fear of a climate catastrophe, as a consequence of a certain life style. The “climate change” virus.

Before going further with this example, let’s stop for a while and admit the obvious: the consequences of human impact on environment are undeniable. But these consequences are not all intrinsically bad. Some of these consequences are “good”, some are “bad” (notice the quotation marks, again). Just as tons of plastic are thrown into the oceans, in other parts of the world reforestations are started, fauna and flora brought back to life, cities are becoming greener and so on.

The human impact on the environment is the obvious fact here. But camouflaged inside this fact (which is the familiarity layer of the virus) there is this fear mongering discourse which, like any other virus, elicits activities geared towards hacking the minds of unsuspicious people.

For instance, one of the actions constantly pushed forward by this virus is a significant movement restriction, the so called “climate change lockdown”. In the name of protecting the planet, people should stop moving around, or decrease their “carbon footprint”.

Another activity trigger is polarization. Because there is a constant (albeit greatly exaggerated) threat, anyone who doesn’t do what’s required to minimize the threat is automatically an enemy. They should be hated, just like “anti-vaxxers” and they should be pushed outside the acceptable social circle.

Alas, these actions, which, allegedly, will minimize the threat are one of the results of the virus, they are not the result of common sense, or even some sort of larger consensus based on facts. Just like Covid-19 virus was built on hundreds of “scientific studies”, so is the “climate change impact”.

These action triggers seem, based on the story told by the virus, like inevitable reactions to a potential catastrophe, but all they do is take out resources (time, money, energy) from hacked individuals. That’s how vulnerability is exploited.

Taking care of the environment is a process that shouldn’t be enforced indiscriminately. It’s something that should be taught and internalized at a personal level, part of a larger approach towards living a balanced life. It’s a process that should take into account each person individual capabilities, values and specific constraints.

Making it indiscriminate turns it into a mind hack. Enforcing it as a general, unquestionable policy, is taking away personal responsibility, and moves it one layer up, at the government level. This level is most likely the main beneficiary of the mind-hack, so it will always be incentivized to try and penetrate as many minds as possible. It’s not known - and probably it will never be known precisely - if governments are the only creators of this virus (probably not). But the fact that they are one of the beneficiaries makes them explicitly complicit with the perpetrators.

So, to recap, the anatomy of the mind hack has 3 main parts:

- an attack surface
- a stimuli on that surface, under a familiar camouflage
- a series of adjustments based on the host reaction to that action

Without an attack surface, there is no virus. That’s one of the areas that we can work on, and we will see down the road, in The Unhackable Blueprint and Identity In The Age Of Data Porn, how we can do that.

The familiarity of the stimuli is what makes it easily ingestible. The issue of trust is fundamental at this level, and we will also tackle it later on in The Unhackable Blueprint.

And last, but not least, our action (and reaction) patterns are also instrumental in the development of the mind virus.

Knowing how much, when and with what intensity we should act makes the difference between keeping ourselves unhacked, and succumbing to unsuspiciously, but sometimes deadly, mind hacks.

# Unhackable
_by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _

## Chapter 4
## Identifying Viruses

For the sake of brevity, I’m not going into the differences between viruses and bacteria, suffice to say that these are very different biological components. Basically, a bacteria can be assessed as “alive” outside a host, whereas a virus is a “dead” sequence of DNA, which becomes active only when inside the host. Bacteria can live and multiply in different contexts, whereas a virus is activated and start multiplication _only_ if and when inside a favorable living host.

From a broader perspective, it matters less if a certain mind virus is already “alive” (like it existed before in the form of an ideology, for instance), or if it’s just been invented as a basic structure of concepts which suddenly becomes alive in compatible hosts. From this perspective, they are both mind viruses, because the end goal is to elicit a certain reaction, a certain type of behavior from the host. So we will continue to call them, collectively, viruses.

Some biological viruses spread only though sexual contact. Some are respiratory viruses, they spread by droplets. Some are propagating by ingesting food.

Similarly, mind viruses spread by different channels. We already saw the most active one is interaction via social media. But there are many other interactions and channels that can lead to the spread of a mind virus.

If we keep shrinking the standard communities one is part of throughout their life, we can safely affirm that certain viruses are created even as early as in the family. Unstable parents, difficult upbringing conditions, cultural specifics, they can all lead to specific behaviors which are instilled into an individual, taking over their natural resources, creating behaviors against their own interest. Fundamentalism, intolerance, use of coercion for personal benefits, these are just a few examples.

### Short, Medium And Long Term Mind Hacks

Truth to be told, minds can be hacked not only by social media, or governments. Mind hackability is an intrinsic property of the human psyche. We experience mind hacks throughout our lives, from various actors, using different attack surfaces and for various amount of times.

Short term hacks are situations in which we give out control of some resources in exchange for a specific reward, and we do it for a very short amount of time - hours, or, at most, days.

Parties, sport events or music concerts are good examples of short term hacks. When we attend such an event, we blend into the fabric of people surrounding us and we start acting in ways in which we wouldn’t in a normal context. We do strange things like yelling, hugging people we’ve never seen before, or verbally aggressing other, equally unknown persons. We do this for validation, for recognition, for the emotional pleasure of being part of something bigger than us, something that we identify with. But make no mistake, our minds are hacked, we spend attention and money for something that takes over our resources - and we have no idea that we’ve been hacked. We consider everything normal. Once the party, or the sport event, or the concert is over, we retrace inside our regular boundaries.

Crushes, or “fallings in love”, are examples of medium term mind hacks - especially the toxic ones, in which we fall in love “with the wrong person”. It’s far more clear here who hacked us and how do we spend our time, attention and money. We get pleasure (or validation) in exchange of redirecting significant resources. The attacker exploits a specific surface - sexual or emotional - and is extracting as much value as he or she wants, for as long as our minds are hacked into believing what they made us believe. Once the fog is lifted, though, we retrace again inside our regular boundaries.

Long term mind hacks are related to social and cultural norms. For instance, being part of specific communities, with very specific rules or limitations, which are going against our own interest. An ultra-religious person, for instance, is spending a lot of time, attention and money into an activity which is not always in his or her self-interest. Such a person can go to extreme actions, redirecting valuable and sometimes irreplaceable resources, like their own lives, for an attacker which exploited the “be a good person” surface.

Our mind is intrinsically hackable, and we all experienced some sort of short, medium or long term hack.

What changed now is the speed at which these hacks are engineered and implemented, the enormous reach they can attain and the relative ease in manufacturing them.

All these factors are creating a context in which mind hacking risk is exponentially higher than it was before the rise of social media.

### High Cost versus Low Cost Mind Hacks

Some viruses are benign. Or we already developed immunity to them. Some are mild, while some can be really effective and powerful.

In identifying viruses, one shouldn’t focus primarily on short, medium or long-term, nor on the attack surface, like social media versus real life communities, but predominantly on the cost, or what type of resources are we giving away and in what quantity.

Similarly to biological viruses, we should try to identify viruses based on how much damage they can do, how “deadly” they are.

In order to do this, let’s start by identifying what are the most important resources for a human being.

The first, and probably the most important of all, it’s time. It’s the only non-renewable resource we have, and one that we have no control over. We don’t really know how much time we have left, and that makes it ultimately invaluable.

The second is attention. What we call “reality” is ulterior to attention, our world is literally constructed by constantly applying focus to an unorganized, frightening and meaningless environment.

And the third is money. There is an entirely new book dedicated to money and to role is playing in our lives, but for now let’s just acknowledge that, after time and attention, money is the third most important asset we possess.

A high cost mind virus will take significant amounts of all these. For instance, the Covid-19 mind hack took years off of the lives of billions of people (by imposing lockdowns), it glued them to social media for hours (focusing on news that reinforced fear), and it generated one of the largest financial crisis in the recent history, one that is still unfolding.

Let’s compare this to, for instance, a TV series. Technically, you’re also experiencing a mind hack while you’re binging, albeit a very mild one. You’re in a state of suspended disbelief, focusing (attention) for hours (time) on a device projecting sequential images (you paid with money for both the device and the streaming service).

It’s also worth mentioning that you already have some sort of immunity for TV shows, as you already know how much time, attention and money you’re willing to give away (on average), whereas for unknown, Covid-19-like viruses, you had literally no defenses yet.

# Unhackable
_by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _

## Chapter 5
## Identity In The Age Of Data Porn

Everything you do or say publicly creates a stream of data. This stream is collected, analyzed, categorized and eventually aggregated into a surface attack for various mind hack viruses.

The biggest part of this attack surface is what we call “identity”.

Your name, your social status, your preferences and biases, your memories, in short, your recognizable sense of “self” is the most common entry point. Why? Because it’s the one to which you cling the most. Without identity, without a recognizable sense of self, we cannot properly function in this world.

As we saw in Chapter 3, mind hacks use familiar, easily recognizable camouflaging. Every message fitting into your familiar patterns bypasses your natural defenses (because you “know” it already, it’s familiar), and has a higher chance of being internalized. In good ol’ computer virus hacking tradition, mind viruses are concealing their toxic actions into layers of seemingly “good” or “obvious” semantics.

### The Age Of Data Porn

Until the recent computing revolution, we had monolithic, atomic identities. We functioned, at the society level, with a single entry point: our government issued id, with the name given by our parents and recorded as such in unique registers.

Social media changed this in at least two major ways.

First, it introduced the possibility of multiple valid accounts for social interaction. For the first time in human history, we can consistently interact with other real people using a range of different valid identities.

And second, it expanded the social interaction surface globally. For the first time in human history, again, we can interact in real time with virtually anyone on this planet.

Inertially, though, we blended our monolithic identity into this new web of potentiality, without thinking about consequences. We projected our sense of self from our small, limited circle (friends, family, colleagues), to the entire human race.

Suddenly, our evening conversations at the neighborhood pub are heard from anyone curious to hear. Anyone.

At an evolutionary scale, this happened in the blink of an eye, just a few decades. These decades would be remembered as “the age of data porn”. They will also be remembered as the time when profitable data harvesting was created.

This completely new industry was made possible by this huge, unexpected availability of reliable and consistent identity data.

Initially, the only ones taking advantage of this huge data spill were the ones owning the social media platforms, mostly for solidifying their products and increase their reach and affinity.

As the social media impact in the overall ecosystem grew, data harvesting spread to other actors too: lobbyists, politicians, or simply for-hire outlets capable of inflicting significant change in the social fabric.

Mind hacks can be created by any of the above actors.

There’s a trick, though. A mind hack works only if there’s enough data to use for the engineering process.

### Introducing Disposable and Undisposable Identities

The new, unexpected, and unlimited availability of identities came with an interesting caveat: because you can create an identity with so much ease, you don’t have to cling too much to it: there’s always a new one available.

In other words, we can have two types of identities now: disposable and undisposable.

Undisposable identities are required to maintain continuity in both real and digital realms. They convey the biggest surface of our persona: social interaction, financial and legal representation, cultural legacy and so on. Losing significant parts of this identity will create major, life-altering disruptions. It’s the closest thing to our initial, monolithic identities pre-data harvesting, but significantly different.

Disposable identities are temporary, they’re used only for very specific activities. They aren’t big enough to cover any aspect of our persona, they exist only for digital interaction. Losing any of these identities will have an insignificant impact on our lives, if any.

As a matter of fact, disposable identities, like the name implies, should be thought as intently ephemeral.

At this moment in time, the concept of a disposable identity seems quite shady. From a certain angle, it’s very close to misrepresentation, and misrepresentation is, after all, a crime. In our opinion, it should continue to be treated as such.

But un-consensual data harvesting is also a crime, potentially a more impactful one.

From an adversarial point of view, the moment we open ourselves for interaction in the social field, we’re already exposing vulnerabilities, whether we are aware of them or not. And from the same adversarial point of view, we are entitled to maximize our chances for survival (or at least for a balanced, correct interaction).

Hence, disposable identities are a valid response to the attempt of stealing behavioral patterns.

Not knowing that someone steals from you is not invalidating the theft, you’ll still be at a loss as a result of this process. In the case of data harvesting, you will experience the loss later on, under the form of a mind hack.

Disposable identities are invalidating this theft, by offering irrelevant, or very low value data to the harvester. As a result, mind hacking will become more difficult, slower and less effective.

### Identities Versus Signals

A world in which disposable identities are common is not a completely safe (from a mind hack point of view) universe. Even in the absence of reliable identities, attack surfaces designed to engineer mind hacks can still be constructed using signals.

Signals are needs, opinions, reactions generated in the social media space. They can exist independently from identities, they are an intrinsic part of the communication process. They can be identified and processed using relatively low cost tools. Based on these signals, new attack vectors can be designed.

But signals, as opposed to identities, have a much smaller and unreliable data footprint. Your needs are inconsistent. Your opinions can change if facts change (or at least I hope they do). Your reactions can be controlled (or at least I hope they can).

There are still ways to construct messages that look familiar based on these signals, but they will be short lived, will have a smaller impact and they will take more time to be build (because of high data variability of signals vs identities).

It is important, though, to understand that mind hacks can, and will be created on top of signals, even if one has a good identity management.

# Unhackable
_by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _

## Chapter 6
## The Unhackable Blueprint

Although ubiquitous, just like the biological viruses, mind hacks are avoidable. What follows is a short, and by design incomplete, blueprint for becoming, and staying unhackable.

### Everything Is Temporary But Not Insignificant

Let’s say you are browsing your favorite social media feed on a Sunday afternoon. You see an interesting post. You skim through the comments. Some of them are idiotic (or so you instantly think), so you decide to straight things up.

There’s not much thinking done, it’s just a trigger you react to, so you leave a short comment. Then you move forward, case closed.

In two hours you already forgot about it. But your reaction, as temporary as the feeling generating it was, is now stored in a digital matrix somewhere. Even more, it adds up to hundreds, thousands, millions of data points which you already gave away about yourself.

For you, this was a temporary thing, a fleeting thought, a passing by reaction. In your own system, it’s gone, and that’s just how we live.

But your digital persona, your invisible avatar built by those who own your data, it’s more alive than ever. Based on that avatar, a new trigger is silently built for you and you will be targeted again.

Just because all things are temporary, it doesn’t mean they are insignificant. On the contrary, they carry much more significance than you think.

Everything matters.

And because everything matters, everything you do matters. Mind your actions, for they are all carrying consequences.

### Manage Your Data Footprint

Algorithms can exist only on top of data. And the data you leave behind - your data footprint - can be managed in such a way that minimizes algorithms efficiency. Specifically, this works by shrinking the attack surface.

The need for an improved data hygiene in our lives is not a fad, it’s a necessary survival skill.

Not only should we become aware that our data trail is very valuable, but we should constantly try to exercise moderation in the number of contacts. Some constant vetting must be implemented: to whom you give your data, and what’s the reason they claim they need it for.

#### Observe Your Data Availability

Some places maintain your data way beyond your initial scope, and revisiting these places every once in a while is a healthy thing. It keeps your digital persona thin.

Some actors, of course, will lie about the reasons and the extent they’re keeping your data for. It’s obvious that you should cut off as soon as you realize there was a breach of trust. Cut off early, cut off often.

Try to control what you say about you, about others and about events. Know that every opinion you put out there, every interaction, is in fact a seed for a potential breach into your unsuspicious internal system.

Implement intermittent interactions. It’s a similar pattern with intermittent fasting, only it pertains to what you’re putting out there, not to what you’re taking in (we’re talk about that in the next subchapter). Appear and disappear from social circles, from social networks, intermittently. Scattered data is more difficult to process than continuous streams.

If you can, try to foster unpredictability (even for yourself). Entertain different points of views, succumb to randomness every once in a while, practice contrarian thinking.

Algorithms will start classifying your digital persona either as an exception, or as a false positive. Hence, not worth hacking.

### Manage Your Data Intake

Another way to control the attack surface is to manage your data intake, what you take in, what you trust, what you support, what you follow - implicitly or explicitly.

Trust is the main differentiator here. Trusted sources are used more frequently, untrusted sources are used less frequently. It is important to understand that untrusted sources shouldn’t be eliminated. Knowing how things are falsified, understand what changes in these patterns, is important. If we have only exposure to trusted sources, we lack comparison terms and we end up into echo chambers.

Crowdsourced projects like Wikipedia are initially favored, because - at least in the beginning - crowdsourced projects are more resistant to censorship or falsification. In the beginning, crowdsourced information projects are vetted by many members, which are incentivized to maintain a decent level of trust., otherwise the project ceases to exist.

But, down the road, these projects are not immune. For example, the same Wikipedia, which was for years a good, balanced source, it is now experiencing and obvious “left” bias.

And that’s because the more you use data, the more you validate it. At some point, vetting is not required anymore, because other metrics are used to enforce trust, like reputation or tradition.

There is a certain threshold over which crowdsourced data is not trustworthy anymore, and that’s where the crowd relies on the that data to survive as a collective. Ironically, the more popular a crowdsourced data source is, the less trustworthy it becomes, because the collective gets attached to it, at the expense of the individual.

So the second differentiator is data intake frequency - how often you create contact points with data? If you use a certain source too often, then that creates a vulnerability. There is no single source of social truth, simply because social truth is made out of moving parts.

The rise of social media created an alternative reality, which often supersedes the sense-validated one, namely what you see and hear with your own senses. Relying too much and too often on what you read online, no matter how trustable that source is, will eventually fade out the core reality and drag you into a new one. In and by itself, this is also a form of mind hacking.

Which brings us to the third differentiator: data intake goals. Why are you searching for a specific data? is it really that important? Furthermore, is it vital? Is it survival-related? Or it’s just some temporary, fleeting controversy, something that you need in order to validate your own viewpoint, or your identity, or your personal values?

Data intake goals are shaping the way you interact. These patterns too can be analyzed and used to craft an attack surface.

Last, but definitely not least, when it comes to data intake, be cautious of others by default. Don’t trust blindly, even if there is some decent history in the interaction, because they may not be who they claim they are. They may appear in a way that makes them recognizable to you.

As we already saw in Chapter 5 - Identity In The Age Of Data Porn, even in the case of a perceived genuine interaction, you may in fact deal with a disposable identity of someone, who is trying to avoid data harvesting.

### Redesign Social Circles

The speed at which the information travels these days turns seemingly benign situations into mind hacking opportunities, with a very small cost for the attackers.

One of the areas which is becoming increasingly vulnerable as a result of this is what we usually call “social circles”. Our close friends, co-workers, relatives, all these dynamic and sometimes unpredictable communities are one of the biggest attack surfaces for mind hacks.

And that’s because the amount of trust invested in them is at the same time unusually high, and unusually inertial. We care a lot about our friends and family and we tend to trust them blindly, most of the time. And when our trust is betrayed (which happens quite often, if you really think about it) we tend to forgive much easier and faster than in other situations.

Because mind hacks are often concealed in familiar packages, many of them are actually carried by close friends, family members or trusted co-workers.

The most effective way to deal with this would be, obviously, to reduce the attack surface. Alas, this would mean to basically stop having friends, cut ties with family members and avoid any work related communication with other people.

As drastic as it may seem for many, this can actually work, but for the rest, there are other ways. Close connection can indeed be maintained, and even thrive, with a few caveats.

First of all, trust should always be measured and adjusted. Because change is inherent, people in our close circles will inevitably go through changes as well. Some of their values will shift. Some of their ideas will evolve. And sometimes, these shifts and evolutions will put them in vulnerable positions. Paying attention to these subtle nudges will help you manage the trust invested in these connection, and, if need will be, reduce it accordingly. Putting some distance between you and your friends will be clearly unpleasant. It will come at a high emotional cost. But everything in life has a cost, whether or not it is immediately visible. It might be better to pay an emotional withdrawal price now, than to experience a potentially devastating mind hack in the future.

Second, the amount of validation we get from external connection should also be measured and adjusted, constantly. That means, at times, our circles must shrink. During intense mind hack attacks, just like during the flu season, we just need to accept that we’ll need to reduce our connection surface. This is somehow similar with the data intake management described in the previous subchapter, only it’s related to human interactions. We derive a lot of meaning from our social activity, but being able to survive with a minimal social touch could prove safer, in the long run. Just like intermittent fasting makes our body healthier, intermittent social interaction will make us emotionally stronger and more resilient.

### Bio-Hacking Avoidance As A Constant Strategy

We saw how fast, at the human evolutionary scale, the internet and social media disrupted our lives. We are at the top of that wave, and now we are able to identify threats and create defenses.

But there’s another field that has a lot more consequences, for better or worse, than the internet. This highly disruptive trend is just at the beginning (think internet 30 years ago), and it’s the rise of genetics.

The ability to modify on-the-fly our genome can cure disease we thought to be incurable until now. Similarly, it can create incredibly dangerous situations for our physical survival. Just like the internet accelerated our communication, as a species, to unthinkable speed, at the expense of our unexpected vulnerability to mind hacks, so is genetics opening the gates for unthinkable levels of health or longevity. Only this benefit comes with a much higher cost. A black swan event in the genetics field will not create just a mind hack. It will be an extinction event.

I’m touching this topic only briefly, and only because it has a certain overlap with the mind hacking process. But it deserves much more interest and attention, maybe in a future series of articles.

Bio-hacking avoidance should become a consistent strategy. What you eat, from where, in what form, what you drink, what pills, supplements and vaccines do you take, all this makes you either more resilient, or more vulnerable.

Every once in a while, black swan events, like the Covid-19 pandemic, will create opportunities for trouble at this level. Insufficiently tested medicine will be part of a mind hacking process and if you are in a biologically vulnerable group, and your mind was hacked, then you will unfortunately experience the worst outcome.

Keeping a balanced diet, checking in with trusted health specialists, getting constant feedback from your body and from people in your trust circle, this will ensure you will at least give the benefit of the doubt to any magical cure for a disease which may not even exist, like a pandemic that was only created as mind hack.

# Unhackable
_by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _

## Chapter 7
## Continuous Unhackability

As any other process in our reality, unhackability is not eternal, nor absolute. It’s not a point you reach and then stay there forever.

It’s a spectrum.

At one end of it, there’s toxicity, there’s deceit, there’s the slow death of being continuously drained of resources, without even realizing it. The hack consumes us inconspicuously, but relentlessly, until we zombify.

But at the other end there’s comfort and pleasure. We constantly give up our resources in a numb-like state, for bits and pieces of pleasure, predictability and fun. Every day we agree to a certain amount of unsuspicious openness, in order to experience some level of connection and fulfillment. We maintain a certain level of permissionless access to our resources, for certain types of tasks and for certain circles of people - like family, friends, colleagues - willingly giving out our time, money and attention.

We even let ourselves experience sudden, organic “love” mind hacks, and we love them (pun intended).

We’re not absolute living beings, we’re humans, functioning on faulty, decaying hardware and buggy, incomplete software.

Our efforts towards being unhackable should not aim towards an absolute level of personal mind security, as this will mean we won’t be able to genuinely connect anymore.

Instead, these efforts should aim for place as far away as possible from the toxic end of the spectrum.

### Managing Expectations

Being unhackable is just a balanced state of mind. It doesn’t mean you reached Nirvana, or that you’ll live in a permanent state of bliss. On the contrary.

We live in a world driven by mind hacks. The vast majority of people is under the influence of one or more major mind viruses and balanced states of mind are the exception, not the rule.

Being unhackable will not warrant you a happy life. You will not experience smooth social interactions. The mere ability to see the suffering of the zombified ones around you will add another layer of misery to your existence.

Yet, living as close as possible to the truth, striving to break free from mind hackers, is way better than being an unaware slave, enjoying some temporary comfort while your attention, time and money are harvested for purposes which have nothing to do with you.

### The Limits Of Freedom Given By Being Unhackable

Let’s say you did your best, and you want to know if you’re there, if you at least reached a place in the spectrum that keeps you reasonably safe.

One way to know you’re there is to try identifying mind viruses in other people. When you can clearly see the three sequences-process - finding an attack surface, applying a stimuli to it and then adjusting to the response of the host - when you can observe how this process is transforming people who used to be sane in full time zombies, then you can safely say you made it. You’re unhackable and immune (at least to that specific virus you observed in others).

The first consequence of this achievement is that you will also know in what way other people are vulnerable. Hence, you will know how to hack them.

The freedom given by being unhackable, like any other freedom, comes with responsibility. It makes you responsible of yourself, but also of others.

Just because you made it, just because you’re unhackable now, you shouldn’t hack others. Especially not for “awakening” them. By doing this, you would just replace an old, toxic virus with a new one, that you just think it’s “better”.

Because even if you succeed, the host is still hackable. It didn’t build any real immunity.

The best thing you can do is to protect others as much as you can, support them on their way to de-virusing - if so they choose - and try not to harm anyone in the process. Including yourself.

And the second consequence stems from the fact that everything is temporary. That means your recently gained unhackability is temporary too. The context may change (it will change, whether you want it or not, actually), new vulnerabilities will be discovered, new attack surfaces uncovered, new mind viruses created and engineered.

Just because you’re unhackable now, it doesn’t mean you will always be.

Act decisively but scarcely, only when you understand the consequences of your actions- and if you’re at peace with them.

Stay aware and know that what looks like a snake may be just a coiled rope.

Similarly, though, what looks like a coiled rope may be a deadly snake.

# Unhackable _by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _ ## Chapter 1 ## Somebody Knows You Better Than You Do We are at a point in human history where we can all be known by someone else better than we know ourselves. The amount of data that we generate, combined with the technologies to gather and process this data, reached a threshold at which our behavioral patterns are recognizable beyond our own capacity to do so. Even more, these patterns have now, for those who own the data models, a level pf predictability which we ourselves cannot consciously reach anymore. In simpler words, we really are known by social media algorithms better than we know ourselves. This fact has a number of consequences. The most important one is that our “freedom”, as we know it, drastically diminished, and, for some of us, completely vanished in this cloud of algorithms (notice the quotation marks around “freedom”). Because our actions can now be predicted without our awareness (let alone our consent) we are simply manipulated into doing what the algorithms aim to do. Our minds are literally hacked (more about this in the next chapter). This whole hacking process is subtle, though, almost imperceptible. And it’s still happening as we speak, hidden in plain sight. Let’s start with a very simple example to illustrate the attack vector. Think about what happens when you use a movie streaming platform, or while shopping online. As you use the platform, you notice a stream of product recommendations, based on what you previously searched for. It’s a basic feature of almost any online shopping platform. These personalized recommendations, most of the time, are “correct”, meaning they “understand” what you’re looking for. And one of the most important things about these recommendation engines is that you reinforce their algorithms every time you accept _or refuse_ that choice. Beware: even if you tell the algorithm you didn’t like a recommendation, you are giving away precious information about yourself. With every yes or no, you’re feeding data to the algorithm, improving it. Ironically, you tend to evaluate the simplicity, or the “utility” of the platform by _how good it gets at knowing what you want_. Doesn’t this sounds weird, already? You feel “supported” and “understood”, but what really happens is that you trade simplicity and utility for significant chunks of personal data. As a result, an algorithm learns something about you, based on the data you willfully gave away, simply by performing searches in a database. A streaming movie platform or an online shopping experience may be seen as benign, and, in many cases, it is benign. The amount of data you give away is very small. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it adds up. Online data networks tend to be incredibly interconnected. They can create bridges between your shopping likes and dislikes, your political affiliations, your food choices, your travel preferences, and so on, in less than a second. They are constantly feeding a living “profile” of you, a digital set of behaviors living inside “the cloud” which, in time, tends to overtake your own real life choices. And this happens in more complex, and significantly more toxic setups. For instance, when we’re subtly nudged towards thought patterns that will elicit a specific action, like a political vote. Or when we’re put in front of some blurry public position, with consequences we’re not immediately aware of, but which will considerably change the social fabric. Resisting this process of subtle hacking is called “being unhackable”. ### What Does It Mean To Be Unhackable Beyond the rather opaque word, unhackability means two things: You don’t _automatically_ believe everything you observe. You don’t _automatically_ act on everything you think. By “everything you observe” I understand everything you see, hear, touch, smell, read or you’re somehow made aware of. By “everything you think” I understand your own thought patterns, your gut reactions, your core values. An unhackable mind knows that your position towards the information flow is always negotiable. An unhackable mind is always questioning, aware and ready to adjust. An unhackable mind also knows that everything happens in a context, and this context is changing continuously. Hence, there is no final definition to anything. Things are constantly evolving, they aren’t, and they cannot become fixed. If you understand that, you understand that every “fixed” opinion we hold is in fact a hack that we suffered. But more on that later. # Unhackable _by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _ ## Chapter 2 ## Owner Of A Hacked Mind What does it actually mean to be hacked? How does a hacked mind behaves? Owning a hacked mind means that somebody else (a person, a community, a trend, an ideology) is using your resources (your time, your money, you attention) without you being aware of it. And, obviously, without your consent. Most of the time, against your own interests, too. It’s exactly what happens when a computer is hacked. An external program is taking control over the computing resources. From the outside, the computer looks and might even act the same - and most of the time, to camouflage the hack, the computer will act very similar with its previous patterns. But from the inside, there’s somebody else using that machine. The main characteristics of a hack are: - lack of consent for giving up resources - unawareness that we’re under the control of an external entity - spending resources predominantly for the external entity benefit An online shopping experience is the easiest example: as you browse an e-commerce site, the site changes itself in order to maximize the resources you spend there, from attention to money. The site learns about your mind patterns and rearranges itself, becoming more and more attractive to your specific patterns. It’s an attempt to hack your mind, in order for you to spend more. This is, like I said before, rather benign. Everybody knows that, and, to a certain extent, this is considered a normal practice. We consider these situations mild hacks, candid viruses, comfort enhancers. But if the hack touches on deeper sides of the psyche, triggering behaviors related to survival, for instance, then we’re dealing with a far more dangerous virus. ### Toxic Mind Hacking - A Real Life Example Let’s have a look at a fairly recent example, and then, in the next chapter, will break this down into a more accurate anatomy of the hacking process. Imagine a situation in which a new, biological virus, appears. Just like they always did. Viruses, and their constant mutations, have been a part of Earth biosphere for the last 3.5 billion years. Here’s how a _mind hack_ built on top of the biological virus it will unfold. First, the danger of getting sick as the result of catching the virus is clearly described, instilling fear. In and by itself, fear is a fundamental survival asset. If you see a snake, you should be afraid, because the snake can really kill you. But if the snake turns out to be a coiled rope, then fear is unnecessary. The coiled rope is harmless. At this point, though, because the biological virus is not very well known, we can’t really say if it’s a snake or a coiled rope. So fear is justified. The first thing we learn about the virus is that it’s airborne. Knowing this, the logical way forward would be to manage social contact. Minimizing the attack surface minimizes the chances for contagion. It also gives time to investigate and apply antidotes. The obvious reaction would be at the individual level: try and minimize contact with other people, just like you do when you get the flu. We’re dealing with a mind hack, though, so the obvious reaction is inhibited. Instead, the mind hack perpetrators (governments, in this case) are stepping in and enforce this surface attack mitigation at a higher level, in the form of a lockdown. Instead of empowering people and leaving this social contact mitigation at the individual level, they step in with a very comforting message: “just to be sure, we’re making it compulsory”. The first consequence is that governments are painted as rescuers. The majority of people know that, traditionally, governments are corrupt and incapable, but the mind virus takes over and replace that belief. The second consequence is that people are giving up their ability to act independently. Subtly, that part is invalidated. You shouldn’t do as you want, as a responsible adult, even if you’re actively minimizing the social contact surface, because you’re not fit for it. We, the government, know better. From this point on, the virus takes over many other parts, exacerbating fear, turning people against each other, with consequences rippling further in societal and economical patterns. The whole thing started when we saw something that could have been a snake. Instead of using our own resources to establish what was it, we’ve been hacked (the vulnerability being exploited: fear) and handled control of our reality to someone else. That someone else was incentivized to make us believe it was a snake, because there were significant benefits to extract from the situation. So that someone kept telling us it’s a snake and we ended up acting like it was actually a snake. After the mind hack vanishes, we’re all realizing it was just a coiled rope. The real danger was way smaller than it was made look like, and, in some cases, the antidote prescribed - the insufficiently tested vaccine - was more dangerous than the virus itself. But now it’s too late. To get back to the characteristics of the mind hack: - no one openly agreed to any of the compulsory measures, from lockdown to vaccination, it was all imposed by the mind virus - lack of consent - no one realized (at least for a few good months or, in some cases, years) that they’ve been hacked - lack of awareness - everybody spent resources (attention, money) in the direction imposed by the hack (compulsory medical treatment, even if you’re not ill yet, jobs lost if you don’t comply, hatred, poverty, social exclusion) - giving up resources to the entity owning and instrumenting the mind virus ### How To Know You’ve Been Hacked An unhacked mind knows that everything is negotiable. If you get to a point where your situation is un-negotiable, or advances very fast into an un-negotiable direction, you’re running a high risk of being hacked. Let’s go even deeper, in the next chapter, into the anatomy of a mind hack. # Unhackable _by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _ ## Chapter 3 ## The Anatomy Of A Mind Hack A mind hack is the process by which an external entity takes control over your mind. In order to have a better understanding of this process, let’s dig a bit deeper into the analogies with computer viruses. First, for a hack to even be possible, your mind must be online, must be connected to other minds. Just like an air gapped computer is considered, theoretically, uncompromisable, if you are not exposed to other people, your attack surface is zero. In real life, of course, we cannot function like that. We need connection for a variety of reasons, including survival. Second, the virus should be concealed into an unsuspicious packaging. Even more, it should be so familiar, that you will take it for granted. Computer viruses are disguised into normal software, the kind that you use every day. That’s very important, and we will see down the road how this “familiarity” is constructed (hint: it’s related to the attack surface your reveal during your connections). Third, the virus must elicit a specific reaction. That reaction is used as an evaluation of the person defenses. For instance, a computer virus first tries to copy certain files in certain locations. If the computer is well secured, if there is some sort of vault, or a sandboxed approach to external apps, the virus will receive a strong reaction. Something like “copying files outside the vault is forbidden”, for instance. Then, depending on how sophisticated the virus is, it tries other locations, or it tries to disguise itself differently, until it reaches the goal of taking over the host. Obviously, if the computer is well secured, the virus never achieves its goal. The same happens during a mind hack, and if the mind is not well secured, the virus will spread around, it will take control over core beliefs and approaches, and it will start identifying with them, eventually blending into the very psyche of the individual. At this point, the host is compromised, the virus is using the resources (time, money, attention) for the benefit of the virus creator. That’s a very basic, schematic description of the process. In practice, there are countless mind viruses, with countless approaches and levels of damage they can inflict. Recently, the rise of social media, with its ability to reveal and measure so many data points about discrete identities (hence, enlarging their attack surface enormously), made it the preferred vehicle for spreading mind viruses. A recent example of a mind hack is the Covid-19 pandemic, and we already talked about it. In that case, the entry point was fear of death from a biological virus. Another example, still unfolding, would be the fear of a climate catastrophe, as a consequence of a certain life style. The “climate change” virus. Before going further with this example, let’s stop for a while and admit the obvious: the consequences of human impact on environment are undeniable. But these consequences are not all intrinsically bad. Some of these consequences are “good”, some are “bad” (notice the quotation marks, again). Just as tons of plastic are thrown into the oceans, in other parts of the world reforestations are started, fauna and flora brought back to life, cities are becoming greener and so on. The human impact on the environment is the obvious fact here. But camouflaged inside this fact (which is the familiarity layer of the virus) there is this fear mongering discourse which, like any other virus, elicits activities geared towards hacking the minds of unsuspicious people. For instance, one of the actions constantly pushed forward by this virus is a significant movement restriction, the so called “climate change lockdown”. In the name of protecting the planet, people should stop moving around, or decrease their “carbon footprint”. Another activity trigger is polarization. Because there is a constant (albeit greatly exaggerated) threat, anyone who doesn’t do what’s required to minimize the threat is automatically an enemy. They should be hated, just like “anti-vaxxers” and they should be pushed outside the acceptable social circle. Alas, these actions, which, allegedly, will minimize the threat are one of the results of the virus, they are not the result of common sense, or even some sort of larger consensus based on facts. Just like Covid-19 virus was built on hundreds of “scientific studies”, so is the “climate change impact”. These action triggers seem, based on the story told by the virus, like inevitable reactions to a potential catastrophe, but all they do is take out resources (time, money, energy) from hacked individuals. That’s how vulnerability is exploited. Taking care of the environment is a process that shouldn’t be enforced indiscriminately. It’s something that should be taught and internalized at a personal level, part of a larger approach towards living a balanced life. It’s a process that should take into account each person individual capabilities, values and specific constraints. Making it indiscriminate turns it into a mind hack. Enforcing it as a general, unquestionable policy, is taking away personal responsibility, and moves it one layer up, at the government level. This level is most likely the main beneficiary of the mind-hack, so it will always be incentivized to try and penetrate as many minds as possible. It’s not known - and probably it will never be known precisely - if governments are the only creators of this virus (probably not). But the fact that they are one of the beneficiaries makes them explicitly complicit with the perpetrators. So, to recap, the anatomy of the mind hack has 3 main parts: - an attack surface - a stimuli on that surface, under a familiar camouflage - a series of adjustments based on the host reaction to that action Without an attack surface, there is no virus. That’s one of the areas that we can work on, and we will see down the road, in The Unhackable Blueprint and Identity In The Age Of Data Porn, how we can do that. The familiarity of the stimuli is what makes it easily ingestible. The issue of trust is fundamental at this level, and we will also tackle it later on in The Unhackable Blueprint. And last, but not least, our action (and reaction) patterns are also instrumental in the development of the mind virus. Knowing how much, when and with what intensity we should act makes the difference between keeping ourselves unhacked, and succumbing to unsuspiciously, but sometimes deadly, mind hacks. # Unhackable _by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _ ## Chapter 4 ## Identifying Viruses For the sake of brevity, I’m not going into the differences between viruses and bacteria, suffice to say that these are very different biological components. Basically, a bacteria can be assessed as “alive” outside a host, whereas a virus is a “dead” sequence of DNA, which becomes active only when inside the host. Bacteria can live and multiply in different contexts, whereas a virus is activated and start multiplication _only_ if and when inside a favorable living host. From a broader perspective, it matters less if a certain mind virus is already “alive” (like it existed before in the form of an ideology, for instance), or if it’s just been invented as a basic structure of concepts which suddenly becomes alive in compatible hosts. From this perspective, they are both mind viruses, because the end goal is to elicit a certain reaction, a certain type of behavior from the host. So we will continue to call them, collectively, viruses. Some biological viruses spread only though sexual contact. Some are respiratory viruses, they spread by droplets. Some are propagating by ingesting food. Similarly, mind viruses spread by different channels. We already saw the most active one is interaction via social media. But there are many other interactions and channels that can lead to the spread of a mind virus. If we keep shrinking the standard communities one is part of throughout their life, we can safely affirm that certain viruses are created even as early as in the family. Unstable parents, difficult upbringing conditions, cultural specifics, they can all lead to specific behaviors which are instilled into an individual, taking over their natural resources, creating behaviors against their own interest. Fundamentalism, intolerance, use of coercion for personal benefits, these are just a few examples. ### Short, Medium And Long Term Mind Hacks Truth to be told, minds can be hacked not only by social media, or governments. Mind hackability is an intrinsic property of the human psyche. We experience mind hacks throughout our lives, from various actors, using different attack surfaces and for various amount of times. Short term hacks are situations in which we give out control of some resources in exchange for a specific reward, and we do it for a very short amount of time - hours, or, at most, days. Parties, sport events or music concerts are good examples of short term hacks. When we attend such an event, we blend into the fabric of people surrounding us and we start acting in ways in which we wouldn’t in a normal context. We do strange things like yelling, hugging people we’ve never seen before, or verbally aggressing other, equally unknown persons. We do this for validation, for recognition, for the emotional pleasure of being part of something bigger than us, something that we identify with. But make no mistake, our minds are hacked, we spend attention and money for something that takes over our resources - and we have no idea that we’ve been hacked. We consider everything normal. Once the party, or the sport event, or the concert is over, we retrace inside our regular boundaries. Crushes, or “fallings in love”, are examples of medium term mind hacks - especially the toxic ones, in which we fall in love “with the wrong person”. It’s far more clear here who hacked us and how do we spend our time, attention and money. We get pleasure (or validation) in exchange of redirecting significant resources. The attacker exploits a specific surface - sexual or emotional - and is extracting as much value as he or she wants, for as long as our minds are hacked into believing what they made us believe. Once the fog is lifted, though, we retrace again inside our regular boundaries. Long term mind hacks are related to social and cultural norms. For instance, being part of specific communities, with very specific rules or limitations, which are going against our own interest. An ultra-religious person, for instance, is spending a lot of time, attention and money into an activity which is not always in his or her self-interest. Such a person can go to extreme actions, redirecting valuable and sometimes irreplaceable resources, like their own lives, for an attacker which exploited the “be a good person” surface. Our mind is intrinsically hackable, and we all experienced some sort of short, medium or long term hack. What changed now is the speed at which these hacks are engineered and implemented, the enormous reach they can attain and the relative ease in manufacturing them. All these factors are creating a context in which mind hacking risk is exponentially higher than it was before the rise of social media. ### High Cost versus Low Cost Mind Hacks Some viruses are benign. Or we already developed immunity to them. Some are mild, while some can be really effective and powerful. In identifying viruses, one shouldn’t focus primarily on short, medium or long-term, nor on the attack surface, like social media versus real life communities, but predominantly on the cost, or what type of resources are we giving away and in what quantity. Similarly to biological viruses, we should try to identify viruses based on how much damage they can do, how “deadly” they are. In order to do this, let’s start by identifying what are the most important resources for a human being. The first, and probably the most important of all, it’s time. It’s the only non-renewable resource we have, and one that we have no control over. We don’t really know how much time we have left, and that makes it ultimately invaluable. The second is attention. What we call “reality” is ulterior to attention, our world is literally constructed by constantly applying focus to an unorganized, frightening and meaningless environment. And the third is money. There is an entirely new book dedicated to money and to role is playing in our lives, but for now let’s just acknowledge that, after time and attention, money is the third most important asset we possess. A high cost mind virus will take significant amounts of all these. For instance, the Covid-19 mind hack took years off of the lives of billions of people (by imposing lockdowns), it glued them to social media for hours (focusing on news that reinforced fear), and it generated one of the largest financial crisis in the recent history, one that is still unfolding. Let’s compare this to, for instance, a TV series. Technically, you’re also experiencing a mind hack while you’re binging, albeit a very mild one. You’re in a state of suspended disbelief, focusing (attention) for hours (time) on a device projecting sequential images (you paid with money for both the device and the streaming service). It’s also worth mentioning that you already have some sort of immunity for TV shows, as you already know how much time, attention and money you’re willing to give away (on average), whereas for unknown, Covid-19-like viruses, you had literally no defenses yet. # Unhackable _by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _ ## Chapter 5 ## Identity In The Age Of Data Porn Everything you do or say publicly creates a stream of data. This stream is collected, analyzed, categorized and eventually aggregated into a surface attack for various mind hack viruses. The biggest part of this attack surface is what we call “identity”. Your name, your social status, your preferences and biases, your memories, in short, your recognizable sense of “self” is the most common entry point. Why? Because it’s the one to which you cling the most. Without identity, without a recognizable sense of self, we cannot properly function in this world. As we saw in Chapter 3, mind hacks use familiar, easily recognizable camouflaging. Every message fitting into your familiar patterns bypasses your natural defenses (because you “know” it already, it’s familiar), and has a higher chance of being internalized. In good ol’ computer virus hacking tradition, mind viruses are concealing their toxic actions into layers of seemingly “good” or “obvious” semantics. ### The Age Of Data Porn Until the recent computing revolution, we had monolithic, atomic identities. We functioned, at the society level, with a single entry point: our government issued id, with the name given by our parents and recorded as such in unique registers. Social media changed this in at least two major ways. First, it introduced the possibility of multiple valid accounts for social interaction. For the first time in human history, we can consistently interact with other real people using a range of different valid identities. And second, it expanded the social interaction surface globally. For the first time in human history, again, we can interact in real time with virtually anyone on this planet. Inertially, though, we blended our monolithic identity into this new web of potentiality, without thinking about consequences. We projected our sense of self from our small, limited circle (friends, family, colleagues), to the entire human race. Suddenly, our evening conversations at the neighborhood pub are heard from anyone curious to hear. Anyone. At an evolutionary scale, this happened in the blink of an eye, just a few decades. These decades would be remembered as “the age of data porn”. They will also be remembered as the time when profitable data harvesting was created. This completely new industry was made possible by this huge, unexpected availability of reliable and consistent identity data. Initially, the only ones taking advantage of this huge data spill were the ones owning the social media platforms, mostly for solidifying their products and increase their reach and affinity. As the social media impact in the overall ecosystem grew, data harvesting spread to other actors too: lobbyists, politicians, or simply for-hire outlets capable of inflicting significant change in the social fabric. Mind hacks can be created by any of the above actors. There’s a trick, though. A mind hack works only if there’s enough data to use for the engineering process. ### Introducing Disposable and Undisposable Identities The new, unexpected, and unlimited availability of identities came with an interesting caveat: because you can create an identity with so much ease, you don’t have to cling too much to it: there’s always a new one available. In other words, we can have two types of identities now: disposable and undisposable. Undisposable identities are required to maintain continuity in both real and digital realms. They convey the biggest surface of our persona: social interaction, financial and legal representation, cultural legacy and so on. Losing significant parts of this identity will create major, life-altering disruptions. It’s the closest thing to our initial, monolithic identities pre-data harvesting, but significantly different. Disposable identities are temporary, they’re used only for very specific activities. They aren’t big enough to cover any aspect of our persona, they exist only for digital interaction. Losing any of these identities will have an insignificant impact on our lives, if any. As a matter of fact, disposable identities, like the name implies, should be thought as intently ephemeral. At this moment in time, the concept of a disposable identity seems quite shady. From a certain angle, it’s very close to misrepresentation, and misrepresentation is, after all, a crime. In our opinion, it should continue to be treated as such. But un-consensual data harvesting is also a crime, potentially a more impactful one. From an adversarial point of view, the moment we open ourselves for interaction in the social field, we’re already exposing vulnerabilities, whether we are aware of them or not. And from the same adversarial point of view, we are entitled to maximize our chances for survival (or at least for a balanced, correct interaction). Hence, disposable identities are a valid response to the attempt of stealing behavioral patterns. Not knowing that someone steals from you is not invalidating the theft, you’ll still be at a loss as a result of this process. In the case of data harvesting, you will experience the loss later on, under the form of a mind hack. Disposable identities are invalidating this theft, by offering irrelevant, or very low value data to the harvester. As a result, mind hacking will become more difficult, slower and less effective. ### Identities Versus Signals A world in which disposable identities are common is not a completely safe (from a mind hack point of view) universe. Even in the absence of reliable identities, attack surfaces designed to engineer mind hacks can still be constructed using signals. Signals are needs, opinions, reactions generated in the social media space. They can exist independently from identities, they are an intrinsic part of the communication process. They can be identified and processed using relatively low cost tools. Based on these signals, new attack vectors can be designed. But signals, as opposed to identities, have a much smaller and unreliable data footprint. Your needs are inconsistent. Your opinions can change if facts change (or at least I hope they do). Your reactions can be controlled (or at least I hope they can). There are still ways to construct messages that look familiar based on these signals, but they will be short lived, will have a smaller impact and they will take more time to be build (because of high data variability of signals vs identities). It is important, though, to understand that mind hacks can, and will be created on top of signals, even if one has a good identity management. # Unhackable _by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _ ## Chapter 6 ## The Unhackable Blueprint Although ubiquitous, just like the biological viruses, mind hacks are avoidable. What follows is a short, and by design incomplete, blueprint for becoming, and staying unhackable. ### Everything Is Temporary But Not Insignificant Let’s say you are browsing your favorite social media feed on a Sunday afternoon. You see an interesting post. You skim through the comments. Some of them are idiotic (or so you instantly think), so you decide to straight things up. There’s not much thinking done, it’s just a trigger you react to, so you leave a short comment. Then you move forward, case closed. In two hours you already forgot about it. But your reaction, as temporary as the feeling generating it was, is now stored in a digital matrix somewhere. Even more, it adds up to hundreds, thousands, millions of data points which you already gave away about yourself. For you, this was a temporary thing, a fleeting thought, a passing by reaction. In your own system, it’s gone, and that’s just how we live. But your digital persona, your invisible avatar built by those who own your data, it’s more alive than ever. Based on that avatar, a new trigger is silently built for you and you will be targeted again. Just because all things are temporary, it doesn’t mean they are insignificant. On the contrary, they carry much more significance than you think. Everything matters. And because everything matters, everything you do matters. Mind your actions, for they are all carrying consequences. ### Manage Your Data Footprint Algorithms can exist only on top of data. And the data you leave behind - your data footprint - can be managed in such a way that minimizes algorithms efficiency. Specifically, this works by shrinking the attack surface. The need for an improved data hygiene in our lives is not a fad, it’s a necessary survival skill. Not only should we become aware that our data trail is very valuable, but we should constantly try to exercise moderation in the number of contacts. Some constant vetting must be implemented: to whom you give your data, and what’s the reason they claim they need it for. #### Observe Your Data Availability Some places maintain your data way beyond your initial scope, and revisiting these places every once in a while is a healthy thing. It keeps your digital persona thin. Some actors, of course, will lie about the reasons and the extent they’re keeping your data for. It’s obvious that you should cut off as soon as you realize there was a breach of trust. Cut off early, cut off often. Try to control what you say about you, about others and about events. Know that every opinion you put out there, every interaction, is in fact a seed for a potential breach into your unsuspicious internal system. Implement intermittent interactions. It’s a similar pattern with intermittent fasting, only it pertains to what you’re putting out there, not to what you’re taking in (we’re talk about that in the next subchapter). Appear and disappear from social circles, from social networks, intermittently. Scattered data is more difficult to process than continuous streams. If you can, try to foster unpredictability (even for yourself). Entertain different points of views, succumb to randomness every once in a while, practice contrarian thinking. Algorithms will start classifying your digital persona either as an exception, or as a false positive. Hence, not worth hacking. ### Manage Your Data Intake Another way to control the attack surface is to manage your data intake, what you take in, what you trust, what you support, what you follow - implicitly or explicitly. Trust is the main differentiator here. Trusted sources are used more frequently, untrusted sources are used less frequently. It is important to understand that untrusted sources shouldn’t be eliminated. Knowing how things are falsified, understand what changes in these patterns, is important. If we have only exposure to trusted sources, we lack comparison terms and we end up into echo chambers. Crowdsourced projects like Wikipedia are initially favored, because - at least in the beginning - crowdsourced projects are more resistant to censorship or falsification. In the beginning, crowdsourced information projects are vetted by many members, which are incentivized to maintain a decent level of trust., otherwise the project ceases to exist. But, down the road, these projects are not immune. For example, the same Wikipedia, which was for years a good, balanced source, it is now experiencing and obvious “left” bias. And that’s because the more you use data, the more you validate it. At some point, vetting is not required anymore, because other metrics are used to enforce trust, like reputation or tradition. There is a certain threshold over which crowdsourced data is not trustworthy anymore, and that’s where the crowd relies on the that data to survive as a collective. Ironically, the more popular a crowdsourced data source is, the less trustworthy it becomes, because the collective gets attached to it, at the expense of the individual. So the second differentiator is data intake frequency - how often you create contact points with data? If you use a certain source too often, then that creates a vulnerability. There is no single source of social truth, simply because social truth is made out of moving parts. The rise of social media created an alternative reality, which often supersedes the sense-validated one, namely what you see and hear with your own senses. Relying too much and too often on what you read online, no matter how trustable that source is, will eventually fade out the core reality and drag you into a new one. In and by itself, this is also a form of mind hacking. Which brings us to the third differentiator: data intake goals. Why are you searching for a specific data? is it really that important? Furthermore, is it vital? Is it survival-related? Or it’s just some temporary, fleeting controversy, something that you need in order to validate your own viewpoint, or your identity, or your personal values? Data intake goals are shaping the way you interact. These patterns too can be analyzed and used to craft an attack surface. Last, but definitely not least, when it comes to data intake, be cautious of others by default. Don’t trust blindly, even if there is some decent history in the interaction, because they may not be who they claim they are. They may appear in a way that makes them recognizable to you. As we already saw in Chapter 5 - Identity In The Age Of Data Porn, even in the case of a perceived genuine interaction, you may in fact deal with a disposable identity of someone, who is trying to avoid data harvesting. ### Redesign Social Circles The speed at which the information travels these days turns seemingly benign situations into mind hacking opportunities, with a very small cost for the attackers. One of the areas which is becoming increasingly vulnerable as a result of this is what we usually call “social circles”. Our close friends, co-workers, relatives, all these dynamic and sometimes unpredictable communities are one of the biggest attack surfaces for mind hacks. And that’s because the amount of trust invested in them is at the same time unusually high, and unusually inertial. We care a lot about our friends and family and we tend to trust them blindly, most of the time. And when our trust is betrayed (which happens quite often, if you really think about it) we tend to forgive much easier and faster than in other situations. Because mind hacks are often concealed in familiar packages, many of them are actually carried by close friends, family members or trusted co-workers. The most effective way to deal with this would be, obviously, to reduce the attack surface. Alas, this would mean to basically stop having friends, cut ties with family members and avoid any work related communication with other people. As drastic as it may seem for many, this can actually work, but for the rest, there are other ways. Close connection can indeed be maintained, and even thrive, with a few caveats. First of all, trust should always be measured and adjusted. Because change is inherent, people in our close circles will inevitably go through changes as well. Some of their values will shift. Some of their ideas will evolve. And sometimes, these shifts and evolutions will put them in vulnerable positions. Paying attention to these subtle nudges will help you manage the trust invested in these connection, and, if need will be, reduce it accordingly. Putting some distance between you and your friends will be clearly unpleasant. It will come at a high emotional cost. But everything in life has a cost, whether or not it is immediately visible. It might be better to pay an emotional withdrawal price now, than to experience a potentially devastating mind hack in the future. Second, the amount of validation we get from external connection should also be measured and adjusted, constantly. That means, at times, our circles must shrink. During intense mind hack attacks, just like during the flu season, we just need to accept that we’ll need to reduce our connection surface. This is somehow similar with the data intake management described in the previous subchapter, only it’s related to human interactions. We derive a lot of meaning from our social activity, but being able to survive with a minimal social touch could prove safer, in the long run. Just like intermittent fasting makes our body healthier, intermittent social interaction will make us emotionally stronger and more resilient. ### Bio-Hacking Avoidance As A Constant Strategy We saw how fast, at the human evolutionary scale, the internet and social media disrupted our lives. We are at the top of that wave, and now we are able to identify threats and create defenses. But there’s another field that has a lot more consequences, for better or worse, than the internet. This highly disruptive trend is just at the beginning (think internet 30 years ago), and it’s the rise of genetics. The ability to modify on-the-fly our genome can cure disease we thought to be incurable until now. Similarly, it can create incredibly dangerous situations for our physical survival. Just like the internet accelerated our communication, as a species, to unthinkable speed, at the expense of our unexpected vulnerability to mind hacks, so is genetics opening the gates for unthinkable levels of health or longevity. Only this benefit comes with a much higher cost. A black swan event in the genetics field will not create just a mind hack. It will be an extinction event. I’m touching this topic only briefly, and only because it has a certain overlap with the mind hacking process. But it deserves much more interest and attention, maybe in a future series of articles. Bio-hacking avoidance should become a consistent strategy. What you eat, from where, in what form, what you drink, what pills, supplements and vaccines do you take, all this makes you either more resilient, or more vulnerable. Every once in a while, black swan events, like the Covid-19 pandemic, will create opportunities for trouble at this level. Insufficiently tested medicine will be part of a mind hacking process and if you are in a biologically vulnerable group, and your mind was hacked, then you will unfortunately experience the worst outcome. Keeping a balanced diet, checking in with trusted health specialists, getting constant feedback from your body and from people in your trust circle, this will ensure you will at least give the benefit of the doubt to any magical cure for a disease which may not even exist, like a pandemic that was only created as mind hack. # Unhackable _by Jinshirro Katchikayo (진실로 같이 가요) _ ## Chapter 7 ## Continuous Unhackability As any other process in our reality, unhackability is not eternal, nor absolute. It’s not a point you reach and then stay there forever. It’s a spectrum. At one end of it, there’s toxicity, there’s deceit, there’s the slow death of being continuously drained of resources, without even realizing it. The hack consumes us inconspicuously, but relentlessly, until we zombify. But at the other end there’s comfort and pleasure. We constantly give up our resources in a numb-like state, for bits and pieces of pleasure, predictability and fun. Every day we agree to a certain amount of unsuspicious openness, in order to experience some level of connection and fulfillment. We maintain a certain level of permissionless access to our resources, for certain types of tasks and for certain circles of people - like family, friends, colleagues - willingly giving out our time, money and attention. We even let ourselves experience sudden, organic “love” mind hacks, and we love them (pun intended). We’re not absolute living beings, we’re humans, functioning on faulty, decaying hardware and buggy, incomplete software. Our efforts towards being unhackable should not aim towards an absolute level of personal mind security, as this will mean we won’t be able to genuinely connect anymore. Instead, these efforts should aim for place as far away as possible from the toxic end of the spectrum. ### Managing Expectations Being unhackable is just a balanced state of mind. It doesn’t mean you reached Nirvana, or that you’ll live in a permanent state of bliss. On the contrary. We live in a world driven by mind hacks. The vast majority of people is under the influence of one or more major mind viruses and balanced states of mind are the exception, not the rule. Being unhackable will not warrant you a happy life. You will not experience smooth social interactions. The mere ability to see the suffering of the zombified ones around you will add another layer of misery to your existence. Yet, living as close as possible to the truth, striving to break free from mind hackers, is way better than being an unaware slave, enjoying some temporary comfort while your attention, time and money are harvested for purposes which have nothing to do with you. ### The Limits Of Freedom Given By Being Unhackable Let’s say you did your best, and you want to know if you’re there, if you at least reached a place in the spectrum that keeps you reasonably safe. One way to know you’re there is to try identifying mind viruses in other people. When you can clearly see the three sequences-process - finding an attack surface, applying a stimuli to it and then adjusting to the response of the host - when you can observe how this process is transforming people who used to be sane in full time zombies, then you can safely say you made it. You’re unhackable and immune (at least to that specific virus you observed in others). The first consequence of this achievement is that you will also know in what way other people are vulnerable. Hence, you will know how to hack them. The freedom given by being unhackable, like any other freedom, comes with responsibility. It makes you responsible of yourself, but also of others. Just because you made it, just because you’re unhackable now, you shouldn’t hack others. Especially not for “awakening” them. By doing this, you would just replace an old, toxic virus with a new one, that you just think it’s “better”. Because even if you succeed, the host is still hackable. It didn’t build any real immunity. The best thing you can do is to protect others as much as you can, support them on their way to de-virusing - if so they choose - and try not to harm anyone in the process. Including yourself. And the second consequence stems from the fact that everything is temporary. That means your recently gained unhackability is temporary too. The context may change (it will change, whether you want it or not, actually), new vulnerabilities will be discovered, new attack surfaces uncovered, new mind viruses created and engineered. Just because you’re unhackable now, it doesn’t mean you will always be. Act decisively but scarcely, only when you understand the consequences of your actions- and if you’re at peace with them. Stay aware and know that what looks like a snake may be just a coiled rope. Similarly, though, what looks like a coiled rope may be a deadly snake.