Notes:

• this is about humans, not about computers;
• this is a draft, the ideas must be further refined, discussed with other people;
• warning: high levels of abstraction ahead!

What would you say... if I said that... a person is nothing but a set of software running on top of a hardware platform? Your first reaction could be "this guy had too much of The Matrix", or "what kind of unsupported nonsense is that!?".

If you bear with me for some time, I hope you will change your views.

What makes a human a human? What is it that defines us? Our body? Our voice? Our thoughts? The beliefs and concepts that influence our decision-making processes? Or maybe it is that entity the church calls "the soul"?

Follow up:

I prefer to place a greater emphasis on our thoughts, because they make us different from other individuals. Otherwise we'd be pretty much the same - two hands, a pair of eyes, two legs... In contrast, thoughts can build communities, thoughts can bring innovation, they can start friendships or wars, as well as end them... Thoughts are our primary self-improvement instrument.

By viewing a human as a "set of software running on top of hardware", we add an abstraction layer, therefore we don't have to focus on the minor details (ex: how is a filter implemented?), and think about "big things" instead.

A human is:

• The body - the physical part of ourselves (the hardware layer);
• Low-level software - the stuff that controls our basic body activities (the firmware);
• High-level software - this is what makes the personality.

To put things into perspective - physically we are the same, and have identical sets of organs. Further, we talk the same way, having the same low-level software that coordinates how our vocal chords vibrate, the same low-level software that controls our eye-sight and guides us in space, etc.

The real difference is in the high-level software, the part that makes some of us poets, engineers... optimists, liberals, christians, electronic music fans, doctors, and so on (this is what makes our personality).

Let's move on with the analogy. What can you do if something is wrong with your hardware? Replace the faulty part, or get yourself an entirely new system. Hmmm... changing a bad organ is not trivial, sometimes - impossible, sometimes it takes a long healthcare course to bring it back to its normal condition.

On the other hand, we have software issues, which can be handled with in other ways: reboot the system, find a patch, uninstall the program (you didn't need it anyway :-), reinstall it, update it, install another one, reverse engineer it and fix it, study the source code and build your own (improved) version.

All these operations take place at the logical layer, as long as you have the right knowledge (or the will to study) and plenty of time on your hands, you can keep playing with your software and watching how the objective function gets better (or worse, depending on how successful you are).

If you are advanced, you can use your software skills to deal with some faulty hardware issues as well. (Think of it as of a filter driver that alters the IRPs in such a way that they become compatible with the lower-level drivers; or as of a program that emulates a device you don't really have (software rendering for those without a real hardware accelerator)). The software that deals with emulation is what we call "imagination".

With that said, it becomes obvious that tweaking the software layer is the #1 tool for self-improvement, the low-hanging fruit - you can become a better person by simply using the power of thought (there is no need to interact with other objects or people, no need to do physical exercise, etc).

Q: Ok, this sounds interesting, but how can this be applied in real life?

• This approach helps you categorize problems by type - thus you see the big picture and avoid cases in which you use the wrong solution. Is it a software problem, or a hardware problem? If it's hardware - take a pill, or see a doctor; if it is software - analyze the issue, find the culprit, and change that component (leaving the other modules intact);
• Separate one component from another, so that "an error here" won't break "everything else over there" (think of this as of a ship, that can stay afloat if 2 out of its 5 compartments are flooded - this gives the crew the chance to get to the shore and handle the problem);
• Create your logical sandboxes, or emotional sandboxes - don't get burned when something goes wrong;
• Alter your behaviour. This applies to impulsive people, they say something, but they don't always think about the impact of their words. Solution - add an output filter, which acts as a high-level plugin (one that can be disabled later) that will review and organize your thoughts before you put them into words;
• Pinkifiers and depinkifiers, "bullshit meters" can be regarded as input filters - prevent useless information from entering the lower software layers of your brain, discard it before you end up thinking too much about something that is not worth it (like a network firewall drops a corrupt packet, so there is no need to forward it to the next layer in the stack);

Things are getting more interesting, when the levels of abstraction are so high, that you can say "there is no spoon", and actually mean it! What a guru can do:

• Ignore pain, or convert it into pleasure (it's like casting an int to a char, or vice versa, and getting away with it);
• Temporarily disconnect sensors - the neighbor's music bothers you? Disable audio input;
• Directly edit memory contents to change values of certain variables (even constants :-), or the states of certain sub-systems. You've tried to understand a problem, troubleshoot it - but nothing seems to work? You can continue playing with it, or simply pretend that the function returned TRUE instead of FALSE, and go on living your life.

Note that some of these things can be dangerous. For instance, pretending that pi=1.618 won't do you any good, because the entire universe around you behaves as if pi=3.14 - and you can't change that (regard the universe as a low-level software platform, a small sub-system of which you are; you can change stuff inside your box, but you cannot change anything outside your box).

You cannot directly alter/control other people's actions either. In this metaphorical example, they are other boxes (also outside your box, but all contained within the bigger box known as "the universe"). In this case, the best you can do is use the box's external controls to interact with it (works like the public methods of a class in C++); in other words, you can ask a person what their name is, and wait for them to answer, but you can't open up their brain and literally extract the answer yourself.

The final point is that you are the ultimate master of your own box, don't be afraid to play with it, use it in any way you can. The important part is that you can't really break it - because if it is a software level problem, it's only a matter of thinking it over and finding a logical solution (often you won't even have to get off the chair for that). As long as you don't break any bones or lose any vital organs - you're fine :-)

Remarks:

• The body replaces its cells at various intervals; meaning that the cells in your bones are not the same cells that were there N years ago (N is different for various body parts). The point is that today you are physically not the same you were several years ago, but you still feel that you are the same individual - therefore your "self" is not in the physical layer (which leaves us with the software layer);
• Emotions should be considered as elements that exist at the software level. The same external event can generate a different response for different people (ex: you look at a pig - you see a cheeseburger; a muslim looks at a pig - and they see disgrace). Another example is our change of attitude: today you don't like trance music, tomorrow it becomes your favourite flavour. The cause is that your software was modified (or was reconfigured - so now you actually like high-pitched or synthesized sounds, and patterns), and the same external event generates a pleasant feeling. What about love, you ask? Love is a logical attachment to a person; there are thousands of attractive women (or men) out there, but you prefer to be with the one because you share a history, you like the same jokes and films, you have the same views... Basically, your personalities are compatible (and a personality is a set of "software level stuff"). Note: this is not supposed to be a story about the origin and the meaning of "love"; an essay about relationships will be published soon, so stay tuned. You may have entirely different views about love, but that does not negate all the points expressed in this article.