Technology basically means systematic use of a tool. A physical tool fits your biology and enhances it. For example, a bottle fits your hand and enables you to carry water. Psychotechnology refers to tools that fit your mind and enhance how it operates.
Think of psychotechnology as installing a new program on a computer. The hardware stays the same but new programs enable you to increase the repertoire of processes you can run. Psychotechnologies enable novel kinds of perceptions, emotions, and cognition — new ways of using our minds.
Here’s a simple example of psychotechnology — literacy. Literacy allows us to write things down, and come back to them later — so we can link a past state of our mind, by writing it down, to a future state, by reading the past state. We network our cognition through literacy. And not only does it enable us to network our own brain’s states, but it also allows us to network our brain with others, without us being there. Look at what these words are doing.
We take it for granted. But imagine if I take literacy out of your brain — you won’t be able to imagine words or put stuff on paper, lose access to all the written knowledge and tools, etc. Your brain would be the same, but the level and the number of problems you can solve would collapse dramatically. In a way, you would be dumber.
Examples of Psychotechnology
Literacy was a basic example. Here are the various types of psychotechnologies and further examples:
You can even sequence these psychotechnologies in new ways and combine them into new recipes. For instance, imagine the kind of experience you can create by combining meditation, sensory deprivation and psychedelics. Throw in something like the Neuralink and the possibilities are endless. Things like these are going to be big in the future as we move deeper into the information age and everyone starts seeking an edge. Being able to select the right psychotechnology for the right purpose, at the right time will be a valuable skill.
We are also goint to see a lot of innovations that transform our basic psychotechnologies like how the calculator transformed numeracy. Keep an eye out on the “tools for thought” space.
Leveraging Psychotechnologies to Enhance Intelligence
Now, intelligence is usually assumed to be fixed. For this discussion, let’s define intelligence as the ability to solve problems or recognize patterns. Those skills can be seriously augmented by changing your mind-body state.
Our normal waking state is very useful, but it is optimized for survival. Altered states of consciousness can help you widen your field of awareness, allowing you to generate insights and pick up on broader patterns you may not have considered before. Certain psychotechnologies can be leveraged to tap into trance-like states of flow where your cognitive abilities and creativity get seriously enhanced.
So while there’s definitely a genetic component to intelligence, there are a lot of things you can do to enhance your intelligence. The catch being you do need a certain level of intelligence to identify and get the most out of those psychotechnologies.
We are quick to adopt physical technologies like cars, gadgets, etc. Because, for one, they appeal to our material instincts. And two, their effects are more tangible and instant.
But take something like meditation. It requires a lot of patience. The effects are not tangible. And there’s still some skepticism around it. So most people ignore it. Many such examples (psychedelics, anyone?). Some people recognize the value, experiment and get ahead of the curve. This is why an open mind is a big advantage.
They say we are the middle children of history. Born too late to explore the earth, born too early to explore the galaxy. But we were born at the right time to explore our minds. And the only thing you need for that exploration is curiosity.
Enjoy the ride.
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