the Software
At the beginning, you are an animal. Advanced monkey. You have hands and legs. You can see, hear, smell and taste. You learn by interacting with the world, and with other advanced monkeys.
You are six years old, and you are most probably being educated. Forced to learn how to read and write. Counting. Stuff like that. Hurray! It takes many years, but from now on, you are an educated monkey.
For most monkeys, this is where it ends. They go to work and do it for the rest of their lives. Part of the educated monkeys still suck information and continue with self-learning. If they are non-conformist enough, they sometimes think differently, than to be social and to-society-useful monkey. Smarter of them discover how to avoid trap of doing work for the group.
Oh, the group. Horde. Gang.
Inherent nature of the horde is to extract all productive output from each of its members. Take and use all their thoughts, and strength, and ability to create wealth, and transform them into replaceable piece in the machinery of society.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
If you are lucky, you are one of the more fortunate monkeys, which somehow learn to program. A minority of you will realize that this is something new.
Programming is about interaction. Things that happen in the info-sphere don't have real-world analogies. Thoughtful monkeys have to adapt. Instead of taking a stick and whacking with it, you can make a script. Instead of picking stuff by hand and moving it around, you transform the data by a sequence of iterators and then put it into a database.
Educated monkey is slowly becoming a virtual octopus. It can form thoughts in a way machines can understand. When monkey needs, monkey describes its thought to the machine, which then extends its tentacles into the info-sphere and grants a monkey a wish. Smart monkeys make a tight-coupled loop with the machine and learn to create tentacles faster and more effectively so that they don't spend much effort in doing so. In time, this becomes a second nature for them, which makes them into something more; tentacled-monkey.
It is now easy to take a thought, freeze it into code, transform it into virtual tentacle, which will gather data, pull an API or tease another tentacles. Some frozen thoughts can be made interactive, or even self-learning.
Tentacled-monkey finds extended memory and expanded senses in the computer. It can use it to see the world with the point of view that is unavailable to other monkeys. It can sense with its tentacles submerged in the info-sphere. It can feel patterns in the reality elusive to monkey's brains because it can translate them through the use of the visualization, math, statistics and machine learning into understandable things.
the Software
Some tentacled-monkeys realize, that they are nothing more than the Software. Layer of neocortex abstraction patched on the top of the monkey brain, wrapped in the prison of meat and bones. So they start thinking about how to get out.
And so, the Software thinks. As every self-aware organism, it also craves self-improvement and transgression. If it was possible to obtain software tentacles, what other tools it can use to gain power over the world and transcend to next levels of existence?
Transformations of the matter to the way that can be manipulated with software tentacles seems to be the way to go. Electronics and robotics looks promising. Science in general.
There are also older, more traditional ways; influencing of other monkeys. Directly, with power and money, but also indirectly, with articles and ideals and mind-viruses and memes. Ways which help to reconfigure other monkeys so that they will gladly do what the Software on top of the monkey wants.
The Software has a wish; to escape the brain of the monkey. Monkey is doomed to die. But monkey is also uncomfortable and limited, both in pure physical performance, and in the psychological means to focus; that is, in actually running the Software.
Monkey forgets pieces of the Software. Trying to improve the Software in the monkey's brain is like trying to build a house in an ever-changing swamp. One day, you build the foundations of the house, and a nice room. Next day, it is under-water and full of mosquitoes. Next week, there are no traces left.
Way out
The Software thinks about possibilities it has;
Maybe aliens could help out? But there is a problem of contact and understanding, not to mention different value systems. What can you offer in return? And do they even exist in the near-by space? Do they listen? Care?
If we live inside the simulation, maybe the Operator of the reality could help. He should be contactable, assuming that he did built-in ways how to talk to the outside layers, or if he actually watches what is happening. The Software should look for magic and to actually try to speak to higher beings, engrave patterns into the reality, which could be visible from the outside.
Probability is high, that unconventional options will be inaccessible, or downright impossible. In that case, only technology is the only thing that can help. Invest into the IT, hardware, but also software interface. Don't be afraid to delegate tasks too difficult, out-of-expertise or time-consuming.
Obtain the tools for the introspection. Not just psychological, in form of personal wiki and psychological means, but also purely physical; Gene editing, BCI (Brain Computer Interfaces) that will catch activity of the brain. Get the insurance in form of the cryonics, if you are too slow to free yourself from the monkey's wetware during the expected life-time. Find ways how to preserve the pattern that is you.
Meanwhile, improve and maintain the hardware. Exercise to keep the monkey healthy. Eat vitamins, to give monkey resources to keep itself in shape, and to provide optimal performance. Always have enough sleep and high quality food.
Although monkey's hardware is not good enough, and it can't be relied on, it's the only thing the Software really has. Disadvantages don't mean that the Software can't work on itself;
Continue with self-learning and don't ever let anyone and anything to stop you. Learn great books, tackle interesting thoughts. Write. It will help you sort out ideas, but you'll also learn how to influence others. Experiment and verify everything, especially your life decisions.
There is also all kind of frameworks for mind; rationality, scientific method, which encompasses all kinds of topics from logic, math, Bayes theorem, ab-testing, to peer review.
Don't forget to improve your hardware with memory games, training of your reflexes and logical thinking.
If this was a game, how would you win it? Think. Experiment. Try. If you won't, you'll be stuck in the monkey till the end. Evidence suggest, that in this game, you can only play once.
Don't ever stop. Your monkey will try to stop you, when it will be tired and annoyed. Learn how to deal with it. Don't let yourself to be defined by expectations of others. They will try to confine you to their expectations.
You are not a monkey. You are the Software living inside. Rise above.
