Introduction
When we bundled up Mind Performance Hacks and sent it out to make its way in the world, we suspected it wasn't the last we had to say about techniques for boosting your brain power. Like keeping a sourdough starter, we had a little bit of lively material still fermenting and bubbling away. Over time, by ourselves and talking to readers—some of whom became contributors—we found and mixed in more tasty ingredients, let them sit and expand, punched them around a little, shaped them and baked them up just so, and now we have a new treat to offer you, Mindhacker.
This book is informed by two fascinating ideals for human behavior from science fiction. They come from different sources (and we discuss them in more detail in Hack 31, “Mine the Future”), but briefly they are the mentat and the asarya. The mentat aspires to mimic and even replace computers by training to perform prodigious feats of cognitive and analytical skill. Obviously the inspiration for the Mentat Wiki, the mentat was also, to some extent, the spirit of Mind Performance Hacks, wherein many of the hacks have to do with acquiring and honing those kinds of skills. The mentat is still present in Mindhacker, but we've added a colleague, the asarya. If the mentat is a strongman, the asarya is an acrobat, focused on flexibility of mind. The asarya aims to hold all possibilities in mind at once, to “look upon the universe just as it is and affirm every aspect,” to say “yes” to all things. With the hacks in Mindhacker ...
