Stub: My Personal Exocortex Software System

by Jan Malakhovski, version 0.18.1, created , published , updated

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Do you want to become an awesome cyborg who can easily track lots of medically, personally, and generally relevant variables, perform exploratory data analyses over them, refer back to previously experienced and related things at light speed, compute Bayesian probabilities for anything, apply the scientific method to everything, and use said abilities to optimize your life? I do! This article discusses my personal adventures in designing, building, and growing my personal exocortex software system setup for the abovementioned purposes, as well as the things I learned in the process.

An exocortex (or exobrain) is a device that plays a role of “an external information processing system that augments the brain’s biological high-level cognitive processes”. In other words, it’s a device that does human intelligence amplification. At the moment of writing, this type of device exists only in the realms of science-fiction. However, if you only care about the software-defined information processing and intelligence augmentation features of such a device and not its neural brain-machine interface, then, with a bit of effort, you can have most of said features today.

Henceforth, a personal exocortex software system is defined as a software setup that does personal exocortex-like things, but using widely available conventional computing devices and operating systems. In other words, it’s an “extended memory” and “external brain” software system that

(Should you have such a personal exocortex software system, you could then make a good approximation of a sci-fi-like exocortex device the moment a general wearable ubiquitous computer with enough compute, storage, and user-to-device IO bandwidth capacities appears.1)

Why would you even want to use such a thing? Are there any potential dangers with using such a system? What is a good design for it? Which tools can you use to implement it? How can you make your setup private, secure, comfortable to use, efficient, and future-proof? This document aims to answer all of these and other relevant questions.

In other words, this document aims to be a comprehensive introduction, motivation, and DIY guide for wannabe tooling-, self-tracking-, and intelligence-enhanced cyborgs.

Changelog

(Click me to see it.)

v0.18.1 -

v0.18.0 -

v0.0.0 -

Table of Contents

Introduction

This section is a work in progress.

My motivation

This section is a work in progress.

Health and productivity inferences

This section is a work in progress.

Document archival and search

This section is a work in progress.

Reminders with checklists, spaced-repetition, and data-driven nanny-ing

This section is a work in progress.

The associative memex and Bayesian queries over documents and annotations

This section is a work in progress.

And more!

This section is a work in progress.

My assumptions

This section is a work in progress.

The state of the art

This section is a work in progress.

My issues with the state of the art

This section is a work in progress.

Structure

This section is a work in progress.

Prerequisites: Basics

This section is a work in progress.

The UNIX way and UNIX-like systems

This section is a work in progress.

Operating systems

This section is a work in progress.

Android forks

This section is a work in progress.

Common pitfalls

This section is a work in progress.

Collecting junk measurements

This section is a work in progress.

Fitness trackers and Smartwatches

This section is a work in progress.

Sleep trackers

This section is a work in progress.

Body mass (weight)

This section is a work in progress.

Body fat percentage

This section is a work in progress.

Blood glucose, when not logging Vitamin C intake

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to maintain privacy while collecting measurements

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to maintain privacy with web services

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to maintain privacy on smartphones and with their apps

This section is a work in progress.

Cloud backups that steal your data

This section is a work in progress.

Evil spying apps

This section is a work in progress.

Evil keyboard apps

This section is a work in progress.

Evil TTS apps

This section is a work in progress.

Evil system apps

This section is a work in progress.

Takeaways

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to maintain privacy on Windows and with its apps

This section is a work in progress.

OS-level advertisements

This section is a work in progress.

Telemetry you can’t really disable

This section is a work in progress.

Cloud backups that steal your data

This section is a work in progress.

Takeaways

This section is a work in progress.

Not writing important things down

This section is a work in progress.

Expecting it to take very little time and effort right off the bat

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to future-proof collected data

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to future-proof web service data

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to future-proof data on smartphones and with their apps

This section is a work in progress.

Minimal future-proofing requirements

This section is a work in progress.

Spending too much effort setting everything up right off the bat

This section is a work in progress.

Being unprepared to actually modify your behaviour

This section is a work in progress.

Obsessing over pretty pictures and summaries instead of doing proper data analyses

This section is a work in progress.

Ignoring Goodhart’s “law”

This section is a work in progress.

Working around Goodhart’s “law”

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to collect enough data by giving up too early

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to confirm your findings with proper self-experiments

This section is a work in progress.

Ignoring effects of the regression to the mean

This section is a work in progress.

Failing to implement the changes your findings suggest

This section is a work in progress.

Dealing with contradictions with field consensus

This section is a work in progress.

Common objections

This section is a work in progress.

“Self-experiments!? Those are dangerous!”

This section is a work in progress.

“Self-experiments!? Scientists did proper studies! You just need to read those!”

This section is a work in progress.

“Self-experiments!? Doctors and other experts learned everything of importance already! You just need to listen to them!”

This section is a work in progress.

“You want regular people to do deep scientific literature research and self-experiments?! This is completely unfeasible!”

This section is a work in progress.

My discoveries

This section is a work in progress.

Low-carbohydrate diets work, high-protein high-meat diets are awesome

This section is a work in progress.

“But mainstream nutritional advice claims that high-protein diets are dangerous!”

This section is a work in progress.

Meat versus illness

This section is a work in progress.

“But mainstream nutritional advice claims that eating lots of red meat is bad for you for multiple reasons!”

This section is a work in progress.

Results

This section is a work in progress.

Butter can help with acid reflux

This section is a work in progress.

Mega-dosing with Vitamin C works, in most unexpected ways

This section is a work in progress.

How to take it most effectively

This section is a work in progress.

Unexpected effects

This section is a work in progress.

Advertised effects

This section is a work in progress.

Takeaways

This section is a work in progress.

Nutritional synergies

This section is a work in progress.

Changing clothes more frequently reduces frequency of being ill

This section is a work in progress.

Changing clothes more frequently helps with lower back pain

This section is a work in progress.

Pure water is more effective against conjunctivitis than anti-microbial eye drops, if used early enough

This section is a work in progress.

Pure water helps with curing chronic conjunctivitis

This section is a work in progress.

Some types of chairs reduce frequency of lower back pain

This section is a work in progress.

Some types of chairs help with acid reflux

This section is a work in progress.

Workspace configuration tracking

This section is a work in progress.

Bidet/bidet shower

This section is a work in progress.

Anti-procrastination

This section is a work in progress.

Prerequisites: Package management

This section is a work in progress.

Package managers

This section is a work in progress.

GNU/Linux package managers and distributions

This section is a work in progress.

This section is a work in progress.

F-Droid and its marketplace apps

This section is a work in progress.

GNU/Linux package management

This section is a work in progress.

Packages

This section is a work in progress.

My operating system usage history

This section is a work in progress.

Self-determination

This section is a work in progress.

Setup Android

This section is a work in progress.

Re-flash your device, if possible

This section is a work in progress.

Learn to use F-Droid

This section is a work in progress.

Replace or isolate evil apps

This section is a work in progress.

Reduce tracking

This section is a work in progress.

Setup Windows

This section is a work in progress.

Setup POSIX OSes

This section is a work in progress.

Productivity

This section is a work in progress.

Fix your biochemistry

This section is a work in progress.

Improve your efficacy

This section is a work in progress.

Setup clocks

This section is a work in progress.

Setup NTP

This section is a work in progress.

Set clocks to UTC or a similar consistent time zone without daylight saving time

This section is a work in progress.

Otherwise

This section is a work in progress.

Setup profile.nix

This section is a work in progress.

Setup file synchronization

This section is a work in progress.

Setup backups!

This section is a work in progress.

This section is a work in progress.

Setup shell

This section is a work in progress.

Learn to use version control

This section is a work in progress.

Learn to touch-type

This section is a work in progress.

Setup dmenu, emoji input, global bookmarks, etc

This section is a work in progress.

Learn to use your task-specific tools

This section is a work in progress.

Reuse time

This section is a work in progress.

TTS is magic

This section is a work in progress.

Reading is the new Latin, but not all hope is lost with TTS

This section is a work in progress.

Setup TTS

This section is a work in progress.

Untether yourself

This section is a work in progress.

Setup document archival

This section is a work in progress.

Setup document playback

This section is a work in progress.

Pipeline tasks

This section is a work in progress.

Batch tasks

This section is a work in progress.

Reuse task shadows

This section is a work in progress.

Minimize interruptions

This section is a work in progress.

Getting Things Eliminated technique

This section is a work in progress.

Scheduling

This section is a work in progress.

Minimal effective self-tracking without org things

This section is a work in progress.

Capture medical selfies

This section is a work in progress.

Setup capture of medical selfies

This section is a work in progress.

Setup capture of medical selfies on Android

This section is a work in progress.

Capture bust-waist-hip circumference measurements

This section is a work in progress.

Setup capture of bust-waist-hip circumferences

This section is a work in progress.

Setup capture of bust-waist-hip circumferences on Android

This section is a work in progress.

Prerequisites: Emacs

This section is a work in progress.

GNU Emacs

This section is a work in progress.

Emacs org-mode

This section is a work in progress.

*.org file syntax

This section is a work in progress.

Important features of Emacs org-mode

This section is a work in progress.

Quirks of Emacs org-mode

This section is a work in progress.

Why use org files?

This section is a work in progress.

Extensions to Emacs org-mode

This section is a work in progress.

Tools adjacent to Emacs org-mode

This section is a work in progress.

Emacs calc and its algebraic syntax

This section is a work in progress.

Alternatives to Emacs and Emacs org-mode

This section is a work in progress.

My personal exocortex software system history

This section is a work in progress.

*.org logistics

This section is a work in progress.

Setup Emacs org-mode and org-alert

This section is a work in progress.

Variables

This section is a work in progress.

This section is a work in progress.

Setup Orgzly Revived

This section is a work in progress.

Setup org files synchronization

This section is a work in progress.

Setup org lensing

This section is a work in progress.

Appointments and habits

This section is a work in progress.

Recap: Self-optimization via self-tracking without common pitfalls

This section is a work in progress.

Self-tracking

This section is a work in progress.

Exercise diary

This section is a work in progress.

Wastebin diary

This section is a work in progress.

Medical diary

This section is a work in progress.

Quantified medical selfies

This section is a work in progress.

Waist-hip measurements

This section is a work in progress.

Expenses

This section is a work in progress.

Time-tracking

This section is a work in progress.

How to structure your org files properly

This section is a work in progress.

Optimize for consistency

This section is a work in progress.

Keep a changelog of major changes

This section is a work in progress.

Name stuff properly

This section is a work in progress.

Optimize for recognizability in org-agenda

This section is a work in progress.

Organize your org header hierarchies properly

This section is a work in progress.

Don’t use tables for self-tracking

This section is a work in progress.

Be succinct, but not too succinct

This section is a work in progress.

Optimize for org-capture speed

This section is a work in progress.

Reuse self-tracking event headers

This section is a work in progress.

A personal wiki on steroids

This section is a work in progress.

How to take good notes

This section is a work in progress.

Prerequisites: Data analysis tools and techniques

This section is a work in progress.

Linear regressions

This section is a work in progress.

Latent variables

This section is a work in progress.

Correlations

This section is a work in progress.

Associations

This section is a work in progress.

Data analysis

This section is a work in progress.

Software mentioned in passing

This section is a work in progress.


  1. That is to say, modern smartphones, smartwatches, and other wearable computers suffer from the following issues that make them currently unsuitable for exocortex-like usages:

    • Most such devices have very high device-to-user but very low user-to-device IO bandwidth.

      In other words, most modern manufacturers seem to be making devices for media consumption, not productive work.

      Some kind of high-bandwidth input device needs to become ubiquitous and reach economies of scale state first.

      A neural brain-machine interface would be cool, sure, but a chorded keyboard (which can be implemented on some of the modern gaming handhelds by chording with joystick buttons) or subvocal recognition (but probably not normal speech-to-text), could also work.

    • Most such devices simply don’t have enough on-board storage.

      Most modern manufacturers actually do this on purpose, producing devices with very little on-board storage to up-sell their users on “Cloud” storage subscriptions.

      Meanwhile, in my experience, a personal exocortex software system only really becomes useful after you dump 2 TiB or more of data and indexes into it (possibly multiplied by the number of languages you speak/use).

    • As shall be discussed below, a good personal exocortex software system must be integrated into the OS, such a system is much less useful as “just another app”. Meanwhile, from a technical standpoint, the number of different boot sequences and devicetrees modern mobile devices use makes multi-device OS distribution development unfeasible.

      Something like IBM PC’s BIOS and PCI need to be standardized first.

      Which is why I think that if such a device ever appears, it would be based on x86 (most likely) or RISC-V (less likely), but probably not ARM, because literally every single manufacturer does their own thing with the latter.

      For example, did you know that on Raspberry Pi it’s actually the GPU that boots first, it then enables the SDRAM, loads the Linux kernel from the SD card into SDRAM, and starts the ARM CPU?

    So, given all of the above, if I were to speculate, I would guess that a first proper exocortex-like device would be a handheld gaming PC (like a descendant of the Steam Deck or something similar running SteamOS) married to an optical HMD glasses, initially used for AR/VR gaming. But then, somebody would develop a practical wearable high-bandwidth input device, like gloves that could be used as a keyboard, a face mask with embedded electrodes that could be used for subvocal recognition, or some such. And then, a custom “exocortexOS” GNU/Linux distro for such a device stack would be born.↩︎


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