Neurotechnicon
Neurotechnicon
by Praxis Astra 2011
Where To Find The Most Up To Date Version
Smiling Friends Social Club Web Site -- You will find the most up to date version of The Neurotechnicon here.
Spy Stuff. War in the information age. The metagame of EVE including instructions on playing EVE "against" yourself. Destruction or protection according to your prediliction. With all due thanks to Sun Tzu, Screwtape, Niccolo Machiavelli, George Orwell, James Madison, and My Mom.
Qualities needed for the Hearts & Minds Player.
- 1. Clearheaded enough to be able to effectively use the Golden Rule.
- 2. Strong sense of individuality even when a "member" of a group.
- 3. Sense of Humor.
- 4. Patience. Time and time again I've found this to be the edge that does the actual cutting when actually implementing my Secret Evil Plans. If you are capable of more patience than your targets, you will have players at your mercy basically because their attention got distracted.
- 5. Ability to keep your mouth shut.
- 6. Acting ability.
- 7. Ability to operate effectively under conditions of uncertainty.
Hearts And Minds (TM)
"One bushel of your enemy's wheat is worth twenty of your own."
Consider Not Sharing The Neurotechnicon
This is really the only thing that Smiling Friends Social Club has which could do irreparable damage if we were to lose control over it. This is a manual on destroying EVE organizations from within. In order to do this you have to pay attention to the meta game of EVE, the game that concerns itself with how the game is played. It is by extending your mind and heart into the meta game you give yourself a fundamental advantage over a player who has not taken the time and trouble to do so. Almost without exception this is an advantage against which, in the end, no number of ships or ISK can prevail. (In this we are merely re stating the position of Sun Tzu in modern English and using the framework of an MMO.) The thing has been written to act as an innocculent just by reading it. Before you make the decision to surrender this advantage, which is what you do every time you let someone not in SFSC read the Neurotechnicon, consider the possible costs to yourself carefully.
How You Destroy An EVE Organization
You cannot by yourself destroy a group. The group itself must provide you with the weapons you need. A well run group will be much harder to destroy than a badly run group. But well run groups in EVE are rare. Most of their leaders care more about the fantasy of being in charge than the actuality of what that means. Every leader who would rather be in charge of something badly run than part of something well run is not the CEO of their EVE corp, they are the CEO of your EVE corp. And its up to you if they ever learn this or not.
Excerpt from Chapter XIII
Every mighty warrior in his faction fitted ship who won't fight the battle within becomes an unknowing vessel in your fleet. Listening to them whine at each other as they fall on their friends rather than take one clear look in the mirror is just gravy.
Excerpt from Chapter XIV
Your wickedness is exactly like your goodness in that its actual worth is what you are actually willing to pay for it. One thing we can count on from most of our targets is that no matter what their putative "virtures" they will not be willing to pay as much for them as you are willing to pay for yours.
Excerpt from Chapter II
The consummate act of genius is simply to see what is in front of you without your preconceptions and knowledge interfering. The mind capable of fielding this weapon will have access to information that few others will access.
Excerpt from Chapter II
A lie is never a trivial thing. Every single one has to be watched carefully and remembered remembered remembered. They have a way of skipping out of your control and doing just the kind of mischef you don't want at the least opportune momments. A like is like a demon servant evoked by just the right combination of words. Like demons, lies always cheat on how much they are going to cost you. Every lie you tell requires your resources to maintain or it will do damage. Like any effective tool they can damage you as much as they can damage your targets if not more.
In this chapter we discuss how, using the methods you learned in chapter I to create your memory palace, you can build a deceptadrome of mnemonic devices to remember and organize your lies.
Memory Palace
A lie is simply never as powerful as a truth. The reason is simple. A truth, bearing the weight of and reflecting the effects from actual events, needs less attention from you in order to do its work. A lie, existing only in the words and minds of the speaker and hearer, has no momentum but what you and the hearer give it yourselves. To believe your lies at any time other than the moment you utter them is an error from which there is usually no escape. Your lies may not be as powerful as the truth but they can easily become more powerful than you.
Excerpt from Chapter III
The simple and terrifying truth is that the cold calculations of lab and caliper reinforces the observation and anecdote of the mystics. Our nervous systems do not make so great a distiction between actual and virtual as we'd all, in our hearts of hearts, hoped they would.
Excerpt from Chapter VII
One of the very best things to use against your targets is a simple sentence: "Its only a game." Ahhhhhhhh. Sweet reason. Silly game. Why throw yourself into it? What could be bad about that? Relax. Play EVE? Watch a movie? What's the difference. All you have to do is whisper that. Whisper that in their ears. Do it just right and you'll get yourself a reputation as a Voice of Reason. And its the truth. There's absolutely no reason to take any attitude besides "Its only a game" towards playing EVE. There is one nagging little detail. Reason just isn't conducive to excellent play. Of Excellence of any kind. Nobody has ever put it better than The Tick: "Sanity really is just a one trick pony. But when you're good and crazy, the sky's the limit."
Any "good reason" you can give your targets to give what they are doing at the moment less than their full attention is good enough for you.
Excerpt from Chapter XII
This method of converting any form of attention that your allies or opponents pay you into something useful is a technique we borrow from Tai Chi and Pua Kua, two of the Taoist martial arts. The basis of this stratagem are simple facts of our neurology. Attention is a limited resource. Every bit of it we cause our opponents to use for our purposes is an irrevocable loss for them. Add to that the circular flow of energy between aggressor and target and.."
Excerpt from Chapter I
Spying in EVE Online is a particularly thorny problem because the overall situation as regards spies is what Sun Tzu would call smooth ground. Everyone has complete access to everyone else at any time. Any character is just a chat window or another tab in their TS voice server away from being to feed your opponents information realtime. Kidding yourself about this is deadly because by the time you can put your finger on what's wrong, its just too late.
Like it or not, in EVE the ingame and out of game communications available to us gives the first side to send in agents a primary and lasting advantage.
The only way--ONLY WAY--to field a successful intelligence campaign is to be on the offensive. Being reactive is being doomed.