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MAD SCIENCE 101

Or, some things I consider the core skills and knowledge of that thing I sometimes refer to as 'mad science'.

REVERSE ENGINEERING

Reverse Engineering is a way of learning from experience. It's an application of the core scientific method to whatever thing you want to reverse engineer.

This isn't as amazing as it sounds. Just about everything scientists do under the name of "research" is an act of reverse engineering and anyone who learns primarily by "trial and error" uses the scientific method by virtue of their experimental approach ( contrasted by the method of repeatedly banging one's head against a wall ).

So, what I'm really talking about when I talk about reverse engineering is something that people tend to do anyway. The difference is that most people don't apply the skill to itself -- in other words, reverse engineer reverse engineering.

Why do that in the first place? Well, I'm glad that I imagined that you asked.  And the answer is -- the same reason anyone would want to reverse engineer anything -- to figure out how it works and improve or learn how to use or do it better. For me, it's all about getting better at what I do, and I see just about everything from either a reverse engineering / system hacking viewpoint. ( This is my blessing and curse,  folks. Like Crowley said the reason you learn about Magick is because you can't help but do it anyway, so the only real choice you have is to be a good at it, or bad at it. So, well... )

A related skill is monkey-wrenching, which is reverse engineering something by breaking it in ever more creative ways. ( And I do love the monkey-wrenching, as the only rules that matter...)

SYSTEMS AND SYSTEMS HACKING

A system is anything which is composed of different parts where those parts interact with each other in a way that each part of the system has an effect on the entire system. It requires a kind of thinking where you are looking through a microscope through one eye and the thing itself as a whole with the other.

For example, the flaps on the wing of an airplane cause the entire airplane to turn, and if the landing gear of an airplane were to fall off in flight, the entire plan would crash.

Hacking is simply getting a system to do something it doesn't normally do, and possibly hasn't ever done, but something it's capable of doing according to it's structure.

If someone were to hijack something on a plane which made an electric spark, say the wires of the bathroom light, and somehow fed it into the plane's fuel tank -- then it would be a reasonable assumption that the plane would explode when someone turned on the bathroom light. This isn't something planes are generally designed to do and it's something they typically don't do but it's something that it's capable of doing 'according to it's structure.'

CYBERNETICS

Cybernetics is the science of steersmanship, in other words, the science of controlling systems, and the foundation of whatever process which allows a system to do something on it's own. ( It's also the difference between a mere machine and a system, at least in my opinion. Though you'll often hear me refer to such things as rocks as systems. I'll explain later. :) ) 

The autopilot of an airplane is essentially cybernetic. It needs to know where it's going and keep it on course as the wind blows the airplane off course. If the airplane gets blown to the right, the autopilot turns the airplane back to the left -- not to degree it was blown right, but to the degree it's off course.

So, you could say that anything cybernetic is also intelligent to some degree, at least while performing the function it was designed for. The thermostat of a house is cybernetic -- it's good at keeping the house at a constant temperature but terrible at math.

The essential function of a cybernetic system is regulation, and this is where Mad Science becomes Mad Philosophy and more importantly, Mad Psychology -- as self-regulating creatures, we humans are a cybernetic system.

Additional Note: The legitimate reason I can call a rock is a system is because when you pick one up it becomes involved in your 'systemness' and you become it's cybernetic element. Systems are plastic like that: two people talking form one system.  The real reason I call things like rocks a system is because I'm lazy.