I was under impression that Buddhism is about giving up on 2.
By "hacking perception" I meant things like hiding thoughts from your consciousness so that other can't learn about them, masking unwanted emotions with others, forcing yourself to feel particular emotions in order to achieve some external goals - pretty un-Buddhist things to do, if my understanding of Buddhism is worth anything.
The distinction between 1 and 2 as I meant them is influencing emotions directly vs. influencing external factors which those emotions have evolved to benchmark, if that makes sense. I'm a (recovering) nerd, not a Buddhist :)
Or buddhists.
> Number 1 are your garden variety nerdy engineers, 2 are clinically insane and probably somewhere in between is where genius lies.
There is definitely genius in realizing the distinction between number 1 and number 2 is finer than it might initially look.