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Extropian Principles
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Subject: EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES 2.5 (Heavily revised new version)
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THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES 2.5
(July 1993)
)1993 Max More
President, Extropy Institute
EXTROPY -- A measure of intelligence, information,
energy, vitality, experience, diversity, opportunity, and
growth.
EXTROPIANISM -- The philosophy that seeks to increase
extropy.
Extropianism is a transhumanist philosophy: Like humanism,
transhumanism values reason and humanity and sees no
grounds for belief in unknowable, supernatural forces externally
controlling our destiny, but goes further in urging us to push
beyond the merely human stage of evolution. As physicist
Freeman Dyson has said: "Humanity looks to me like a
magnificent beginning but not the final word." Religions
traditionally have provided a sense of meaning and purpose in
life, but have also suppressed intelligence and stifled progress.
The Extropian philosophy provides an inspiring and uplifting
meaning and direction to our lives, while remaining flexible and
firmly founded in science, reason, and the boundless search for
improvement.
1. Boundless Expansion -- Seeking more intelligence,
wisdom, and effectiveness, an unlimited lifespan, and
the removal of political, cultural, biological, and
psychological limits to self-actualization and self-
realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our
progress and possibilities. Expanding into the universe
and advancing without end.
2. Self-Transformation -- Affirming continual
moral, intellectual, and physical self-improvement,
through reason and critical thinking, personal
responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological
and neurological augmentation.
3. Dynamic Optimism -- Fueling dynamic action
with positive expectations. Adopting a rational, action-
based optimism, shunning both blind faith and
stagnant pessimism.
4. Intelligent Technology -- Applying science and
technology creatively to transcend "natural" limits
imposed by our biological heritage, culture, and
environment.
5. Spontaneous Order - Supporting decentralized,
voluntaristic social coordination processes. Fostering
tolerance, diversity, long-term thinking, personal
responsibility, and individual liberty.
These principles are developed below. Deeper treatments can be
found in various issues of EXTROPY: The Journal of
Transhumanist Thought -- Spontaneous Order in #7,
Dynamic Optimism in #8, and Self-Transformation in #10.
1. BOUNDLESS EXPANSION
Extropians recognize the unique place of our species, and our
opportunity to advance nature's evolution to new peaks.
Beginning as mindless matter, parts of nature developed in a
slow evolutionary ascendence, leading to progressively more
powerful brains. Chemical reactions generated tropistic
behavior, which was superseded by instinctual and Skinnerian
stimulus-response behavior, and then by conscious learning and
experimentation. With the advent of the conceptual awareness
of humankind, the rate of advancement sharply accelerated as
intelligence, technology, and the scientific method were applied
to our condition. We seek to sustain and quicken this
evolutionary process of expanding extropy, transcending
biological and psychological limits into posthumanity.
In aspiring to posthumanity, we reject natural and traditional
limitations on our possibilities. We champion the rational use of
science and technology to eradicate constraints on lifespan,
intelligence, personal vitality, freedom, and experience. We
recognize the absurdity of meekly accepting "natural" limits to
our lifespans. The future will bring a graduation from Earth --
the cradle of human and transhuman intelligence -- and the
inhabitation of the cosmos.
Resource limits are not immutable. Extropians affirm a rational,
market-mediated environmentalism aimed at sustaining and
enhancing the conditions for our flourishing. We oppose
apocalyptic environmentalism which hallucinates catastrophe,
issues a stream of irresponsible doomsday predictions, and
attempts to strangle our continued evolution. Intelligent
management of resources and environment will be fostered by
the Extropian goal of vastly extended lifespan. The market price
system encourages conservation, substitution, and innovation,
preventing any need for a brake on growth and progress.
Migration into space will immensely enlarge the energy and
resources accessible to our civilization. Extended lifespans will
foster wisdom and foresight, while restraining recklessness and
profligacy.
No mysteries are sacrosanct, no limits unquestionable; the
unknown will yield to the ingenious mind. We seek to
understand the universe and to master reality up to and beyond
any currently foreseeable limits.
2. SELF-TRANSFORMATION
Extropians affirm reason, critical inquiry, intellectual
independence, and honesty. We reject blind faith and the
passive, comfortable thinking that leads to dogma, mysticism,
and conformity. Our commitment to positive self-transformation
requires us to critically analyze our current beliefs, behaviors,
and strategies. Extropians therefore feel proud by readily
learning from error rather than by professing infallibility. We
prefer analytical thought to fuzzy but comfortable delusion,
empiricism to mysticism, and independent evaluation to
conformity. We affirm a philosophy of life but distance ourselves
from religious dogma because of its blind faith, debasement of
human worth, and systematic irrationality.
We seek to become better than we are, while affirming our
current worth. Perpetual self-improvement -- physical,
intellectual, psychological, and ethical -- requires us to
continually re-examine our lives. Self-esteem in the present
cannot mean self-satisfaction, since a probing mind can always
envisage a superior self in the future. Extropians are committed
to deepening their wisdom, honing their rationality, and
augmenting their physical and intellectual capabilities. We
choose challenge over comfort, innovation over emulation,
transformation over torpor.
Extropians are neophiles and experimentalists who track new
research for more efficient means of achieving goals and who are
willing to explore novel technologies of self-transformation. In
our quest to advance to a posthuman stage, we rely on our own
judgment, seek our own path, and reject both blind conformity
and mindless rebellion. Extropians frequently diverge from the
mainstream because they refuse to be chained by any dogma,
whether religious, political, or intellectual. Extropians choose
their values and behavior reflectively, standing firm when
required but responding flexibly to new conditions.
Personal responsibility and autonomy go hand-in-hand with
self-experimentation. Extropians take responsibility for the
consequences of their choices, refusing to blame others for the
results of their own free actions. Experimentation and self-
transformation require risks; we wish to be free to evaluate
potential risks and benefits for ourselves, applying our own
judgment, and assuming responsibility for the outcome. We
seek neither to rule others nor to be ruled. We vigorously resist
those who use the institutionalized coercion of the State to
impose their judgments of the safety and effectiveness of various
means of self-experimentation. Personal responsibility and
self-determination are incompatible with authoritarian
centralized control, which stifles the choices and spontaneous
ordering of autonomous persons.
Coercion, whether for the purported "good of the whole" or for
the paternalistic protection of the individual, is unacceptable to
us. Compulsion breeds ignorance and weakens the connection
between personal choice and personal outcome, thereby
destroying personal responsibility. Extropians are rational
individualists, living by their own judgment, making reflective,
informed choices, profiting from both success and shortcoming.
As neophiles, Extropians study advanced, emerging, and future
technologies for their self-transformative potential. We support
biomedical research to understand and control the aging
process. We examine any plausible means of conquering death,
including interim measures like biostasis, and long-term
possibilities such as migration of personality from biological
bodies into superior embodiments ("uploading").
We practice and plan for biological and neurological
augmentation through means such as neurochemical
enhancers, computers and electronic networks, General
Semantics, fuzzy logic, and other guides to effective thinking,
meditation and visualization techniques, accelerated learning
strategies, applied cognitive psychology, and soon neural-
computer integration. Shrugging off the limits imposed on us by
our natural heritage, we apply the evolutionary gift of our
rational, empirical intelligence to surpass the confines of our
humanity, crossing the threshold into the transhuman and
posthuman stages that await us.
3. DYNAMIC OPTIMISM
Extropians espouse a positive, dynamic, empowering attitude.
Seeing no rational support for belief in a non-physical "afterlife",
we seek to realize our ideals in this world. Rather than enduring
an unfulfilling life sustained by a desperate longing for a illusory
heaven, we direct our energies enthusiastically into moving
toward our ever-evolving vision.
Living vigorously, effectively, and joyfully, requires dismissing
gloom, defeatism, and ingrained cultural negativism. Problems
- technical, social, psychological, ecological - are to be
acknowledged but not allowed to dominate our thinking and our
direction. We respond to gloom and defeatism by exploring and
exploiting new possibilities. Extropians hold an optimistic view
of the future, foreseeing potent antidotes to many ancient
human ailments, requiring only that we take charge and create
that future. Dynamic optimism disallows passively waiting and
wishing for tomorrow; it propels us exhuberantly into immediate
activity, confidently confronting today's challenges while
generating more potent solutions for our future.
We question limits others take for granted. Observing
accelerating scientific and technical learning, ascending
standards of living, and evolving social and moral practices, we
project continuing progress. Today there are more researchers
studying aging, medicine, computers, biotechnology,
nanotechnology, and other enabling disciplines than in all of
history. Technological and social development continue to
accelerate leading, in the eyes of some of us, to a Singularity -- a
time in the future when everything will be so radically different
from today, and changing so fast, that we cannot accurately
foresee life beyond that horizon. Extropians strive to maintain
the pace of progress by encouraging support for crucial
research, and pioneering the implementation of its results.
Adopting dynamic optimism means focusing on possibilities and
opportunities, being alert to solutions and potentialities. It
means refusing to whine about what cannot be avoided, learning
from mistakes rather than dwelling on them in a victimizing,
punishing manner. Dynamic optimism requires us to take the
initiative, to jump up and plough into our difficulties, our
actions declaring that we can achieve our goals, rather than
sitting back and submerging ourselves in defeatist thinking.
Our actions and words radiate dynamic optimism, inspiring
others to excel. We are responsible for taking the initiative in
spreading this invigorating optimism; sustaining and
strengthening our own dynamism is more easily achieved in a
mutally reinforcing environment. We stimulate optimism in
others by communicating our Extropian ideas and by living our
ideals.
Dynamic optimism and passive faith are incompatible. Faith in
a better future is confidence that an external force, whether
God, State, or extraterrestrials, will solve our problems. Faith,
or the Pollyanna/Dr. Pangloss variety of optimism, breeds
passivity by promising progress as a gift bestowed on us by
superior forces. But, in return for the gift, faith requires a fixed
belief in and supplication to external forces, thereby creating
dogmatic beliefs and irrationally rigid behavior. Dynamic
optimism fosters initiative and intelligence, assuring us that we
are capable of improving life through our own efforts.
Opportunities and possibilities are everywhere, calling to us to
seize them and to build upon them. Attaining our goals requires
only that we believe in ourselves, work diligently, and be willing
to revise our strategies.
Where others see difficulties, we see challenges. Where others
give up, we move forward. Where others say enough is enough,
we say: Forward! Upward! Outward! We espouse personal,
social, and technological evolution into ever higher forms.
Extropians see too far and change too rapidly to feel future
shock. Let us advance the wave of evolutionary progress.
4. INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY
Extropians affirm the necessity and desirability of science and
technology. We use practical methods to advance our goals of
expanded intelligence, superior physical abilities, self-
constitution, and immortality, rather than joining the well-
trodden path of comfortable self-delusion, mysticism, and
credulity. We regard science and technology as indispensable
means to the evolution and achievement of our most noble
values, ideals, and visions. We seek to foster these disciplined
forms of intelligence, and to direct them toward eradicating the
barriers to our Extropian objectives, radically transforming both
the internal and external conditions of existence.
Technology is a natural extension and expression of human
intellect and will, of creativity, curiosity, and imagination. We
foresee and encourage the development of ever more flexible,
smart, responsive technology. We will co-evolve with the
products of our minds, integrating with them, finally merging
with our intelligent technology in a posthuman synthesis,
amplifying our abilities and extending our freedom.
Profound technological innovation excites rather than frightens
us. We welcome change, expanding our horizons, exploring new
territory boldly and inventively. We favor careful and cautious
development of powerful technologies, but will neither stifle
evolutionary advancement nor cringe before the unfamiliar.
Regarding timidity and stagnation as unworthy of us, we choose
to stride valiantly into the future. Extropians therefore favor
surging ahead -- delighting in future shock -- rather than
ignobly stagnating or reverting to primitivism. Intelligent use of
biotechnology, nanotechnology, space and other technologies, in
conjunction with a free market system, can remove resource
constraints and discharge environmental pressures.
We see the coming years and decades as a time of enormous
changes, changes that will vastly expand our opportunities and
abilities, transforming our lives for the better. This technological
transformation will be accelerated by genetic engineering, life
extending biosciences, intelligence intensifiers, smarter
interfaces to swifter computers, neural-computer integration,
virtual reality, enormous and interconnected databases, swift
electronic communications, artificial intelligence, neuroscience,
neural networks, artificial life, off-planet migration, and
nanotechnology.
5. SPONTANEOUS ORDER
Extropians emphasize self-generating, organic, spontaneous
orders over centrally planned, imposed orders. Both types of
order have their place, but the under-appreciated spontaneous
variety are crucial for our social interactions. Spontaneous
orders have properties that make them especially conducive to
Extropian goals and values; we see spontaneously ordering
processes in many contexts, including biological evolution, the
self-regulation of ecosystems, artificial life studies, memetics
(the study of replicating information patterns), agoric open
systems (market-like allocation of computational resources),
brain function and neurocomputation.
The principle of spontaneous order is embodied in the free
market system -- a system that does not yet exist in a pure
form. We are evolving away from tribalism, feudalism,
authoritarianism, and democracy towards a polycentric system
of distributed power shared among autonomous agents, their
plans coordinated by the economic network. The free market
allows complex institutions to develop, encourages innovation,
rewards individual initiative, cultivates personal responsibility,
fosters diversity, and decentralizes power. Market economies
spur the technological and social progress essential to the
Extropian philosophy. We have no use for the technocratic idea
of central control by self-proclaimed experts. No group of
experts can understand and control the endless complexity of an
economy and society. Expert knowledge is best harnessed and
transmitted through the superbly efficient mediation of the free
market's price signals -- signals that embody more information
than any person or organization could ever gather.
Sustained progress and effective, rational decision-making
require the diverse sources of information and differing
perspectives that evolve in spontaneous orders. Centralized
command of behavior constrains exploration, diversity, and
dissenting opinion. Respecting spontaneous order means
supporting voluntaristic, autonomy-maximizing institutions as
opposed to rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian groupings with
their bureaucratic structure, suppression of innovation and
dissent, and smothering of individual incentives. Our
understanding of spontaneous orders grounds our opposition to
self-proclaimed and involuntarily imposed "authorities", and
makes us skeptical of political solutions, unquestioning
obedience to leaders, and inflexible hierarchies.
Making effective use of a spontaneously ordering social system
requires a degree of tolerance and self-restraint, allowing others
to pursue their lives as they choose, just as we wish to be free to
go our own way. Mutual progress and fulfillment will result
from a cooperative and benevolent attitude towards all those
who respect our rights. Tolerating diversity and disagreement
requires us to maintain control of the impulses built into the
human organism, and to uphold demanding standards of
rational personal behavior. Extropians are guided in their
actions by studying the fields of strategy, decision theory, game
theory, and ethology. These reveal to us the benefits of
cooperation, and encourage the long-term thinking appropriate
to persons seeking an unlimited lifespan.
CONCLUSION
These are principles not only of belief but of action. We become
transhuman only when we have fully integrated these values
into our lives, when we have consciously transformed ourselves
ready for the future, rising above outmoded human beliefs and
behaviors. When technology allows us to reconstitute ourselves
physiologically, genetically, and neurologically, we who have
become transhuman will be primed to transform ourselves into
posthumans -- persons of unprecedented physical, intellectual,
and psychological capacity, self-programming, potentially
immortal, unlimited individuals.
As posthumans we will both embody extropy and generate more
-- more intelligence, information, energy, vitality, experience,
diversity, opportunity, and growth. As we progress from human
to transhuman to posthuman, our understanding and
application of these Principles will evolve with us. The Extropian
Principles are a new operating system for our selves; always
seeking to improve upon them, we will avoid dogmatizing them.
The Principles derive their value by guiding us to our true goal:
the maximization in our lives of extropy.
READINGS
These books are listed because they express Extropian ideas.
However, appearance on this list should not be taken to imply
full agreement of a book or its author with the Extropian
principles, or vice versa. Reading just the first ten books listed
will illuminate many components of the evolving Extropian
worldview.
Paul M. Churchland: Matter and Consciousness
Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene
Eric Drexler: Engines of Creation
David Friedman: The Machinery of Freedom (2nd Ed.)
Hans Moravec: Mind Children: The Future of
Robot and Human Intelligence
Ed Regis: Great Mambo Chicken and the
Transhuman Condition
Julian Simon: The Ultimate Resource
Robert Anton Wilson: Prometheus Rising
Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged (fiction)
Marc Stiegler: The Gentle Seduction (fiction)
Harry Browne: How I Found Freedom in An
Unfree World
Paul M. Churchland: A Neurocomputational Perspective
Stephen R. Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People
Mike Darwin &
Brian Wowk: Cryonics: Reaching For Tomorrow
Ward Dean &
John Morgenthaler: Smart Drugs and Nutrients
Freeman Dyson: Infinite in All Directions
Eric Drexler: Nanosystems: Molecular
Machinery, Manufacturing, and
Computation
Eric Drexler, C. Peterson
with Gayle Pergamit: Unbounding the Future: The
Nanotechnology Revolution
F.M. Esfandiary: Optimism One
Up-Wingers
Telespheres
Robert Ettinger: The Prospect of Immortality
Man Into Superman
FM-2030: Are You A Transhuman?
David Gauthier: Morals By Agreement
Alan Harrington: The Immortalist
Timothy Leary: Info-Psychology
J.L. Mackie: The Miracle of Theism
Jan Narveson: The Libertarian Idea
Jerry Pournelle: A Step Farther Out
Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers: Order Out of Chaos
W. Duncan Reekie: Markets, Entrepreneurs and
Liberty
Albert Rosenfeld: Prolongevity II
Julian Simon and
Herman Kahn (eds): The Resourceful Earth
Alvin Toffler: Powershift
Robert Anton Wilson: The New Inquisition
Fiction:
Roger MacBride Allen: The Modular Man
Greg Egan: Quarantine
Robert Heinlein: Methusaleh's Children
Time Enough for Love
James P. Hogan: Voyage To Yesteryear
Inherit the Stars
Charles Platt: The Silicon Man
Eric Frank Russell: The Great Explosion
Robert Shea and
Robert Anton Wilson: Illuminatus! (3 vols.)
L. Neil Smith: The Probability Broach
Bruce Sterling: Schismatrix
Vernor Vinge: True Names
"The Ungoverned" in Across
Realtime
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
My thanks to all those who have commented on the numerous drafts of the
revised Principles, especially Jamie Dinkelacker, Derek Ryan, and Ralph
Whelan.
COPYRIGHT POLICY
The Extropian Principles 2.5 may be reproduced in any publication, private
or public, physical or electronic, without need for further authorization, so
long as they appear unedited, in their entirety and with this notice.
Notification of publication or distribution would be appreciated. The
Extropian Principles 2.5 are copyight )1993 by Max More, c/o Extropy
Institute, 11860 Magnolia Avenue, Suite R, Riverside, CA 92503.
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