EDITORIAL

Max More

CHANGING TIMES

This issue is appearing about six months after #5, and so is just about on time despite reorganization of personnel. Tom W. Bell, the editor and designer until now, has been busy working for the Institute for Humane Studies encouraging the growth of libertarian ideas, and is now starting law school. He will continue as co-publisher. Thank you Tom, for making EXTROPY an appealing and infectious ‘zine’.

I am taking over as editor and designer as of this issue. I will try to keep EXTROPY coming out twice a year, though don’t be surprised if #7 is late: I be will hard at work on my Ph.D dissertation (in philosophy) and will be focusing on the last of the Advanced Exams in January. If you write and don’t get an instant response, please be patient. I now have E-mail, and E-mailed messages are more likely to receive quick responses.

Another change that should be mentioned is my name change. I am no longer ‘Max O’Connor’. I’ve changed my name to ‘Max More’ in order to remove the cultural links to Ireland (which connotes backwardness rather than future-orientation) and to reflect the extropian desire for MORE LIFE, MORE INTELLIGENCE, MORE FREEDOM. Please note: I will be unable to cash checks in my new name until October, so make them payable to ‘Max O’Connor’ until then. Several people have been adopting new extropian names recently - sometimes unofficially. If you don’t particularly like your given, unchosen name, why not think of a new one that better reflects your self-conception? As extropians pursuing self-transformation it is appropriate that we should choose new personal labels - one’s that reflect what we feel to be important to us.

Please note the new address for submissions, and the new subscription rates. We have had to raise the rates to $3 per issue since the publishers have been making increasing losses on each issue. With circulation now exceeding 200, enough is enough!

Finally on changes: submissions for publication are preferred in either WordPerfect, Generic, or DOS Text, or you can E-Mail them to my CompuServe address. If you have an idea for an article, but are unsure whether we can use it, phone or write and we can discuss it. I’m especially looking for someone to write about the implications of advanced artificial reality for our understanding of what is real, and to discuss how it might benefit our lives.

SUGGESTIONS WANTED

MP-Infinity and Walter Vannini (aka Transinfinity Plus) have made suggestions for an extropian music collection. If you know of pieces of music that represent extropian values (as presented in the Principles in this issue) please let me know. It’s hard to find music that promotes intelligence, life extension and immortality, self-transformation, dynamic optimism, and so on. An example of what I’m looking for is ‘Forever Young’ - versions by Alphaville and Laura Brannigan. Apart from music I’d like to collect together extropic speeches, such as the concluding inspiring praise of intelligence and exploration from The Shape of Things to Come.

Elsewhere in this issue you will find an ad for EXTROPY T-shirts, one designed by Tom and one by myself and Simon! Levy. I welcome suggestions for more shirts with new logos, slogans, and designs.

New dating system: Extropians like to make changes, whether to their names, their identity, their lifespan, or their experiences. It would therefore be appropriate to come up with a new dating system to replace the Christian one. To avoid confusion we may have to use it in addition to the old system, but at least having a new one would help to keep extropian values in people’s minds. I’m looking for suggestions for a base date.

One possibility is to date from the publication of Bacon’s Novum Organum, which established the scientific method and made possible vast growth in science and technology. Since Bacon’s masterwork was published in 1620ce, 1990ce would be 370ano (after Novum Organum). Alternatively, the publication of Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematica) in 1687 sparked the explosion of advancement in physics and science generally. Newton included a section in the Principles to methodology, a subject vital to the success of the scientific enterprise, just as private property rights were essential to the industrial revolution that, not coincidentally, took off at the same time as science.

EXTROPIANISM AND VENTURISM

The Society for Venturism is a philosophical organization dedicated to promoting the ideas and values of cryonics and physical immortality. I regard it as a subset of

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extropianism. I have been a member for some time and was recently elected Vice President and Media Spokesperson for the Venturists. I hope that cooperation will develop further between the Venturists and the extropians. I recommend their monthly newsletter (see Extropian Resources). If you would me to talk on a local radio or TV station about cryonics, feel free to give them my address and phone number. I’d like to thank MP-Infinity for getting me on an hour long talk show on KTOK. The host was quite hospitable and none of the questioners were hostile.

At a recent Venturist gathering, three time capsules were buried, heading for the years 2040, 2090, and 2240. Each one of them carried a copy of EXTROPY. The time capsules will (probably in a year or two) be incorporated into a building in the proposed cryonics community in Perris, California (where the Alcor Foundation is planning a new facility for 1991).

THIS ISSUE

My article, ‘Transhumanism: Towards a Futurist Philosophy’ examines the way in which complex systems of value commitments and broad perspectives provide enhanced meaning and worth to our lives. I argue that religion does this but at terrible cost in ignorance and stagnation. I propose the replacement of religion by a rational and extropic transhumanism. Transhumanistic philosophy will continue to be developed in EXTROPY in coming issues. Once my Ph.D is out of the way, I hope to complete a book on the topic, tentatively titled: Technologies of Transformation: A Futurist Philosophy. The essence of the extropian version of transhumanism is presented in the Extropian Principles, modified and reprinted in this issue. Feel free to copy and distribute this to whoever may be receptive. Separate copies are available for $0.25 each.

Tom’s ‘Free Law’ was to appear in this issue, but is postponed until next time to allow further development. The possibility of a non-statist society is further explored in David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, reviewed by Rob Michels (who I’d like to congratulate on entering graduate school in philosophy).

Prolific extropian writer MP-Infinity explains why the age of the humanities is over in ‘The Opening of the Transhuman Mind’ and reviews Joe Haldeman’s immortalist and libertarian SF novel Buying Time.

Simon! Levy continues his illuminating series on neural networks and connectionism, an area of research that holds out the promise of understanding and improving on the complexities of human cognition. More information about the possibilities of neural networks and neurocomputation can be found in my review of Paul Churchland’s brilliant book A Neurocomputational Perspective. Simon also reviews Prigogine and Stengers’ Order Out of Chaos - part of the recent enormous burst of interest in and research of how complex systems can evolve from chaos, bursting the bonds of entropy, without design or central control.

‘Extropy’ - the process of increasing intelligence, information, usable energy, life, experience, and growth. ‘Extropianism’ - the philosophy that seeks to promote these goals. The Extropian Principles are: (1) Boundless Expansion; (2) Dynamic Optimism; (3) Self-Transformation; (4) Intelligent Technology.

Mike Price’s ‘The Thermodynamics of Death’ gives us reason to believe that the extropian project of infinite and unending progress and expansion need not be limited even by the supposed heat death of the universe vastly far in the future.

Finally, A, Tom, and myself argue about infinity and other things in the Forum. The updated and expanded Extropian Resources list completes the issue.

open door to possibility picture here

Front cover: Designed by Max More. Thanks to Simon! Levy and Mike McHugh for ideas and computer graphics assistance. Back cover: Variations on the EXTROPY logo.

EXTROPY #6

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Summer 1990