Epistemological Psychology for Extropians

by Max More

Abstract:

The Extropian principle of Dynamic Optimism (D.O.) is analyzed and shown to be a valuable empowering element of this philosophy of life. The distinctive features of a dynamically optimistic attitude are explored and distinguished from those of faith. Dynamic optimism is shown to be a rational and practical approach to life. The pervasive temptation for humans to slide into passive faith is examined and some preventive measures suggested.

One of the four fundamental principles of Extropianism is Dynamic Optimism (D.O.), which can be defined as: ‘A positive and empowering rational attitude toward our individual and collective possibilities.’ This definition must be taken in the context of the following discussion since ‘optimism’ has been used in a variety of senses. A major objective of this essay is to clarify the nature of a type of optimism appropriate to a rational extropian philosophy, and to distinguish it from the very superficially similar attitude of faith common to religions. Explication of D.O. will make it obvious how it mutually supports the other Extropian Principles, especially Boundless Expansion and Self-Transformation.

Optimism vs Pessimism.

‘I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist; I’m a realist.’ This reasonable sounding expression is intended to convey a commitment to truth, good judgement, and rationality. The problem with this claim is that it assumes the terms to refer to purely epistemological policies — policies of underestimating, correctly estimating, and overestimating good outcomes respectively. But optimists and pessimists both believe they are realists; the fact that they don’t refer to themselves that way hints that these terms are psychological as well as epistemological. To borrow an awkward but useful

term from Ayn Rand, optimism and pessimism are psycho-epistemological traits.¹ That is, they are more than detached assessments of objective probability; they are commitments to a particular mode of cognition and action.

Optimism and pessimism are personal characteristics having both psychological and knowledge-related aspects integrated into action-guiding attitudes. They profoundly affect a person’s thinking, behavior, happiness and achievement. Extropianism, as a philosophical approach to life, must require or encourage some form of either pessimism or optimism; the question is whether such a philosophy will affirm a psycho-epistemological position implicitly or explicitly, in full awareness of its effects on the lives of those who affirm its principles. To explain this important aspect of the Extropian perspective, I will set out eight components and contributing causes of optimism — specifically Dynamic Optimism — and contrast them with pessimism. The eight aspects of D.O. are set out such that the first four apply also to other types of optimism. In the following section I will distinguish D.O. from passive and dogmatic forms of optimism by focusing on features 5-8.

(1) Selective focus: Any form of optimism, rational or irrational, involves a focus on the positive aspects of life and a de-emphasis of the dark side. This means the individual will see more of what he or she regards as good. This need not

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require a denial of pain, difficulty or frustration; rather it may be a matter of spending less time on unpleasantness, and of apprehending unpleasant things in a masterful, empowering way instead of a helpless, victimizing way. Optimists attend to the downsides of life only insofar as doing so is likely to enable them to move ahead. Optimists are too occupied with entertaining encouraging, empowering thoughts to dwell on miseries that they cannot control.

“A pessimist is one who feels bad when he feels good for fear he’ll feel worse when he feels better.” (Anonymous). Pessimists have a filter reversed from that of optimists. Pessimists are fixated on everything that could possibly annoy them, or frustrate them, or hurt them. If something goes well, it is not to be believed. If it goes badly, it shows that things are getting worse. Extreme pessimists are filled with despair because every option open to them is imagined as being crowded with waiting traps.

(2) Stoicism: Optimists are rarely heard to complain; when they do it’s because something is truly wrong and complaining may rectify it. They notice, seek out and cultivate the parts of life that are good, enjoyable, rewarding, beautiful, exhilarating. They don’t whine and moan about things that are past or out of their control. When truly suffering they are stoic and practical in coping with their situation. Pessimists find it difficult to communicate anything without conveying a sense of burden and futility. Dignified pessimists don’t complain about their world to others, but cannot help projecting a sense of gloom and casting a shroud of cynicism over the confident enjoyment of others.

(3) Questioning of limits: Optimists’ dislike of obstacles to their plans leads them unreflectively to deny limits (passive) or to be skeptical of entrenched and unquestioned beliefs regarding limits (dynamic). Optimists will question and probe at any entrenched limiting assumptions, especially where these appear to lack a rationally convincing basis. Only an iron-clad demonstration of impossibility (such as Godel’s incompleteness theorem) will stop them; even then optimists will be careful not to draw unnecessarily frustrating conclusions. This means accepting limits as limits-

within-a-context and then widening the context to step around the obstacle. For example, an optimist may accept the Second Law of Thermodynamics but will resist unproved consequences such as the impossibility of achieving an infinite amount of life and thought.²

Optimists are especially suspicious of purported limitations that are said to be “sacred”, “natural”, or part of “God’s plan”. The passive optimist may deny limits by reference to revelation and dogma; the dynamic optimist will challenge limits through a directed application of reason, analysis and creative thinking to a problem. Either form of optimism contrasts with the pessimist who accepts all limits without question, being more comfortable with the given, and lacking the drive to search for solutions.

(4) Energizing: Viewing the world optimistically is energizing; it encourages cheerfulness and activity. In the higher-energy optimistic state you want to tackle tasks because you expect to enjoy the activity and make progress at it. A bootstrapping effect is likely to operate: The increase in enthusiasm resulting from optimism tends to lead to effort and progress which generates more optimism, in a virtuous circle. Pessimistic thinking enervates, discouraging activity, resulting in stagnation and deeper pessimism.

(5) Self-Improving: Optimists are constantly engaged in an evolutionary process of growth, self-correction, and improvement. Since optimists have supportive expectations of their actions, they are not paralyzed by fear of failure, or being wrong, or making mistakes, as are pessimists. Pessimists will be static and conservative, avoiding uncertain changes because they entertain all the possible undesirable outcomes. This aspect of dynamic optimism connects it with the principle of Self-Transformation: The dynamically optimistic self-conception will be one of the self as a process rather than fixed state. Optimists expect to keep improving everything that matters to them.

(6) Experimental: Related to the previous aspect, the dynamic optimist is constantly experimenting, searching for better solutions to blockages and barriers. An optimistic attitude encourages openness to new sources of information and

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new methods of improving life. A well-integrated attitude of positive expectation programs the brain to apprehend opportunities and possibilities. This open, experimental attitude is creative, analytical, critical, and empirical. The dynamic optimist will be the first to examine means of extending lifespan, enhancing intelligence, and improving health, such as life extending nutrients and drugs or scientifically constructed diets, nootropics, cryonics, uploading, and non-traditional lifestyles. The dynamic optimist eagerly learns from culturally entrenched practices, but puts no faith in them, evaluating and rejecting them when appropriate, and implementing new practices if these offer advantages.

The contrasting practice of the pessimist involves clinging to the old and familiar, the authorized, regulated and approved. Pessimists will be the last to adopt superior practices and will deny any reason to change where this will disrupt their indolence and secure conservatism. The massive and growing encrustation of statist institutions — regulatory agencies, liability rules, taxation, compulsory welfarism — all are reflections of pessimism and conservatism.

(7) Self-confidence: Self-confidence is inseparable from dynamic optimism. Dynamic optimism and self-confidence both involve our belief that good things are possible because we can and will bring them about. Self-confidence generates the force to persist in the face of hardship and to continue making the effort, finally to overcome. Pessimists, believing desirable goals to be unattainable, do not persist; in giving up so soon and thereby failing, they reinforce their sense of personal inefficacy. Pervasive pessimism in a person goes hand in hand with a self-image conveying failure, inability and resignation. The drive towards self-improvement and the willingness to experiment with non-standard practices cannot exist without self-confidence.

(8) Personal responsibility: Dynamic optimism entails personal responsibility since it is the attitude that goals are achievable through personal effort. This aspect of D.O. may partly explain why Extropians are almost always highly libertarian. Libertarians favor a society where everyone is free to make their own choices, and to bear the

costs of their own mistakes rather than shift those costs onto someone who has not made those choices. An illustration of this is the libertarian’s rejection of laws banning drugs: Such laws are, in part, intended to protect persons from themselves but result in harm to others, such as when a desperate drug abuser steals from uninvolved parties in order to finance a habit made vastly more expensive than it would be without the laws. Pessimists are much more comfortable depending on the nanny state’s promise of a stifling security. Libertarians hold that individuals can and should take responsibility for their choices in the market and for the direction of their lives. Extropian values such as continuing personal growth and transformation must be actively pursued; they will not happen by default.

The principle of Dynamic Optimism has appeared in various forms elsewhere, such as in Ayn Rand’s contrasting of those who seek the positive with those who avoid the negative. The former are those who pursue positive values to enhance their lives; the latter are paralyzed by fear, expending their energies in an attempt to avoid the undesirable rather than in seeking the desirable. In Rand’s thought these opposed tendencies are related to holding a premise of either a benevolent universe or malevolent universe. Dynamic optimism might be described as embodying a benevolent universe perspective because it proclaims existence to be full of possibility and says that we should regard ourselves as essentially free to make of life what we want. The malevolent universe perspective, held by the pessimist, sees activity as futile because the universe will always frustrate our Promethean efforts. The malevolent universe view permeates many cultures, from the stories of the Tower of Babel, Icarus and Phaeton to environmental doomsaying and crisis-mongering.

Active Optimism vs. Passive Faith.

Optimism of any kind involves positive expectations of the future. These expectations may relate to a person’s own life or to their view of the possibilities for a wider group of persons. Beyond

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this, “optimism” can refer to two importantly different attitudes. The psychological and epistemological gulf between the two meanings of the word explains why I prefer to talk of dynamic optimism. The basic distinction is between a dynamic, active optimism and a passive form, which I will refer to as “faith”. Later sections will examine the strength of the psychological border between them and how it might be maintained.

“Faith” is sometimes used in a way that is compatible with dynamic optimism and rationality. This is the sense in which “I have faith in him” means “I trust him (due to past experience)” or “I believe he can do it (due to past experience)”. But the sense of “faith” I am using is the one intrinsic to religious and dogmatic thinking. Faith in this sense, the sense incompatible with dynamic optimism, is a persistent belief in something in the absence of supporting evidence or reasons, or in the face of conflicting evidence or reasons (where the evidence or reasons have not been been defeated). In contrasting faith with D.O., I am interested only in optimistic faith regarding beliefs rather than in any neutral belief held with faith. Dynamic optimism and optimistic faith can be accurately distinguished by observing how they differ over some of the features listed in the previous section, especially the first, and the fifth to eighth.

Starting with the first characteristic—selective focus—already the two varieties of optimism can be differentiated. A person is passively optimistic when they turn away from what they don’t want to see, believing that events will somehow work out for them. This kind of cognitive filtering comforts the person but fails to address the problem. Dynamic optimism will also encourage you to reduce negative incoming data when such data is not conducive to solving a problem. This means not spending time worrying over events or situations that you cannot affect or that you judge not worth involving yourself in. A dynamic optimist faces a difficulty squarely when this is necessary to understand and tackle it. But even here selective focus is used to reframe the difficulty so that it is regarded as a challenge rather than a problem, and is viewed in a context of possibilities and resources for overcoming the difficulty rather than

fixing on the difficulty alone.

In terms of the fifth aspect—self-improving—dynamic optimists identify themselves not with a particular set of beliefs and practices but with the active process of learning, correction and improvement. This means that they are not afraid of being wrong, and they boldly keep trying new strategies for winning—they implement the advice of Thomas Watson, founder of IBM: “The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.” This aspect of D.O. is what fosters active thinking, thinking receptive to new ideas, new methods and strategies. Being corrected by new information is welcomed because it means a step in the right direction. Successful living is understood by dynamic optimists as a cybernetic process of continual error-correction. This perspective makes it difficult for them to resent corrections from others.

Compared with the experimental aspect (6) of dynamic optimism, optimistic faith is much more static. Rather than conceiving of their selves as processes of continual change fideists identify with particular beliefs and practices, substituting dogmatism for critical experimentation. Correction is painful to fideists and so they are likely to ignore, dismiss, or brand as immoral differing beliefs and methods. Dogmatic beliefs are held to be certainly true, removing any need for alternatives. This attitude, in a religious context, has been stated in a particularly unapologetic and extreme form by the Church father Tertullian:

After Jesus we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research. When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else; for we begin by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe.”³

The dynamic optimist rejects faith, valuing reality and progress over comfortable delusion. Some may prefer not to believe any difficult, controversial or uncertain theory, regarding them instead as working hypotheses. This is not merely a verbal difference but reflects different cognitive practices. Belief involves identifying a theoretical model with reality, whereas a working hypothesis is a tool by which understanding is improved and which may or may not be a fully accurate representation of

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reality.$^{4}$ The dynamic optimist realizes that a theory, be it trivial or grand, is not guaranteed to be true simply because it ‘works’. A theory can produce many useful results while being radically false: Consider the concept of mass in Newtonian physics. This intrinsic property of objects is no longer part of physics, having given way to the relational concept of mass defined in General Relativity. Despite the non-existence of intrinsic mass, the concept was used to successfully predict a vast number of observations. Further back, we can see similar examples with Aristotle’s notion of impetus, and concepts of phlogiston and caloric.

Dynamic optimists practice an empirical and rational approach to life — testing new approaches and critically examining purported answers. They are primed to notice and take advantage of new and better means of advancement. Fideists see no reason to be open to alternatives, for their faith involves the certainty that all truth has already been discovered through some ‘infallible’ method such as revelation; no need is seen for experimentation and critical analysis. Indeed, these are to be discouraged, the fideist believes, because they will inevitably lead one into error and evil.

We have seen that D.O. necessarily involves self-confidence, the belief that one is able to persist and succeed. Faith is likely to generate confidence too, but it is less self-confidence than confidence in forces outside the individual. This externally directed confidence is more likely to result in passivity since the belief in success or fulfilment need no longer be founded on a commitment to personal effort. Passivity may occasionally be avoided in some aspects of a religious life if the tenets of the faith happen to order the person to engage in particular productive activities. But, as explained above, even then the person will pursue advancement in a rigid, uncritical manner. Personal responsibility will be undermined by the fideist’s blind trust in external (and invisible) forces, forces that announce supposedly certain truths and require the sacrifice of individual judgement, analysis and choice.

As an illustration of the profound difference between dynamic optimism and faith, consider the

responses of dynamic optimists and fideists to the threat of death. Fideists assuage their fears by an ungrounded but psychologically certain belief in a non-physical afterlife. To overcome death requires nothing more than belief in the ‘correct’ dogma or, at most, requires following a prescribed set of practices and perhaps making financial and other sacrifices to the institution associated with the dogma. Dynamic optimists reject any such passive and comforting yet futile approach. They investigate and adopt any promising strategy for postponing or eliminating death. They study how most effectively to exercise and then engage in it. Dynamic optimists will look at dietary means of life extension, use of nutrients and drugs, cryonics and other personality preservation techniques, and uploading.

Faith need not be associated with religion but religion is its natural home, providing systematization and reinforcement. Systematized faith in particular doctrines is dogma. Religions by their nature require dogma: An unquestioning belief, a surrender of probing reason, an abdication of cognitive responsibility. This is the appeal of religions to most people. Submitting yourself to religious faith saves you from the search for better understanding, from the burden of intellectual autonomy, from experimentation and the search for solutions to life’s challenges, and it offers you ready-made answers and invests responsibility not in you but in a God or divine forces beyond your control. Religious faith relieves you of personal responsibility for making real choices whether intellectually or morally, instead handing you the answers. This passivity is bolstered by the certainty with which you are imbued once you join the system. It is also, of course, the religious individual’s unquestioning faith and intellectual and moral passivity that makes him or her an easy target for manipulation by religious institutions.

Where faith is essential to religion, dynamic optimism is intrinsic to the transhumanist philosophy of Extropianism. The principle of Dynamic Optimism expresses an extropian optimism which differs drastically from the optimism to be found in religious faith. D.O. encourages us to see ourselves as continually changing and improving and

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questioning the status quo; it supports our self-confidence and promotes our critical and probing search for ever better means of advancing ourselves, and it affirms our personal responsibility. These characteristics, so at variance with dogmatic optimism, can only promote tolerance of experimentation and diversity, and welcome change instead of fearing and attacking it. The principle of Dynamic Optimism is what allows Extropianism to be a guide and a spur to action and to focus our thoughts and efforts while avoiding the dogma common to religious philosophies of life.

Keeping Optimism Dynamic

There is no sharp dividing line between dynamic optimism and faith, so it is our responsibility as Extropians to continually guard against sinking into faith. The distinction between the two is not one of the strength of beliefs, for faith can be weak — though this is an unstable state — and many very ordinary beliefs are extremely strongly held, e.g., my belief that I currently live in Los Angeles, that the Earth orbits the sun and that I am biologically male. The foregoing discussion indicates that it’s more a matter of attitudes to disconfirming evidence or contrary arguments and of a willingness to maintain an activity of searching, critical experimentation, and personal responsibility for cognitive activity.

There can be neither final personal nor institutional guarantee against creeping faith and intellectual passivity but certain habits and practices might be adopted by Extropians to guard against it. In developing the Extropian philosophy, we should always stress that it is to be understood in terms of attitudes and tendencies encouraging us to move forward, upward, outward rather than as a set of fixed beliefs about particular goals and particular means to those goals.

Reinforcement of dynamically optimistic thinking can be built into regular meditation and planning sessions. Regular sessions for the purpose of setting personal goals and priorities provide an opportunity for a reality check: They are a time for reassessing personal long-term and short-term goals and the effectiveness of the means

being used.⁵ These planning sessions can be used for both the motivational and critical aspects of D.O.: Optimistic and ambitious goal setting and visualization in addition to a regular critical evaluation of the efficacy of current beliefs and methods.

Another way of maintaining a high level of optimism while avoiding intellectual passivity and certainty is to subject your ideas to evaluation by other extropically-minded persons.⁶ Such individuals and groups are likely to support the same general values and goals and so will not be hostile, but will restrain unbridled flights of fantasy. Testing your ideas in groups that are fundamentally opposed to your goals, or who cannot comprehend them, is neither encouraging nor enlightening. Testing your ideas in supportive yet critical and analytical intellectual communities is vital.

Faith, Optimism, and Uncertainty

“Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.” Bertrand Russell’s barbed observation applies forcefully to extropian issues of life extension and physical immortalism. Most humans exhibit a deep need for certainty. Certainty of belief, even if it reduces the chances of achieving important goals, is more comfortable than uncertainty. Certainty is soothing since it requires no action. If you are certain an event will occur you need not contribute to bringing it about; if you hold a belief with certainty you need not look for contrary evidence and can ignore evidence presented to you.

All current human cultures exhibit this desire for certainty. It infests the prevailing cross-party political economy of welfare statism and is thoroughly at home in all religions with ideas of heaven, merging with “the Godhead” or dispossession of the ego. But this entropic temptation spreads even into science, with many scientists adopting a dogmatic Establishment stand rather than a critical yet receptive inquiry.⁷ Certainty-seeking threatens extropian goals both externally and internally to our “virtual community”. Externally the desire for certainty results in anti-extropian resistance to social and technological innovation. Ignorant anti-cryonicists and biological fundamen-

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talist opponents of genetic modification are salient examples of the harmful practical effects of this psychological trait. (The internal threat I will discuss in the next section.)

In advancing the desirability of radical life extension and means such as cryonics and uploading, we encounter a depth of incomprehension and hostility. Whether the person being addressed is religious or atheistic, resistance to a serious and open consideration of immortalism stems from a desire to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty, possibility and choice. For the religious, a dogmatic belief in an effortless, blissful afterlife allows them to avoid confronting death. All that is required of them, they feel, is to believe. Few or no actions are necessary to secure the certain continuation of life, and any prescribed actions (such as worship) that may be necessary guarantee indefinite and effortless life.

Some of the non-believers in an afterlife, from the non-philosophical to the humanists, from the deathists who say death is natural and therefore good to the ephemeralists who assert death’s ‘inevitable’ evil, share a dogmatic certainty. If you are unable to delude yourself into a religious belief in a non-physical afterlife — either being insufficiently dishonest or being constrained by a non-religious sub-culture — your alternative to living with uncertainty is to accept death as absolutely inevitable, ‘as inevitable as death and taxes’. The certainty of death allows you to stop thinking about it, to reconcile yourself to your fate, and to ignore the annoying and difficult claims of immortalists. Deathists present personal extinction as the delightful culmination of life, in the absence of which life would lose its meaning. Ephemeralists don’t pretend annihilation to be good but agree with deathists that death should be accepted gracefully. And the humanist ephemeralists make a philosophical and psychological virtue of this acceptance.$^{8}$

To avoid misinterpretation I wish to say that I am not claiming that everyone other than transhumanist immortalists has succumbed to the temptation of dogmatic certainty. The comparative youth of transhumanist philosophies such as Extropianism and of practices like cryonics means

that most of the world is unfamiliar with non-religious alternatives to certain death. A fraction of those who believe death to be certain and human limitations to be inevitable would be willing to reconsider upon discovering our ideas. It is only those who refuse to reconsider who lack courage and rationality. Those with a stronger drive to live and grow will accept the possibility of indefinitely extending life and the concomitant need for careful and continuous thought and action to actualize the possibility.

Extropian ideas of unlimited lifespan and somatic and cognitive augmentation are especially liable to arouse dogmatic responses in non-Extropians. To consider the possibility that extropian goals might be possible and even desirable requires an enormous alteration in a person’s world-view. It may require changing habits affecting health, learning about the many possible life-extension measures, going against family and community norms by making cryonic suspension arrangements and altering wills and burial plans, changing the way time and resources are spent, and re-examining all priorities to make them compatible with extropian values. So long as extropian ideas are shared by so few, the threat of isolation and alienation from normal culture and friends may be too daunting. How much easier it is to reject these heretic ideas out of hand. If the prospect of radical alteration of world-view is particularly frightening to some timid persons, they may even denounce the Extropian heresy as evil. At the very least, they will say, it must be unnatural.

Uploading, Cryonics, and Faith

So tempting is certainty of survival, and so distressing uncertainty, that even transhumanists may fall prey to it. I have noticed tendencies towards dogmatic certainty among some cryonics and uploading enthusiasts. Having found a possible present or future means of avoiding death and having made changes in their view of life, these persons are tempted to stop searching for ways of improving their chances. There are those who agree that cryonics has a reasonable chance of working, but who choose not to make suspen-

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sion arrangements believing that before they need suspending they will be uploaded into more durable hardware. Some of these people are not young, and have, in my view, unrealistic beliefs regarding when uploading will be possible. Given that no one has yet been able to demonstrate clearly what kind of device will be necessary to preserve our selves fully, and given the significant chance of accident or disease, their extreme confidence that they won’t need suspending is, in my judgement, foolish.

There is a related tendency in these cryonicists and uploaders to talk about uploading or revival from suspension as if it will suddenly and totally eliminate any difficulties with life. We are given the impression that transhuman or posthuman existence will be one of constant bliss, without need for effort or struggle as a result of dramatically enhanced intelligence and superior

So tempting is certainty of survival, and so distressing uncertainty, that even transhumanists may fall prey to it.

bodies. A Pollyanna view like this turns the idea of uploading or revival from suspension into a variation on the Christian Rapture in which the faithful ascend to heaven and leave behind all the problems of the World.9 But realistically we can expect life to continue to be full of challenges requiring thoughtful attention and action, though the challenges will not be the same as today’s and the possible rewards will be much grander.

Dynamic Optimism does not sanction these tendencies toward dogmatic passivity and faith. D.O. requires us to treat no practice or solution as final or certain to succeed. Faith that uploading or cryonics will certainly work and work in time for us is deadly. It will discourage both the search for ways to improve the probability that cryonics and

uploading will work and the search for superior alternatives. The tendency towards certainty may partly explain why too many cryonicists and uploaders fail to take charge of their health. It’s much easier to believe that you have a sure escape route in the future from death than to control your diet and exercise in the present.

Some transhumanist practices and beliefs are more prone to the error of certitude and intellectual passivity than others. Uploading seems to be one such idea because of the radical and discontinuous nature of the transformation, which gives it the tone of a Rapture. This is one reason why I concur with Thomas Donaldson in preferring an expectation of gradual metamorphosis to that of discontinuous uploading. The process of metamorphosing will require us to carefully and continuously select and integrate the optimal somatic and cognitive upgrades. Uploading promises a radical change that requires no effort on our part.

Cryonics is, at present, protected to a degree simply because its very survival as an activity requires its practitioners to improve their technical and organizational abilities and to justify its practicability to indifferent or hostile outsiders. One particularly vulnerable belief system is Universal Immortalism (UI). The Order of Universal Immortalism (OUI)10 is an outgrowth of the Society for Venturism. Venturism itself might be thought of as similar to a small part of Extropianism,11 in that it is defined in terms of seeking the technological abolition of involuntary death through technological means. Universal Immortalism goes further in that it is committed to returning to life everyone who has ever died.

This goal, if theoretically and practically feasible at all, is so extremely remote from current possibility that it may tend to induce either indifference or certainty. Furthermore, Universal Immortalism may tempt some to reduce their efforts to secure indefinite life because of the belief that other Universal Immortalists will eventually recreate them. Neither of these negative effects will necessarily follow from Universal Immortalism, yet this doctrine is much more prone to these effects than is cryonics.

If we are to continue advancing toward

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better ways of achieving extropian goals such as indefinite life, augmented intellectual and physical capacities, and expanding personal freedom, we must remain on guard against creeping certainty and dogmatism. In part we should work on changing our self-conception away from that of someone who must be ‘right’ and instead identify ourselves with the process of learning, growing, and transforming. We will each have our favored means of pursuing our common goals, but we are responsible for remaining open to alternatives and to new information. We will either remain flexible and live with uncertainty, or we will stagnate and perish.

Possibility and Belief

Extropianism is defined by principles including Self-Transformation and Boundless Expansion and characterized by a desire to continually overcome limits. We must therefore be concerned with the question of how far we can go in pursuing these goals. What is possible to us and what is impossible? Dynamic optimism encourages us to question traditional limitations. But what limits are we to accept in our planning and imagining? We need some principles to ensure that in rejecting pessimistic beliefs about limitations dynamic optimism does not push us into absurdity. A satisfactory treatment of the rational bounds to optimism would require a separate paper, or an entire book.$^{12}$ Nevertheless, some suggestions need to be offered here to ward off misunderstanding of dynamic optimism from the beginning.

In asking ourselves, or being asked by non-extropians, whether any goal is possible we can break the question down into categories of technical possibility, empirical (or scientific) possibility, and logical or conceptual possibility, though whether these categories are always sharply differentiated is open to doubt.$^{13}$ I will primarily discuss the most important distinction for our purposes here — that between technical and empirical (scientific) possibility.

To say that a goal, such as landing humans on Mars or constructing a nanotechnological assembler is technically possible is to say that it can be accomplished with current technology. But this

is still somewhat indeterminate; does it mean possible with machines currently in existence? Or machines either in existence or on the drawing board? Or possible with technology that exists elsewhere, whether we know of it or not? Something that is thought to be technically impossible may still be empirically or scientifically possible. Something is empirically possible so long as it is not ruled out by the known regularities of nature.$^{14}$ An example of an empirically impossible goal is the construction of a perpetual motion device because of the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.

Technical impossibility need not frighten off Extropians from their goals. Complete control over the aging process is technically impossible now, but we have no reason to judge it to be empirically impossible. We might hold, as a guide to action, a principle that says ‘anything that is empirically possible will eventually be technically possible’, on the condition that technological progress continues. This seems to be a reasonable working principle so long as we don’t make short-term decisions on the assumption that something now technically impossible but empirically possible will become technically possible soon despite our having no idea how this thing could be accomplished.

An objection might be raised to the effect that many empirically possible things will never be technically possible because the technical problems involved are too hard for human brains to ever solve. Though this might be true of some goals, omniscience would be required to know it to be true of any specific goal since all possible routes to the goal would have to be ruled out in advance. No matter how many means to a technological goal fail, tomorrow someone may think of a new method that works. Furthermore, the objection makes the typically non-extropian assumption that we will always be limited to the capacities of human brains.

Some things may seem to be conceptually possible, i.e., conceivable, even though empirically or scientifically impossible. Some people think that faster-than-light (FTL) travel and backwards time-travel fall into this category. Others would say that the apparent conceivability results from having only a superficial grasp of the con-

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cepts involved. Suppose we assume that a goal such as FTL travel is conceivable but agree that it’s scientifically impossible. Is it reasonable to believe that we will one day be able to achieve FTL speeds? If the scientific paradigm that rules out FTL has been around for a long time, has demonstrated enormous explanatory and predictive power, and has withstood many attempts to disconfirm it, then it would surely be unreasonable to make practical plans on the assumption that FTL would eventually be possible. A high degree of confidence in the prevailing theory would be justified.

However, scientific theories are never certain. Part of what makes a theory scientific is vulnerability to refutation by sufficient contrary evidence (and the availability of an alternative theory). No matter how well-established a theory is, there is always some minimal possibility that it will have to be revised. Such a possibility is too remote to justify practical planning and action but it may justify pure speculation, for this may lead to research which might revise the current paradigm. A reasonable principle governing how we spend our time and effort might instruct us to apportion our time and effort in seeking desired goals in proportion to their degree of possibility or probability multiplied by their desirability.

Mechanisms of Empowerment.

The mechanisms by which Dynamic Optimism promotes effective behavior are implicit in earlier sections, but this section will make these mechanisms explicit. One category of methods by which D.O. empowers can be referred to as “reframing”.¹⁵ Reframing involves altering the meaning or context of a situation or event in order to change one’s emotional and behavioral responses. There are content and context reframes, though the distinction is a matter of degree.

A dynamically optimistic content reframe places a more positive, empowering interpretation on an event. For a simple example, Robbins (1986) cites a general who, in a heavy enemy attack, announced to his troops: “We’re not retreating, we’re advancing in another direction.” Such con-

tent reframes can be self-delusive rationalizations, but they can also be helpful interpretations of events for which the “correct” interpretation is unknown. If you have been insulted, for instance, you can either frame this to mean that you really are bad in some respect, or that the person issues the insult because of some deficiency of their own.

A context reframe accepts an event for what it is or appears to be but changes cognitive focus in order to alter the context in which the event is seen. This kind of reframe is unlikely to require rationalization or denial of facts. Rather, it will involve concentrating on what can be learned from the event, what opportunities it opens up, and what benefits can be drawn from it, instead of seeing the event as an unpleasant, annoying, impossible obstacle.

Context reframing allows an apparently unpleasant or frustrating event to be a means of learning. An unhealthy response is to focus exclusively on the frustration, building it up, allowing it to fill your mind, and exaggerating its badness. A positive reframe involves concentrating on what can be learned from the event, and how its recurrence can be prevented. Most people realize in the abstract that advancing requires some frustrations and setbacks, yet this is too often forgotten in practice. You cannot find out what works without often taking paths that lead to a dead end. If you focus on the goal, regarding setbacks along the way as learning experiences and progress, you will be far more motivated and persistent in trying again until you succeed. Practicing dynamic optimism means stopping yourself from moaning about and exaggerating problems; it means spending your time confidently looking for ways to solve the problems.

Some people characteristically respond to challenging situations by withdrawing, complaining, and “catastrophizing” while others smile, rub their hands, and rise to the challenge with enthusiasm and creativity. It may appear that those in the first category can never move into the second. However, there are a number of techniques capable of changing habitual behaviors.¹⁶ A simple one is this: As soon as you become aware of yourself engaging in self-defeating thinking and

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behavior say to yourself “STOP!” Then deliberately relax all your muscles and breathe deeply and slowly, retaining each breath to oxygenate your brain and promote clarity of thought. Then ask yourself: “How can I respond most effectively?” This procedure is more effective when you have previously engaged in visualization sessions in which you see yourself following the procedure and imagine some effective responses. Exercises of this kind build an ability to remain in charge, immunized against uncontrolled negative emotions and unproductive reactions. They will promote an attitude that sees obstacles as challenges rather as problems.

Apart from reframing occurrent situations, dynamic optimism also involves being primed in advance to always be on the lookout for opportunities and possibilities. It involves cultivating critical and analytical thinking, mutually beneficial friendships, and access to resources. Experiments in cognitive psychology have demonstrated that people are better at recognizing patterns for which they have been primed. Spending some time on a daily basis meditating on your goals and forming a commitment to achieving them will put your brain in a state where it will be more alert to effective means to those goals. Frequent recall of goals and visualization of yourself progressing toward them will reinforce a self-image of achieving, persisting, succeeding. Self-image acts as a cognitive map; your brain checks the map when selecting “fitting” emotions, behaviors and responses. Deliberate creation and reinforcement of a dynamically optimistic self-image is therefore tremendously important for success.

Dynamic Optimism in Our Culture

Much of contemporary culture, in both Europe and America, is permeated by negativity, especially when the topic at hand is humankind’s place and direction. Too many environmentalists promote a view of humankind as a pestilence on the face of Gaia. Our suggestion that the species should strive to extend its lifespan, and push back other natural and inherited limitations evokes dismay and incomprehension amongst these

entropists. Movies invariably portray the future as a harsh and mean place with terrible environmental problems. And too many people find the idea of life extension and cryonics repulsive because of these culturally reinforced entropic world-views.

Not everyone accepts or promotes such a destructive attitude yet even those who don’t buy into it find themselves weighed down by those who bow down to entropy. Since our goals require enormous technological advances and bold scientific quests, we Extropians have a particular need to reverse these entropic cultural trends. The purpose of this essay has been to make explicit a core element and motivating force of the shared world-view that we affirm as Extropians. With a fully conscious awareness of the importance of dynamic optimism perhaps we Extropians can resist the tide of gloom with increased efficacy, and infect those around us with a more enjoyable, productive and liberating attitude.¹⁷

Notes

¹Rand’s definition is “Psycho-epistemology is the study of man’s cognitive processes from the aspect of the interaction between man’s conscious mind and automatic functions of his subconscious.” Ayn Rand, 1971, p.190. Nathaniel Branden discusses psycho-epistemology in more depth in Ch.6 of Branden, 1969.

²See Dyson, 1988, Ch.6 and Moravec, 1989, Ch.6. Dyson offers a definition of optimism as “the philosophy of people who welcome challenges”. The Second Law does not rule out immortality because “in an expanding universe, life of any fixed degree of complexity can survive forever upon a finite store of energy” by slowing down as temperature drops.

³Tertullian, The Prescriptions Against the Heretics, quoted in Classical Statements on Faith and Reason, edited by L. Miller (New York: Random House, 1970), p.3.

⁴See Robert Anton Wilson, 1986.

⁵A helpful approach to goal-setting and life management is offered in Alan Lakein’s How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life.

⁶One of the best forums for critical but supportive analysis of Extropian ideas by intelligent people is provided by the computer networks. Various intersecting virtual communities specialize in particular areas of discussion. Currently, those of most relevance are the e-mail lists Extropians and Cryonet, and the newsgroup sci.nanotech.

⁷For an excellent treatment of the Science Establishment, see R.A. Wilson, 1986. I think Wilson goes a little too far in his

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liberality towards some non-standard beliefs, but he provides a welcome counterpoint.

$^{8}$Even Nathaniel Branden, an exponent of a normally life-affirming philosophy and psychology, takes the ephemeralist line. See ch.13 of his Honoring the Self (Branden, 1983) which I otherwise recommend.

$^{9}$See related points made by Thomas Donaldson in ‘The Apocalypse Has Been Called Off’, Cryonics #107, Vol 10 (6), June 1989.

$^{10}$Founded by Michael Perry in 1990.

$^{11}$However, full membership in the Society for Venturism requires that one have completed arrangements for cryonic suspension. In contrast, one can rightly describe oneself as an Extropian without having suspension arrangements. Neither will this be required as a condition of membership of the Extropy Institute. Although being an Extropian requires certain tendencies, the absence of very specific requirements is a deliberate safeguard against dogmatization and stagnation.

$^{12}$An informative and entertaining overview of thinking that pushes the limits is Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition by Ed Regis (Addison Wesley, 1990, ISBN: 0-201-09258-1).

$^{13}$These distinctions are clearly defined and explained in John Hospers’ An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis.

$^{14}$I say ‘regularity’ rather than ‘law of nature’ since we have no reason to believe there is a legislator of the universe dictating the principles to be discovered by physics.

$^{15}$See Robbins, 1986, especially ch.XVI.

$^{16}$See Robbins, 1986, and the books by Dyer.

$^{17}$My thanks to Simon D. Levy and Connie Gergen for helpful comments on the first draft of this essay.

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Beck, Aaron T., M.D., Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders (Meridian, New American Library, 1976). ISBN: 0-452-00663-5

Bell, Tom W., ‘Extropia: A Home for Our Hopes’ in Extropy #8 (Vol.3, No.2), Winter 1991/92.

Branden, Nathaniel, The Psychology of Self-Esteem (Nash Publishing Corporation, 1969). ISBN: 0-553-23449-8

Branden, Nathaniel, Honoring the Self (J.P. Tarcher, 1983, Bantam edition 1985). ISBN: 0-553-26814-7

Dyer, Dr. Wayne, Your Erroneous Zones (Sphere Books, London, 1976). ISBN: 0-7221-0565-7

Dyer, Dr. Wayne, Pulling Your Own Strings (Hamlyn Books, London, 1978). ISBN: 0-600-20061-2

Dyson, Freeman, Infinite in All Directions (Harper and Row,

1988). ISBN: 0-06-091569-2

Hospers, John, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (2nd ed., Routledge & K.Paul, 1973).

James, William, The Will to Believe and Other Essays (Longmans, London, 1896).

Lakeln, Alan, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life (Signet Books, New American Library, 1973.) ISBN: 0-451-13430-3

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Maltz, Maxwell, Psychocybernetics (Wilshire Book Company, N. Hollywood, 1977). ISBN: 0-87980-127-1

Moravec, Hans, Mind Children: The Future of Human and Robot Intelligence (Harvard University Press, 1988). ISBN: 0-676-57616-0

More, Max, ‘Dynamic Optimism,’ Cryonics #129 (vol.12(4)), April 1991, pp.4-5.

Nozick, Robert, Philosophical Explanations (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981). ISBN: 0-674-66479-5

Rand, Ayn, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (New American Library, revised edition 1975). ISBN: 451-08776-3

Regis, Ed, Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (Addison Wesley, 1990). ISBN: 0-201-09258-1.

Robbins, Anthony, Ultimate Power (Ballantine Books, 1986). ISBN: 0-449-90280-3

Taylor, Shelley E., Positive Illusions (Basic Books, 1989). ISBN: 0-465-06053-6

Wilson, Robert Anton, ‘Ten Good Reasons to Get Out of Bed in the Morning’ in The Illuminati Papers (And/Or Press, 1980). ISBN: 0-915904-52-7

Wilson, Robert Anton, The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science (Falcon Press, Phoenix, Arizona, 1986). ISBN: 0-941404-49-8

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