🚀 go-pugleaf

  The essay included below is a copy of a speech I delivered to my 
Toastmasters club.  It covers several basic extropian ideas, and I think
it can be considered a good introduction to the topic.

Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesman for the Extropy Institute.

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		    "Extropianism 101"  by John McPherson

  "Forward! Upward! Outward! Into the Future!"  This is the rallying cry of
the Extropian futurist movement.  "Who are these Extropians?", you may ask.
First, I must say that Extropians are among the most fiercely individualistic
people I know of, so my whole speech is only in general and probably doesn't
apply to any particular person.  That having been said, basically, Extropians
are people interested in living as long as they can in a high-technology 
lifestyle, perhaps even in space, and they agree that libertarianism offers 
the best socio-political and economic system to encourage and support that 
lifestyle.  Extropians also want to improve and upgrade themselves, perhaps 
to a degree that may stun even some of the most open-minded people, for you 
see, many Extropians dream of becoming immortal.  More on that later!

  Let's take a look at the word "extropy" ... what does _that_ mean?  
_Ex_tropy is the opposite of _en_tropy, and many of you know that "entropy" 
refers to that tendency of the universe towards disorder, degradation, 
erosion, and ultimately, death, so, "extropy" refers to that opposite tendency
which promotes improvement, upgrading, progressive self-organization, and the
building-up of energy, vitality, intelligence, and creativity ... in other 
words, the very essence of life itself.

  "How would you like the option of living as long as you want?"  Many 
Extropians would answer a resounding "Yes!"  Incredulously, you might ask 
"How?!"  "Simple," they would answer, "it's a 4-step process: life extension,
cryonics, nanotechnology, and uploading."  Here's the plan:

  First, take care of yourself as best you can, and increase your chances of
living as long as you can, perhaps by following the dietary advice of Dr. Roy
Walford who wrote "The 120-Year Diet".  He describes a program backed up with
solid scientific research which has been shown to extend the life span of
laboratory animals.  The diet consists of high-quality, low-calorie selections
>from the whole range of foods and nutrients, and it's carefully balanced using
a computer program.

  Second, if you don't live long enough to gain access to the next big 
longevity breakthrough, you can arrange to have your recently-deanimated body
deep frozen in liquid nitrogen by a cryonics organization, such as Alcor Life
Extension Foundation, where it will wait essentially unchanged in cryonic 
suspension until technology allows you to be resuscitated.

  Third, within a hundred years we'll probably have micro-miniaturized 
technology, or "nanotechnology", developed to the point where molecular-sized
robots can repair damage to your body at the cellular level, as described by
Eric Drexler ("Unbounding the Future").  Nanotechnology will probably be the
way that you are revived from your cryonic suspension, by repairing freezing
damage, curing whatever you "died" of (including "old age"), and jumpstarting
your metabolism.

  Fourth, for the long haul, some may choose to replace various parts of their
body or brain with more durable and efficient mechanisms, and some may go all 
the way and replace everything!  This process, called uploading, is described
by Hans Moravec ("Mind Children"), and the end result is that a person 
"uploads" or upgrades themself into a super-advanced robot with lightning-fast
massively-parallel embedded computers to store your personality or essence. 
This process, of course, is rather controversial and is something for the 
distant future.

  If that or some of these other proposals sounds "way out there", consider how
fast technology has been advancing this century.  We've gone from horses to 
cars to planes to rockets, from epidemics to vaccines to genetic engineering,
and the pace is accelerating.  Extropians are merely anticipating and planning
for what already seems feasible to some of the best minds.

  What are the driving forces behind developments such as these?
The assuming of personal responsibility for your own destiny, unabashed 
optimism for the future and your prospects in it, diligently applied and 
expanded creative intelligence, and the socio-economic freedom to experiment
and act.  Extropians want to live in a libertarian society, free to pursue 
these projects in peace, free to enjoy their lives in whatever peaceable ways
they desire, and free to create wealth to as great an extent as they aspire. 
  I assume that you all understand the importance of personal responsibility,
optimism, and freedom, so I'll focus on intelligence.  Extropians want to 
maximize their effective intelligence, and they can do this through mind-
enhancing technologies such as: nootropic smart drugs, the computer-based 
technologies of virtual reality, hypermedia, artificial intelligence, and 
neural networks, and the future technology of direct brain-to-computer 
linkages.
  I only have time to describe three of these in greater depth, so I'll focus
on: smart drugs, hypermedia and artificial intelligence.

  Psycho-pharmacologists have discovered and developed what are known as smart
drugs which seem to facilitate neural communication and functioning at the 
chemical synaptic level.  Some of them have been described by Dr. Ward Dean
("Smart Drugs and Nutrients"), and I'll mention 4 of them.  Hydergine has been
shown to enhance cognition in the elderly.  Piracetam has been shown to enhance
memory and the flow of information between the cerebral hemispheres. 
Vasopressin improves concentration and the imprinting of new information in 
your brain, so its good for students.  Lucidril boosts intelligence and removes
old-age deposits from the brain.  

  The second intelligence technology is Hypermedia, which is a way of 
structuring information such as text, pictures, sound tracks and video clips,
in an expandable network of reference links that _you_ can make according to 
your own interests, as opposed to linear one-dimensional modes of 
communication, such as books, newspapers, radio and TV, which you have to take
pretty much as it comes. With a hypermedia system, you can go off in wholly new
directions just by clicking a button, creating new links and following your own
pathways.  In case you get lost, you can easily retrace your steps (because 
it's all stored in the machine) and can start over from any branch point you 
choose. The implications for education are obvious.

  The 3rd intelligence technology is Artifical intelligence, which will enable
us to function at a higher level by storing patterns of knowledge or by 
offloading certain tasks for machines to handle.  Expert systems can guide us
through complicated tasks that we know nothing about, because they will store
the insights and rules of thumb used by experts.  "Knowbots" can help us in 
study and research by autonomously searching for information in vast library
archives just based on general things we "tell" them to look for.  For example,
I may tell a knowbot to "look for something on parental choice in education 
with lots of numbers and statistics and get back to me tomorrow", turn it 
loose, and it will do it!

  After hearing all these things Extropians are interested in: life extension,
cryonics, nanotechnology, uploading, smart drugs, hypermedia and artificial 
intelligence, etc., you might ask "Why?"  Why would someone want to live for 
a thousand years, or upgrade their body, or augment their intelligence?  My 
current answer is: experience, knowledge, and the glory of achievement ... 
to see, to know and to do.  With enough time and durability, you can see the
whole world!  Heck, you can see the universe!  You can learn whole new fields
that you never would've gotten to otherwise.  You can read all those books 
you've been meaning to get to, and write those books you've been meaning to 
write.  You can work on ever bigger and grander projects, maybe even someday
constructing on the stellar level!  You can enjoy the experience of accumulated
successes, innovations and breakthroughs that before might've only been 
once-in-a-lifetime experiences.  You can share the exquisite pleasure of 
passing on quality knowledge and of mentoring younger people who are "only" 
2 or 3 hundred years old.

  In conclusion, Extropians want to live as long as possible in a maximally
free society, and to grow in knowledge, creativity, intelligence, and ability,
to the fullest extent possible.  Personally, I applaud their efforts and 
look forward to the day I too can say "I am an Extropian."

 John McPherson                                mcpherso@lumina.ucsd.edu
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 Life -->  Individual  -->  Net Extropic  -->  Free  -->  Free Market
          Human Action       Production        Trade        Economy
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"Things are only impossible until they're not."  Captain Jean-Luc Picard