Extropian

Singularity Sky
by Stross, Charles
Published 28 Oct 2003

Molinsk is cut off; there have been no reports from that town for the past day, and a helicopter that was sent to look in on them never reported back. The DR's are raising seven shades of merry hell around town, and so are the Radicals. I tried to have the usual suspects taken into custody, but they've declared an Extropian Soviet and refuse to cooperate. The worst elements are holed up in the Corn Exchange, two miles south of here, holding continuous committee meetings, and issuing proclamations and revolutionary communique on the hour, every hour. Encouraging people to traffic with the enemy." "Why haven't you used troops?"

…

Instead, the Critics had to make do with their own devices; a clumsy network of spy-eyes in low orbit, winged surveillance drones, and precarious bugs planted on the window ledges and chimney pots of significant structures. The Critics watched, with their peculiar mixture of bemuse-ment and morbid cynicism, while the soldiers of the First and Fourth Regiments shot their officers and deserted en masse to the black flag of Burya Rubenstein's now-overt Traditional Extropian Revolutionary Front. (Many soldiers burned their uniforms and threw away their guns; others adopted new em-blems and took up strange silvery arms churned out by the committee's replicator farm.) The Critics looked on as peasants greedily demanded pigs, goats, and in one case, a goose that laid golden eggs from the Festival; their womenfolk quietly pleaded for medicinal cures, metal cutlery, and fabric.

…

Then he plugged the pod into his own interface and started the diagnostics running. A minute later, he began to swear quietly under his breath. The module was totally randomized. Evidence of misdoing, that was sure enough. But what kind of misdoing? Burya Rubenstein sat in the Ducal palace, now requisitioned as the headquarters of the Extropians and Cyborgs' Soviet, sipping tea and signing proclamations with a leaden heart. Outside the thick oak door of his office, a squad of ward-geese waited patiently, their dark eyes and vicious gunbeaks alert for intruders. The half-melted phone that had started the revolution sat, unused, on the desk before him, while the pile of papers by his left elbow grew higher, and the unsigned pile to his right shrank.

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
by Mark O'Connell
Published 28 Feb 2017

They started putting together a magazine called Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought, and soon afterward set up a nonprofit they called the Extropy Institute. Although Max is the figure most closely associated with Extropianism, which is generally seen as an early version of the transhumanist movement, it was Bell, he says, who coined the term. In those days, he went by the name T. O. Morrow, but since the late 1990s he has reverted to the less hurtlingly dynamic Tom W. Bell. Max maintains that a document he wrote in 1990 called “The Extropian Principles”—laying out the movement’s ideals of “Boundless Expansion,” “Self-Transformation,” “Dynamic Optimism,” “Intelligent Technology,” and “Spontaneous Order”—constitutes the “first comprehensive and explicit statement of transhumanism.”

…

* * * *1 For what it’s worth, he gave a slightly different reason for the name change at the time, in an announcement about it in the Summer 1990 issue of Extropy magazine, the house publication of the Extropian movement: “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.” *2 In the 1970s, while incarcerated for a range of drug offenses, Leary developed a set of futurist principles under the snappy rubric SMI²LE (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension).

…

And the irony with which I found myself most immediately preoccupied was the situation of Max himself, or the picture of that situation I could not help but cultivate in my mind. This was a man who had dedicated his life to the idea of transcending the limitations of our natural condition, to a vast expansion of the range of human experience and potential. This was a man who, before he left Britain for the U.S. in his twenties, started the Extropian movement, named in defiance of an entropic principle whereby all that exists tends toward disintegration and disorder and decline, in a universe in which the center cannot hold. This was a man who had dedicated himself to what he called “perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities as individuals, as organizations, and as a species.”

The Transhumanist Reader
by Max More and Natasha Vita-More
Published 4 Mar 2013

He authored Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (Oxford University Press, 2000); and Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Harvard University Press, 1990). Max More, PhD, is President of Alcor Life Extension Foundation and Co-Editor of The Transhumanist Reader. He authored “The Overhuman in the Transhuman” (Journal of Evolution and Technology 21, 2010); “True Transhumanism” (Global Spiral 2009); and “The Extropian Principles” (Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought 8). Michael Nielsen is one of the pioneers of quantum computing. He is an essayist, speaker, and advocate of open science. His most recent book is Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science (2012). Ravi Pandya is Systems Software Architect, Microsoft.

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Despite all the varieties and interpretations we can still identify some central themes, values, and interests that give transhumanism its distinct identity. This coherence is reflected in the large degree of agreement between definitions of the philosophy from multiple sources. According to my early definition (More 1990), the term refers to: Philosophies of life (such as extropian perspectives) that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values. According to the Transhumanist FAQ (Various 2003), transhumanism is: The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

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Creatures with similar levels of sapience, sentience, and personhood are accorded similar status no matter whether they are humans, animals, cyborgs, machine intelligences, or aliens. Yet the meta-­ethical basis for making moral decisions and according rights can be consequentialist, deontological, or virtue-based. A genuinely pure deontological ethics appears to be uncommon. At least since the advent of the extropian transhumanism, many transhumanists have established their morality on a virtue foundation. In recent years, some prominent transhumanists have assumed a consequentialist foundation, in the form of various kinds of utilitarian – most radically in David Pearce’s “hedonistic imperative.” Transhumanism supports a rich diversity of political perspectives.

Accelerando
by Stross, Charles
Published 22 Jan 2005

Manfred holds out a hand, and they shake. His PDA discreetly swaps digital fingerprints, confirming that the hand belongs to Bob Franklin, a Research Triangle startup monkey with a VC track record, lately moving into micromachining and space technology. Franklin made his first million two decades ago, and now he's a specialist in extropian investment fields. Operating exclusively overseas these past five years, ever since the IRS got medieval about trying to suture the sucking chest wound of the federal budget deficit. Manfred has known him for nearly a decade via a closed mailing list, but this is the first time they've ever met face-to-face.

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He's the enemy of those Stalinist deviationist running dogs in Conservative Party Central Office who want to bug your bedroom and hand everything on a plate to the big corporates owned by the pension funds – which in turn rely on people dying predictably to provide their raison d'être. And, um, more importantly dying and not trying to hang on to their property and chattels. Sitting up in the coffin singing extropian fireside songs, that kind of thing. The actuaries are to blame, predicting life expectancy with intent to cause people to buy insurance policies with money that is invested in control of the means of production – Bayes' Theorem is to blame –" Alan glances over his shoulder at Manfred: "I don't think feeding him guarana was a good idea," he says in tones of deep foreboding.

…

Memo to immigration control: No entry rights for Manfred Macx or the other named individuals without clearance through the Queen's secretary." "What did he do to get you so uptight?" asks Monica idly. Amber sighs, and subsides. "Nothing. It's not that I'm ungrateful or anything, but he's just so extropian, it's embarrassing. Like, that was the last century's apocalypse. Y'know?" "I think he was a really very forward-looking organic," Monica, speaking for the Franklin borg, asserts. Amber looks away. Pierre would get it, she thinks. Pierre would understand her aversion to Manfred's showing up. Pierre, too, wants to carve out his own niche without parents looking over his shoulders, although for very different reasons.

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era
by James Barrat
Published 30 Sep 2013

Speakers at the 2011 summit in New York City included science legends, like Mathematica’s Stephen Wolfram, Peter Thiel, a dot-com billionaire who pays tech-savvy teens to skip college and start companies, and IBM’s David Ferrucci, principal investigator for the DeepQA/Watson Project. Eliezer Yudkowsky always speaks, and there’s usually an ethicist or two as well as spokespeople for the extropian and transhuman communities. Extropians explore technologies and therapies that will permit humans to live forever. Transhumans think about hardware and cosmetic ways for increasing human capability, beauty, and … opportunities to live forever. Standing astride all the factions is the Colossus of the Singularity, a cofounder of the Singularity Summits, and the star of each gathering, Ray Kurzweil.

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climate change cloud computing cognitive architectures OpenCog cognitive bias Cognitive Computing Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) Colossus “Coming Technological Singularity, The” (Vinge) computational neuroscience computers, computing cloud detrimental effects from exponential growth in power of see also programming; software computer science consciousness creativity cybercrime Cyc Cycle Computing Cycorp DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Darwin Machine Deep Blue de Garis, Hugo Dennett, Daniel Dijkstra, Edger DNA-related research Dongarra, Jack Drake, Francis drives creativity efficiency resource acquisition self-preservation Dugan, Regina Duqu Dyson, George ecophagy efficiency Einstein, Albert emotions energy grid Enigma Enron Eurisko evil extropians Fastow, Andrew Ferrucci, David financial scandals financial system Flame Foreign Affairs Freidenfelds, Jason Friendly AI Coherent Extrapolated Volition and definition of intelligence explosion and SyNAPSE and Future of Humanity Institute genetic algorithms genetic engineering genetic programming George, Dileep global warming Global Workspace Theory Goertzel, Benjamin Golden Rule Good, I.

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley
by Corey Pein
Published 23 Apr 2018

Patent 8543339 B2, December 5, 2008; Karen Kaplan, “23andMe’s Designer Baby Patent Is ‘a Serious Mistake,’ Critics Charge,” October 3, 2013, latimes.com. endorsed the Singularity sect Lev Grossman, “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal,” February 10, 2011, time.com. an online forum of futurists who called themselves extropians. Max More For more on cryonics and the extropians, see my report, “Everybody Freeze!,” 2016, Baffler (no. 30). a procedure called parabiosis Jeff Bercovici broke the news of Thiel’s quasivampirisim in an August 1, 2016, Inc. magazine story titled “Peter Thiel Is Very, Very Interested in Young People’s Blood.” Breitbart News would months later dismiss Bercovici’s report as “fake news” after his key source clammed up, though he and the magazine stood by the story.

…

Thiel’s support for technophilic extremists did not stop with Anissimov. The billionaire was, for example, among the most important clients of an outfit called the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, which promised to freeze the dead for later resuscitation. Max More, an Alcor employee and self-proclaimed guru of “extropian” futurism, had given a presentation on “cryonics as a bridge to an indefinitely extended life” at the same BIL conference where Thiel donee Curtis Yarvin appeared. The bearded British life extension researcher Aubrey de Grey spoke at BIL that year about his work in “anti-aging bioscience.” De Grey whiled away most of his days at the Thiel-funded, Mountain View–based SENS Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization also dedicated to the quixotic cause of achieving human immortality.

Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
by Susan Schneider
Published 1 Oct 2019

Defense Department agency has funded a program, Synapse, that is trying to develop a computer that resembles the brain in form and function.8 Ray Kurzweil has even discussed the potential advantages of forming friendships, Her-style, with personalized AI systems.9 All around us, researchers are striving to turn science fiction into science fact. You may be surprised to learn that I consider myself a transhumanist, but I do. I first learned of transhumanism while an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley, when I joined the Extropians, an early transhumanist group. After poring through my boyfriend’s science fiction collection and reading the Extopian listserv, I was enthralled by the transhumanist vision of a technotopia on Earth. It is still my hope that emerging technologies will provide us with radical life extension, help end resource scarcity and disease, and even enhance our mental lives, should we wish to enhance.

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See also morality consciousness and human moral systems, 5, 39, 40–41, 110 creation of AIs with uncertain conscious status, 68–69 Precautionary Principle, 66–69 slavery and AI consciousness, 4, 39 treatment of conscious/potentially conscious AIs, 39, 67–69, 149 Ex Machina (film), 9, 149 excluded middle, principle of, 68–69 extraterrestrial intelligence. See alien/extraterrestrial AI Extropians, 14 Facebook, 4, 120, 131 Francis (pope), 110 Freaky Friday (film), 51 functional decomposition, 118, 158n9 functional immortality, 8, 135, 137 functional or cognitive consciousness, 49–50, 51, 67 fusion-optimism, 73, 80–82, 87–89, 92, 95, 119, 122, 125, 133–34, 138, 163n11 Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University, 13 Garza, Mara, 68 Gates, Bill, 4, 105 global workspaces, 117–18 Go (game), 9 Google, 4, 9, 10, 12, 39 HAL 9000, 53 Harmon, Amy, 122, 145 Hawking, Stephen, 4, 41, 104, 120, 122, 124 Hayworth, Ken, 126 Her (film), 9, 10, 14, 19, 37, 41, 46 Heraclitus, 143 hippocampus, artificial, 12, 44, 69, 145 Hopkins, Anthony, 33 “hot zone” of sensory processing, 38 Hughes, James, 161n10 Hume, David, 76 Huxley, Julian, 13 I, Robot (film), 149 IBM True North chip, 64 idealism, 130, 163n17 IIT (integrated information theory), 61–65 illusion, self viewed as, 76, 77, 137, 161n10 immortality, functional, 8, 135, 137 Independence Day (film), 107 instantiation of software program, mind viewed as, 134–44 Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 6, 41–43 instrumental convergence thesis, 113 integrated information theory (IIT), 61–65 isomorph thought experiment, 26–31, 57, 158n10, 159nn11, 13, 14 Jackson, Frank, 159n5 Jeopardy (TV show), 9 The Jetsons (TV show) and Jetsons fallacy, 12, 69 Kaku, Michio, 77 Kernel, 12, 58 Knowledge Argument, 159n5 Koch, Christof, 63–64 Kurzweil, Ray, 10, 14, 16, 33, 73, 75–76, 77, 80, 85, 143 language-like mental representations, 116–17 The Late Lessons from Early Warnings Report, 66 Locke, John, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 161n8 “locked in” patients (conscious but unable to communicate), 63 Lowe, E.

Clock of the Long Now
by Stewart Brand
Published 1 Jan 1999

The distinguishing trait of futurismists is that they have an agenda: something they want to have happen or something they want to prevent from happening in the future, often based on a particular ideology, political bent, theory of history, or special interest. Some hive off into sectlike groups, such as the Extropians—a 01990s California enclave of bright and enthusiastic Singularity advocates who could hardly wait for the techno-Rapture. They have a classic case of what Paul Saffo calls macro-myopia: “we overexpect dramatic developments early, and underexpect them in the longer term.” Futurismists are predictable once you know their agenda, whereas futurists are not.

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Diamond, Jared Digital information and core standards discontinuity of and immortality and megadata and migration preservation of Digital records, passive and active Discounting of value Drexler, Eric Drucker, Peter Dubos, René Dyson, Esther Dyson, Freeman Earth, view of from outer space Earth Day Easterbrook, Gregg Eaton Collection Eberling, Richard Ecological communities systems and change See also Environment Economic forecasting Ecotrust Egyptian civilization and time Ehrlich, Paul Electronic Frontier Foundation Eliade, Mircea Eno, Brian and ancient Egyptian woman and Clock of the Long Now ideas for participation in Clock/Library and tour of Big Ben Environment degradation of and peace, prosperity, and continuity reframing of problems of and technology See also Ecological Environmentalists and long-view Europe-America dialogue Event horizon Evolution of Cooperation, The “Experts Look Ahead, The” Extinction rate Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence programs and time-release services Extropians Family Tree Maker Fashion Fast and bad things Fault-tolerant systems Feedback and tuning of systems Feldman, Marcus Finite and Infinite Games Finite games Florescence Foresight Institute Freefall Free will Fuller, Buckminster Fundamental tracking Future configuration towards continuous of desire versus fate feeling of and nuclear armageddon one hundred years and present moment tree uses of and value Future of Industrial Man, The “Futurismists” Gabriel, Peter Galileo Galvin, Robert Gambling Games, finite and infinite Gender imbalance in Chinese babies Generations Gershenfeld, Neil Gibbon, Edward GI Bill Gibson, William Gilbert, Joseph Henry Global Business Network (GBN) Global collapse Global computer Global perspective Global warming Goebbels, Joseph Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goldberg, Avram “Goldberg rule, the” Goldsmith, Oliver Goodall, Jane Governance Governing the Commons Government and the long view Grand Canyon Great Year Greek tragedy Grove, Andy Hale-Bopp comet Hampden-Turner, Charles Hardware dependent digital experiences, preservation of Hawking, Stephen Hawthorne, Nathaniel Heinlein, Robert Herman, Arthur Hill climbing Hillis, Daniel definition of technology and design of Clock and digital discontinuity and digital preservation and extra-terrestrial intelligence programs ideas for participation in Clock/Library and Long Now Foundation and long-term responsibility and motivation to build linear Clock and the Singularity and sustained endeavors and types of time History and accessible data as a horror and warning how to apply intelligently Hitler, Adolf Holling, C.

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
by Nathaniel Popper
Published 18 May 2015

The advent of the Internet had been a boon for Hal, allowing him to connect with other people in far-flung places who were thinking about similarly obscure but radical ideas. Even before the invention of the first web browser, Hal joined some of the earliest online communities, with names like the Cypherpunks and Extropians, where he jumped into debates about how new technology could be harnessed to shape the future they all were dreaming up. Few questions obsessed these groups more than the matter of how technology would alter the balance of power between corporations and governments on one hand and individuals on the other.

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The government categorized encryption technology, such as PGP, as weapon-grade munitions, and this designation made it illegal to export. While the case was eventually dropped, Hal had to lie low with his own involvement in PGP for years and could never take credit for some of his important contributions to the project. THE EXTROPIANS AND Cypherpunks were working on several different experiments that could help empower individuals against traditional sources of authority. But money was, from the beginning, at the center of their efforts to reimagine the future. Money is to any market economy what water, fire, or blood is to the human ecosystem—a basic substance needed for everything else to work.

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See also Ulbricht, Ross drugs/drug trafficking. See Silk Road eDonkey (file sharing website), 50–51 Ehrsam, Fred, 334–336. See also Coinbase (Bitcoin service) Electronic Frontier Foundation, 80, 270 Eleuthria (screen name), 195 encryption technology, 8–12. See also Public-key cryptography exchange-traded funds (ETF), 222, 250 Extropians, 11 Facebook, 145 Faiella, Robert (aka BTC King), 130, 138, 299 The Far Wilds (online game), 50–51 FBI. See U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Reserve. See U.S. Federal Reserve Financial Crimes Enforcement Unit [FinCen] (Treasury Department), 138, 196–197, 201, 234–235, 266, 325 Financial Times, 262, 317 Finney, Fran, 3 Finney, Hal defense of Bitcoin system, 24–27 introduction to Bitcoin, 3–8 Lou Gehrig’s disease diagnosis, 27 return to Bitcoin community, 59–60 role in PGP, 10, 13 Finney, Jason, 27 FirstMark Capital, 144, 147–149, 176 Forbes, 80, 96 Fortress Investment Group, 180, 217–219, 252, 272–273.

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age
by Steven Levy
Published 15 Jan 2002

Unlike the Birkenstocked academics and rubber-necking spooks who met at the Crypto conferences, the twenty or so in attendance were people who saw cryptography totally outside the context of their own careers (if indeed they had one, as some did not). Their main concern was how people would and should use crypto tools. Their politics were heavily libertarian; more than a few were also self-proclaimed Extropians, whose philosophy merged an extremist view of individual liberties with a loopy belief that the far fringes of scientific research would soon accrue to our benefit. (Topics that made Extropians giddy included nanotechnology, cyborgs, and cryogenics; some Extropians had signed up to have their heads posthumously frozen, to be thawed and revived in some distant century.) But it would be a mistake to misjudge this group by their peccadilloes or by the modest turnout at this first meeting.

Toast
by Stross, Charles
Published 1 Jan 2002

Since then the Dok has done some growing up, and I can safely say that if he wasn’t a menace to society then, he certainly is now. Or he’d like us to think he was. That’s the way it is. The nerds are on parade. They’ve always been sensitive about the way outsiders see them. First it was SF fans. Then computer hackers and phone phreaks. These days it’s extropians, roboticists, and hard physics geeks. But the character type is the same: very bright, highly strung, defensive about their hobby, competitive within their field. They realize it’s not something the rest of society understands or cares much about, but THEY care and that’s what makes the difference.

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I figured it was about time we met.” “Sure.” Manfred holds out a hand and they shake. Manfred realises the hand belongs to Bob Franklin, a Research Triangle startup monkey with a VC track record, lately moving into micromachining and space technology: he made his first million two decades ago and now he's a specialist in extropian investment fields. Manfred has known Bob for nearly a decade via a closed mailing list. The Suit silently slides a hardware business card across the table; a little red devil brandishes a trident at him, flames jetting up from the gigabytes of detail around its feet. He takes the card, raises an eyebrow: “Annette Dimarcos?

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism
by David Golumbia
Published 25 Sep 2016

Most of those involved in the development and early adoption of Bitcoin were and are part of several intersecting communities who have long put a huge amount of faith into very specific technological–political orientations toward the world, ones grounded in overtly right-wing thought, typically coupled with myopic technological utopianism. These include movements like Extropians, cypherpunks, crypto-anarchists, political libertarians with an interest in technology, transhumanists, Singularitarians, and a wide swath of self-described hackers and open source software developers. Sometimes the politics of these individuals and the groups in which they travel are inchoate, but often enough they are explicit (see Carrico 2009, 2013a, 2013b for detailed discussions of these various movements, focusing in particular on their politics).

The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World
by John Michael Greer
Published 30 Sep 2009

The fate of the neoconservative movement, in turn, echoed that of its Marxist equivalents: just as Marxist regimes claimed to ride the wave of the future, only to learn that every wave crests and then flows back out to sea, neoconservatives’ bluster about their place as “history’s actors” gave way to frantic excuses and finger-pointing against a background of military stalemate, political failure and economic catastrophe.2 The same interlacing of theoretical inevitability and practical failure can be traced in other movements that have claimed that history was on their side. Such movements have never been in short supply and there is certainly no shortage of them now. The claim that an evolutionary leap will take care of all of today’s problems has already been discussed in this book. The so-called Extropian movement insists, along the same lines, that science will shortly know everything that matters, technology will gain unlimited powers and they will be able to upload themselves into robot bodies and go zooming off to the stars.3 Religious teachings that announce the imminent arrival of a new world by divine fiat, neoprimitivist theories insisting that the downfall of industrial society will force humanity back to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle forever and many others all insist that the existing order of things is about to give way to a new world from which history in the ordinary sense will be banished forever.

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Ziarek, Ewa Plonowska, An Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of Radical Democracy, Stanford University Press, 2001. 261 Index A advertising, 155–156 agriculture, 25–28, 30, 147 amateur radio, 156–157, 216 anacyclosis, 231 Anderson, Sherry Ruth, 200 appropriate ecology, 215–216 Aristotle, 214 Augustine of Hippo, 207 B Bacon, Francis, 214 Bateson, Gregory, 222 bats, evolution of, 58–61 Bell, Daniel biodiesel, 106, 116, 151 biodynamic agriculture, 103 biointensive organic gardening, 103 biophobia, 114–115 Black Death, 87 bog iron, 72 Brand, Stewart, 121–122 brewers, 147 Brown, Lester, 94–5 Burke, Edmund, 79 C Carson, Rachel, 11 Catton, William, 41 ceramics industry, Roman, 135–137 cities in the deindustrial world, 182–186 263 264 T he E cotechnic F u t u re climate change, 41, 50–54 climax community, 21–23, 25, 29–30 cob building, 123 composting, 107–112, 113, 115 Condorcet, Marquis de, 228 conserver society, 12 Costanza, Robert, 15 “crackpot realism,” 16 Crimean War, 80 CTL (coal-to-liquids) fuel production, 161–162 “cultural creatives,” 200–201 culture death, 49–50 culture wars, 191 D dark age(s), xiii, 150, 184 Darwin, Charles, 193 decline and fall of civilizations, 17, 38, 150, 243 deep time, 62 democracy, 186–188 depopulation, 39, 41–43 Dijkstra, Bram, 193–194 disintegration, political and cultural, 40, 46–50 dissensus, 96–99, 246 draft horses, 116–117 E Easter Island, 20, 89 ecology, 3, 17, 187, 215–216, 221, 240ecosophy, 221–222, 241ecotechnic trades, 149 education industry, 153–154 emergy (embodied energy), 71 energy flows, 4–5 energy slaves, 142–144, 152–153 energy subsidies, 165–166 ethanol, 13–14, 106 evolution, 35, 57–62, 96, 192–193, 237–238, 243–244 external proletariat, 195 Extropian movement, 226 Index F farmer’s markets, 24, 127–128 feces as fertilizer, 112–115 feminism, 131–133 Ferguson, Marilyn, 201 fossil fuels, 8–12, 33, 61, 69–70, 134, 159, 164 Friedman, Thomas, 53 Friedrichs, Pete, 156 Fukuyama, Francis, 225–226, 229 fundamentalism, Christian, 205–6 G Gentile, Giovanni, 229 ghost acreage, 41, 42 Ghost Dance, 63 Gibbon, Edward, 54 globalism, 64 Google, 37–8 Gould, Stephen Jay, 62 Grafton, Anthony, 232 H hedgerows, 216 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 229–230 Holmgren, David, 103 home economics, 131–133 homeostasis, 84–88 household economy, 128–130, 133–134, 138–139 Hubbert, M.

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
by Max Chafkin
Published 14 Sep 2021

It was as if he not only believed that the laws of the State of California did not apply to him—but believed the laws of physics didn’t either. * * * — when he wasn’t playing chess, Thiel gravitated to fellow intellectual rebels. Sophomore year, he befriended a geeky computer scientist and chess player, Barney Pell, who exposed him to extropianism: the idea that advances in technology would allow humans to live forever and that cryonics should be used to freeze people’s brains postmortem so they could eventually be reanimated or have their minds uploaded to computers. Around the same time, he became close with Reid Hoffman. They were in the same class, but didn’t become friends until the second quarter of their sophomore year when they started talking during an introductory philosophy lecture, Mind, Matter, and Meaning.

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J., 196, 227 Davidson, James Dale, 175 The Sovereign Individual, 175, 208–9 DCGS, 147, 216–17, 234–35, 284 DealBook conference, 326 DeAnna, Kevin, 203 DeepMind, xiii deep state, 192–93 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 145, 333 Defense Department, 114, 145–46, 149, 288, 310 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 149 de Grey, Aubrey, 138, 139, 326, 327 DeMartino, Anthony, 283 democracy, 14, 32, 112, 140, 141, 176, 182, 192, 250, 303, 318, 321, 322 Democrats, Democratic Party, 47, 94, 179, 197, 220, 281, 301, 306, 313, 333 “Atari,” 94 Facebook and, 299, 300, 302–3 Deng, Wendi, x Denny, Simon, 305–6 Denton, Nick, 123–29, 194–96, 200, 201, 227–33 Deploraball, 255 Dershowitz, Alan, 198 Details, 173, 175 Dhillon, Harmeet, 279 Dickinson, Pax, 202 Dietrick, Heather, 201 Digg, 118 Dimon, Jamie, 118 disruption, 77, 313 Diversity Myth, The (Thiel and Sacks), 40–42, 47, 53, 145, 202, 252, 344n DNA sequencing, 168 Doherty, Bran, 181 Donnelly, Sally, 283 Doohan, James, 59 dot-com era, 48, 68, 73, 80, 84, 85, 88, 95, 98, 118, 292 Dowd, Maureen, 266 Downs, Jim, 243 Drange, Matt, 230 drones, 152, 288 Dropbox, 298 Drudge Report, viii drug legalization, 178–79, 259 D’Souza, Aron, 166, 193–95, 198, 201 D’Souza, Dinesh, 31, 35, 42, 61, 99 Duke, David, 31 Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), 1–2, 8, 306 Earnhardt, Dale, Jr., 299 Eastwood, Clint, 182 eBay Billpoint and, 56, 65, 90 PayPal and, 56, 59, 64–66, 70, 80–81, 84–85, 147, 274 PayPal acquired by, xii, 76, 88–91, 105, 108 Eden, William, 331 Edmondson, James Larry, 38 education, higher, xvi, 158, 160–62, 191–92, 335 Edwards, John, 177 Eisenberg, Jesse, 159 Eisman, Steve, 132 Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The (Wolfe), 162 Elevation Partners, 76 Ellis, Bret Easton, 25 Ellis, Curt, 251 Ellison, Larry, 68, 188, 221 Emergent Ventures, 192 Endorse Liberty, 179–81 EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), 250, 251 Epstein, Marcus, 203 ESPN, 99 Esquire, 144 extropianism, 23 Facebook, viii, ix, xiii, 77, 105–9, 112, 119, 134, 135, 141, 159, 162–64, 180, 182, 213, 234, 245, 259, 264, 268, 271, 276–77, 279, 280, 282, 285, 291–304, 317 Cambridge Analytica scandal and, 219–20 China and, 298–99 conservative opinions and, viii–xi, 245–46, 298, 300, 303–4 COVID pandemic and, 309, 313 Democrats and, 299, 300, 302–3 IPO of, 292, 294 Luckey at, 296 and 2008 US presidential election, 135 and 2016 US presidential election, 299, 323 Russia and, 245, 299 Trump and, 220, 245–46, 299–300, 302–4, 323 users’ sharing of information on, 297 Fairchild Semiconductor, 143–44 Falwell, Jerry, Jr., 237 Fast Company, 135 Fathom Radiant, 168 FBI, 79, 80, 114, 149, 289 FCC, 249 FDA (Food and Drug Administration), xvii, 181–82, 249, 253–54, 308, 316, 327 Federalist Society, 33, 170, 250 Federal Reserve, 133, 178, 183 Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), 139, 266 feminism, 36, 202 Ferguson, Niall, 280–81 Fidelity, 211 Fieldlink, 50–51 1517 Fund, 169 financial crisis of 2008, 131–33, 145, 311, 313 Great Recession following, 104, 132, 157, 178 Financial Times, 124 Fincher, David, 159 Finish, The (Bowden), 152–53 Fiorina, Carly, 221, 223–25 Fischer, Bobby, 7, 22 Flatiron Health, 253 Flickr, 118 Flooz, 56, 68, 72 Flynn, Michael, 148–49, 235, 283–84 Forbes, 154, 215, 230 Ford, Henry, 270 formalism, 176 Fortune, 121, 192, 223, 231 Foster, Jodie, 128 Foster City, Calif., 1–2, 6–7, 10 Founders Fund, 119–21, 126, 138, 160, 162–64, 167, 168, 170, 173, 180, 189, 211, 214, 234, 248, 249, 269, 282, 285, 293, 297, 309, 310, 319, 330 Founder’s Paradox, The (Denny), 305–6 Fountainhead, The (Rand), 176 Fox News, x, 179, 247–48, 286, 289, 332 Free Forever PAC, 315 Frieden, Tom, 311 Friedman, Milton, 137 Friedman, Patri, 136–37, 169, 174, 176 Friedman, Thomas, 189 Friendster, 105 Frisson, 97–99, 108, 210 From Poop to Gold (Jones), 180 FTC, 249, 281 FWD.us, 263 Gaetz, Matt, 302 gambling, 81–83 Gamergate, 204 GameStop, 330 Garner, Eric, 187 Gates, Bill, 68 Gausebeck, David, 78 Gawker Media, xiv–xvi, xviii, 122, 123–24, 126–30, 133, 134, 137, 153, 184, 189, 193–98, 200–202, 228–33, 239, 277, 279, 287, 326, 334 Hogan’s suit against, xv, 195–97, 201, 227–34 Valleywag, 121, 123, 124, 126–29, 134, 140–42, 189 gay community, 34, 40–42, 125, 177 AIDS and, 32, 34, 40 conservatives in, 177 gay marriage, 177, 179, 199, 240 gay rights, 40–41, 177, 184, 186, 259, 314 homophobia and, 32–35, 40, 126, 128 outing and, 128, 129 Thiel’s sexual orientation, xviii, 41, 98, 104, 125–29, 134, 138, 239, 241, 243 Gelernter, David, 252–53 Genentech, 163 General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 192 Genius Grants for Geeks, 160 Germany, 3 Gettings, Nathan, 113, 114 Ghostnet, 146, 153 Gibney, Bruce, 163 Gibson, Michael, 164, 165, 169, 174 Giesea, Jeff, 43, 200–201, 204, 255, 278, 288 gig workers, 189, 190 Gingrich, Newt, 213 Gionet, Tim, 255 Girard, René, 19–20, 42, 111 GitHub, 286 Gizmodo, viii Glitch, 230 globalization, 112, 131, 189, 209, 225, 259, 298 Goliath (Stoller), 329–30 Goldin, David, 227 Goldman Sachs, 185 Goldwater, Barry, 15, 60–61, 287 Google, xii, xiv, xvi, 55, 57, 98, 123, 133, 136, 137, 145, 169, 180, 188, 190, 191, 234, 245, 259, 261, 263, 274–81, 288–90, 295, 300, 318, 328 artificial intelligence project of, xiii, 280, 288 China and, 288–89, 321 conservatives at, 277–79 Damore at, 277–79, 281, 295–96 Defense Department and, 288 Hawley’s antitrust investigation of, 279–80 indexing of websites by, 297 monopoly of, 274–77 Palantir and, 289, 290 Places, 274 Trump and, 276 Gopnik, Adam, 124 GOProud, 177 Gore, Al, 63, 94 Gorka, Sebastian, 332 Gorshkov, Vasiliy, 80 Gorsuch, Neil, 314 Gotham, 116 GotNews, 199 Government Accountability Office, 213 Gowalla, 164 Graeber, David, 192 Greatest Trade Ever, The (Zuckerman), 132 Great Recession, 104, 132, 157, 178 Greenwald, Glenn, 150 Grigoriadis, Vanessa, 124 growth hacking, 61, 78, 271 Gruender, Raymond, 82 Guardian, 154, 230 guns, 184 Habermas, Jürgen, 115 Hacker News, 170–71 Hagel, Chuck, 271 Haines, Avril, 333 Halcyon Molecular, 138, 167–68 Haley, Nikki, 182 Hamerton-Kelly, Robert, 19–20, 111 Hamilton College, 334–36 Happer, William, 251–52 Harder, Charles, 195–97, 228, 229 Harmon, Jeffrey, 180 Harper’s, 176 Harrington, Kevin, 101, 255, 256, 283 Harris, Andy, 265 Harris, Kamala, 300, 304 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, 174–75 Harvard Business School, 192 Harvard Crimson, 108 Harvard University, 107–8, 191, 308 Hastings, Reed, 295, 296, 298 Hawley, Josh, 279–80, 288, 301, 321–23, 331–33 Hayek, Friedrich, 68 HBGary, 150–51 Health and Human Services (HHS) Department, 311, 318, 320 Hellman, Martin, 50–51, 54, 172 Hello, 167 Heritage Foundation, viii Hewlett-Packard (HP), 223–24 Heyer, Heather, 272 Hillbilly Elegy (Vance), 288, 332 Hitler, Adolf, 251–52, 255, 270 Hitler Youth, 30 Ho, Ralph, 101 Hoffman, Reid, 23–24, 42, 65, 67, 71, 76, 85, 107, 108, 171, 280, 333 Hogan, Hulk (Terry Bollea), xv, 182, 195–97, 201, 227–34 Holiday, Ryan, 193, 297–98 Holocaust, 203, 251–52, 255 Hoover, Herbert, 14, 33 Hoover Institution, 14, 15, 316 Houston, Drew, 298 Howery, Ken, 53, 101, 119 How Google Works (Schmidt), 54 HP, 144 HuffPost, 204 Hughes, Chris, 135 Hume, Hamish, 234, 258 Hunter, Duncan, 149, 216, 217 Hunter, Duncan, Sr., 149 Hurley, Chad, 105 Hurley, Doug, 310 Hurricane Katrina, 209 Hurston, Zora Neale, 25, 26 Hyde, Marina, 230 IBM, 257 Iger, Bob, 264 Igor, 79, 112–14 Illiberal Education (D’Souza), 31, 35, 42 Immelt, Jeff, 264 immigration, 112, 139–40, 185, 225, 259, 261, 263, 271, 298, 313, 315 Customs and Border Protection, 267, 285–86 Palantir and, 266–68, 285–87, 290, 318 and separation of families at border, 285–86 Trump and, xii, xiii, 226, 244, 247, 260–68, 272, 285–86, 309, 314 visas and, see visas Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 267, 268, 286, 287, 290, 318 Inc., xv, 157 incels, 41 Inception, 118–19, 215 Independent Institute, 42, 82 indeterminate optimism, 171 Ingraham, Laura, 31 initial public offerings (IPOs), 46 In-Q-Tel, 116 Instagram, 296, 300–301 Intel, 144, 163, 249, 257 Intellectual Dark Web, 278, 282, 319 Intelligence Advisory Board, 271–72 intelligence work, 114, 117, 148–49, 217 Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 25, 42 International Space Station, 310 Iran, 116 Iraq War, 135, 146, 148, 178, 199, 216, 247, 284, 303 IRAs, 212–13, 313 IRS, viii, 213, 214 ISIS, 311 Islam, see Muslims, Islam Ivanov, Alexey, 80 Jackson, Candice, 243 Jackson, Eric, 53, 121 Jackson, Jesse, 31–32, 47 Jackson, Michael, 26–27, 35 Japanese Americans, 266 Jews, 252, 255, 270, 321 Holocaust and, 203, 251–52, 255 Jobs, Steve, 8, 75–77, 124, 144, 262, 331, 334, 335 Stanford University address of, 334 John M.

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts
by David Gerard
Published 23 Jul 2017

The ideology was libertarian right-wing anarchism, often explicitly labeled anarcho-capitalism; they considered government interference the gravest possible threat, and hoped to fight it off using the new cryptographic techniques invented in the 1970s and 1980s. They also tied into the Silicon Valley and Bay Area Extropian/transhumanist subculture. Tim May’s “Crypto Anarchist Manifesto,” a popular document on the list, is all about the promise of money and commerce with no government oversight, and anticipates many of the future promises and aspirations of cryptocurrency.14 Chaum’s DigiCash was not acceptable to the Cypherpunks, as a single company confirmed every participant’s signature.

The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
by David Brin
Published 1 Jan 1998

The aim is no longer to enhance the sharing of learning and skills, or even to maximize economic benefit to owners. Rather, the law is used in these cases to ensure that citizens of a free commonwealth will be prevented from knowing certain things, whether they would be willing to pay for the information or not. Lee Daniel Crocker, a member of the Extropians futurist society, typified this view when he recently suggested that true accountability can take place only if “tag commentary” is taken to its logical conclusion. People who criticize a specific work on the World Wide Web should be able to “tag” that site with a compulsory “back-link” that will notify any future visitor about the criticʼs censure—whether or not the author wants his Web page to carry any disparaging tags.

…

(See later discussions of how the West barely avoided this trap in the Cold War.) An interesting case in this area is PepsiCo, Inc. v. Redmond, 54 F.3d 1262 (7th Cir. 1995). Or see Mark Halliganʼs trade secrets home page at http://www.execpc.com/~mhallign/doctrine.html. 102 ... propose ending the “fiction” of copyright ... See Lee Daniel Crocker, EXTROPIANS commentary: http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html. Robin Hanson of the University of California at Berkeley dealt with similar ideas as far back as 1987. See http://hanson.berkeley.edu/linktext.html and http://hanson.berkeley.edu/findcritics. html. 102 ... Give it your best shot ... This is said with a smile ... and acknowledging that book reviews are already a simple implementation of “tag commentan.” 104 ... look foolish trying to charge for songs played ...

You Are Not a Gadget
by Jaron Lanier
Published 12 Jan 2010

One flavor is based on the idea that a sufficiently voluminous computation will take on the qualities we associate with people—such as, perhaps, consciousness. One might claim Moore’s law is inexorably leading to superbrains, superbeings, and, perhaps, ultimately, some kind of global or even cosmic consciousness. If this language sounds extreme, be aware that this is the sort of rhetoric you can find in the world of Singularity enthusiasts and extropians. If we leave aside the romance of this idea, the core of it is that meaning arises in bits as a result of magnitude. A set of one thousand records in a database that refer to one another in patterns would not be meaningful without a person to interpret it; but perhaps a quadrillion or a googol of database entries can mean something in their own right, even if there is no being explaining them.

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
by Anna Wiener
Published 14 Jan 2020

* * * The intellectual culture of Silicon Valley was internet culture: thought-leadership, thought experiments. Message-board intellectualism. There were economists and rationalists; effective altruists, accelerationists, neoprimitivists, millennialists, objectivists, survivalists, archeofuturists, monarchists, futarchists. Neoreactionaries, seasteaders, biohackers, extropians, Bayesians, Hayekians. Tongue-in-cheek and deadly serious. Witting and unwitting. It did leave something to be desired. At a party in Noe Valley, I fell into an argument with an enthusiastic participant in the online rationality community. Rationalism was considered a truth-seeking movement, at least by its practitioners.

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 21 Mar 2013

TRANSCENDING HUMANITY For all the flesh eating going on in the zombie genre, there’s something positively flesh loathing about the psychology underlying it. People are the bad guys. Apocalypto seems less about transforming the human species than transcending it altogether. In neither the hallucinations of psychedelic 2012 end-of-worlders nor the scenarios forecast by techno-enthusiast extropians do we humans make it through the chaos attractor at the end of time—at least not in our current form. And why should we want to, when human beings are so loathsome, smelly, and inefficient to begin with? The postnarrative future belongs to the godhead, machines, cockroaches, planetary intelligence, complexity, or information itself.

The Rapture of the Nerds
by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross
Published 3 Sep 2012

Death is obviously the enemy of humanity and God, so the Prophet says we’re first going to make ourselves immortal, then we’re going to resurrect everyone who has ever lived, and simulate every human who ever might have lived so that we can incarnate them too. And we’re to colonize space—” Huw is zoning out at this point. Because she has a very funny feeling that she’s heard it all before. This is the religious wellspring of the whole extropian transhumanist shtick, after all: the name’s on the tip of her tongue— “Federov,” she says. “Whut?” Sam sounds suspicious. “An early Russian cosmist, sort of a fossil transhumanist mystic. My dad was a big fan of Federov,” she adds. “Was he a Commie?” Doc asks. “What’s he got to do with the Kingdom of God?”

Pandora's Brain
by Calum Chace
Published 4 Feb 2014

The waitress started clearing the window table and as the door swung closed the noise level dropped several decibels. ‘Tell me why this is irritating you.’ Carl was looking down. He flicked a tiny ball of paper along the table, away from them. ‘Because it’s so stupid!’ he said, sulkily. ‘It’s intelligent design for smart people. These Singularitarians, Transhumanists, Extropians, whatever they call themselves, they are all just guilty of a massive amount of wishful thinking.’ Carl leaned back, paused, and smiled sheepishly. ‘End of rant.’ Matt smiled. ‘No, it was a good rant. You give good rant, Carl. And as it happens I partly agree with you. There is a bit of a self-satisfied feeling about it all, as if they are initiated into a secret which no-one else knows, but everyone will be jolly grateful when they unveil it and bestow their blessings upon the world.

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
by Howard Rheingold
Published 24 Dec 2011

As medical technology provides more and more intimately bio-connected mechanical life-support systems, and more people spend more time in communication with mechanical thinking aids, an entire literature of cyborg criticism has grown up.49 One critic, Mark Dery, argued in his 1996 book, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century, that certain cyborg subcultures who call themselves “extropians” or “transhumanists” actively seek to transcend the flesh, projecting a quasi-mystical faith onto the scientific whiz-bangery of technology.50 These extreme technophiles ask why we should put up with the messiness, mortality, limitations in intelligence and physical power that accompany the human body as it evolved biologically, now that we seem to be on the verge of building more effective substitutes for vital organs.

Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History
by Thomas Rid
Published 27 Jun 2016

But the e-mail then ominously added, “We can be contacted (preferably through a chain of anonymous remailers) by encrypting a message to our public key (contained below) and depositing this message in one of the several locations in cyberspace we monitor.” These locations were two Usenet groups—alt.extropians and alt.fan.david-sternlight—and of course the cypherpunks list itself. This didn’t look like irony. The idea for BlackNet was to remain “nominally” nonideological. But the author of the ominous passage made clear that he considered nation-states, export laws, patent laws, and national security “relics of the pre-cyberspace era.”

Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology
by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
Published 30 Sep 2007

I figured it was about time we met.” “Sure.” Manfred holds out a hand and they shake. Manfred realizes the hand belongs to Bob Franklin, a Research Triangle startup monkey with a vc track record, lately moving into micromachining and space technology: he made his first million two decades ago and now he’s a specialist in extropian investment fields. Manfred has known Bob for nearly a decade via a closed mailing list. The Suit silently slides a business card across the table; a little red devil brandishes a trident at him, flames jetting up around its feet. He takes the card, raises an eyebrow: “Annette Dimarcos? I’m pleased to meet you.

Rationality: From AI to Zombies
by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Published 11 Mar 2015

(Although if you have to do one or the other, of course you should save the world.) But let’s be more specific. John Perry was a New York City police officer who also happened to be an Extropian and transhumanist, which is how I come to know his name. John Perry was due to retire shortly and start his own law practice, when word came that a plane had slammed into the World Trade Center. He died when the north tower fell. I didn’t know John Perry personally, so I cannot attest to this of direct knowledge; but very few Extropians believe in God, and I expect that Perry was likewise an atheist. Which is to say that Perry knew he was risking his very existence, every week on the job.

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
by Nate Silver
Published 12 Aug 2024

For instance, Perkins recommends prioritizing experiences over buying stuff or departing life with a large inheritance. *23 Though Alexander himself had twins right as I was completing this draft. *24 Some critics of EA like Émile Torres and Timnit Gebru use the term “TESCREAL” to describe this, for Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. No, there won’t be a pop quiz. 8 Miscalculation Act 5: Lower Manhattan, October–November 2023 Sam Bankman-Fried, at least by his own account,[*1] wasn’t much of a fan of poker or other forms of capital-G Gambling.

The Best of Best New SF
by Gardner R. Dozois
Published 1 Jan 2005

I figured it was about time we met.” “Sure.” Manfred holds out a hand and they shake. Manfred realizes the hand belongs to Bob Franklin, a Research Triangle startup monkey with a VC track record, lately moving into micromachining and space technology: he made his first million two decades ago and now he’s a specialist in extropian investment fields. Manfred has known Bob for nearly a decade via a closed mailing list. The Suit silently slides a business card across the table; a little red devil brandishes a trident at him, flames jetting up around its feet. He takes the card, raises an eyebrow: “Annette Dimarcos? I’m pleased to meet you.