# Extropy/Extropian

Explore the concept of extropy and extropian philosophy—where boundless optimism, technological progress, and transcendent purpose converge. Learn more soon.

Extropy names the growth of intelligence, order, and capacity for improvement in a living or social system, and extropians made its increase the aim of a philosophy of perpetual progress. Restoration scripture shares that hope of endless progression and grounds it in opposition, active faith, and a community bound together in love.

Extropy is a coined word, introduced in 1988 by the founders of the magazine *Extropy* as the counterpart of entropy. In its 1998 statement of principles, the philosopher Max More defined it as "the extent of a system's intelligence, information, order, vitality, and capacity for improvement," and called those who seek to increase it extropians. Entropy itself was coined in 1865 by the physicist Rudolf Clausius from the Greek *tropē*, "a turning" or "transformation," to measure the disorder that accumulates as energy is spent. The extropians set the prefix *ex-*, "out of," against *en-*, "in," and adopted seven principles: perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, and rational thinking. Their principles also held that religious faith "breeds passivity by promising progress as a gift bestowed on us by superior forces." Restoration scripture answers that charge with its own account of decay, progress, and faith.

## Entropy and the Shadow of Turning

Scripture acknowledges decay in the material world and places the source of order in a God who does not decay.

Jesus warned against "treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt" (Matthew 6:19), and a common reading takes the verse to mean that matter runs down and only spirit lasts. James describes God as "the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17). It is significant that the Greek word behind "turning" is *tropē*, the root Clausius chose for entropy, and that this is its only occurrence in the New Testament. Lexicons explain it as the turning of the heavenly bodies, whose courses bring light and shadow. James sets the God of lights outside that turning. Restoration teaching holds that matter is eternal, so the decay Jesus describes belongs to a fallen world that scripture promises will be renewed.

Lehi's teaching on opposition offers a further parallel. He taught that "there is an opposition in all things," and that if all things were "one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption" (2 Nephi 2:11). Physicists describe the far end of entropy in similar terms, as a uniform state with no differences of temperature left to drive any process. The parallel is inexact, since Lehi speaks of moral agency. Yet both accounts treat difference and tension as conditions of life.

## Perpetual Progress and Eternal Progression

The extropian ideal of perpetual progress has a close counterpart in the Restoration doctrine of eternal progression.

The extropian principle of perpetual progress calls for "seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an indefinite lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization." Abraham saw a hierarchy of intelligences with no upper limit short of God: "there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all" (Abraham 3:19). A revelation adds that "intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence; wisdom receiveth wisdom; truth embraceth truth" and "light cleaveth unto light" (D&C 88:40). In this connection, intelligence in Restoration scripture grows by attraction to more intelligence, which makes progress a relationship as well as an accumulation. The Mormon Transhumanist Association hosted Max More at its 2010 conference, and Mormon transhumanists have long recognized the extropians as kin in their hope that people may become more than they are.

## Practical Optimism and the Anchor of Hope

Restoration faith is active, and it measures progress by the bonds of a community.

The extropian charge that faith waits passively for a gift does not fit the faith Moroni describes. Whoever believes in God "might with surety hope for a better world," a hope that "maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works" (Ether 12:4). That hope moves its holder to work for the better world it expects. The sharper difference lies in self-direction. Extropian principles placed the individual's choices at the center, while Alma's converts were to have "their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another" (Mosiah 18:21). Of course, the Restoration also prizes agency, and the two positions overlap more than either tradition sometimes admits.

The physics of entropy names the risk. Living things maintain their internal order only by exporting disorder to their surroundings, and the same holds for cities, industries, and data centers. An individual or a company can raise its own intelligence and capacity while spreading waste, heat, and want to others. The test for any project of enhancement is whether it increases intelligence, order, and vitality for the whole community that bears its costs, or builds order for a few by exporting disorder to everyone else.