COVER

1 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought is a journal of ideas, dedicated to discussing and developing themes in the follow- ing areas: • and futurist philosophy • , immortalism and biostasis • Smart drugs and other intelligence intensifying • (AI) and personality uploading • Nanocomputers and • Memetics (ideas as replicating agents) ExtropyExtropy InsInstitutetitute • Experimental free communities in space, on the oceans, and in EXTROPY (ISSN 1057-1035) is published twice per • Effective thinking, information filtering, & year (quarterly from January '94) by Extropy Institute life management (ExI), a nonprofit educational corporation, 11860 Mag- nolia Avenue, Suite R, Riverside, CA 92503. Phone: • Self-transformative psychology (909) 688-2323. E-mail to: [email protected]. Copyright • Spontaneous orders (free markets, neural ©1993 Extropy Institute. networks, evolutionary processes, etc) Distributed nationally by Armadillo, Los Angeles, CA; Desert Moon • Digital economy (privacy technologies, Periodicals, Sante Fe, NM; Fine Print, Austin, TX; IPD, Solana Beach, CA; digital money and electronic markets) Ubiquity, Brooklyn, NY; & Tower Magazines, W. Sacramento, CA; Inter- nationally by Sala Communications, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Gaia • Critical analysis of extreme environmentalism Media, Basel, Switzerland; and in the UK by Counter Productions, • Probing the ultimate limits of physics London, UK. • Artificial life Manuscripts and letters submitted for publication must be typed or printed double-spaced, and accom- panied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Make checks payable to “Extropy Institute.” EDITOR: , MA, Extropy Institute *All payments must be in US dollars, drawn on a US bank. Communications: Russell E. Whitaker, ECFP Ven- tures, Ltd. (UK) SUBSCRIPTIONS (4 issues):

Computing, Simon! D. Levy, MA, Linguistics Dept., USA: $18 Linguistics: University of Connecticut; Haskins Canada and Mexico*: $22 Laboratories Overseas*: $32 (air); $24 (surface) & Michael R. Perry, Ph.D; Director, Institutions: USA: $40, Canada, Mexico: $45 Immortalism: Society for Venturism Overseas: $60/$44 (air/surface) Law, Politics: Tom Morrow, MA, JD, Extropy Institute BACK ISSUES: See p.33 for contents #s 1, 2, 4, 5, 6: $4 each. #s 7, 8, 9, 10: $5 each. Memetics: Keith Henson, Founder, L-5 Society EXTROPY INSTITUTE (See p.32 for details) Nanotechnology: J. Storrs Hall, Rutgers University, Laboratory for Computer Science Re- Membership (Includes one year subscription to search Extropy and to 6-12 issues of Exponent, ExI's newslet- ter), plus discounts on conferences, tapes, T-shirts, Philosophy, Max More, MA, Extropy Institute software, and books, and invitations to festivals, and Politics: local meetings, and other gatherings: Physics: Prof. Gregory Benford, Physics Dept., USA: $30 University of California, Irvine Canada: $40 Science: David Krieger, MLS, American Infor- Overseas: $50/$62 (Extropy by surface/full air) mation Exchange Sustaining: $100 Transhumanities: Mark Plus, MS, Editor, Venturist Benefactor: $300 Monthly News Sponsor: $1000

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 2 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 (vol.5, no.1)

Uploading Consciousness Ralph Merkle 05

Extropian Principles 2.5 Max More 09

Traversable Wormholes: Some Implications or, Contact! A Post-Singularity Phase Change Michael Price 14 Illustrated by Ralph Whelan

A Conversation with Mark Miller, Part 2 The Day the Universe Stood Still David Krieger 24

“Bunkrapt”: The Abstractions that Lead to Scares about Population and Resources Julian L. Simon 34

THE TASTE (reviews) Theories of Everything Peter McCluskey 42 In Our Own Image: Building an Artificial Person Derek Zahn 43 Mirror Worlds Harry Shapiro Hawk 44

Extropy Institute Update 32 Back Issues 33 Extropy 5th Birthday Party 33 Extro 1 Conference 1994: Call for papers 46 Contributors 47

Cover image by Derek Zahn with Laura Guy

3 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 EDITORIAL

Going Quarterly: From 1988-90, Extropy came out quar- your suggestions for further refinements; versions are terly, the workload — then much lighter — divided be- inevitable. tween Tom Morrow and myself. On becoming sole editor I'm delighted to present an ambitious examination of and producer, I cut the frequency to twice yearly to ensure the uses of spacetime wormholes, based on current physics Extropy's continued appearance despite my graduate research, to realize the Extropian goal of boundless work and teaching duties. Happily, this journal will return to expansion throughout spacetime, civilizing the universe. quarterly publication starting with next issue: Extropy #12 I'm especially pleased to introduce readers to the author, will appear in January, #13 in April, and so on. This move Michael Price, with whom I first worked six years ago, on the was encouraged by my quitting teaching to work full-time UK cryonics newsletter, Biostasis. Ralph Whelan, who for Extropy Institute (thanks to those ExI members who learned Aldus Freehand to produce the article's illustrations, pulled together to hire me), and enabled by the increasing deserves special thanks, both for the graphics and for supply of appropriate writing. helpful comments on the layout of the issue. If you bought this issue of Extropy at a newsstand or David Krieger concludes his conversation with Mark bookstore and intend to read future issues, please consider Miller, this second half even more stimulating, disturbing, subscribing directly. Not only will you save money and and intriguing than the first. Miller identifies five variants of receive your copy quickly and conveniently, you will be the libertarian political position, focusing especially on helping Extropy to survive and thrive. Distributors generally “nanarchy” — a possible system of the future designed to take 55% of the cover price ($4.95 from next issue), leaving minimize coercion by removing the enforcement of rights us well under half once shipping costs are paid. Due to the from human control. Prepare to be both horrified and minimal advertising in these pages, this return makes it thrilled. hard to cover costs. Current subscription information can Economist Julian L. Simon, author of numerous books be found on the inside front cover. on the of population, immigration, and re- sources, and an unrelenting foe of the foolish kind of In this issue: The idea of uploading one's consciousness, environmentalism, investigates why so many politicians, personality, or self, leaving behind the biological human are enraptured by this bunk — why are they bunkrapt? body for an intellectually and physically superior vehicle is Three reviews and two Extropian event notices complete an aspect of the Extropian outlook gathering much atten- the issue. tion. The recent story in the British GQ (“Meet the Extropians”) Upward and Outward! is a case in point. Although some of us expect a more Max More gradual process of human-machine merging, the possibil- ity of uploading (taken as a starting point in last issue's mindstretcher by roboticist ), merits serious Extropy #12 (available in early January '94) analysis. In his article, Ralph Merkle — one of today's few will likely feature: professional nanotechnology researchers — calculates Boundless Constellations: The Emergence the goals to be achieved by our if we are to of Celestial Civilization make this vision a reality. Ocean Colonization: A Practical Analysis The Extropian Principles 2.5 substantially refines version 2.0 from a year ago. For those of you who have not seen Neural-Computer Interfacing the Principles before, you should know that this manifesto Logical Languages: Artificial Language and is intended to be a concise, consistent, and comprehen- Rationality sive presentation of the Extropian philosophy. I welcome Two Questions for Utility Fog (nanotech), Pt. 1 Change of address: Please note that we have Interviewer David Krieger strikes again moved since last issue. We may move again More reviews (inc. Kosko's Fuzzy Thinking: before the next issue comes out in January '94, but The New Science of Fuzzy Logic) mail will be forwarded. Posthuman Sexuality

EXTROPY — a measure of intelligence, information, energy, life, experience, diversity, opportunity and capacity for growth. Extropianism is the philosophy that seeks to increase extropy. The Extropian Principles are: (1) Boundless Expansion; (2) Self-Transformation; (3) Intelligent Technology; (4) Spontaneous Order; (5) Dynamic Optimism.

TRANSHUMANISM — Philosophies of life (such as Extropianism) that seek to continue and accelerate the evolution of intelligent life beyond the limitations of the human form to a posthuman condition by means of science and technology, guided by life-furthering principles and values, while rejecting religious dogma and irrationalism. [See Extropy #6]

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 4 Uploading Transferring Consciousness from Brain to Computer Ralph C. Merkle Xerox PARC 3333 Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304

what over 1026 atoms in the brain, so our Your brain is a material object. The behavior of material objects is storage system needs to hold about 1028 described by the laws of physics. The laws of physics can be modeled bits. on a computer. Therefore, the behavior of your brain can be modeled For those readers who might view on a computer. Q.E.D. the feasibility of such a memory system with some doubt, recall that DNA re- quires roughly 16 atoms to store a bit of So why haven’t we cals it was a part of, what bonds it had information (not including the water in done it already? formed, and so on. The brain is roughly .1 which it floats). Your body, with 1010 bits meters across, so .01 nanometers is about per cell stored in DNA and 1014 cells, Well, we’d need a fairly big computer. 1 part in 1010: we need to know the posi- stores almost 1024 bits of information (and And we’d have to get a very detailed tion in each coordinate to within one part it’s unlikely that you’re an optimal description of your brain. The only ways in ten billion. A number of this size can be memory storage device). We’re assum- we know of getting that detailed a de- represented with about 33 bits. There are ing only a modest improvement in stor- scription are destructive. That means we’d three coordinates, X, Y, and Z, so the age technology over DNA; and as we’ll have to take your brain apart. Most people position of an atom can be represented in see, we don’t actually need as much stor- most of the time object to this. Even if you 99 bits. An additional few bits are needed age as we’ve computed here. don’t object, the legal system would. to store the type of the atom (whether Destructive analysis of someone’s brain is hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc.), bringing viewed dimly by the courts. These minor the total to slightly over 100 bits. How Many Bits to objections could be circumvented by wait- With about 100 bits per atom we Describe a Molecule ing until you are legally dead. At that could certainly describe your brain as point, the courts wouldn’t object if you precisely as we’d need. (Purists might While such a feat is remarkable, it is also didn’t object. And although brain func- object that this does not take into account much more than we need. Chemists usu- tion has usually (though not always) the positions of the electrons. While this ally think of atoms in groups — called stopped by the time you’re declared le- is technically true, it’s usually not hard in molecules. For example, water is a mol- gally dead, the information should still be biological systems to infer the electronic ecule made of three atoms: an oxygen and there for a while (though you’d probably structure if you have the coordinates of all two hydrogens. If we describe each atom lose short term memory). When we power the nuclei. We might wish to have a little separately, we will require 100 bits per down the system we lose volatile memory, more information, e.g., Na+, OH-, etc. atom, or 300 bits total. If, however, we but non-volatile memory and the circuitry With this additional ionization informa- give the position of the oxygen atom and are still there. tion our knowledge of the system would give the orientation of the molecule, we Let’s assume we’ve solved the legal be essentially complete). Examining the need: 99 bits for the location of the oxygen hassles, and we’re preparing to analyze published plots of the number of atoms atom plus perhaps 20 bits to describe the your brain using the new, advanced Mark required to store a bit of information as a type of molecule (“water”, in this case) 7 Neural Analysis System. We’ve hooked function of the year, we find that some- and perhaps another 30 bits to give the up the Mark 7 to the Intel Pentadecium. where between 2010 and 2020 we should orientation of the water molecule (10 bits The first question we might ask is: how be able to store one bit with one atom. If for each of the three rotational axes). This much memory should we buy? How one atom in your brain is described by 100 means we can store the description of a many bits does it take to describe your bits, and each bit occupies one atom, then water molecule in only 150 bits, instead of brain? the memory required to hold a digital the 300 bits required to describe the three Your brain is made of atoms. Each description of your brain accurate to the atoms separately. (The 20 bits used to atom has a location in three-space that we last atom would occupy about 100 times describe the type of the molecule can can represent with three coordinates: X, the size of your brain. The brain is some- describe up to 1,000,000 different mol- Y, and Z. Atoms are usually a few tenths what over one liter, so it would require a ecules: more than are present in the brain). of a nanometer apart. If we could record computer memory with a volume of some- As the molecule we are describing the position of each atom to within 0.01 what over one hundred liters to encode gets larger and larger, the savings in stor- nanometers, we would know its position the location of each and every atom in the age gets bigger and bigger. A whole accurately enough to know what chemi- brain in a digital format. There are some- protein molecule will still require only

5 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 150 bits to describe, even though it is can’t fully describe long term memory had not been exposed to the material were made of thousands of atoms. The canoni- we’ve gone too far. used. The difference in the scores be- cal position of every atom in the molecule How many bits does it take to hold tween the two groups was used to esti- is specified once the type of the molecule human memory? Cherniak[6] said: “On mate the amount actually remembered (which occupies a mere 20 bits) is given. the usual assumption that the synapse is (to control for the number of correct an- A large molecule might adopt many con- the necessary substrate of memory, sup- swers an intelligent human could guess figurations, so it might at first seem that posing very roughly that (given anatomi- without ever having seen the material). we’d require many more bits to describe cal and physiological ‘noise’) each syn- Because experiments by many different it. However, biological macromolecules apse encodes about one binary bit of in- experimenters were summarized and ana- typically assume one favored configura- formation, and a thousand synapses per lyzed, the results of the analysis are fairly tion rather than a random configuration, neuron are available for this task: 1010 robust; they are insensitive to fine details and it is this favored configuration that cortical neurons x 103 synapses = 1013 bits or specific conditions of one or another we will describe. of arbitrary information (1.25 terabytes) experiment. Finally, the amount remem- Describing the brain one atom at a that could be stored in the cerebral cor- bered was divided by the time allotted to time is much less compact than describ- tex.” A problem with hardware-based memorization to determine the number ing it one molecule at a time. estimates is that they have to make as- of bits remembered per second. sumptions about how the information is The remarkable result of this work stored. The brain is highly redundant was that human beings remembered very Do We Really Need to and not completely understood: the mere nearly two bits per second under all the Describe Each fact that a great mass of synapses exists experimental conditions. Visual, verbal, does not imply that they are in fact con- musical, or whatever — two bits per sec- Molecule? tributing to the memory capacity. This ond. Continued over a lifetime, this rate makes the work of Landauer[7] very in- of memorization would produce some- While this reduces our storage require- teresting for he has entirely avoided this what over 109 bits, or some hundreds of ments quite a bit, we could go much hardware guessing game by measuring megabytes. further. Instead of describing molecules, the actual functional capacity of human While this estimate is probably only we could describe entire sub-cellular or- memory directly. accurate to within an order of magnitude, ganelles. It seems excessive to describe a Landauer says mitochondrion by describing each and every molecule in it. It would be suffi- A Functional Estimate We need answers at this level of accu- cient simply to note the location and per- racy to think about such questions as: haps the size of the mitochondrion, for all of Human Long Term What sort of storage and retrieval ca- pacities will computers need to mimic mitochondria perform the same function: Memory Capacity they produce energy for the cell. While human performance? What sort of there are indeed minor differences from Landauer works at Bell Communications physical unit should we expect to con- mitochondrion to mitochondrion, these Research — closely affiliated with Bell stitute the elements of information differences don’t matter much and could Labs where the modern study of informa- storage in the brain: molecular parts, reasonably be neglected. tion theory was begun by C. E. Shannon to synaptic junctions, whole cells, or cell- If we’re concerned about the behav- analyze the information carrying capac- circuits? What kinds of coding and ior of the nervous system then worrying ity of telephone lines (a subject of great storage methods are reasonable to about the location of each mitochondrion interest to a telephone company). postulate for the neural support of seems excessive. We could describe an Landauer naturally used these tools by human capabilities? In modeling or entire cell with only a general description viewing human memory as a novel “tele- mimicking human intelligence, what of the function it performs: this nerve cell phone line” that carries information from size of memory and what efficiencies has synaptic connections of a certain type the past to the future. The capacity of this of use should we imagine we are copy- with that other cell, it has a certain shape, “telephone line” can be determined by ing? How much would a robot need to and so on. If we assume there are 1015 measuring the information that goes in know to match a person? synapses, and if we need (very roughly) and the information that comes out, al- Landauer’s estimate is interesting 100 bits per synapse, this brings us down lowing the great power of modern infor- because of its small size. While Landauer to 1017 bits. We could be yet more eco- mation theory to be applied. doesn’t measure everything (he did not nomical of storage: a group of cells in the Landauer reviewed and quantita- measure, for example, the bit rate in learn- retina might perform a ‘center surround’ tively analyzed experiments by himself ing to ride a bicycle nor does his estimate computation, so the entire group (includ- and others in which people were asked to even consider the size of “working ing all their synapses and fine morphol- read text; look at pictures; hear words, memory”) his estimate of memory capac- ogy) could be summarized in one succinct short passages of music, sentences and ity suggests that the capabilities of the functional description. nonsense syllables. After delays ranging human brain are more approachable than from minutes to days or longer the sub- we had thought. jects were then tested to determine how How many bits do we need to satis- How Many Bits Do We much they had retained. The tests were factorily describe your brain? We have Really Need? quite sensitive (they did not merely ask quite a range: from 1028 to 109. If we “What do you remember?”) often using assume we have to describe every neuron This kind of logic can be continued, but true/false or multiple choice questions, in and every synapse (and every nerve im- where does it stop? What is the most which even a vague memory of the mate- pulse traveling along every neuron), we’re compact description which captures all rial would increase the chances of making probably safe in estimating something the essential information? While many the correct choice. Often, the differential like 1018 bits. Those who object to this minor details of neural structure are irrel- abilities of a group that had been exposed approximation can buy the more expen- evant, our memories clearly matter. If we to the material and another group that sive High Fidelity system which keeps

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 6 If the changes that have been introduced by the uploading process are smaller than the behavioral changes introduced by (say) a beer, a night’s sleep or a cup of coffee, then it’s getting rather difficult to argue that uploading has somehow destroyed the real you and substituted a “fake” you that just seems (by all objective measures) to be you.

about 1010 analog adds per sec- the nerve impulse comes by they open for ond. There are about 108 nerve about a millisecond and then spontane- cells in the retina[5, p. 26], and ously close again[2]. between 1010 and 1012 nerve cells When a single voltage-activated so- in the brain[5, p. 7], so the brain is dium channel opens, it has a conductance roughly 100 to 10,000 times larger of about 15 picosiemens [1]. (A siemen is than the retina. By this logic, the the reciprocal of an ohm, and is also called brain should be able to do about a “mho”). In myelinated nerve cells there 1012 to 1014 operations per second are roughly 60,000 channels at each node (in good agreement with the esti- of Ranvier (and nowhere else). The total mate of Moravec, who considers charge that crosses the membrane at one this approach in more detail[4, p. node in one millisecond can thus be com- 57 & 163]). puted: about 5.4 x 10-11 coulombs (over track of each and every atom. If people A third approach is to measure the 300 million ions per node). The energy will buy gold-plated Monster Speaker total energy used by the brain each sec- dissipated is just the charge times the cables..... ond, and then determine the energy used voltage, or 3.2 x 10-12 joules. If we view this for each “basic operation”. Dividing the one millimeter jump as a “basic opera- former by the latter gives the total number tion” then we can easily compute the How Much Computing of basic operations per second. We need maximum number of such “Ranvier ops” Power? two pieces of information: the total en- the brain can perform each second: 3.1 x ergy consumed by the brain each second, 1012. Now that we have a rough idea of the and the energy used by a “basic opera- Although the details differ for unmy- information storage we’ll need, how many tion”. elinated nerve cells, the energy cost of operations per second will we need? How The total energy consumption of the traveling one millimeter is about the same. fast does the brain operate? While mips brain is about 25 watts[2]. Much of this is To translate “Ranvier ops” (1-milli- are appropriate for a PC, there are several used either for “house keeping” or is meter jumps) into synapse operations we measures we might use for the brain. We wasted, perhaps 10 watts is used for “use- must know the average distance between might count the number of synapses, es- ful computation”. synapses, which is not normally given in timate their average speed of operation, neuroscience texts. We can estimate it: a and so determine synapse operations per human can recognize an image in about second. If there are roughly 1015 synapses The Energy of a Nerve 100 milliseconds, which can take at most operating at about 10 impulses/second[2], 100 one-millisecond synapse delays. A we get roughly 1016 synapse operations Impulse single signal probably travels 100 milli- per second. Nerve impulses are carried by either my- meters in that time (from the eye to the A second approach is to estimate the elinated or un-myelinated axons. Myeli- back of the brain, and then some). If it computational power of the retina, and nated axons are wrapped in a fatty insu- passes 100 synapses in 100 millimeters then multiply this estimate by the ratio of lating myelin sheath, interrupted at inter- brain size to retinal size. The retina is vals of about 1 millimeter exposing the then it passes one synapse every millime- relatively well understood so we can make axon. These interruptions are called ter — which means one “synapse opera- a reasonable estimate of its computational “nodes of Ranvier”. Propagation of a tion” is about one “Ranvier operation”. power. The output of the retina — carried nerve impulse in a myelinated axon is If propagating a nerve impulse a dis- by the optic nerve — is primarily from from one node of Ranvier to the next — tance of 1 millimeter requires about 3.2 x -12 retinal ganglion cells that perform “center jumping over the insulated portion. 10 joules and the total energy dissipated surround” computations (or related com- A nerve cell has a “resting potential” — by the brain is about 10 watts, then nerve putations of roughly similar complexity). the outside of the nerve cell is 0 volts (by impulses in your brain can collectively If we assume that a typical center sur- definition), while the inside is about -60 travel at most 3.1 x 1012 millimeters per round computation requires about 100 millivolts. When a nerve impulse passes second. By estimating the distance be- analog adds and is done about 100 times by, the internal voltage briefly rises above tween synapses we can in turn estimate per second[3], then computation of the 0 volts because of an inrush of Na+ ions. how many synapse operations per sec- output of each ganglion cell requires about The inrushing Na+ goes through special ond your brain can do. This estimate is 10,000 analog adds per second. There are protein pores in the nerve cell membrane three to four orders of magnitude smaller about 1,000,000 axons in the optic nerve[5, called “voltage activated sodium chan- than an estimate based simply on count- p. 21], so the retina as a whole performs nels”. They are normally closed, but when ing synapses and multiplying by the aver-

7 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 age firing rate, and similar to an estimate (among other things): temperature fluc- early 21st century. based on functional estimates of retinal tuations; microwaves, light, and other elec- It will also require the highly accu- computational power. It seems reason- tromagnetic radiation; cosmic rays; last rate analysis of your nervous system. This able to conclude that the human brain has nights dinner; a beer, etc. If the errors in kind of analysis should also become fea- a “raw” computational power towards our computational model are smaller than sible in the 21st century. There is already the low end of the range between 1012 and these influences do we really care about considerable interest in understanding the 1016 “operations” per second. the difference? Is it “significant?” The human brain: for example, the Brain Map- We’ll use the upper end of this range, human brain can and does continue to ping Initiative has already been started[8]. 1016 operations a second. function reasonably well in the presence Transmission electron microscopy has of gross perturbations (the death of many been used to do complete three-dimen- neurons, for example) yet this does not sional reconstructions of small volumes Our Model Isn’t Perfect detract from our consciousness or life — I of neural tissue and this relatively primi- We have been glossing over a point: a don’t die even if tens of thousands of tive approach could be scaled up to much computational model of a physical sys- neurons do. In fact, I usually don’t even larger volumes[9]. The use of more ad- tem will fail to precisely predict the be- notice the loss. A model of your brain that vanced technology should make the com- havior of that system down to the motion described the behavior of every synapse plete and inexpensive analysis of the hu- of the last electron for two reasons: quan- and nerve impulse, and did a reasonably man brain feasible. tum mechanics is fundamentally random accurate job at that level, would seem to The biggest obstacle to uploading in nature, and any computational model capture everything that is essential to be- today is the primitive state of current has an inherent limit to its precision. The ing “you.” technology and the unfortunate fact that former implies that we can at best predict Yet how can we tell? How will we our current hardware has an MTBF (Mean the probable future course of events, not judge the “accuracy” of our computa- Time Between Failures) of 70 years (I’ve the actual future course of events. The tional model? How can we say what is already used up 41, how about you?). latter is even worse — we cannot precisely “significant” and what is “insignificant?” Even worse, actual failures occur unpre- predict even the probable course of future We might adopt a variation of the Turing dictably and the failure mode is cata- events. A good example of this second test: if an external tester can’t tell the strophic, resulting in complete erasure of point is the weather: weather prediction difference, then there is no difference. But all software. Bummer. more than a week or two into the future is the opinion of an external tester enough? But if you can bridge the gap (it’s might well be inherently impossible given How about your opinion? If you “feel” a only a few decades) then you’ve got it any error in the initial conditions or com- difference, wouldn’t this mean that the made. All you have to do is freeze your putations. Any error at all (rounding off model was a “mere copy” and not really system state if a crash occurs and wait for to a mere million digits of accuracy) will you? the crash recovery technology to be devel- eventually result in gross errors between Well, we could ask: “Hi! We’ve up- oped. Fortunately, cryonic suspension the actual events and the events predicted loaded your brain into an Intel services are available today which quite by the computational model. The model Pentadecium, how are you feeling?” “Ab- literally let you freeze your state: call Alcor predicts sunshine next Tueday, and we solutely top notch!” “Do you think you’re at 800-367-2228. Which means if you can’t get rain. This kind of error cannot be not you?” “Nope, I’m me. And this simu- stay alive and healthy until the technol- avoided. lated body is great!” “How’s the orgy?” ogy is developed (and approved by the We have been simplifying our com- “Wonderful! Who worked on this soft- FDA, don’t forget the regulatory delays!) putations even further by not bothering to ware? I’d like to shake their hand, they’ve you can be suspended until you can be compute the state of every atom, or even done a really great job! Uh, I hope you uploaded. of every molecule. We’ve been operating don’t mind, but maybe I could talk with And then you’ll get to find out ex- at the level of synapses or higher, which you a bit more after the party's over? I’m actly how good that Roman Orgy simula- introduces another sort of “noise” into the being distracted.....” tion package really is. computation. The ultimate in experimental evi- It’s safe to conclude that any compu- dence: try it and see! tational model of your brain will almost If everyone agrees that you’re you, References: certainly deviate from the behavior of the including you, and if behavioral tests can’t 1. Ionic Channels of Excitable Membranes, by Bertil Hille, original — eventually in some gross and show any difference, then is there any Sinauer 1984. detectable fashion. If you decide that it difference? Perhaps, but the grounds for 2. Principles of Neural Science, by Eric R. Kandel, James H. doesn’t matter which of two courses of objection are getting rather slim. If the Schwartz and Thomas M. Jessell, 3rd ed., Elsevier 1991. 3. Tom Binford, private communication. action to follow and allow yourself to changes that have been introduced by the 4. Mind Children, by Hans Moravec, Harvard University decide on whim, then it seems plausible uploading process are smaller than the Press, 1988. that some slight influence might cause a behavioral changes introduced by (say) a 5. From Neuron to Brain, second edition (1984) by computational model of your brain to beer, a night’s sleep or a cup of coffee, Stephen W. Kuffler, John G. Nichols, and A. Robert select the opposite course. But is this then it’s getting rather difficult to argue Martin. Sinauer. difference “significant?” Given that our that uploading has somehow destroyed 6. “The Bounded Brain: Toward Quantitative Neu- model is highly accurate for short periods the real you and substituted a “fake” you roanatomy,” by Christopher Cherniak, Journal of Cognitive of time and that any deviations are either that just seems (by all objective measures) Neuroscience, Volume 2, No. 1, pages 58-68. random or represent the accumulation of to be you. 7. “How Much Do People Remember? Some Estimates of slight errors, does it matter that the behav- the Quantity of Learned Information in Long-term Memory,” ior of the model and of the original even- by Thomas K. Landauer, in Cognitive Science 10, 477- 493, 1986 tually deviate in some gross and obvious Summary 8. Mapping the Brain and its Functions, edited by Constance fashion? Roughly, uploading will need a computer Pechura and Joseph Martin, National Academy Press 1991. We can view this another way: your with a memory of about 1018 bits, able to 9. “Large Scale Analysis of Neural Structures” by Ralph C. brain, as a physical system, is already do around 1016 “operations” a second. A Merkle, Xerox PARC Technical Report CSL-89-10, subject to a variety of outside and essen- computer of this capacity should fit com- November 1989. tially random influences caused by fortably into a cubic centimeter in the

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 8 EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES V.2.5 Max More President, Extropy Institute (July 1993)

EXTROPY — A measure of intelligence, information, energy, vitality, experi- ence, diversity, opportunity, and capacity for growth. EXTROPIANISM — The philosophy that seeks to increase extropy.

Extropianism is a transhumanist philosophy: Like humanism, transhumanism values reason and humanity and sees no grounds for belief in unknowable, supernatural forces externally controlling our destiny, but goes further in urging us to push beyond the merely human stage of evolution. As physicist Freeman Dyson has said: “Humanity looks to me like a magnificent beginning but not the final word.” Religions traditionally have provided a sense of meaning and purpose in life, but have also suppressed intelligence and stifled progress. The Extropian philosophy provides an inspiring and uplifting meaning and direction to our lives, while remaining flexible and firmly founded in science, reason, and the boundless search for improvement.

1. Boundless Expansion — Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an unlimited lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities. Expanding into the universe and advancing without end.

2. Self-Transformation — Affirming continual moral, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through reason and critical thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological and neurological augmentation.

3. Dynamic Optimism — Fueling dynamic action with positive expecta- tions. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism, shunning both blind faith and stagnant pessimism.

4. Intelligent Technology — Applying science and technology creatively to transcend “natural” limits imposed by our biological heritage, culture, and environment.

5. Spontaneous Order — Supporting decentralized, voluntaristic social coordination processes. Fostering tolerance, diversity, long-term thinking, personal responsibility, and individual liberty.

9 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 mind can always envisage a superior self in the future. Extropians are committed These principles are developed below. Deeper treat- to deepening their wisdom, honing their ments can be found in various issues of EXTROPY: rationality, and augmenting their physi- The Journal of Transhumanist Thought — Spon- cal and intellectual capabilities. We choose challenge over comfort, innovation over taneous Order in #7, Dynamic Optimism in #8, and emulation, transformation over torpor. Self-Transformation in #10. Extropians are neophiles and experimen- talists who track new research for more efficient means of achieving goals and who are willing to explore novel tech- nologies of self-transformation. In our BOUNDLESS tended lifespans will foster wisdom and quest to advance to a posthuman stage, foresight, while restraining recklessness we rely on our own judgment, seek our 1 EXPANSION and profligacy. own path, and reject both blind confor- Extropians recognize the unique place of mity and mindless rebellion. Extropians our species, and our opportunity to ad- frequently diverge from the mainstream vance nature’s evolution to new peaks. e seek to sustain because they refuse to be chained by any Beginning as mindless matter, parts of dogma, whether religious, political, or W and quicken this intellectual. Extropians choose their val- nature developed in a slow evolutionary ascendence, leading to progressively more evolutionary process of ues and behavior reflectively, standing powerful brains. Chemical reactions gen- expanding extropy, tran- firm when required but responding flex- erated tropistic behavior, which was su- ibly to new conditions. perseded by instinctual and Skinnerian scending biological and Personal responsibility and autonomy go stimulus-response behavior, and then by hand-in-hand with self-experimentation. conscious learning and experimentation. psychological limits into Extropians take responsibility for the con- With the advent of the conceptual aware- posthumanity. sequences of their choices, refusing to ness of humankind, the rate of advance- blame others for the results of their own ment sharply accelerated as intelligence, free actions. Experimentation and self- technology, and the scientific method were No mysteries are sacrosanct, no limits transformation require risks; we wish to applied to our condition. We seek to unquestionable; the unknown will yield be free to evaluate potential risks and sustain and quicken this evolutionary pro- to the ingenious mind. We seek to under- benefits for ourselves, applying our own cess of expanding extropy, transcending stand the universe and to master reality judgment, and assuming responsibility biological and psychological limits into up to and beyond any currently foresee- for the outcome. We seek neither to rule posthumanity. able limits. others nor to be ruled. We vigorously In aspiring to posthumanity, we reject resist those who use the institutionalized natural and traditional limitations on our coercion of the State to impose their judg- possibilities. We champion the rational SELF- ments of the safety and effectiveness of use of science and technology to eradicate TRANSFORMATION various means of self-experimentation. constraints on lifespan, intelligence, per- 2 Personal responsibility and sonal vitality, freedom, and experience. Extropians affirm reason, critical inquiry, self-determination are incompatible with We recognize the absurdity of meekly intellectual independence, and honesty. authoritarian centralized control, which accepting “natural” limits to our lifespans. We reject blind faith and the passive, com- stifles the choices and spontaneous order- The future will bring a graduation from fortable thinking that leads to dogma, ing of autonomous persons. Earth — the cradle of human and mysticism, and conformity. Our commit- Coercion, whether for the purported transhuman intelligence — and the in- ment to positive self-transformation re- “good of the whole” or for the paternalis- habitation of the cosmos. quires us to critically analyze our current tic protection of the individual, is unac- Resource limits are not immutable. beliefs, behaviors, and strategies. ceptable to us. Compulsion breeds igno- Extropians affirm a rational, market-me- Extropians therefore feel proud by readily rance and weakens the connection diated environmentalism aimed at sus- learning from error rather than by pro- between personal choice and personal out- taining and enhancing the conditions for fessing infallibility. We prefer analytical come, thereby destroying personal respon- our flourishing. We oppose apocalyptic thought to fuzzy but comfortable delu- sibility. Extropians are rational individu- environmentalism which hallucinates ca- sion, empiricism to mysticism, and inde- alists, living by their own judgment, tastrophe, issues a stream of irresponsible pendent evaluation to conformity. We making reflective, informed choices, prof- doomsday predictions, and attempts to affirm a philosophy of life but distance iting from both success and shortcoming. strangle our continued evolution. Intelli- ourselves from religious dogma because As neophiles, Extropians study advanced, gent management of resources and envi- of its blind faith, debasement of human emerging, and future technologies for their ronment will be fostered by the Extropian worth, and systematic irrationality. self-transformative potential. We sup- goal of vastly extended lifespan. The We seek to become better than we are, port biomedical research to understand market price system encourages conser- while affirming our current worth. Per- and control the aging process. We exam- vation, substitution, and innovation, pre- petual self-improvement — physical, in- ine any plausible means of conquering venting any need for a brake on growth tellectual, psychological, and ethical — death, including interim measures like and progress. Migration into space will requires us to continually re-examine our biostasis, and long-term possibilities such immensely enlarge the energy and re- lives. Self-esteem in the present cannot as migration of personality from biologi- sources accessible to our civilization. Ex- mean self-satisfaction, since a probing cal bodies into superior embodiments

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 10 (“uploading”). ing so fast, that we cannot accurately ward! We espouse personal, social, and We practice and plan for biological and foresee life beyond that horizon. technological evolution into ever higher neurological augmentation through Extropians strive to maintain the pace of forms. Extropians see too far and change means such as neurochemical enhancers, progress by encouraging support for cru- too rapidly to feel future shock. Let us computers and electronic networks, Gen- cial research, and pioneering the imple- advance the wave of evolutionary eral Semantics, fuzzy logic, and other mentation of its results. progress. guides to effective thinking, meditation and visualization techniques, accelerated here others see learning strategies, applied cognitive psy- INTELLIGENT difficulties, we see chology, and soon neural-computer inte- W TECHNOLOGY gration. Shrugging off the limits imposed challenges. Where 4 on us by our natural heritage, we apply Extropians affirm the necessity and desir- the evolutionary gift of our rational, em- others give up, we move ability of science and technology. We use pirical intelligence to surpass the confines forward. practical methods to advance our goals of of our humanity, crossing the threshold expanded intelligence, superior physical into the transhuman and posthuman abilities, self-constitution, and immortal- stages that await us. Adopting dynamic optimism means fo- ity, rather than joining the well-trodden cusing on possibilities and opportunities, path of comfortable self-delusion, mysti- being alert to solutions and potentialities. cism, and credulity. We regard science DYNAMIC It means refusing to whine about what and technology as indispensable means cannot be avoided, learning from mis- to the evolution and achievement of our 3 OPTIMISM takes rather than dwelling on them in a most noble values, ideals, and visions. victimizing, punishing manner. Dynamic We seek to foster these disciplined forms Extropians espouse a positive, dynamic, optimism requires us to take the initiative, of intelligence, and to direct them toward empowering attitude. Seeing no rational to jump up and plough into our difficul- eradicating the barriers to our Extropian support for belief in a non-physical “af- ties, our actions declaring that we can objectives, radically transforming both the terlife”, we seek to realize our ideals in this achieve our goals, rather than sitting back internal and external conditions of exist- world. Rather than enduring an and submerging ourselves in defeatist ence. unfulfilling life sustained by a desperate thinking. longing for a illusory heaven, we direct our energies enthusiastically into moving Our actions and words radiate dynamic e will co-evolve toward our ever-evolving vision. optimism, inspiring others to excel. We are responsible for taking the initiative in W with the products Living vigorously, effectively, and joy- spreading this invigorating optimism; sus- of our minds, integrating fully, requires dismissing gloom, defeat- taining and strengthening our own dyna- ism, and ingrained cultural negativism. mism is more easily achieved in a mutally with them, finally Problems — technical, social, psychologi- reinforcing environment. We stimulate merging with our cal, ecological — are to be acknowledged optimism in others by communicating but not allowed to dominate our thinking our Extropian ideas and by living our intelligent technology in and our direction. We respond to gloom ideals. and defeatism by exploring and exploit- a posthuman synthesis, ing new possibilities. Extropians hold an Dynamic optimism and passive faith are amplifying our abilities optimistic view of the future, foreseeing incompatible. Faith in a better future is potent antidotes to many ancient human confidence that an external force, whether and extending our ailments, requiring only that we take God, State, or extraterrestrials, will solve charge and create that future. Dynamic our problems. Faith, or the Pollyanna/ freedom. optimism disallows passively waiting and Dr. Pangloss variety of optimism, breeds wishing for tomorrow; it propels us passivity by promising progress as a gift Technology is a natural extension and exhuberantly into immediate activity, con- bestowed on us by superior forces. But, in expression of human intellect and will, of fidently confronting today’s challenges return for the gift, faith requires a fixed creativity, curiosity, and imagination. We while generating more potent solutions belief in and supplication to external foresee and encourage the development for our future. forces, thereby creating dogmatic beliefs of ever more flexible, smart, responsive and irrationally rigid behavior. Dynamic technology. We will co-evolve with the We question limits others take for granted. optimism fosters initiative and intelli- products of our minds, integrating with Observing accelerating scientific and tech- gence, assuring us that we are capable of them, finally merging with our intelligent nical learning, ascending standards of liv- improving life through our own efforts. technology in a posthuman synthesis, ing, and evolving social and moral prac- Opportunities and possibilities are every- amplifying our abilities and extending tices, we project continuing progress. where, calling to us to seize them and to our freedom. Today there are more researchers study- build upon them. Attaining our goals ing aging, medicine, computers, biotech- Profound technological innovation excites requires only that we believe in ourselves, nology, nanotechnology, and other en- rather than frightens us. We welcome work diligently, and be willing to revise abling disciplines than in all of history. change, expanding our horizons, explor- our strategies. Technological and social development ing new territory boldly and inventively. continue to accelerate leading, in the eyes Where others see difficulties, we see chal- We favor careful and cautious develop- of some of us, to a Singularity — a time in lenges. Where others give up, we move ment of powerful technologies, but will the future when everything will be so forward. Where others say enough is neither stifle evolutionary advancement radically different from today, and chang- enough, we say: Forward! Upward! Out- nor cringe before the unfamiliar. Regard-

11 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 ing timidity and stagnation as unworthy resources), brain function and tion, and encourage the long-term think- of us, we choose to stride valiantly into neurocomputation. ing appropriate to persons seeking an the future. Extropians therefore favor The principle of spontaneous order is unlimited lifespan. surging ahead — delighting in future embodied in the free market system — a shock — rather than ignobly stagnating or system that does not yet exist in a pure reverting to primitivism. Intelligent use form. We are evolving away from tribal- of biotechnology, nanotechnology, space ism, feudalism, authoritarianism, and e who have be- and other technologies, in conjunction democracy towards a polycentric system with a free market system, can remove W come transhuman of distributed power shared among au- resource constraints and discharge envi- tonomous agents, their plans coordinated will be primed to trans- ronmental pressures. by the economic network. The free mar- form ourselves into ket allows complex institutions to de- velop, encourages innovation, rewards — persons e are evolving away individual initiative, cultivates personal responsibility, fosters diversity, and de- of unprecedented physi- W from tribalism, centralizes power. Market economies spur cal, intellectual, and psy- feudalism, authorit- the technological and social progress es- sential to the Extropian philosophy. We chological capacity, self- arianism, and democracy have no use for the technocratic idea of programming, potentially towards a polycentric central control by self-proclaimed experts. No group of experts can understand and immortal, unlimited indi- system of distributed control the endless complexity of an viduals. economy and society. Expert knowledge power shared among is best harnessed and transmitted through autonomous agents, the superbly efficient mediation of the free market’s price signals — signals that their plans coordinated embody more information than any per- CONCLUSION by the economic network. son or organization could ever gather. These are principles not only of belief but Sustained progress and effective, rational of action. We become transhuman only decision-making require the diverse when we have fully integrated these val- sources of information and differing per- ues into our lives, when we have con- We see the coming years and decades as a spectives that evolve in spontaneous or- sciously transformed ourselves ready for time of enormous changes, changes that ders. Centralized command of behavior the future, rising above outmoded human will vastly expand our opportunities and constrains exploration, diversity, and dis- beliefs and behaviors. When technology abilities, transforming our lives for the senting opinion. Respecting spontaneous allows us to reconstitute ourselves physi- better. This technological transformation order means supporting voluntaristic, ologically, genetically, and neurologically, will be accelerated by genetic engineer- autonomy-maximizing institutions as we who have become transhuman will be ing, life extending biosciences, intelligence opposed to rigidly hierarchical, authori- primed to transform ourselves into intensifiers, smarter interfaces to swifter tarian groupings with their bureaucratic posthumans — persons of unprecedented computers, neural-computer integration, structure, suppression of innovation and physical, intellectual, and psychological virtual reality, enormous and intercon- dissent, and smothering of individual in- capacity, self-programming, potentially nected databases, swift electronic com- centives. Our understanding of sponta- immortal, unlimited individuals. munications, artificial intelligence, neu- neous orders grounds our opposition to As posthumans we will both embody roscience, neural networks, artificial life, self-proclaimed and involuntarily im- extropy and generate more — more intel- off-planet migration, and nanotechnology. posed “authorities”, and makes us skepti- ligence, information, energy, vitality, ex- cal of political solutions, unquestioning perience, diversity, opportunity, and obedience to leaders, and inflexible hier- growth. As we progress from human to SPONTANEOUS archies. transhuman to posthuman, our under- ORDER Making effective use of a spontaneously standing and application of these Prin- 5 ordering social system requires a degree ciples will evolve with us. The Extropian Extropians emphasize self-generating, of tolerance and self-restraint, allowing Principles are a new operating system for organic, spontaneous orders over cen- others to pursue their lives as they choose, our selves; always seeking to improve trally planned, imposed orders. Both types just as we wish to be free to go our own upon them, we will avoid dogmatizing of order have their place, but the under- way. Mutual progress and fulfillment them. The Principles derive their value by appreciated spontaneous variety are cru- will result from a cooperative and be- guiding us to our true goal: the maximiza- cial for our social interactions. Spontane- nevolent attitude towards all those who tion in our lives of extropy. ous orders have properties that make them respect our rights. Tolerating diversity especially conducive to Extropian goals and disagreement requires us to maintain and values; we see spontaneously order- control of the impulses built into the hu- ing processes in many contexts, including man organism, and to uphold demand- biological evolution, the self-regulation ing standards of rational personal behav- of ecosystems, artificial life studies, ior. Extropians are guided in their actions memetics (the study of replicating infor- by studying the fields of strategy, deci- mation patterns), agoric open systems sion theory, game theory, and ethology. (market-like allocation of computational These reveal to us the benefits of coopera-

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 12 F.M. Esfandiary: Optimism One Up-Wingers BEST DO IT SO! Telespheres Boundless Robert Ettinger: The Prospect of Man Into Superman Expansion FM-2030: Are You A Transhuman? Self- David Gauthier: Morals By Agreement Alan Harrington: The Immortalist Transformation Timothy Leary: Info-Psychology J.L. Mackie: The Miracle of Theism Dynamic Jan Narveson: The Libertarian Idea Optimism Jerry Pournelle: A Step Farther Out Ilya Prigogine and Intelligent Isabelle Stengers: Order Out of Chaos W. Duncan Reekie: Markets, Entrepreneurs and Technology Liberty Spontaneous Albert Rosenfeld: Prolongevity II Julian Simon and Order Herman Kahn (eds): The Resourceful Earth Alvin Toffler: Powershift Robert Anton Wilson: The New Inquisition READINGS Fiction: These books are listed because they express Extropian ideas. However, appearance on this list should not be taken to imply Roger MacBride Allen: The Modular Man full agreement of a book or its author with the Extropian Greg Egan: Quarantine principles, or vice versa. Reading just the first ten books listed Robert Heinlein: Methusaleh’s Children will illuminate many components of the evolving Extropian Time Enough for Love worldview. James P. Hogan: Voyage To Yesteryear Paul M. Churchland: Matter and Consciousness Inherit the Stars Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene Charles Platt: The Silicon Man Eric Drexler: Engines of Creation Eric Frank Russell: The Great Explosion David Friedman: The Machinery of Freedom (2nd Ed.) Robert Shea and Hans Moravec: Mind Children: The Future of Robot Robert Anton Wilson: Illuminatus! (3 vols.) and Human Intelligence L. Neil Smith: The Probability Broach Ed Regis: Great Mambo Chicken and the Bruce Sterling: Schismatrix Transhuman Condition : True Names Julian L. Simon: The Ultimate Resource “The Ungoverned” in Across Robert Anton Wilson: Prometheus Rising Realtime Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged (fiction) Marc Stiegler: The Gentle Seduction (fiction) Harry Browne: How I Found Freedom in An Unfree ACKNOWLEDGMENT World My thanks to all those who have commented on the Paul M. Churchland: A Neurocomputational Perspective numerous drafts of the revised Principles, especially Jamie Dinkelacker, Derek Ryan, and Ralph Whelan. Stephen R. Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Mike Darwin & Brian Wowk: Cryonics: Reaching For Tomorrow Ward Dean & COPYRIGHT POLICY John Morgenthaler: Smart Drugs and Nutrients The Extropian Principles 2.5 may be reproduced in any Daniel C. Dennett: Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will publication, private or public, physical or electronic, with- Worth Wanting out need for further authorization, so long as they appear unedited, in their entirety and with this notice. Notification Eric Drexler: Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, of publication or distribution would be appreciated. The Manufacturing, and Computation Extropian Principles 2.5 are copyight ©1993 by Max More, Eric Drexler, C. Peterson Unbounding the Future: The c/o Extropy Institute, 11860 Magnolia Avenue, Suite R, with Gayle Pergamit: Nanotechnology Revolution Riverside, CA 92503. Freeman Dyson: Infinite in All Directions

13 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 Speculative Physics: TRAVERSABLE WORMHOLES SOME IMPLICATIONS or CONTACT! A POST-SINGULARITY PHASE CHANGE Michael Clive Price © June 1993 Illustrations by Ralph Whelan

That is often the way it is in physics — our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. — Steven Weinberg

Everything will be accomplished that does not violate known fundamental laws of science. — Gerald Feinberg

You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. — Opening words of the Time Traveler, from The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells.

Bussard ramscoop and on-board worm- Summary: Traversable wormholes permit faster-than-light travel, within hole. general relativity, but not time travel and associated acausal paradoxes. This 5. TIME TRAVEL: Why traversable article explores some of the implications traversable wormholes have on the wormholes do not permit time travel, but expansion of civilizations through the universe. In particular it is found each allow FTL, and remain compatible with civilization, or empire, imposes a local, accessible, region of simultaneity, or relativity. empire-time, which differs from the more natural timeframe cosmologists 6. EMPIRE-TIME: The differences be- use. Distant regions of the universe, and alien civilizations if they exist, can tween the local, or empire, time frame an expanding civilization imposes on its sur- be reached in short periods of empire-time. Expanding empire-time zones roundings and the more conventional fuse, on contact with each other, forming an absolute, but artificial, universal conception of time. time frame. Finally, some information-processing limitations of Euclidean 7. ALIENS: Contacting aliens. In par- space are contrasted with wormhole connected non-Euclidean space. ticular it examines how local empire-time zones fuse together, forming... 0. INTRODUCTION 8. UNIVERSAL TIME: ... a universal 0. INTRODUCTION: You’re reading it. simultaneity, creating a post-Singularity To establish an interstellar trading civili- 1. SLOWER THAN LIGHT: Problems cosmological phase change, Contact. zation we need faster-than-light (FTL) and frustrations of living in universe with- 9. BEYOND THE OBSERVABLE UNI- travel or communication, which the re- out faster than light travel, exacerbated by VERSE: Implications of exploring be- cently proposed traversable wormholes the adoption of nanotechnology. yond the edge of the observable universe. provide. This article is a “what-if”, and, in 2. FASTER THAN LIGHT: Other pro- 10. BASEMENT UNIVERSES: Some pros the words of Weinberg, takes the idea and posals for breaking the light barrier. and cons of Euclidean space against worm- its implications seriously. In the spirit of 3. TRAVERSABLE WORMHOLES: The hole-linked arrays of basement universes. Feinberg I assume that the ultimate limits latest candidate for FTL, and some of its 11. CONCLUSION of technology are best suggested by the properties. 12. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS laws of physics [1]. 4. EXPLORING THE UNIVERSE: How 13. REFERENCES The article is structured thus: to explore the universe with a modified 14. FURTHER READING

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 14 1. SLOWER THAN LIGHT The Einstein-Rosen Bridge connects two distant regions We can colonize the universe at sub-light of space via a comparatively velocities [2, 3], but the colonies remain short spacetime tunnel. In separated from each other by the vastness this depiction, spacetime is represented two-dimensionally of interstellar space. In the past trading as a plane, artificially curved to empires have coped with time delays on aid visualization of the Bridge. Einstein-Rosen Bridges appear commerce routes of the order of a few to be extremely short-lived, so years, or decades at most. This suggests much so that their use as passage- that integrated, interstellar economic and ways for light or matter is precluded. cultural zones are limited, at most, to only a few star systems. Nanotechnology [4] only exacerbates the situation. We expect full nanotech, uploading, AIs and other self-transfor- mative technology to arrive (over a pe- riod of some few years, often dubbed the Singularity) before interstellar travel becomes practical. Assume, for illustra- tive purposes, that we keep the same dimensions for our brains as at the mo- ment. Once we are uploaded onto, and redesigned on, a decent nanotech plat- form our mental speeds can be expected your encoded engrams down an interstel- its acceleration (with constant thrust). Ship to exceed our present rates by the ratio of lar modem and decode at Alpha Centauri time also slows down, which also reduces the speed of electrical impulses to neuro- (assuming the receiving station hasn’t shut thrust (e.g. for a photon drive the fre- chemical impulses — about a million-fold down in the intervening millions of years quency of the photon beam red-shifts, speed-up. Subjective time, in the infor- of subjective cultural change and eco- reducing apparent thrust to an off-ship, mation world Hans Moravec has called nomic transformation). You could leave a stationary observer). Both effects make cyberspace [5], speeds up by this factor. copy of your consciousness behind as the speed of light an insurmountable bar- Perhaps we can’t expect an ultimately redundancy or if you wanted to explore rier. materials-based economy (which even both regions, but I suspect many of us will Since the advent of relativity there cyberspace is, with its need for raw pro- not find this completely satisfactory. The have been a number of approaches to cessing power) to speed up by this amount. speed of light barrier would limit and traveling faster than light: Economic speed-up of a factor of a thou- cramp our style much more than it does at sand, as the geometric mean of one and a present. 1) Tachyons: Tachyons are posited FTL million, might be more reasonable and I Trade routes, we have seen, are particles, compatible with relativity. They shall adopt this factor for illustrative pur- unlikely to spread beyond single star never cross the lightspeed barrier, which poses. Even so, the doubling time for the systems, at least until after the economy is all that relativity forbids, being economy is reduced from decades to has plateaued (maybe never). superluminal from emission to absorp- weeks. Trade across more than light weeks Information-based cultures are unlikely tion. Unfortunately there are serious is much less economically significant due to spread beyond single planets before doubts about whether they could be used to the growth and change in markets dur- time delays cause social fragmentation. for transmitting information [6]. More- ing a doubling. Although individual stel- Mars, at its closest to Earth, is 4 light- over, no tachyons have been detected, so lar systems can form single economic minutes away. After nanotech speed-up things look bleak either way. zones, they remain in economic isolation the effective communication distance to from even their nearest neighbors, includ- Mars increases to several subjective-light- 2) Superluminal quantum effects: ing their surrounding Oort cloud or years. Other planets become as distant to Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen & quantum cometary halo. nanotech-based societies as the stars are ‘teleportation’ [7]. This relies on an ac- With full nanotech and nuclear trans- to us. And stars become as distant as companying classical sublight signal, so mutation there is little need to transfer present-day galaxies. no FTL. Other quantum schemes (e.g. matter. Trade in the distant future is likely pure EPR signaling) rely on transmitting to consist of mostly information. Design information via the posited collapse of the plans for new products, assembled on 2. FASTER THAN LIGHT wavefunction, on which no general con- receipt. Patterns of uploaded conscious- Life, on the galactic scale, becomes in- sensus exists. Until this is settled we can’t ness of intrepid travelers. Gossip and credibly dull without FTL. In science expect too much here. No quantum news. But, with communication delays to fiction a standard plot device is to invent superluminal effect has been demon- Alpha Centauri of the order of millions of some faster-than-light mechanism, to strated in the laboratory, either. subjective years, two-way dialogues are make stories interesting. As you might difficult to imagine — even when we are expect, there have been a number of ef- 3) Spinning black-holes: Things looked enjoying unlimited life spans. Old news is forts to circumvent the light speed barrier hopeful for a while that large spinning or no news. in science-fact as well as fiction. charged black-holes might permit travel Interstellar communication and ex- What stops faster-than-light travel? into other regions of somewhere. Later ploration, without FTL, is a one-way pro- According to relativity, as an object accel- work showed that the passage of any- cess. If you had a yen to travel to the erates toward the light-speed barrier its thing through a black-hole sets off a gravi- Alpha Centauri system you could. Squirt mass increases asymptotically, slowing tational feedback process that crushes the

15 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 traveler to death. Also infalling radiation blue- ExI ------ExI

...... shifts to infinity [8], frying ...... the traveler, if tidal forces, ...... which are similarly in- flated (no matter how big the black-hole), don’t shred her first.

4)Einstein-Rosen bridges: An Einstein- Rosen bridge connects two otherwise widely sepa- rated regions of space, with a bridge, throat or

tunnel of space, whose Distance Arbitrarily Large length is independent of the conventional separa- tion. Unfortunately the throat is very short-lived, pinching off so quickly that only tachyons (if they existed) could travel through them and get out Particles entering one "end" of a wormhole are expelled from the other, in another part the other end, [9]. But if of the Universe. Such a voyage would be instantaneous, enabling faster-than-light you could travel faster transmission of matter and data. Generally, it should be more economical to send data than light you wouldn’t (i.e., light) rather than matter, as in the above depiction of the transmittal of the contents need a wormhole — of a diskette (in this case, bylaws for a new Chapter of ExI!). (Note: This diagram takes liberties to aid visualization in that the transmitter and receiver Catch-22! Einstein-Rosen appear "outside" the fabric of normal spacetime, which in this depiction is two-dimensional.) bridges are non-travers- able wormholes. their conclusions in 1988 [11], including a tionary’ phase. Cosmic string has nega- As each attempt has failed the conven- recommendation for students to read Con- tive tension and also tries to exhibit acausal tional wisdom has strengthened that FTL tact as a light introduction to traversable behavior. Clearly ‘exotic’ states are not travel is the 20th century’s analog of the wormholes and ‘exotic’ states! barred by physics. alchemist’s dream of transmuting lead In 1989 Matt Visser showed how more The negative energy of a wormhole into gold. Or flying to the Moon. Or general traversable wormholes could be has equal magnitude to the energy of a living forever. They seemed impossible constructed [12] or, more precisely, the black-hole, where the wormhole throat dreams at the time.... material requirements for wormhole sta- radius equals the black-hole bility. A Visser-style wormhole requires Schwarzschild radius. A traversable ‘exotic’ states confined to the edges of a wormhole can be thought of as the nega- 3. TRAVERSABLE three-dimensional volume, for example tive energy counterpart to a black-hole. the edges of a cube. Although there is The energy of a traversable wormhole, WORMHOLES only one cube of material, it appears at like a black-hole, scales with its linear In 1985 Carl Sagan appealed to theoretical two locations to the external observer. dimensions. A one meter cube entrance physicists for plausible methods of FTL The cube links the two ‘ends’ of a worm- requires a negative mass of roughly 1027 travel to include in his forthcoming book, hole together. The cube has no interior, kg. A Planck-scale wormhole, throat di- Contact. Stimulated by this request, but merely facilitates passage from ‘one’ ameter of 10-33m, has a negative mass of amongst others, were Kip Thorne and his cube to the ‘other’. Each face of the cube, 108 kg. graduate students at Caltech. Instead of instead of showing the interior of the Negative energies, though they exist looking at how different forms of matter cube, opens onto the view from the corre- in nature, have so far only been seen in distort space they turned the problem sponding face of the other cube. A trav- association with other positive energies, around and asked, what states of matter eler, passing between the edges of ‘one’ yielding systems with total positive mass. are required to hold a wormhole open cube, emerges from between the edges of The negative Casimir energies observed permanently, so no pinch off occurs? The the ‘other’ cube, unaware of anything are confined between metal conductors answer is ‘exotic’ states — highly stressed special about the journey. whose mass gives the total system of con- states, with enormous tensile strengths. The ‘exotic’ nature of the edge mate- ductor plus vacuum a positive, overall The tension or pressure of ‘exotic’ states rial requires negative energy density and energy. Similarly the particle creating exceeds the local energy density. We have tension/pressure. But the laws of physics region of an event horizon is energetically no familiarity with substantial ‘exotic’ do not forbid such materials. The energy dwarfed by the associated black-hole states today, but they existed under con- density of the vacuum may be negative, as mass. Being conservative in my induc- ditions of extraordinary pressure in the is the Casimir field generated in the empty tion, I’ll assume that the total mass of a early universe and exists in very tenuous space between two plate conductors or in wormhole is positive, of the same order as forms today. Carl Sagan published Con- the particle-creating region around a black- the negative energy, which is suggested tact in 1985 [10], incorporating the Caltech hole. Negative pressure fields, according by some other recent work [13], although team’s early work on traversable worm- to standard astrophysics, drove the ex- only a conjecture. holes in the novel. Thorne et al. published pansion of the universe during its ‘infla- Construction of ‘exotic’ cubes is, of

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 16 course, far, far beyond our present day Destination Distance & Trip time at various gees engineering capabilities. I would seriously doubt the possibility of achieving such (light-years) 1-g 1000-g capability were it not for the self- Alpha Centauri 4.3 2.3 years 3.3 days transformative technologies mentioned Center of Milky Way 30,000 11 years 6.5 days earlier. With AIs and nanotech combined Andromeda Galaxy 2,250,000 15 years 8 days we expect the limits on intelligences to be Nearest Alien Civilization? 100 M 19 years 9.5 days governed by physics, not biology [1], [4]. Our brain’s processing capacity is Edge of observable universe 10,000 M 24 years 11 days 30 conventionally assessed between 1015 and Edge of inflationary bubble? 10 70 years 28 days 1018 bit/sec. A comparably sized nanoelectronic brain would have Table 1: Probe Journey Times processing power of 1032 to 1036 bit/sec [14]. The 6 orders of magnitude absorbed These two properties of wormholes, To sustain high accelerations a space by nanotech speed-up, mentioned in the fixed matter-throughput versus band- probe with an on-board, small, light, opening paragraphs, still leaves 8 - 15 width scaling with mass or radius, sug- wormhole could be powered from base. orders of magnitude expansion for gest that large, cold wormholes will be The fuel (perhaps antimatter, in the form complexity, or depth of thought, of our used primarily for communications, rather of super-heavy anti-particles) is uploaded brains as we switch from biology to than matter transference. Some excep- through the base end of the wormhole to nanotechnology. So we should not blithely tions might be that the object is unusually the on-board end of the wormhole, pow- assume construction and manipulation of information-rich or can’t be reduced to ering a photon drive. A corresponding the exotic states required will long remain classical information (e.g. a quantum cor- mass (ballast) has to be exchanged to beyond the grasp of future, post- related EPR state [7]), without destroying maintain the two-way mass balance, as I Singularity civilizations, populated by the object. Another class of objects that mentioned earlier. This matter has to be such super-intelligences, or cyberminds will need direct physical transference, collected by the probe from its environ- [5], unless prohibited by physical law [1]. rather than being transmitted as informa- ment, which naturally leads to the sug- The remainder of the article will assume tion, are wormholes themselves. Having gestion that the probe should be a Bussard the mass production of wormholes is laboriously dragged one end of a worm- ramscoop [17], collecting ballast/fuel from economically achievable by future hole somewhere, later wormholes are interstellar gas with a magnetic ‘trawl’. civilizations. transferred via the first, to increase the Half the collected matter is exchanged for Leaving aside the problems of con- connections between the two distant re- antimatter via the wormhole, which is struction, let’s look at the properties of gions. combined with the remaining matter to wormholes. A wormhole collapses, or An object swallowed by the mouth of power the photon drive. A Bussard throat pinches off, when the amount of a wormhole leaves its electric charge, ramscoop gains in thrust as it reaches mass passing through its throat’s vicinity momentum and mass associated with the higher and higher relativistic speeds (the approaches the same order as the amount mouth, in an analogous manner with the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction increases of negative mass confined to its edges, no-hair theorem for black-holes. The no- the density of oncoming interstellar threatening to form a black-hole. Surpris- hair theorem for black-holes says that a plasma). To protect against relativistic ingly, the maximum rate of mass flow black-hole only remembers the total charge dust impact damage, some of the extra through a wormhole is independent of and mass (and angular momentum) of energy and mass could be used for the size. As the diameter of the throat ex- objects swallowed. Correspondingly, construction of a heat shield (whose mass pands so does the time taken to pass into when an object is disgorged from a worm- would partially off-set the gain in thrust and beyond the hole’s Schwarzschild ra- hole the mass and charge of the wormhole with speed). At different velocities, dif- dius, giving a maximum rate of mass flow end is reduced, by the disgorged object’s ferent designs are optimal, so the probe through the hole of c3/2G, or approxi- mass and charge. Matter and charge flows would have to effect in-flight redesign. mately 2.1035 kg/s, where G is Newton’s through a wormhole have to be balanced At the relativistic speeds time dila- constant, c the speed of light. in either direction to prevent gravitational tion becomes a major factor. Time dila- Wormholes can be viewed as com- and electric flux lines being trapped and tion reduces trip times for relativistic trav- munication channels with enormous po- distorting the hole. To the external ob- elers. A probe accelerating at one-gee tential bandwidth. According to Shan- server, who may not know a wormhole is approaches lightspeed within a year. As non [15] and others [14], [16], information involved, mass and charge appear locally it speeds up, probe time dilates more and has a minimum energy of kTlog2 per bit conserved. Over the long term the worm- more. I have given flight times assuming associated with it, where T is the absolute hole is forced to act as a matter exchange, 1-gee acceleration, after the original plans ambient temperature. The gravitational rather than a source or sink for matter. I’ll [18], based on a hydrogen fusion motor. field of the hole will impose a size-depen- return to this point when discussing the I’ve also included a higher 1000-gee flight dent lower bound on the Hawking tem- Bussard ramscoop idea. time plot, based on the greater accelera- perature of the wormhole, giving a chan- tions a nanotech ramscoop construction nel capacity that scales with hole size, of could withstand, and an antimatter drive 1052 bits/sec X mass (in kg). This suggests 4. EXPLORING THE could deliver. See Table 1 for probe or it will usually be more economic to squirt UNIVERSE journey time to various locations (not the design of an object down a wormhole allowing for slow-down). channel rather than the object itself. This Wormholes enable travel from one mouth bandwidth, or channel capacity, is the to the other. To travel to distant parts of The probe remains in communication with upper limit possible through a hole, but the universe one wormhole end stays at the home base, throughout the trip. As a doesn’t, in itself, give any clues as to how home and the other is carted away, at drop point approaches, another worm- to achieve it. sublight velocities, to the destination. hole plus deceleration rig is uploaded

17 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 through, detaching itself from the mother If a wormhole enables someone to travel Shalt Not Allow Time Travel [21]. craft. Deceleration is quicker and less from Alpha Centauri 2996 to Sol 2993, and One of the time travel skeptics is Matt expensive than acceleration: the daughter vice versa, then no paradox results be- Visser. Early in 1993 he showed that craft brakes itself against interstellar/ga- cause she can’t travel back to Alpha wormholes do not enable time travel [22], lactic gas, dust and magnetic fields, or Centauri (through conventional space, a by proposing physical mechanisms that even reflects the oncoming gas forwards distance of about 4.3 light-years) and ar- enforce CPC. Visser showed that the to double the braking force. Transfer of rive before she left (to cause a paradox). mouths of a wormhole, with an induced colonists begins when deceleration is com- Paradoxes result if a wormhole con- clock difference, could not be brought plete. The colonists transfer through the nects, say, Alpha Centauri 3000 to Sol close enough together (one wormhole end daughter hole, whilst the main probe con- 2993. Now a traveler can travel, through inside the light cone of the other) to permit tinues its outward voyage. One of the first the wormhole, from Alpha Centauri 3000 causality violation. Quantum field and tasks of colonists is to secure the connec- to Sol 2993 and then make the return gravitational effects build up as the two tions with home by increasing the local journey, through normal space within 5 ends of a wormhole approach each other wormhole presence, transporting more years, at sublight speeds, arriving before and either collapse the wormhole or in- wormholes from base via existing worm- her own departure. This is a problem duce a mutual repulsion. Visser’s work is holes. Initial supplies, plant and machin- because we can always time-dilate one not complete, but it seems swarms of ery are transported as needed from base. end of a wormhole and not the other, virtual particles disrupt the region around Transport of manufacturing plants con- either by placing one end in a gravita- a time machine, just before it would oth- tinues until local nanotech factories be- tional field or transporting it with great erwise become operational. The virtual come more competitive than transport of speed. Wormholes, it would seem, can be particle fluxes around a nearly chrono- finished product and local industries reach always transformed into time machines. logically violating region are able, via the critical mass. After this, the wormholes uncertainty principle, to form closed become increasingly used for communi- spacelike (superluminal) loops and bor- cations rather than materials transport. As each attempt has row energy off themselves, becoming An analogy with the cloud chamber failed, the conventional more virulent than usual. As traversable springs to mind here. Charged particles wormholes approach being time ma- are tracked through cloud chambers. Each wisdom has strength- chines, the energy of the virtual spacelike particle is invisible, but its presence is particle loops pinch off the throats, pre- revealed by the expanding wake of drop- ened that FTL travel is venting formation of paradoxical, real lets left behind. Similarly the space probe the 20th century’s ana- closed timelike loops. This mechanism is all but invisible, lost in the immensity of still works even if more than one pair of deep space. The burgeoning colonies left log of the alchemist’s wormholes is involved. One end of a behind mark its passage. The colonies dream of transmuting wormhole is excluded from the light cone send out further wormhole probes. From of the other end, even if the light cone is a distance the whole affair resembles a lead into gold. Or flying transmitted via another wormhole. For growing 3-D snowflake, with Earth at the to the moon. Or living the purposes of this article I’ll adopt center. The tips of the snowflake indicate Visser’s conclusion that the CPC mecha- the positions of colony-probes. forever. They seemed nism is generic and blocks all forms of Road, sea, and air routes allow the impossible dreams at the time travel via wormholes, but permits creation and operation of global markets. the operation of wormholes for the pur- With the growth of transportation, once time.... pose of FTL travel. isolated economic zones are now forming more tightly integrated global trading blocs. Similarly, wormhole connections Problems begin when the wormhole 6. EMPIRE-TIME enable galactic and intergalactic economic ends move towards each other, and the Wormholes do have one major trick up blocs or zones to form. time-shifted traveler is able to return, by their sleeves. We have seen that worm- traveling through conventional space, to holes don’t permit time travel. But they 5. TIME TRAVEL visit herself before departure. If a traveler do exhibit some very strange effects. Con- As we have seen, wormholes are con- can visit an earlier part of her worldline sider the journey from Earth to Androm- strained by relativity to travel at sublight then the possibility of acausal paradoxes eda of a 1-gee exploration probe (with the speeds, being time-dilated as normal. is opened. This conclusion was realized obligatory on-board wormhole), from the Clocks placed at the two mouths of a soon after the first articles on traversable probe’s perspective. At launch from Earth, wormhole always remain in synchroni- wormholes were published [11]. Depend- in say the year 3000, the probe’s view of zation with each other [19]. If I look ing on your view of the plausibility of Earth matches the view of Earth through through one end of a wormhole and com- time travel this is either, if you believe the on-board wormhole — both show pare the near clock with the far clock, they time travel possible, very exciting or, if Earth 3000. After 15 years probe-time will always agree, even if one end of the you scoff at time travel, proof that travers- travel, at constant 1-gee acceleration, the wormhole is traveling at relativistic able wormholes can’t exist. No general ship reaches Andromeda. The view of speeds, many light-years away. We ob- consensus emerged in the pages of vari- Earth through the wormhole now shows serve the two clocks keeping time with ous physics journals as the subject was Earth 3015. But the probe can calculate each other, yet relativity says the ‘distant’, batted back and forth. Elaborate and very trip duration, using Minkowskian geom- traveling clock, is running slowly. How interesting papers [19, 20] reconciled time etry, relative to the stationary, Earth-bound do we reconcile this? Only by concluding travel with quantum theory, whilst Hawk- observer. This time works out to be that the receding clock is being displaced ing proposed, and gave plausibility argu- 2,250,001 years. So the probe knows that in space and time [19]. A wormhole con- ments for, a Chronological Protection Con- it is ‘really’ year 2,253,001. We have to nects different regions of space and time. jecture, CPC, which says the Universe conclude that wormholes not only con-

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 18 distribution of matter is stationary. The cosmological frame, or co-moving frame, expands with the Hubble expansion of = 3 lightyears the universe. At each point in cosmologi- SLICE D: P 3 Years After Event cal time the averaged distribution of mat- ter is even, allowing the easiest calcula- tion of dynamics of the expansion of the SLICE C: = 2 lightyears universe. Relativity says all reference P 2 Years After Event frames are relative, but in truth most as- SLICE B: tronomers think of the cosmological frame 1 Year After Event P = 1 lightyear as a natural choice, or ‘Schelling frame’, to

Time adopt, even though we are drifting with SLICE A: Event E respect to it. P Event Occurs Wormholes sent to Andromeda, in Distance from Event Space our example, at near light speeds, arrive in approximately year 2,253,001 cosmo- Space logical time, but in year 3,015 empire- The above diagram depicts the "light cone" approach to visualizing events and their spheres time. Assuming that once wormhole tech- of causality. In the language of light cones, normal three-dimensional space is depicted with nology is developed we expand at near only two spatial dimensions, with time representing the third. Relativity tells us that any event (like event "E" above) can only affect items that fall within the event's light cone, which is light speeds, then the surface of constant expanding at precisely the speed of light. Therefore, if one imagines a spherical area in empire-time forms an inverted cone in space of radius 1 lightyear, one is in effect imagining the sphere of causality for an event that occurred at the center of the sphere one year ago. In a light cone diagram, that sphere of cosmological spacetime, with Earth at the radius 1 lightyear appears in "collapsed" form as a two-dimensional circle of radius 1 lower apex. (I use the language of cones lightyear, like SLICE B above, which looks at a "slice" of timespace precisely 1 year after the to describe what is really a sphere, but this event captured in SLICE A. Notice that an observer situated at point P cannot be affected by (or even aware of) event E until more than two years after the event occurs. is conventional in relativity texts, because Unless a wormhole is involved. In the diagram below, the event captured by SLICE A is the it lends itself to greater ease of visualiza- launch at 1g of a large series of wormhole-bearing ships directed away from the Earth in tion — think of time forming the vertical various directions. The ships are at relativistic speeds by the 1-year point (SLICE B), and since the wormholes allow instantaneous travel but NOT time travel, anything passed through the scale and the spatial dimensions contrib- wormhole gates at, say, 3 years after launch Earth time, emerges instantly on the ship at 3 uting to the horizontal co-ordinates. Later years after launch SHIP time (SLICE D). And since ship time is lagging relative to Earth time, the object or information passed through the wormhole gate emerges MORE than 3 lightyears times form surfaces stacked on top of from Earth. In this case, then, an observer at point P with a telescope pointed at Earth could earlier times.) At any particular moment be encountered by one of the wormhole probes years prior to seeing its launch! in empire-time the entire surface of the empire-time cone is accessible to the wormhole traveler. Traveling along the wormhole highways away from Earth takes you into the far future in cosmologi- SLICE D: cal time, but not in empire-time. Later P 3 Years After Launch empire-time zones form inverted cones, open base uppermost, stacked on top of SLICE C: each other. 2 Years After Launch P Empire-time is the time imposed by the wormholes throughout the region they SLICE B: connect up. This region I’ll call an empire, P 1 Year After Launch although no central authority is implied Time but is allowed. Clocks within the empire Earth SLICE A: P Wormhole Launch can be synchronized with each other, pro- Distance from Earth vided they are close to a wormhole. A Space traveler within the empire could always Space set their clock by empire-time, because the wormholes provide a common refer- nect widely separated regions, but also hole bridgehead is established, CPC pre- ence frame, or a background, against different times, as we said earlier. In this vents any connections to different times, which to define position and velocity. example Earth 3015 is connected with within the future light cone, even indi- Because this reference frame is common Andromeda 2,253,001. rectly via other wormhole connections. to all occupants, the empire-time defined Using the wormhole, a traveler can Because of this strict chronological en- can be used to catalog events in a time- move between Earth 3015 and Androm- forcement it makes sense to define a local ordered fashion. Attempts to redefine the eda 2,253,001. (Note that CPC prevents time, which I call empire-time, for use empire-time already laid down by the anyone trying to create a paradox. Creat- within the regions linked up. In this wormhole structure are firmly resisted by ing an additional return wormhole con- example, Earth time is the standard by CPC. To redefine empire-time you have necting Andromeda 2,253,016 with Earth which clocks can be defined. to repopulate a region with holes travel- 4,503,002, say, would enable someone The time frame being defined by the ing at a vastly different speed than the from Earth 4,503,002, to travel to Earth expansion of wormholes, which I’ve original colonists. The CPC mechanism 3030, via Andromeda 2,253,016 to disrupt dubbed empire-time, is not coincident says, in empire-time terminology, two her own past. But the closed spacelike with the cosmological time frame. The holes disturb each other as they approach loops form, via the CPC mechanism, and cosmological spacetime is the spacetime closer than their empire-time difference block the arrangement.) Whilst a worm- frame in which the average background times the speed of light, e.g., two holes

19 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 with an empire-time difference of a year wormholes, we won’t make contact with within a few years of their empire-time. can’t approach closer than a light-year them for over 100 million years, making ‘Meanwhile’ the defenders retreat, aban- without being both violently disrupted their existence an object of theoretical doning rim worlds one-by-one, over a and destroyed [23]. speculation, which can’t be resolved for period of tens of thousands of years of Once the empire-time frame has been millions of years. their empire-time. Each light-year crossed defined, it becomes increasingly difficult With relativistic probes and on-board and the defenders’ technology and eco- to change it. As the population and wormholes, though, we can reach alien nomic power advances by a year (likely to economy of a region grow, the numbers colonized regions within decades of em- be a large gain with nanotech growth of holes increases. Once established, to pire-time, no matter (almost) how far away rates), whilst the invaders’ technology is change the relationship between cosmo- they are, although no probe can penetrate in relative stasis. Eventually science, tech- logical time and empire-time requires the into an alien empire. Each empire defines nology and weight of numbers tells and complete upheaval of the local economy its own empire-time, in conflict with the the balance of attack shifts in favor of the and denizens. Economic growth breeds empire-time of the other. A probe from defenders. Unless an invader over- chronological stability. Earth flying into an alien zone not only whelmed the defenders in some surprise, Questions about the distant cosmo- crosses alien space, but also alien empire- sneak attack, the attack fails. Wars have to logical future of our universe are answered time zones. As it approaches the alien be fought on a more subtle level. Enough directly by travel. How quickly is the home world it passes increasingly into the material here to keep military strategists Hubble expansion slowing? Would the alien empire-time future. CPC forbids busy for a while. natural universe expand forever or re- such travel by destroying lone worm- A more likely scenario is: Contact is collapse? Is the universe spatially closed? holes that attempt to interpenetrate each signaled by our leading wormhole probes Send out a probe at one-gee. From the others’ empires. failing in the overlap of our sphere of above table we see that within a century of This opens up the possibility of dif- influence with the alien empire’s sphere, empire-time it is reporting back from al- ferent expansion scenarios. a kind of neutral zone. Finding each most inconceivable distances and futuri- other’s probes is non-trivial. It might be ties, answering the questions about the easier to find the colonies than the origi- fate of the natural universe. If you wish With relativistic probes nal exploration vessels. To push the anal- you can visit the end of the universe, and and on-board wormholes, ogy with a particle zipping through a come back. “Go see the end of the uni- cloud chamber: search for the tell-tale verse” might be a catchy travel company’s though, we can reach droplets, rather than the elusive particle. jingle. (Actually this is only possible in an alien colonized regions The easiest way of doing this, at the point open universe. In a closed universe there where the relativistic wormholes are de- is a limit to how far you travel before CPC within decades of empire- stroyed, is to send out sub-light, mildly- prevents you.) time, no matter (almost) relativistic survey probes (with on-board wormholes), from the nearest drop points, how far away they are, to establish diplomatic relations. If both 7. ALIENS sides explore each other with non- or Enrico Fermi said “if aliens existed they although no probe can mildly-relativistic probes (relative to the would be here” [24], reflecting the in- penetrate into an alien cosmological frame) then their empire- creasingly common view that circumstan- times will realign themselves, over the tial evidence indicates alien civilizations empire. Each empire locale of the neutral zone, although this are very few and far flung in the universe. defines its own empire- may take years, permitting diplomatic The easiest way to explore and colonize contact and, assuming no wars, eventual the universe is to send out self-replicating time, in conflict with the exchanges of wormholes. space probes, as Tipler has cogently ar- empire-time of the other Empire-times merge as empires gued [2], [3], which almost any civiliza- merge. Clocks in one empire are synchro- tion will do at some stage in its evolution. nized with the clocks in the other. Initially Within a cosmologically short period (i.e. A well coordinated, centrally controlled to travel from one empire to another in- millions of years) we could colonize the species might halt expansion at the bound- volves wormhole travel to the neutral Milky Way and the rest of the Local Group. ary of their home galaxy (say) for a few zone and hopping over to a nearby alien The arrival of a colony probe at a star thousand empire-years, building up num- hole, before entering into the alien’s worm- system precludes and supersedes local bers, armaments etc. When their technol- hole network. As wormholes are ex- biological evolution. This hasn’t hap- ogy seems to have plateaued they resume changed, direct travel becomes possible. pened to us, otherwise we wouldn’t be expansion, relying on technology and The wormhole networks merge as more here. Since life on Earth has evolved over numbers to overwhelm aliens. Such a and more direct connections open up. billions of years then we can’t expect (sta- strategy is technology dependent. If The spheres of colonization are now avail- tistically speaking) to find civilizations wormholes can be booby-trapped to ex- able to each other and the two empire- within our local group or, perhaps, any- plode on tampering or hostile attack, such times merge to form a double conical where in the universe. This is the Fermi a strategy fails. Consider what happens structure. If the alien empire began ex- Paradox. as they invade a neighboring, occupied pansion before us, in cosmological time A statistical elaboration of this argu- galaxy. At the first sign of attack the terms, then traveling to the alien home ment [25] gives grounds for believing that defenders destroy their wormholes in the world would take us back to an era of the nearest aliens are currently over 100 invasion zone and retreat in a scorched cosmological time prior to the present. million light-years distant. For illustra- earth policy. The structure of their respec- Given the expansion rates quoted, tive purposes I’ll assume the nearest alien tive empire-times operates to favor the once the first aliens are contacted, the civilization is 100 million light-years dis- defenders. The attackers penetrate deeply second, third etc., follow soon after. In tant. In the cosmological frame, without towards the galactic core and home world addition to directly contacting alien em-

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 20 pires we’d also make contact indirectly. To begin with we’d make contact with The first phase change, the Singularity, is the alien empires that had not met very many adoption of full-blown nanotechnology and the con- other aliens — just starting out, so to speak, as we were. This would soon sequent uploading from a biological to a nanotech change. As our probes reach further and platform. The second phase change, which I’ll call further into the distant cosmological fu- ture we contact larger and larger alien Contact, occurs when each civilization, more or empires, who, in turn, have met more and more other aliens. The crucial point is less simultaneously, links up with the rest of the reached when the average number of civi- universe, tapping the benefits of the near-infinite lizations a typical civilization is in direct contact with reaches three, or thereabouts. economies of scale this brings. In our 1-gee flight scenario this point is reached about 4-5 months after first con- tact is established, i.e., in under 20 years the cosmological time surface, relative to post-inflationary bubble that extends over exploration, plus time to establish diplo- the flat universal time surface. Universal distances of 1030 light-years or more, look- matic relations. If we plot the number of time would be the preferred time for dis- ing pretty much everywhere as it does aliens contacted, directly and indirectly, cussing life, history, politics etc. — every- here. against empire-time, we get an asymp- thing except prehistory before Contact. Inflationary theories differ about what tote, bounded only by the total number of Universal time has many similarities lies beyond the inflationary bubble. Be- alien species in the universe, at this point. with absolute time, as Newton conceived cause these regions are inflating at huge of it [26]. Newton viewed absolute time rates, an event horizon prevents any sub- as deriving from God’s immanence, or stantial exploration outside the ‘bubble’. 8. UNIVERSAL TIME presence throughout the universe. The Unless we make Contact we will never This is a symmetrical situation. Not only universal time frame defined by worm- directly observe this since these regions will we be meeting aliens within an his- holes is created by the civilizations within will have changed greatly in the century torically short period, but they will be the universe, which is a much more satis- or two of empire-time (>1030 years of cos- meeting us shortly after their expansions factory state of affairs to the modern sci- mological time) it takes to reach them. begin. Consequently, all the space-faring entific paradigm. In universal time, Con- One possibility is that naturally occurring species of the universe will be connecting tact is year zero. wormholes, relics of the inflationary pe- up at about the same stage in their devel- Roughly half the civilizations we meet riod, and inflated to astronomical dimen- opment. This gives us all shared interests are likely to have been around, in cosmo- sions [27], may link our post-inflationary and markets in common. We might ex- logical terms, hundreds of millions or bubble with others, forming an infinitely pect each civilization to go through two even billions of years before us. Gaining large chaotic, fractal structure [28, 29]. future phase changes. The first phase access to their empire-time zones will A couple of paragraphs back I men- change, the Singularity, is the adoption of enable our astronomers to observe the tioned the phase change, Contact, associ- full-blown nanotechnology and the con- expansion of the universe in the distant ated with linking up with the rest of the sequent uploading from a biological to a past (although always further away from universe and gaining the benefits of near- nanotech platform. The second phase here in space than cosmological time). infinite economies of scale, access to huge change, which I’ll call Contact, occurs The occurrence of the first civilization in information markets, etc. The present when each civilization, more or less si- the universe is the limit before which we scope of Internet, the electronic global multaneously, links up with the rest of the could not travel, in cosmological time. communications network, pales into ut- universe, tapping the benefits of the near- ter insignificance before the size of the infinite economies of scale this brings. pan-universal internet that will form, post- After Contact all the local empire- 9. BEYOND THE Contact. It’s worthwhile stopping for a times have merged to form a universal OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE moment and considering what this might time or simultaneity surface. On a very do to our perception of ourselves and our large scale the sheet of universal time The expansion of the universe is defined place in the universe. At the moment we conforms with the cosmological average. by a parameter called Hubble’s constant, are the only civilization we know, unique On closer inspection (i.e., scales of billions which relates the distance of a far galaxy and conceited. If civilizations lie scattered of years and light-years) the universal with its velocity of recession. Beyond a at distances of 100 million light-years, in a time surface reveals conical pit-like in- certain distance the recession velocity ex- universe of radius 1030 light-years, this dentations, marking where each civiliza- ceeds the speed of light. Objects beyond still yields over 1060 alien mother cultures. tion arose and stamped its own chrono- this are red-shifted to infinity and are It is unlikely anyone could ever catalog all logical footprint on the surrounding unobservable. This distance defines the the civilizations and cultures, even if they spacetime topology, before merging with edge of our observable universe, an event did have a nanoelectronic brain! No single their neighbors’ zones. By saying that the horizon, and lies approximately (subject historian could encompass the sweep of universal time surface is indented I reveal to experimental error) 15-30 billion light- history, no biologist catalog the species. my own cosmological time prejudices. years away. This is the limit of the as- We would have returned to the medieval From the vantage of point of a future tronomers’ universe. What lies beyond is world, surrounded by legends of distant cybermind, post-Contact, it is surfaces of left to cosmology to ponder on. Cosmo- lands populated by mythical and fantas- equal, cosmological time that appear logical theories expounded over the last tic creatures. Construction of a single bumpy, relative to the planes of constant decade (in particular inflationary theo- universal map and travel guide would be universal time. To them, civilization birth ries) indicate that the observable universe impossible. The culture shock of absorb- points appear as the summits of cones in is just an infinitesimal speck in a greater ing all the extra data would likely keep us

21 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 occupied for not far short of eternity. ment universe space, unlike in Euclidean Cromwell, Dani Eder, Carl Feynman and space, where it must expand radially ex- Timothy Freeman for filtering out some 10. BASEMENT ponentially. of my worst errors and most obtuse word- This might seem somewhat like a ing. But most particular thanks to Robin UNIVERSES subtle and obtuse piece of mathematics, Hanson, for jointly starting and working Initially, no doubt, wormhole connections but it’s just restating that a tree with con- with me on this project, and specifically would supplement existing architectures, tinually branching twigs eventually for pointing out how empire-time follows connecting together points in the existing strangles itself, in Euclidean space, from time-dilation. Thanks in advance to locally Euclidean universe. The next logi- whereas it could grow forever through a Ralph Whelan for the diagrams. Needless cal step would be to start constructing tangled array of wormholes and base- to say none of the above share any respon- extensions to the existing topology. The ment universes, without the crowding sibility for, or necessarily agree with, some technologies involved in generating arti- out effect choking off growth. of my conclusions, nor any of my errors. ficial inflation to expand the interiors of A related limitation of Euclidean wormholes into basement, or baby, uni- space is the amount of information a vol- verses are of the same order of magnitude ume can contain. This limitation, the 13. REFERENCES as creating traversable wormholes. A Bekenstein bound [33], [34], implies that [1] Gerald Feinberg. Physics and Life Prolonga- basement universe is a traversable worm- to achieve unlimited information storage tion. Physics Today 19(11) 45 (1966). The full hole with only one end and an inflated a system must spread itself increasingly quote is: “A good approximation for such pre- interior (rather than two ends and no thinly and operate more slowly [35], in dictions is to assume that everything will be the limit to zero, or else collapse into a accomplished that does not violate known fun- interior). Rather like the Tardis, in con- damental laws of science as well as many things cept, bigger on the inside than the outside. black-hole. No such limitation applies to that do violate these laws.” a space of connected basement universes. Computer-simulated basement universe [2] Frank J. Tipler. Extraterrestrial Intelligent Each basement universe is shielded from formation has already been discussed in Beings Do Not Exist. Quarterly Journal of the the literature [30, 31, 32]. The technology the positive energy contribution of its Royal Astronomical Society 21(3) 267 (1980). Ad- to construct traversable wormholes im- neighbors, allowing infinitely complex, ditional Remarks on Extraterrestrial Intelligence. plies the ability to construct basement extended, networked structures to form. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society universes. 22(3) 279 (1981). See also Chapter 9 [3] We have already mentioned that we [3] Frank J. Tipler and John D. Barrow. The expect speed-up of subjective time rates 11. CONCLUSION Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Clarendon Press, of a million or so with the adoption of full Oxford (1986) ISBN 0198519494 Provides lots of We have seen that, whilst the construction evidence against the notion that the universe is nanotech. If just a factor of a thousand of wormholes is technically very difficult, crawling with aliens, Chapter 9. translates into GDP and population the long-term payoffs are very great. A [4] K. Eric Drexler. Engines of Creation, Anchor growth rates, then doubling times drop civilization can expand through the uni- Press/Doubleday, (1986) ISBN 0385199724. from decades to weeks. I don’t know if verse, stamping its own chronology on its Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufactur- these growth rates are sustainable, even in locality, at a speed only limited by its ing, and Computation, Wiley-Interscience, (1992) empire-time, but they indicate that any ISBN 0-471-57518-6. See also Extropy #10 4(2) 44 energy resources. At the very least, prob- limited resource is likely to be at a pre- (1993) for a review by J. Storrs Hall. lems of construction, theoretical and prac- mium, within years of empire-time. Since [5] Hans Moravec. Pigs in Cyberspace, Extropy tical, will exercise the advanced intelli- the amount of natural space per civiliza- #10 4(2) 5 (1993). gences of the future considerably. In the tion is likely to be limited to roughly 1024 longer term the possibility of opened- [6] Gerald Feinberg. Possibility of Faster-Than- cubic light-years, space will ultimately be Light Particles. Physical Review 159(5) 1089 (1967) ended, perhaps even infinite, information at a premium. The need for living space Tachyons can always be re-interpreted as mov- processing lie before the civilizations dictates that eventually wormholes will ing forwards in time, with positive energy, by all which solve the problem of wormhole observers. be used to provide links to artificial base- construction and transport. Without ment universes. Or perhaps the possibil- [7] Charles Bennett. Teleporting an Unknown wormholes a civilization faces certain frag- ity of wormhole wars, mentioned earlier, Quantum State via Dual Classical and Einstein- mentation as it expands. With worm- Podolsky-Rosen Channels. Physical Review Let- will tempt societies to move wholesale holes it can remain integrated. Whether ters 70, 1895 (1993) How to use a split EPR into basement universes for security. this centralizing power is used for good or experiment to make a perfect quantum copy of In a sense exponential growth and ill is another question. a system — but the original is destroyed during Euclidean space are natural enemies. The classical signal assembly. From a more detached point of view volume enclosed by a Euclidean 3-sphere it is interesting that the universal time [8] Werner Israel & Eric Poisson. Internal Struc- only increases with the cube of the radius. frame permits a return to the Newtonian ture of Black-Holes. Physical Review D 41(6) With exponential growth pressures driv- 1796 (1990) Infinite blue-shifting of infalling conception of an absolute time and simul- ing expansion all civilizations confined to radiation (including gravitational) at the inter- taneity, previously thought to be incom- Euclidean space will rapidly (in historical nal Cauchy horizon forms an infinite, hidden patible with general relativity. It is espe- energy barrier (called blue-sheets) to travelers. terms) hit technological limitations or each cially pleasing that the shape of the uni- other. Wormholes and associated base- [9] Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne & John A. versal time surface is a function of the ment universes offer the long-term pros- Wheeler. Gravitation W.H. Freeman (1973) ISBN birth place-times of civilizations, rather 0716703440. Simply the best book on general pect of escaping from this dilemma. An than divine choice or blind, insensate relativity. See section 31.6 for Einstein-Rosen array of basement universes connected by cosmological processes. bridges. wormholes has the useful property that [10] Carl Sagan. Contact, Arrow and Legend, the volume of habitable space accessible (1985) ISBN 0099469502 The novel that, amongst grows exponentially with distance from 12. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS other things, features a fictional account of travel origin. A civilization driven by volumet- My thanks to all the Extropians and through a traversable wormhole. Quite good ric exponential growth need only grow Cryonauts for their feedback, including story, so I’m told. radially at a constant rate through base- Gregory Benford, Andrew Clifford, Ray [11] Michael S. Morris & Kip S. Thorne. Worm-

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 22 holes in Spacetime and Their Use for Interstellar 554. 15-Jan-1993 Hawking’s CPC is expanded verse in an inflationary cosmological model. Travel. American Journal of Physics 56(5), 395 upon and fleshed out. Wormholes are shown to Physical Review D 39(4) 1058 15-Feb-1989 Base- (1988) The article that started all the fuss. Good enable FTL travel, but not time travel. Note that ment universe formation modeled by number- historical overview of the status of various en- this work, though impressive, is not complete. crunching the Einstein equations. ergy conjectures. Outlines the requirements for [23] Gary W Gibbons & Stephen W Hawking. [32] Alan H. Guth, S.K. Blau, & E.I. Guendelman. traversable wormholes: violation of the aver- Selection Rules for Topology Change. Commu- Dynamics of False Vacuum Bubbles. Physical aged weak energy condition and the presence of nications of Mathematical Physics 148(2) 345 (1992) Review D 35(6) 1747 (1987) Localized inflation is exotic states. Wormholes have to be created/destroyed in modeled, leading to the creation of baby uni- [12] Matt Visser. Traversable Wormholes: Some pairs. verses. Simple Examples. Physical Review D 39(10), 3182, [24] Enrico Fermi, quoted by Carl Sagan. Plan- [33] Jacob D. Bekenstein & Marcelo Schiffer. (1989) Non-spherically symmetric traversable etary and Space Science 11(5) 495 (1963), quoted Proof of the Quantum Bound on Specific En- wormholes are shown to be superior to spheri- by Tipler & Barrow, 578 [3] tropy for Free Fields. Physical Review D 39(4) cally symmetric ones. [25] Dani Eder (private communication) mod- 1109, (1989) Do Zero-Frequency Modes contrib- [13] Ian H. Redmount & Wai-Mo Suen. Is Quan- els the occurrence time of galactic and interga- ute to the Entropy? Physical Review D 42(10) tum Spacetime Foam Unstable? Physical Review lactic civilizations on a normal distribution, bell 3598 (1990), an extension to the above article. D 47(6), 2163, 15-March-1993. The authors show curve. The time between the first and second [34] Jacob D. Bekenstein. Entropy Content and that we’d expect small, Planck scale, negative- civilizations, in a large volume, is an appre- Information flow in Systems with Limited En- energy wormholes to inflate to observable di- ciable fraction of the standard deviation or sigma, ergy. Physical Review D 30(8) 1669, (1984). En- mensions. Since we don’t observe this instabil- which is related to biological and galactic for- tropy Bounds and the 2nd Law for Black-Holes. ity, perhaps, (i) the Wheeler quantum foam, mation timescales of many billions of years. The Physical Review D 27(10) 2262 (1983). See also with Planck-scale wormholes popping into and time between the arising of the first and second Physical Review D 23 287 (1981). The Bekenstein out of existence, doesn’t exist, or (ii) wormholes civilizations in an arbitrary volume scales with upper bound for information, in a system, is I = are constrained by as- yet-unknown energy con- the standard deviation, but is very insensitive to 4 pi2 E R / h c ln2, where E = energy, R = ditions — for instance if they only had net posi- other factors. Assuming the galaxy could sup- Euclidean radius Note: also valid for black- tive energies. port millions or billions of civilizations (as is holes. [14] Thomas Schneider. Channel Capacity of conventional, via the Drake equation), but that [35] Freeman J. Dyson. Time Without End: Phys- Molecular Machines. Journal of Theoretical Biol- sigma is of the order of billions of years, gives the ics and Biology in an Open Universe. Reviews of ogy, 148(1) 83 (1991) Draws the parallels be- statistical time between the first and second Modern Physics, 51(3), 447 (1979). Suggests ways tween an molecular assembly and Shannon’s civilizations as hundreds of millions of years. in which intelligences can survive indefinitely concept of channel capacity. This may be a gross underestimate, if life is in an open, expanding universe. See also Chap- [15] Claude L. Shannon. Communication in the much rarer (although contact time is not much ter 10 [3] Presence of Noise. Proceedings of the IRE (now altered, in empire-time, unless we are completely alone). [36] Gary T. Horowitz. Topology Change in the IEEE), 37, 10 (1949) Classical and Quantum-Gravity. Classical and [16] Thomas Schneider. Energy Dissipation from [26] Sir Isaac Newton. On the Gravity and Quantum Gravity 8(4) 587 (1991) How topology Molecular Machines. Journal of Theoretical Biol- Equilibrium of Fluids (1668+) Translated in transformations can be naturally handled by ogy, 148(1) 125 (1991) Demonstrates an alterna- Unpublished Papers of Isaac Newton ed. A.R. and classical general relativity. The singularities tive derivation of the thermodynamic limits of Marie Boas Hall (1962). Newton preferred the imposed by [37] need not be physically signifi- computation. term Universal Ruler to describe God. The di- cant, since no physical quantity becomes infi- vine time-frame was the Universal Ruler’s view nite. [17] Iain Nicolson The Road to the Stars, of its creation. So central was this to Newton’s Westbridge Books (1978), ISBN 0-7153-7618-7 theology that he equated the relativism espoused [37] Robert P. Geroch. Topology in General Has some nice artistic impressions of Bussard by Leibnitz as tantamount to atheism. Relativity. Journal of Mathematical Physics 8(4) ramscoops and more references for the space- 782 (1968) Creation of a wormhole requires ei- faring enthusiast. [27] Thomas Roman. Inflating Lorentzian Worm- ther CTLs or a “mild” [36] singularity, accord- holes. Physical Review D 47(4), 1370 15-Feb-1993 [18] R.W. Bussard. Galactic Matter and Inter- ing to classical general relativity. If we exclude Speculation on inflating Planckian wormholes CTLs, by Visser’s logic, then wormhole creation stellar Flight. Astronautica Acta 6 179 (1960) to macroscopic and astronomical dimensions. Contains plans for a fusion-powered, 1000- implies a mild, physically permissible, singu- Also that naturally occurring wormholes from larity. tonne, 1-gee ramscoop with 105 - 3.106 meter the inflationary era, may link our habitable radius magnetic scoops. bubble (of which the observable universe is a [19] Fernando Echeverria, John Friedman, subset) to other bubbles. 14. FURTHER READING Gunnar Klinkhammar, Michael S. Morris, & Ulvi [28] Andrei D. Linde. An Eternally Self-Repro- Yurtsever. Cauchy Problem in Spacetimes with ducing Cosmos? Scientific American, 268(5) 10 Apart from the references given, popular Closed Timelike Curves. Physical Review D 42(6) (1993) Computer simulation of some eternal accounts are available. None, yet, incor- 1915 (1990) Shows how the Feynman path inte- inflation models. porate Visser’s work on the chronology gral, sum-over-histories approach to quantum protection conjecture. field theory might remove time-travel causality [29] Dalia S. Goldwirth & Tsvi Piran. Inflation paradoxes, an approach pioneered by Igor — an Alternative to the Singular Big Bang. Gen- Paul Halpern. Cosmic Wormholes: The Novikov. See especially figure 11 for how worm- eral Relativity and Gravitation 23(1) 7 (1991) More Search for Interstellar Shortcuts. Dutton hole clock synchronization works. detailed presentation of the theory of [28], based Press (1992) ISBN 0525934774. Very good on generic, dimensional arguments. Habitable presentation of the arguments against [20] E.V. Mikheeva and Igor D. Novikov. Inelas- post-inflationary bubbles float within an eter- tic Billiard Ball in a Spacetime with a Time nally inflating, expanding sea. time-travel and FTL through black-holes. Machine. Physical Review D 47(4) 1432 15-Feb- John Gribbin. In Search of the Edge of 1993 An extension of [19] which covered the [30] Matt Visser. Wormholes, Baby Universes and Causality. Physical Review D 41(4), 1116 Time. Black Swan (1992) ISBN 0552994626. elastic collisions of a billiard ball with itself, to Covers a lot of the relativity background include inelastic collisions. (1990) Banning topological transformations pre- serves causality. Baby universes created by material assumed here, with useful dia- [21] Stephen W. Hawking. Chronology Protec- inflation, for instance, are constrained to be grams. tion Conjecture. Physical Review D 46(2) 603 linked with the parent universe by a wormhole. Thomas Donaldson. The Holes of (1992) Provides plausibility ‘proof’ of CPC. The Superseded by [22], to some extent, which intro- Spacetime. Analog and Fact, back-reaction of the gravitational metric op- duces other mechanisms for preserving causal- July 1993, ISSN 10592113. Covers most of poses conditions which permit causality viola- ity. The possibility of topology changes to tion. spacetime (which the creation of wormholes the wormhole basics, but not any of the [22] Matt Visser. From Wormholes to Time require) is addressed in [36]. CPC material and implications — i.e., Machines: Remarks on Hawking’s Chronology [31] Katherine A. Holcomb, Seok Jae Park, & empire and universal time. Protection Conjecture. Physical Review D 47(2), Ethan T. Vishniac. Formation of a “child” uni-

23 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 A Conversation With Mark S. Miller by David Krieger Part Two:The Day the Universe Stood Still

its monopoly on force as well as to enforce Mark S. Miller is one of the system architects of the Xanadu project, the electronic people’s rights. So, centralized enforce- hypertext system conceived by Ted Nelson as the future of publishing. Miller is also ment mechanisms, and perhaps a central- co-author, with K. Eric Drexler, of the Agorics papers (published in The Ecology of ized judicial system… and also, most dan- Computation, B. A. Huberman, ed.; New York: Elsevier-North Holland, 1988) which gerous of all, a centralized legislative sys- first presented the idea of agoric open computing systems — computer operating tem. And obviously you can have all sorts systems in which system resources such as memory and processing cycles are of gradations of minarchy that leave some traded by programs and processes on an internal open market. I spoke with Mark of these in and some out. in Palo Alto, California, in September, 1992. In Part One of this interview (see Next over is Epstein’s . Extropy #10), we discussed “creole physics” and the credit theory of identity. In this, I don’t think Epstein ever calls himself a the conclusion of the interview, we talk about the five flavors of libertarianism, libertarian, but his book Takings5 lays out including “nanarchy,” and Jim Bennett’s “Reverse Polish Moon Treaty”: apolitical philosophy that to me is clearly libertarian. The fascinating thing about it is that it’s a libertarianism that doesn’t get Let’s talk about libertarianism. In Literary for a while, and many of the people from stuck on externality problems. Essen- Machines1, Ted Nelson refers to your com- the XanAMIX community remember me tially, in Epstein’s system, the role of the plaints about there being too much gravity, from those days. state, by derivation from the takings clause, and your detestation of governments. How did The next stage that many of us go is to use force to solve externalities. Epstein you become a libertarian? through, which I went through, is to go does a very good job of grounding his Well, I started out as a socialist. I was a from there to a kind of Nozick-style first- interpretation in the history of English socialist for the reason I believe many principles axiomatic libertarianism. From common law, which is where it comes people are socialist, which is for actually there, you kind of mellow out, if you will, from, in order to make the case that this is much the same reason many people are into more of a Hayekian, Austrian, evolu- the proper historical understanding of libertarians, which is a deep desire to see tionary libertarian. what they meant, and therefore the inter- people being more free and, in the case of pretation that the Supreme Court should when I was a socialist, a misunderstand- Spontaneous orders and emergent systems, currently be using, which it’s not, unfortu- ing of under what kind of system people rather than a rigid “These are the rules, these nately. would in fact be more free. A strong anti- are the results” kind of thing. Epstein’s interpretation is that a “tak- authoritarianism, a strong sense that the I have an interesting observation about ing” in any action by the government by current structures and institutions in soci- libertarianism, which I think will be espe- coercive force, that decreases your prop- ety are in need of much change and re- cially interesting to Extropians. There are, erty in some way. It might be that it’s form, and that something much better is as far as I can see, five internally-consis- decreasing the amount of property you possible. tent libertarian political philosophies, and own; it might be that it’s a decrease in the So I was a socialist for many years. I they’re on a spectrum, from least to most set of rights that you hold with respect to would argue with my cousin Neil. Finally statist, where even the most statist I am that property… so zoning would be a he handed me a copy of The Moon Is A content to call libertarian. decrease in your rights with respect to Harsh Mistress.2 When I put that book There is David Friedman’s anarcho- that property; it is a taking equally well as down, I was certainly not convinced of capitalism3. I specifically say “David losing title to the land… the case for free markets or for libertarian- Friedman’s” anarcho-capitalism, because ism — it doesn’t even use the word liber- no one else, and that means Rothbard, has In reducing the utility of the land. tarianism — but I knew that my socialism constructed an anarcho-capitalist story Right. And, that just compensation is to was wrong. When I put that book down that deals with all the meta-issues by actu- be assessed by the courts at somewhat I was no longer a socialist. I knew that my ally dealing with them, as opposed to above fair market value for the good. It socialism had been naive, that there were defining them away. There’s the basic has to be assessed by the courts because a lot of things I hadn’t thought through, “Who will watch the watchers?” prob- the fact that a taking happened meant that and that I needed to reassess things. It got lem. you don’t necessarily have a market to me started thinking about all of these Next to anarcho-capitalism you have give you a price. Going back to the whole matters again from a fresh perspective. something which I’m going to label history of tort law, one could do some I went through the sequence many “nanarchy” and will be getting back to. kind of adequate job of assessing such libertarians go through, which is getting That’s sort of a non-conventional one that things perhaps. into libertarianism wholeheartedly by be- I regard as actually the most important. The reason that the government can coming a Randroid, by getting in through Next to nanarchy is minarchy. There only use force to solve externality prob- Objectivism. So I read all of Rand’s nov- are an infinite number of gradations of lems is, if the value of what it has to give els, I inhaled them, I loved them. This was minarchy. Nozick has done a very good in compensation is greater than the value the Truth, the Beauty, the Light — it was job of defining all the different gradations of what it took, then it can only proceed if such an incredible experience that I did there4, but basically, a minarchy is a gov- the net effect of using the force is a net become an obsessive, obnoxious Randroid ernment that uses force both to preserve creation of wealth, so that there’s a sur-

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 24 plus of value to be returned to the people whose property was taken. The particular externality problem which David Definitions of Terms Friedman acknowledges as the hardest problem for libertarians, in Machinery of Lotus Marketplace — A product proposed by Lotus Development Freedom, is national defense, which is eas- Corporation in 1990. Lotus Marketplace would have been a CD-ROM ily solved under Epstein’s takings system, database with demographic information about millions of individuals and as follows: The compensation itself doesn’t households, including estimated income. There was vocal opposition to have to be in money, so, in the case of national defense, there is a takings on the the product from consumer and privacy advocacy groups like the Com- tax dollars, and there is compensation in puter Professionals for Social Responsibility, and Lotus discontinued the national defense, with the right of anyone product without ever releasing it commercially. to challenge in court whether the value of Program proving — Techniques that allow one to prove that a program the national defense that they got— will operate as advertised, without actually executing the program. Was worth what was taken from them. Program proving is complicated by the halting problem, the proof that Exactly. it is possible to construct programs for which it cannot be determined in advance whether or not they will ever finish executing. And there’s one more. Util — A notional unit for measuring the usefulness, or utility, of a Right. The fifth one is something that is particular outcome; employed in economics and game theory. called “libertarian socialism.” It’s pro- Zero-knowledge proofs — Cryptographic techniques that allow the posed by David Miller — by the way, not the David Miller who’s a friend of Phil members of a group to, for example, present conclusive proof that one of Salin’s; it’s a different David Miller — in them has taken a particular action, without it being possible to prove which an article in Critical Review, in the special of them took the action. The canonical application of zero-knowledge issue they had on The Fatal Conceit.6 The proofs is the dining cryptographers problem, in which three notional article was written in response to Hayek. cryptographers wish to demonstrate that one of them has paid for their The article really was, to me, an explica- dinner, without revealing which of the three it was. Zero-knowledge proofs tion of libertarian socialism. David Miller buys, and has really have been generalized to provide services like anonymous remailers and internalized, all of the Austrian arguments, “DC nets” for electronic mail,which can generate e-mail messages that all of the libertarian arguments, all of the cannot be traced to their author. free-market economist arguments about the ineffectiveness of centralized plan- ning, about the value of spontaneous or- der, and about the ability of an uncon- I think, by the way, that that libertar- so the enforcers are operating in a biologi- strained market to produce more wealth ian socialism is something that libertar- cal framework, not a market framework, than any centralized interference with that ians should do more to promote, whether in which force is possible, and they need market — that is, the inability of a central- they believe in it or not, because it’s a to operate in that framework in order to ized interference to increase the market’s wonderful step in an argument. It’s also create a setting in which people are oper- wealth-creating capacity. However, the a good system compared to all the sys- ating as if force was not possible. part of the Austrian story he doesn’t buy tems we have in the world right now. It’s David Friedman especially does, I is Hayek’s demolishing of “social-justice.” a worthwhile thing to move to, and the think, a fairly brilliant job of trying to The system he proposes is basically abso- reason it’s so worthwhile to promote, is wrap the whole thing into a circle in a way lute free-market minarchy, plus negative that in terms of the stated goals of the left- that’s completely self-consistent, of try- income-tax transfer payments. There’s liberals, the most important stated goals ing to turn market forces in on the users of exactly this one program. are the goals which you can’t easily de- force, but the paradox is that it’s only by He also, by the way, buys all of the molish by argumentation. All the kinds the proper activities of those users of force libertarian criticism of how welfare bu- of elitist intervention in people’s lives, I that there is a market framework to turn reaucracies and food stamps and all of think are easy targets, comparatively, but back on them. It may be the case that these interventions in poor people’s lives in terms of what those folks really care anarcho-capitalism is much better at deal- are demeaning and destructive of the lives about, this really gives it to them, and lets ing with this paradox than any central- of poor people, and that you need to get us really get what we care about, as well. ized system, but it’s still not very good. the hands of these bureaucrats out of the Really, it’s a brilliant compromise. In the film The Day The Earth Stood Still 7 — lives of those people. However, he doesn’t Whether you think of it as a compromise, buy the arguments against the transfer or if you, like David Miller, think that it’s I see where you’re going — payments, his basic argument for the trans- the best solution, at least there’s a brilliant — it was presented to the Earth-folk, that fer payments being that a dollar is worth compromise that deserves to be promoted. the aliens, the people who lived in the rest more to a poor person than to a rich of the solar system, were operating under person. So, therefore, in a sort of “greatest You wanted to return to nanarchy. a system of very loose non-aggression good to greatest number,” or maximizing The basic problem with the libertarian rules that operate only between planets, net total utils, that a dollar is worth more anarchy/minarchy debate is that both that were enforced by a “race of robots” — utils to a poor person than to a rich per- sides are trying to solve a problem that’s a strange choice of term, but that’s what son, and therefore if you have this net incredibly difficult to solve, which is the they said. The result was that the alien transfer of wealth from rich to poor, you’ve old “Who will watch the watchers?” prob- who came to earth was clearly not threat- increased the overall good of society. lem. Free markets are a wonderful mecha- ening the Earthfolk himself, because he There’s that one way in which poor people nism of evolutionary interaction within a had no choice in whether the robots would get additional money. They’re free to framework of rules of lack of coercion. smash the Earth for engaging in aggres- spend that money on whatever the hell However, the enforcement of those rules sion. He was simply informing them so they want, and they get no targeted help. itself relies on the ability to use coercion… that they would know before they stepped

25 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 into it that there was this additional con- Blue goo. mander — he was the guy in the bunker of straint that simply was there, it was en- Blue goo. By the way, the historical deriva- a missile silo that you see portrayed at the forced by the robots. Neither the Earthfolk tion of blue goo: Drexler and I were beginning of War Games9, with his finger nor the aliens could do anything about it, discussing the gray goo problem, and on the button. and it was as if another law of physics had talking about nanarchy as a possible way been added to the Universe. There was out. Roger Gregory, who was as aghast as The other fellow sits over in the next chair, and simply this additional constraint, which the rest of us at the idea of nanarchy, and they’ve got the keys. If one of them goes was not corruptible, not subject to new we were all fairly aghast at it — I’m for it, berserk, the other’s supposed to shoot him. legislation, not subject to amendment, not because I think all the other alternatives Exactly. I don’t know how accurate that subject to any kind of corruption, not are worse, not that I think there’s any- was; you can ask [him], he’ll tell you. That subject to overthrow — it was as if sud- thing particularly good about this one — was his position for a while. So he actu- denly you found yourself living in a Uni- ally knows a lot about the procedure by verse where the laws of physics had an Sort of like what Churchill said about democ- which a launch decision is made, reported, additional constraint added. racy.8 and carried out, and what the interlocks are along the way. It turns out they’ve gamed this thing out to see what it would Some initial wave from human civilization, from take to do a Dr. Strangelove10 — to have an unauthorized launch. The government human technology, is going to explode out into did a hell of a lot of engineering of that particular system of people and machines the universe, expanding out into the universe at and authorization; they did an incredible close to the speed of light. And Drexler has amount of engineering and gaming of the system. Nevertheless, under the best sys- pointed out that the nature of that wave, of tem they designed — I won’t say the best they could do, but the best they did do — what is on the frontier of that wave, will deter- it was still the case that three particular mine the long-term nature of the universe, and people, none of whom were the Presi- dent, Vice-President, or Speaker of the will determine what universe it is that every- House, or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs thing that follows that wave has to work with. of Staff — none of whom was in any of those privileged positions, just three par- ticular people involved in the carrying- through of the launch authorization or The system that was presented in The Exactly. Roger Gregory expressed his the reporting of it — had they formed a Day The Earth Stood Still is a literal revulsion at nanarchy very elegantly when conspiracy, could have successfully implementation of the rhetorical ideal of he termed it “bluegoo,” and I think per- caused a false launch. And, what they classical liberalism. These robots were haps stated, “I prefer graygoo.” I’m not depended on — which I think was a wise executing a program where the program sure about that last clause; you can check decision, something we can reliably de- embodied the laws. This was in fact the it out with Roger. [I asked Roger about this pend on — is, you pick these people from first time that it’s ever been presented, as at the First General Conference on large pools of candidates that generally far as I know, in any work of fiction or in Nanotechnology in November, 1992, and he don’t know each other. By picking them any other work — a presentation of “a said this sounds like something he would out of large pools it’s very hard to have government of laws and not men.” say.— dk] foreknowledge of who’s going to be Back to the issue of corruptibility and picked, so it’s very hard to have pre- Applications of nanotechnology are left to the trusting the creators of the system. The arranged a conspiracy. reader as an exercise? kind of thing that we will need to engineer Essentially. will be extraordinarily difficult to begin And you rotate them rapidly so they’re always with: a mutually-constraining develop- working with different people. I haven’t seen The Day The Earth Stood Still. mental process for designing a secure Actually, I don’t know if they do that. I’d like to ask you, is there any indication in mechanism and a secure software system And, they’re careful to make sure that the the film how the creators of the robots were to run on that mechanism, such that, by particular people they’ve picked have not removed from control? virtue of the nature of the social process been in contact. And then, once they’re The creators of the robots were not re- by which it was created, and the way in picked, they’re very careful not to let them moved from control. It was clearly the which the pieces of that social process be in unmonitored contact. And it’s in- case, as I would advocate for our near were mutually constraining, we can be credibly hard to form a conspiracy, or to future, that the creators of the robots cre- confident that the system as a whole does have a conspiracy pre-arranged, under ated them to be autonomous, and the not have any trapdoors in it. those constraints. creators purposely denied themselves the Let’s say you’ve got N groups coop- ability to control the robots, because had erating. If you’ve arranged the social Something else which that reminds me of is the they retained that ability, the system of process such that to successfully insert a existence of things like zero-knowledge proofs robots would have been corruptible. trapdoor would require a coordinated and digital cash, where, presumably, even if conspiracy among at least one half of all of the other participants are conspiring, Essentially, the builders of the robots them- those N groups, then by going through you can’t reconstruct the connection between selves needed to be somewhat incorruptible in the appropriate procedure for picking a given person and a given digital pseudonym. order to not put backdoors and trapdoors and those N groups, and keeping them out of So I would assume it would be possible to so forth into the coding that drives the robots. unmonitored communication with each create a software-engineering environment That was certainly not covered in the other, you can be confident that there are where every piece of code, in a sense, goes movie. The issue of us building a dis- no large conspiracies. through a zero-knowledge proof so that even persed system of communicating nano- As precedent for that, [an acquain- if N-1 conspirators are trying to put in a Gorts — tance of ours] was once a missile com- trapdoor, the Nth person is still able to check

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 26 12

and prevent a conspiracy of that type. 12

100 Utils 12 100

That’s exactly the kind of thing to look for, 12 to try to engineer this process so that it can 12 12 12 12 succeed. Finally, it’s that progress on 12 = Value (in utils) 12 12 12 zero-knowledge proofs, and similar kinds 12 12 of cryptographic technologies, as well as = Expected value (value * probability) 12 12 the progress on program proving — which 12 12 is easy to disparage but it’s actually been 12

12 good progress — those are the things that 12

12 give me hope that we could actually carry 12

12 this thing out, and have, not absolute 12

12 confidence in the result, but sufficiently 12

12 high confidence in the result that, given 12

12 that we’re in this real-time situation and 12

123 12

to not turn the system on has all sorts of 123 12 other dangers, this system wins if we have 5 123 12 5 123 12 sufficient confidence that it’s clearly less 123 12 123 12 dangerous to turn it on than not to turn it 123 123 12 123 123 12 on. It doesn’t have to be 100%. 123 123 12 1 123 123 12 1

This brings us around to —what’s the name of Owning ~0% of Owning 10^-10 Owning Entire the holiday involved in the Reverse Polish the Universe of the Universe Universe Moon Treaty? Inheritance Day11. The false dichotomy In the absence of a coordinated property according to the Reverse Polish that people keep raising is they imagine nanarchy development effort, if you go interpretation of Inheritance Day, the Re- that if we don’t do something like with the homestead model, and in the verse Polish Moon Treaty, and an en- nanarchy, that somehow it’ll be this nice presence of the possibility soon of self- forcement of non-aggression between the spontaneous-order free-for-all of people replicating, space-faring machines that are property whose title is recognized ac- dispersing in all sorts of different direc- able to arrange for their own military cording to the Reverse Polish treaty. Be- tions, and “Let a million flowers bloom,” defense and able to use the resources that yond that, then one would like to say, and a diversity happening in the coloniza- they’re acquiring by spreading to engage “Anything goes.” Beyond that, the only tion of the universe as different people go in that defense, what results is a terrible rules that are enforced are the laws of indifferent directions, and a continuation winner-take-all race, where “take all” in physics. Anything further, people can of diversity on into the future. If I be- this case is “take the entire Universe.” arrange to have enforced within their own lieved that could happen without the You’ve got this race where whoever gets property, since it’s theirs, but they can’t proper seed having been arranged through there first takes the entire Universe, and inflict those conditions by force on some- a difficult coordinated social process ahead the rest of us are left with essentially one else’s property, since that violates the of time, I would think that’s clearly the nothing. Alternatively, if no one power framework. Have Extropians been ad- way to go, because I hate central plan- gets out there first in a defensible way, equately introduced to the Reverse Polish ning, and what I’m advocating here is you might end up with several powers Moon Treaty? central planning, and central authority — getting out there first and spreading in somewhat different directions — I don’t think so. Of a non-human agency. The person to really talk to about this is Of a non-human agency, creating an ad- That’s still a very extreme oligarchy. Jim Bennett. ditional constraint which will forever be It’s a very extreme oligarchy, and it’s also imposed on everybody. That’s pretty not necessarily stable because of the logic I was there the night that you were talking goddamn offensive. So, the question is, of military power in a system where who- about it with him and you drew your utility what else can be bad enough to think that ever expands outward fastest or expands curve. that alternative is the best chance we’ve in the direction of more available mass- I drew the utility curve by asking the got? energy most effectively, gets to have more people in the room, including you, “Let’s Ralph Merkle has a nice image for mass-energy at his disposal to beat on the take the following two extreme points.” this issue, which is that some initial wave other guys. There’s a positive feedback in One is, I don’t get any of the universe from human civilization, from human there that probably still ends up with one beyond a little bit of the Earth and the technology, is going to explode out into winner taking all. Solar System, which is really essentially the universe, expanding out into the uni- So, what we can choose to do instead, nothing of the Universe. That might be verse at close to the speed of light12. And very carefully, with incredible dangers, is vast wealth compared to what anybody Drexler has pointed out that the nature of to have the first wave that explodes out has right now, if you have nanotechnology that wave, of what is on the frontier of that there into the universe be the minimum with which to deal with those resources, wave, will determine the long-term na- framework of enforced rules such that, but essentially I get nothing of the Uni- ture of the universe, and will determine within that framework of enforced rules, verse. Let’s call that one util. what universe it is that everything that that kind of military instability cannot At the other extreme, I get the entire follows that wave has to work with. And happen. Universe as my own personal playground we have no choice about whether that Then there’s the open question — — I own the Universe, everybody recog- initial wave happens, and whether it hap- and it’s important to emphasize that the nizes my title, or I’m able to militarily pens soon, other than self-destruction. question is open — of what is a decent and defend it, but somehow, in an actual real We can all kill ourselves, destroy civiliza- minimal framework of enforced rules that sense, it’s all mine, and I can have my will tion and prevent the wave, but then we’re is sufficient to give us more confidence over the entire Universe. Let’s call that no better off; probably the one scenario in with those rules than without, that we 100 utils. which we’re worse off. The only choice will have a universe of ongoing diversity? Now, how many utils would each of we’ve got is what the wave will be. My proposed set of rules is a division of you assign to getting one ten-billionth of

27 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 the universe? Typical answers are, 5%, way that is more effective than anything source of power over the rest of human- 10%, 50% even. Let’s take the lowest that else that I know of that is politically real- ity. The understanding of what would be I’ve heard, which is like 5%. istic, to a net redistribution of current the implementation protocol, back then, wealth from richer to poorer, without any was incredibly awful. The odds of being the one person to get every- coercion, in a completely voluntary, non- Now that the inability of central plan- thing — offensive way. It lets people who are ning to function is universally acknowl- Right. The odds of being the one person miserably poor now, benefit now, before edged — to get everything is, let’s say, one in a moving out into the universe, from the billion, because you’re enough of an elit- wealth that rich people have now. It’s the Except over in Berkeley. ist to say you’re above average —you’re only non-coercive redistribution scheme Except in Berkeley. The proposal is that in the top billion. Let’s do an expected- that I’ve ever heard of that can work, and the U.S. in fact should now be encouraged value calculation. If we go with the home- the way it works is simply by giving to ratify the Moon Treaty, and Jim is steading model, your expected value is everyone a title to all of these resources drafting an implementation protocol that essentially one plus epsilon. You’re tak- whose future value has some net present basically says, “In these days of the uni- ing the 100 utils and multiplying it by the value, and allowing them to trade. Some- versally-acknowledged failure of central probability that you will be the one who body who’s on the edge of starvation planning, it’s clear how to correctly inter- got to homestead the universe. Contrast naturally has a very short time horizon. pret the common-heritage clause, which that with the Inheritance Day model, in is, if it’s the common heritage of all man- which you have basically a certainty of So they’re going to trade Some of their distant kind, give everyone their piece.” It’s ours, getting one ten-billionth of the value of real estate to increase the probability that right? the universe, that gets you five utils. they will survive to reach it, by trading it to Where the Polish part comes in is, I think it’s clear that now, in terms of someone who’s presently richer. what does it mean to give everyone their choosing which of these two regimes of Right, who’s presently richer and can piece? What does it mean to take the assignment of property right in the cur- therefore afford to have a longer-term whole Universe and divide it equally? rently unowned Universe, which one is in time horizon. Therefore, speculators in Because Poland had very much the same the best interest of each of us? I think that the future value of these resources will problem, which is, they had all of these it’s clearly the Inheritance Day model. actually be paying people who are cur- businesses, all of these large factories, The Inheritance Day model says: the rently miserably poor money now — to which were all run “in the name of the whole Universe is currently unowned; someone who’s currently starving in So- people.” They were in fact run by a small value is value to people; it’s important not malia, that could very well save their life. elitist bureaucracy who ran it for their to do a continual re-allocation, because And I think that it’s very interesting to own aggrandizement, but once that bu- that only creates a tragedy-of-the-com- point out that it’s a completely free-mar- reaucracy was out of power, there was mons problem which leads to universal ket solution that dumps money into relief now a government interested in freedom starvation. It’d be a tragedy to take this for starving people, in a way that actually and free markets, but faced with all this incredible amount of wealth which could helps them out, and that doesn’t create state property and trying to figure out make all of us incredibly wealthy, and any conflict between the rich and poor. So what to do with it. Well… it was all run in instead make all of us incredibly poor by it really gives all sides of the political the name of the people, let’s give it to the engaging in a system of continual redistri- debate what they want. people. bution… which is, by the way, the reason How do you give it to the people? that, even though libertarian socialism is You might say a little bit more about the Milton Friedman, I believe, had a pro- great in the short term, it would still be present Moon Treaty, and why the Inheritance posal. It was the right conceptual model, fatal applied to the Universe. So, if we go Day model is called the Reverse Polish Moon but was impractical in practice, which is, around advocating libertarian socialism, Treaty. make these companies publicly-traded we need to be clear — The Moon Treaty states that the moon and companies, with stock in them, then give all extraterrestrial resources shall be con- every member of the population an equal That it has a time limit. sidered to be the common heritage of share of stock in each of the companies, It has a time limit, or it has a resource mankind, but the treaty itself doesn’t then allow them to trade on an open stock limit. Inheritance Day says, only those specify an implementation protocol. The market. It’s the perfect model — it suc- resources covered by the Moon Treaty, reason that the L5 organization, and all ceeds at dividing things equally without which starts at somewhere between the freedom-loving organizations that take having to make any judgments ahead of Earth and the Moon’s orbit, and proceeds the future seriously, either fought or time as to what the relative valuations of outward from the Moon. You could have should have fought the Moon Treaty when different things are; and, by allowing trade a libertarian-socialist system for redistrib- it first came up, is that it was before the fall from there, it allows people to determine uting Earth wealth, then a one-time equal of Communism, in a situation where a lot the values and to individually own cer- distribution of wealth-in-the-rest-of-the- of the countries voting in the U.N. thought tain things by buying it up from every- Universe, never to be re-distributed. I central planning was the natural way to body else. suspect that, when it’s clear how much do things, and in which the language of The reason it’s impractical is that the wealth we’re talking about giving to ev- the Moon Treaty was modeled on the Law transaction costs are too high, because, erybody now, that any motivation of com- of the Sea Treaty. let’s say, just to pick numbers out of the passion people have will clearly not be an The Law of the Sea Treaty was a air, you have 10,000 companies, you have issue for arguing for continual redistribu- terrible precedent for a central-planning a population of a million, then each mem- tion. way of allocating rights and resources, in ber of the population would have a one- fact a non-property right. “The common millionth share in each of 10,000 compa- “But you’ve got a billion star systems and I heritage of all mankind” meant that no nies. So each individual stock certificate is only have a million.” It would be difficult to one could own any property out there, worth so little that you end up not keep- make plea like that credibly in such a situa- which meant that really it would be owned ing track of it, not looking for trading tion. by the bureaucracy that got to say what opportunities, and not looking for oppor- One very interesting additional point would be done with it — the common tunities to buy from someone else because about Inheritance Day: Inheritance Day, heritage of a small elitist U.N. bureau- what you’re buying from them is so much once it is carried out, actually leads, in a cracy which got to use it as a permanent less than the effort of finding them and

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 28 convincing them that they should sell it to you. At the conclusion of The Day the Earth Stood Still, the alien, Klaatu (played by So what they did instead is some- Michael Rennie), having been murdered by the American army, then rescued and thing which I think is quite brilliant— it’s restored to life by the robot policeman Gort, delivers this speech to a gathering of the first practical alternative to “I cut, you scientists from every Earth nation: choose,” and it’s something that game theorists should really take seriously be- I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The cause it solves the “I cut, you choose” Universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any model for a large multi-person game, group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security whereas the standard multi-person gen- eralization of “I cut, you choose” is an N- for all, or no one is secure. This does not mean giving up any freedom, squared algorithm. except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this, when What they did was to create a set of they made laws to govern themselves, and hired policemen to enforce mutual funds. Once again, these are not them. We of the other planets have long accepted this principle. We the real numbers, let’s say they created ten have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets, and for mutual funds. Each of the mutual funds the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher has an equal share in each of the 10,000 companies, and then each member of the authority is of course the police force that supports it. For our population has an equal share in each of policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the the ten mutual funds. Now, every indi- planets, in spaceships like this one, and preserve the peace. In matters vidual bit of ownership is itself individu- of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power ally sufficiently valuable to make a mar- cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically ket at it, and after t0, everything’s tradable on the open market — against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, The managers of the mutual funds can trade in secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war… shares of the companies, and the individual free to pursue more profitable enterprises. We do not pretend to have members of the population can trade in shares achieved perfection… but we do have a system, and it works. I came of the mutual funds. here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your But in addition, individuals can trade in the shares of companies, the companies own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of can trade in the shares of the mutual funds yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: — join us, and live in peace, or pursue your present course, and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests The mutual funds can buy shares of each with you. other. Right. So the whole thing’s on the open market, no constraints. Now, unfortunate- ly, Poland did not succeed at implement- by signing on to the Moon Treaty, as of the kernel of your operating system. ing this scheme in this neutral way be- written, with this attached implementa- What you’d like is that the kernel of that cause it got bogged down in a political tion protocol — that’s the proposed sys- nanarchy system (which we’ve spread process of special interests. But it was the tem of property rights for a future into the universe in an irrevocable way) is right model and it’s exactly the same prob- nanarchic system to either directly im- just sufficient that we can convince our- lem: Poland faced the common heritage pose or, if we can get away with some- selves that systems layered on top of it to problem. Those companies were the com- thing more minimal(which would be enforce complex systems of property mon heritage of the Polish population; good, because something that ambitious rights are themselves things that we can they were declared to be so by the Com- has a lot to it), to impose a more minimal experiment with and change and modify munists. The successor government de- set of constraints, on top of which we can and amend, as we learn more and as we cided to actually implement what the bootstrap a system of enforcement mecha- evolve, and that the underlying nanarchic Communists had been saying, through a nisms that are capable of enforcing such a framework is just sufficient to let that real system that actually implemented system of property rights, but in which process of amending that system of en- common heritage through private prop- that system that’s layered on top is not an forced property rights be one which is not erty, and succeeded in coming up with a irrevocable system. destabilized by runaway military repli- way to do so. I think that there’s a lot of This is very much like operating sys- cators. details to be worked out, because the tem design. The kernel of the operating By the way, one enormous piece of Universe is not publicly-traded compa- system is something that you can’t escape credit that I’m amazed that I haven’t been nies, but I think that that’s the first viable from. It sets the foundational rules. There’s saying repeatedly over and over again in structure I’ve heard for Inheritance Day. a methodology in software engineering this is Eric Drexler. A lot of these ideas, It deals with the fact that the Universe called “mechanism/policy separation,” perhaps most of these ideas, about in different directions has very different where you want to embody in the irrevo- nanotechnology and military stability in value, so you can’t do a spatial division. cable kernel as few policies about how to the future come from conversations with You largely don’t know what’s out there do things as possible…basically, just the him, as part of the conversational process. yet, so you can’t do a division based on enabling mechanisms that allow all of I would say I did more of the bouncing having mapped things out. And you those policies to be built in a diverse way and he did more of the thinking for a lot of don’t have a market in it yet, so you can’t by different users of the operating system this. In all of the years in which Drexler use any notion of market prices to use that to serve different needs, and enabling and I have collaborated and engaged in as your basis for division. You need this experimentation. intense conversations out of which won- in order to create that system. There’s also a good analogy to the derful ideas came up, there’s only one Now, taking it back to nanarchy. The essence of constitutional systems. An incident where we each thought we were system of property rights that we legislate “unamendable constitution” is really sort the proper author of the idea and the other

29 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 one was mistaken. Sometimes, when we server object that other objects make re- ered that there was an Extropian mailing think we’re mistaken, it’s when we each quests of and that itself uses computa- list— I discovered the mailing list before the think the other one’s the proper author, tional resources writes subcontracts out magazine. That there were other people out not himself. to other objects. It’s a system of property there — “Yeah, they have all these same ideas, I’d like to make another point here: rights governing the interaction of all these and they consider them mutually consistent — the issue of “What is property rights? computational objects. Even though none ’ What is aggression and coercion?” so that of them are sentient, it’s clearly the case The XanAMIX community, the Extropian we can have something for this frame- that the system as a whole does much group, and the Assembler Multitude, I work to be enforcing. The great problem better by giving to each of these non- consider to be really all one community; there is, humankind has been arguing sentient objects full “libertarian” rights, it’s just that different names are for differ- political philosophy with each other for because that’s a better framework of rules ent foci of the community. We need to get many many centuries, and we’re a long for governing their interactions than any more integration between the Agorics folk way from universal global consensus. other. at George Mason University and And, we’re also about to step into a world Let’s examine the issue you brought Extropianism. Extropianism is much more in which, by virtue of these problems of up. You create an AI, and it goes out and technologically literate and much more identity, the discreteness of “moral kills somebody; are you responsible? technologically informed than they are. agency” goes away. “Who is a moral Now, the interesting thing is, under Obviously, going the other way, they’re agent?” becomes problematic. nanarchy, and under agoric open sys- much more economically inclined than tems, that issue doesn’t come up, and the the Extropians are; the non-obvious but If I build a fully sapient AI that then goes out reason it doesn’t come up is the other much more important thing is they’re and murders someone, am I responsible? difference between this and governmen- much more epistemologically well-in- Right. The second issue is, “What is a tal systems, which is that current govern- formed than the Extropians are. It seems good reconstruction of political philoso- mental systems of rights enforcement to me that epistemological issues are the phy in a world of ambiguous moral don’t actually enforce rights, they punish great missing piece in Extropian philoso- agency?” This question is fascinating to violators of rights. The idea with both phy right now. me, and is much of the reason why I nanarchy and agoric open systems is that pursued the work that Eric Drexler and I we’ve added this additional constraint: I think Max More would be surprised to hear did on agoric open systems. It’s impossible for you or an agent you you say that, and I know that he would want to Now, libertarians have often said that create to murder that person. When the launch into a long and involved conversation the only things which should be consid- coercion is attempted, it is prevented. That on that topic. ered moral agents, and therefore the only would be the case in a nanarchy — the Very, very late at the Too Many Erics things which should be covered by non- thing that is monitoring for certain inter- party, I actually did say this to Max More, aggression rules, are things which are boundary activities that may be coercive, and he wrote down my recommendation, sentient. That gets you into the infinite stops any that fall within the possibility of which I will repeat here. I have certainly morass of “What the hell is ‘sentient’?” coercion. They just don’t succeed in hap- not read every book on epistemology, but And it’s unresolvable: it’s an observer pening. There’s also no issue of whom to in my opinion, the very best book on episte- question, not an intrinsic question of the punish — what does execution mean to mology, for what that means from some- thing that you’re labeling. someone with backup copies? body who hasn’t read all of them is, The Agoric open systems are a system of And, in agoric open systems, you can Retreat to Commitment13, by Bill Bartley. rules that are extraordinarily similar to no more steal from someone than you or My one-paragraph summary of the his- the system of rules that libertarians of all I could go faster than the speed of light. tory of epistemology is: five stripes have been proposing: it’s a You just don’t have the language to ex- Hume said, “We can’t really know system of rules extraordinarily similar to press coercion; you don’t have the tools anything,” but nobody believed him, in- that, as the operating rules for a computer available in which you could create a cluding Hume. Then Popper came along system — an operating system or a pro- concept of coercion. So, we can talk about and said, “Hume was right, but here’s gramming-language system. Both pro- the distinction between pre-enforcement what you can do instead.” And then gramming languages and operating sys- and post-enforcement. Post-enforcement Bartley came along and had one hell of a tems are foundational computational sys- depends on punishment creating an in- debugging session. tems on top of which you have a lot of centive to not commit a crime, and that Bartley’s evolutionary epistemology computational entities interacting with gets trashed by post-Singularity confu- is essentially Popper’s work debugged, each other, and different operating sys- sions of identity, so what we need to do is and it’s the only debugged epistemology tem designs and different language de- transfer to a system of pre-enforcement. that I’ve ever encountered. signs establish different frameworks for A lot of these ideas about the strategics the interaction of agents. Another way to of the long-term future of the Universe are While the tape was off just now, you said you think of it is that, every operating system actually ideas that are many years old; I find it weird that you find yourself so often and every programming language is es- feel like I have had very few new ideas going back to a scene from a movie as an sentially a different set of laws of physics, with respect to that in the last few years. illustration for discussions about post-Singu- in which the agents are interacting. The thing that’s really changed is that larity life. That reminded me of something The thing that’s fascinating to me is now there’s a community to say these that Jim Bennett said the other night at the that we did not need to impose any ‘sen- ideas to. Back when these ideas were Assembler Multitude. The topic for discus- tient’ constraints. In fact the issues brought being hatched, there was no such commu- sion was privacy and technology, and he used up by the whole process of thinking about nity. And I want to express my deep the example of the Sicilian organized crime agoric systems made clear that you want gratitude to the whole phenomenon of families in the United States and the tongs in to assign rights to lots of little things that Extropianism for creating a community China, who would develop these idiomatic are clearly very far from sentient. A little of people that can share and bounce languages that were very rich in allusions to mathematical server, a sort of equation- around ideas like this. tales and stories that were not familiar to the solver object in your computer system, is outside, so that they could use that as a something you want the agoric frame- I think you’ve put your finger on something communication code, in order to conceal mean- work to treat as having full property rights. that everybody in the Extropian community ing from outsiders while communicating with Similarly, any other little computational feels; I felt the same way when I first discov- insiders. So there’s an Extropian core of

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 30 common movies and stories, and I can refer to sense gossip will travel faster and be more out of the bag, once it’s public, it becomes “The Ungoverned” and you automatically persistent. Spontaneous order admirers, much more visibly and persistently pub- have an indication of what topics that might particularly libertarians and Extropians, lic. I think that it’s very important to lead to. should understand, first of all, that gossip recognize that what we have in this tran- Yes, and even though you haven’t actu- is speech that should be protected by free sition is a system that’s much more equi- ally seen “The Day The Earth Stood Still”, speech — what Lotus was doing was in table with respect to information because, nevertheless my reference to it had a lot of some sense engaging in a very large-scale previously, information that got out of content for you. piece of gossip — and spontaneous order the bag was accessible to elites and not admirers should appreciate and under- accessible in general. Other references to it in our environment are stand the positive values of gossip. This is why the Lotus Marketplace rich enough that I got the gist of it. In some sense I’m being provocative decision should be incredibly offensiveto Another big issue about libertarianism and hurting my cause by using the word lovers of freedom. It’s not that the infor- and technology in the future, is that liber- gossip for this because it’s a word that has mation on that CD-ROM is otherwise in- tarians are of confused and contradictory negative connotations, but in fact a lot of accessible; it is simply otherwise acces- minds about the issue of privacy, and the dynamics by which people in small sible only to elites. It’s not a question of what a right to privacy is. towns were constrained to be decent to people’s privacy being violated, it’s a ques- each other, and a dynamic which, to a tion of accessibility to information that is That became apparent at the Assembler Mul- significant extent, has been breaking down claimed to already be used to “violate titude session that I was describing. We went in large cities where so many interactions people’s privacy” — from “Gee, it would be nice if we could keep an are anonymous and untraceable, is the eye on all the people in high places,” to “Gee, fact that actions have consequences, in It would be more equitable to have it more it would be nice if no one could keep an eye on that they would be reported back and widely distributed, to at least give the non- anyone.” forth through the gossip mill — people elites the same access to the same information. People who thought they were defending realized the cost of a negative reputation, Right. By the way, I have no idea whether the cause of freedom thought they scored as well as value of a positive reputation, it’s even conceivable that you could work a big victory in preventing Lotus Market- through the mechanism of people feeling any of this into a single article. place from being distributed, and I think free to talk to each other about other people. that they’re rather badly mistaken. I think With larger-scale societies, verbal What I’m envisioning now is a series of these that something that I have to say about communication between people just interviews… and I’d like to thank you for you to a third person is not your informa- doesn’t have the spreading power to keep getting things off to a great start. tion, it’s my information. It’s something the dynamic of that reputation system I pride myself on being one of the few that I know; it’s in my head, it happens to intact. However, computer-based media people — Max More and Eric Drexler also be about you but it’s my information that violate people’s intuitions about pri- certainly included — to take seriously about you, and I am not violating your vacy are simply the old small-town repu- both hard issues of philosophy and a privacy by speaking that information to tation mechanisms, scaled-up by technol- post-Singularity future, to really take both somebody else, unless I have an agree- ogy to a scale that can deal with the cur- seriously, and I think that that, rather than ment with you not to do so — unless rent scale of society that the old gossip any skill at philosophizing, is really what’s either I heard that information in a way mechanisms can no longer deal with. responsible for my being able to make that contractually constrained me from interesting progress in the philosophy for revealing it further, or I acquired the in- I can see how through something like Netnews, a post-Singularity world. formation itself through illegitimate means I can have an opinion about the trustworthiness such as by breaking into your house. or the judgment of someone on the opposite Notes coast whom I’ve never met, based on the If I am, let’s say, witness to a transac- 1Nelson, Ted. Literary Machines, Edition 87.1. evaluation of their behaviors, particularly tion that took place — I watched you Published by the author. verbal behaviors they’ve emitted over the net, engage in a transaction with a shopkeeper, 2Heinlein, Robert. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. and I saw you buy that stick of bubble by other people. New York: Berkeley, 1966. gum for five cents. I saw you do it, you By the way, I should point out that much 3Friedman, David. The Machinery of Freedom, 2d and the shopkeeper didn’t do what you of the credit for this thinking comes from Edition. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1989. may have needed to do to prevent me Gayle Pergamit, via conversations I had 4Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and . New from being able to see it. The fact that the with Phil Salin. York: Basic Books, 1974. transaction occurred is my information, I think that due to the public online 5Epstein, Richard A. Takings. Cambridge, Mass.: and I don’t violate anyone’s rights by media, combined with cryptographic tech- Harvard University Press, 1985. reporting it further. nology, we’re going to find that informa- 6The bibliographic citation for this article is not Credit reporting agencies, and Lotus tion which is not out of the bag is able to available. Marketplace, are essentially a large-scale be kept in the bag; people are able to keep 7The Day the Earth Stood Still. Twentieth-Cen- form of that kind of reporting of informa- certain information private, much more tury Fox, 1951. Available on CBS-Fox Video. tion that no one was contractually obli- effectively than they ever have in the past, 8“Democracy is the worst form of government gated not to report. and private from eyes that are prying with — except for all the others.” millions of dollars worth of resources 9War Games. United Artists, 1983. Available on It’s my understanding that a large part of behind the prying effort — CBS-Fox Video. Lotus Marketplace was census information, 10Doctor Strangelove: Or, How I Stopped Worrying in the sense that it broke down average in- And acres of computing power. and Learned to Love the Bomb. Hawk Films, 1963. comes by nine-digit ZIP code, to the extent Right. And we’ve never been able before 11Inheritance Day was proposed by Eric Drexler that you would know that the average income to be securely private against those re- in Engines of Creation (New York: Doubleday, on the block where So-and-so lives is X dol- sources when they’re concentrated on 1986). lars. anybody; cryptography gives us that. So, 12Also in Engines of Creation, Drexler presents an One of the things that’s going to happen in some sense, things that successfully get evolutionary argument explaining why near- with large-scale online databases and defended in their privacy are really de- lightspeed expansion is almost inevitable. online media where people post things fended much better than they have been 13Bartley, William W., III. The Retreat to Commit- that other people can read, is that in some in the past, but on the other hand, once it’s ment. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984.

31 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 Extropy Institute

While Extropy celebrates the commencement of its The Extropian cultural and intellectual network has sixth year (see facing page for information), Extropy grown and deepened. Parties spring up frequently, Institute completed its first in May. The year was incred- often when an Extropian is visiting from afar. The Bay ibly busy, challenging, and encouraging. As an Extropy Area Extropians now gather weekly for lunch and intel- reader, you may want to hear what the journal's um- lectual stimulation. brella organization has accomplished, and what ExI's A major locus of Extropian culture is the Extropians goals are for Year Two. e-mail list, still getting stronger and more sophisticated after two years. The evolution of interaction in What Have We Done? Starting from zero in May 1992, ExI cyberspace is being pushed along by voluntary social membership has grown steadily, passing 100 in Decem- experiments on the list, and by advanced list software, ber, and 200 by the time you read this. This response, planned and implemented by Harry S. Hawk (ExI's coming despite painfully limited funds for advertising Electronic Communication's Officer), and Ray Cromwell, our existence, encourages us and sustains our efforts. aided by people like Perry Metzger (original founderof Extropy's print run, between last summer and now, the list). These and other developments are reported has ballooned from 750 to 3,200 copies. Alas, this figure regularly in ExI's newsletter, Exponent. Thanks to Editor has not been matched by a proportionate improve- Simon! D. Levy, Exponent appeared every two months. ment in finances, given minimal advertising revenue, since most copies are sold through distributors who What Will We Do in Year 2? Some of our most certain take more than half the cover price. Happily, direct goals include: (1) Double Extropy's frequency, publish- subscriptions are also growing, though more slowly. ing quarterly, while continuing to improve it, by spread- Awareness of our exist- ing the creative input wider. ence has been pumped up Improve finances by build- by increasingly frequent me- ing the direct subscriber dia attention. The widely cir- base, and attracting adver- culated, pro-tech Wired tising. (2) Publish Exponent gave Extropy a mention in more frequently (9-12 per their second issue, sparking year). (3) Spur formation of off a prolonged flurry of infor- local discussion groups, as mation requests. Factsheet well as the Nexus Network Five, a thriving review of al- (domiciles shared by ternative publications, gives Extropians with supportive Extropy especially favorable values and lifestyles). (4) Pro- reviews. A major feature in duce an ExI information the British GQ (“Meet the booklet (given to all new Extropians”) is drawing further members), explaining our media interest. As a result, ExI principles, history, activities, director Russell Whitaker has Extropy Institute and goals, plus a guide to been busy giving interviews terms and ideas common in England. Here in the U.S., among Extropians but unfa- I've appeared on ideas chat shows like Breakthroughs: miliar to most others. (5) Boost membership by informa- A Transcentury Update (hosted by futurist Nancie Clark), tion mailings to sympathetic groups. (6) Develop ExI's and Electric Coffee, plus a few documentaries. Re- Advisory Council. (7) Start gathering material for an cently, I was delighted to be flown to Amsterdam by Extropy book. (8) Hold Extro 1 conference (see p.46), organizer Luc Sala to speak at the New Edge Confer- and present Extropy Awards. (9) Build up book service. ence — a tremendously enjoyable event where I met If you share our values and goals, we urge you to numerous creative and future-oriented people. join us in the core of the Extropian community, as an Extropy Institute member. As a member you will receive For details of membership dues, see p.2, lower right box. detailed analysis in Extropy, topical news and essays in Extropy Institute Exponent, and discounts on various items, including 11860 Magnolia Avenue, Suite R conference fees. As a member, you will also be sustaining our efforts Riverside, CA 92503 to build an extropic culture. Scientific humanism and 909-688-2323 optimism were strong in the intellectual atmosphere of ExI Directors the nineteenth century. Today's prevailing grey cli- Max More, President, Editor of Extropy. [email protected] mate of gloom, credulity, and timidity is waiting to be Tom Morrow, Vice President. [email protected] dispelled. Join us in transhumanising the culture, taking Simon! D. Levy, Editor of Exponent. [email protected] charge of our lives, and creating a future fit for Tanya Jones, Treasurer. c/o [email protected] posthumans. Ralph Whelan, Secretary. c/o [email protected] Upward and Outward! David Krieger. [email protected] Max More Russell E. Whitaker. [email protected] President, Extropy Institute

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 32 Extropy 5th Birthday Party Extropaganza August 28 1993, from 2.0pm Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought — the premier food with them, so as not to overburden our host. Also bring intellectual futurist publication — will be celebrating its fifth along appropriate toys, gadgets, and a playful attitude. Mark’s birthday on Saturday August 28 1993. The first issue of Extropy house does have a hot tub, so come prepared; please note that — then a 24-page, small-format magazine with a print run some clothing will be required in the tub, so as not to shock the around 50 — was collected from the printers by editors and neighbors with the sight of our transhuman physiques! publishers Max More and Tom Morrow on Saturday September 8 1988. To avoid clashing with other major events near the end Here’s what you need to know: of the summer, we’re celebrating a few days early. Date: Saturday August 28 1993, starting 2pm. Evolving drastically throughout its five years and 11 issues, Location: 580 Burnside Bend, Boulder Creek, CA 95006 Extropy is now read by over 3,000 people and is distributed (H): (408) 338-0636 (W): (408) 437-5122 internationally. From issue #12 in January 1994, Extropy will return to its original quarterly publication schedule. The energy Mark says: and enthusiasm generated by and attracted to Extropy led to the My house in in Boulder Creek, which is on Hwy 9, which runs formation of Extropy Institute (ExI), under whose umbrella it is from Saratoga (in the San Jose area) to Santa Cruz. The closest now published, and to spinoffs such as the Extropians e-mail quasi-major town is Scott’s Valley, which is on Hwy 17, running list, and ExI’s newsletter, Exponent. All subscribers, readers, and from Oakland through San Jose to Santa Cruz. There will be interested parties are invited to join in the birthday celebration, (floor, alas) crash space for about as many as need it, and there for a day of fun and intellectual stimulation. is plenty of local hotelry for those so inclined and so financially The festivities will be opened at 2.0pm by Max More and Tom endowed. Also, there is Big Basin Redwoods State Park just a Morrow, with a comparison of the early issues and the current few miles away, for anyone who wishes to camp. What more issue. can I tell you? Long-time Extropian Mark Desilets has kindly made avail- Questions? Contact Mark as above, or Max More at Extropy able his home for the event. Attendees should bring drinks and Institute: 909-688-2323

#1, 2, 4, 5, 6: $4 each; #7, 8, 9, 10: $5 each. Back Issues Available from Extropy Institute (address, p.2)

#10, Vol.4 No.2 (Winter/Spring '93): Pigs in Cyberspace, Platt’s The Silicon Man; News of scientific advances and Simon D. Levy; Extropian Resources, by Max O’Connor by Hans Moravec; Protecting Privacy with Electronic movement news; Reviews of zines. and Tom W. Bell; The Extropian Declaration, by Tom Cash, by Hal Finney; Technological Self-Transformation, W. Bell and Max O’Connor; Our Enemy, ‘The State,’ by by Max More; Mark Miller interview, by David Krieger, Pt.1: #7 Vol.3 No.1 (Spring 1991): A Memetic Approach to Max O’Connor and Tom W. Bell. Creole Physics & the Credit Theory of Identity; ‘Selling’ Cryonics, H. Keith Henson & Arel Lucas; Privately Nanocomputers: 21st Century Hypercomputing, by J. Produced Law, Tom Morrow; Order Without Orderers, #4 (Summer 1989): Forum; In Praise of the Devil, by Max Storrs Hall; The Transhuman Taste (Reviews): Two books Max More; Futique Neologisms; Neurocomputing 4: Self- O’Connor; Neurocomputing, by Simon D. Levy; Why on Ayn Rand & Objectivism; Nanosystems; Genius. Organization in Artificial Neural Networks, by Simon! D. Monogamy? by Tom. W. Bell; What’s Wrong With Death? Levy; Forum on Transhumanism; Reviews of Smart Pills, by Max O’Connor; Reviews: Are You a Transhuman? #9, Vol.4 No.1 (Summer 1992): The Extropian Principles, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman, Great Mambo Chicken Postscript to “Morality or Reality” by Max O’Connor; Efficient 2.0, by Max More; Extropy Institute Launches, by Max and the Transhuman Condition; and more... Aesthetics, by Tom. W. Bell; Intelligence at Work: Advances More; Persons, Programs, and Uploading Conscious- in Science by Max O’Connor. ness, by David Ross; Nanotechnology and Faith, by J. #6 (Summer 1990): Transhumanism: Towards a Futurist Storrs Hall; The Making of a Small World (fiction), by R. Philosophy, by Max More; The Thermodynamics of Death, #3 (Spring 1989) is out of print. Michael Perry; Genetic Algorithms, by Simon! D. Levy; Michael C. Price; The Opening of the Transhuman Mind, Time Travel and Computing, by Hans Moravec; Futique by Mark Plus; The Extropian Principles, by Max More; #2 (Winter 1989): Review of Mind Children, by Max Neologisms 3; Exercise and Longevity, by Fran Finney; Neurocomputing Part 3, by Simon! D. Levy; Forum on O’Connor; Darwin’s Difficulty, by H. Keith Henson and Arel The Transhuman Taste (Reviews): The Anthropic Cosmo- Arch-Anarchy and Deep Anarchy; Reviews: Order Out of Lucas; A Truly Instant Breakfast, by Steven B. Harris M.D.; logical Principle, The Blind Watchmaker, The Ultimate Chaos, The Emperor's New Mind, A Neurocomputational Wisdomism, by Tom W. Bell; Nanotechnology News, by Resource, Population Matters, The Resourceful Earth, Perspective, Loompanics Greatest Hits, The Machinery of Max O’Connor; Weirdness Watch, by Mark E. Potts. Bionomics. Freedom; Extropian Resources, and more. #1 (Fall 1988): A brief overview of extropian philosophy #8 Vol.3 No.2 (Winter 1991-92): Idea : Encourag- #5 (Winter 1990): Forum: Art and Communication; and an introduction to some of the topics we plan to ing an Honest Consensus, by ; Dynamic Leaping the Abyss, by Gregory Benford; Arch-Anarchy, address: AI, Intelligence Increase Technologies, Optimism, by Max More; Neurocomputing 5: Artificial Life, by A; Deep Anarchy, by Max O’Connor; I am a Child, by Immortalism, Nanotechnology, Spontaneous Orders, by Simon! D. Levy; Futique Neologisms (futurist lexicon); Fred Chamberlain; Perceptrons (Neurocomputing 2), by Psychochemicals, Extropic Psychology, Morality, Extropia: A Home for Our Hopes, by Tom Morrow; Human- Simon D. Levy; On Competition and Species Loss, by Mindfucking, Space Colonization, Libertarian Economics Transhuman-Posthuman, by Max More; Reviews of: Max O’Connor; A Review of Intoxication, by Rob and Politics, Memetics, and Aesthetics; “Morality or Reality,” Stiegler’s David’s Sling, Drexler’s Unbounding the Future, Michels; Intelligence at Work, by Max O’Connor and by Max O’Connor.

33 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 BUNKRAPT: THE ABSTRACTIONS THAT LEAD TO SCARES ABOUT RESOURCES AND POPULATION GROWTH or WHY DO POLITICIANS THINK GREEN? Julian L. Simon

INTRODUCTION Item: The “official” Global 2000 Re- port to President Carter of 1980 pitched Immediately after you show someone that the U.S. into a fever of environmental all trends pertaining to human welfare — activism and became the basic document health, wealth, education, leisure, avail- for the environmental movement, selling ability of natural resources, cleanliness of over a million copies. Other countries our air and water, you name it — have undertook parallel reports such as Britain been improving rather than deteriorat- 2010, China 21st Century, Japan’s The Year ing, the question arises: Why, then, do our 2000, and others for Portugal, Mexico, political leaders tell us the opposite — life Taiwan, Norway, Canada, Indonesia, is more dangerous, our planet is “plun- Mauritius, Iceland, Thailand, and Ireland. dered” and “in crisis”, we are running our Item: In 1987 the Brundlandt Com- of resources, pollution is increasing — mission, a group of household names that is, that things are getting worse when chaired by the Prime Minister of Norway, they are really getting better? Why do the published Our Common Future on these politicians say that there is need to “save same environmental issues. the planet”? Item: In November of 1991, the A “commitment” to environmental- nation’s Roman Catholic Bishops “ac- ist ideals has become a commonplace, an knowledged that overpopulation drains article of faith for just about every com- world resources”. The bishops asked munity and organization. The extent of Catholics “to examine our lifestyles, be- consensus that we are in trouble because haviors and policies, to see how we con- things are getting worse, and therefore tribute to the destruction or neglect of the the government should “do something” environment”. Even the Pope issued a1988 about it, may be seen in many evidences encyclical “In Sollicitude Rei Socialis” and — for example: a 1990 New Year’s message on this theme in the organized Jewish community in the Item: At the Rio Summit (or “Rio of environmental “crisis” and “plunder- United States — religious leaders, com- Nadir”) of 1992 more heads of state con- ing of natural resources,” and “the reality munal leaders, Jewish Senators and other vened than had ever convened elsewhere, of an innumerable multitude of people.” elected officials. and signed a “treaty” concerning the treat- The Pope apparently has “gotten religion” * * * ment of plants, animals, natural resources, and changed his message since then, how- The tapestry of explanation for this and the environment. ever. mass belief is surely very complex. A few Item: U.S. Vice-President Albert Item: In 1992 there took place in of the threads include: Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance (1992), Washington a “Consultation on the Envi- 1. Institutional self-interest of the recites the entire litany of environmental ronment and Jewish Life”, intended as “a media in trying to catch big audiences laments and is a best-seller. The United Jewish communal response to the world with scary bad-news stories. Nations Fund for Population Activities environmental crisis”. The invitation let- 2. Ostensible environmental prob- 1991 book, Population, Resources, and the ter said: “We appreciate the many impor- lems justifying the funding of scientific Environment opens with this quote: “The tant issues on the Jewish communal research and the budgets of organizations ‘triad’ of excessive population growth, agenda. But the threat of ecological catas- such as the UN’s Food and Agricultural environmental degradation and poverty trophe is so frightening and universal that Organization (FAO) and Fund for Popu- threaten us and our planet as never be- we believe we must mobilize our lation Activities (UNFPA) and the U.S. fore” (p. 2). And the authors of Limits to community’s considerable intellectual and Council on Environmental Quality whose Growth (Meadows et. al., 1972) are back organizational resources as soon as pos- reason for existence is fear of resource with a reprise, Beyond the Limits (Mead- sible”. The signers of the invitation in- scarcity and population growth. ows et. al., 1992). cluded just about every important figure 3. The preservationists who prefer

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 34 bucolic surroundings to resource devel- man thinking, because so much of our properly spend much of their lives bat- opment. situation must sensibly be regarded as tling to persuade others that abstract theo- 4. Psychological propensities deep in fixed in the short run — the bottles of beer rizing has importance and is not just an our psyche that predispose us to warn- in the refrigerator, our paychecks, and the “ivory tower” recreation). In my experi- ings of doom. amount of energy that parents have to ence, journalists and businessmen are less 5. The marvelously evocative inflam- play basketball with their kids. likely to be taken with the simple Malthu- matory rhetoric that has been created to In contrast, the vision underlying my sian abstraction, perhaps because they arouse fear -“population bomb”, “empty thinking about resources — also what is have no professional stake in this idea (in pumps”, “save the children”, “end of the now a consensus of other students of contrast to many biologists and some world as we know it”, and “end of the age these subjects (NAS, 1986), with such pre- economists) and perhaps because jour- of affluence”, for example. (See my 1981 decessors as William Petty, Friedrich nalists are more attuned to reaching judg- book, Chapter 22 of 2nd edition, 1993), for Engels, Simon Kuznets, , ments and making decisions in light of the a long discussion of this rhetoric.) and the main developer of the idea, Harold full richness of a situation — on their 6. Simple racism, especially with “intuition” — rather than upon the logical respect to population growth in other relationships in a simple model. (More parts of the world, and with respect to A key difference between generally, businessmen and newsmen immigrants of various shades and the thinking of those who seem to be more open to new ideas than ethnicities entering the United States. academics, perhaps because a continuous 7. An attitude toward the factual worry about impending flow of creative change is more crucial in truth that induces people to exaggerate doom, and those who see their occupations.) Another element is the and even lie when convinced that the dead hand of expertise. As Kuznets tells, eleventh-hour danger to the public justi- the prospects of a bet- “Experts are usually specialists skilled in, fies such dishonest practices. Joining the ter life for more people in and hence bound to, traditional views; environmental movement is seen by many and they are, because of their knowledge as a last chance to do good, just as joining the future, apparently is of one field, likely to be cautious and the Communist Party in the1930’s seemed unduly conservative” (in Rosenberg, l972). an opportunity for social contribution by whether one thinks in It is a puzzle why so many people — many generous-minded people. Once closed-system or open- with biologists and physicists notable having joined the movement, foul means among them — are so sure that there must are deemed acceptable by many if the end system terms. be some constraint to prevent humanity is thought to be beneficial. from growing both ever richer and ever 8. This essay leaves aside the seven Barnett — is that the relevant system of more populous, and why theirs is the previous elements of the explanation, discourse has a long enough horizon that vision of unexpandable limits. One pos- however, and focuses only on the ideas it makes sense to treat the system opera- sible explanation is that each of us tends to that undergird the newspaper and televi- tionally as not fixed rather than finite. We bring our professional modes of thought sion stories, the intellectual infrastructure view the resource system as being as un- to bear on other situations even if those which give these stories credibility. The limited as the number of thoughts a per- modes are not appropriate to the situation ideas to be discussed fall into two catego- son might have, or the number of varia- at hand. For example, biologists liken the ries: misunderstandings of the nature of tions that might ultimately be produced human population to an animal popula- resource creation and population econom- by biological evolution. That is, a key tion and then apply the animal-ecology ics, and misunderstandings of the nature difference between the thinking of those notion of “carrying capacity,” though that of a modern complex social-economic who worry about impending doom, and notion is quite inapplicable to natural system. The essay attempts to explain those who see the prospects of a better life resources in a human context. why so many people are enraptured with for more people in the future, apparently Another attraction of the closed-sys- this kind of bunk — that is, bunkrapt. is whether one thinks in closed-system or tem vision is that the closure of the system open-system terms. For example, those enables one to use interesting mathemat- who worry that the second law of thermo- ics, especially the calculus and other opti- MISUNDERSTANDING THE dynamics dooms us to eventual decline mization devices. From a purely physical NATURE OF RESOURCE necessarily see our world as a closed sys- point of view, a proposition about finite- tem with respect to energy and entropy; ness (or entropy) requires a bounded sys- CREATION AND those who view the relevant universe as tem. But where is the relevant boundary POPULATION SIZE unbounded view the second law of ther- for our material world? Around the earth modynamics as irrelevant to this discus- excluding the sun? Around the earth plus The Seductiveness of sion. I am among those who view the sun plus solar system? Around other suns? the Malthusian Logic relevant part of the physical and social Around a “universe” which may or may universe as open for most purposes. not be finite or expanding in the Beneath the Malthusian notion of dimin- Which vision is better in the context astronomer’s eye? No boundary, no fi- ishing returns, we find an inter-related set of resources and population is not subject niteness. of fundamental ideas that we may call a to scientific test. Yet the choice profoundly Still another root of the closed-sys- “vision.” The vision underlying the think- affects our thinking. I believe that here tem vision is the bewitching medieval ing of today’s conventional writers about lies the root of the matter. notion of “first cause” or “ultimate cause,” resources and population is the concept Academics are particularly suscep- the idea that nothing happens which is of fixity or finiteness of resources in the tible to the notion of Malthusian dimin- not the result of other forces. And push- relevant system of discourse. This idea is ishing returns, perhaps because academ- ing back the causal sequence in an infinite found in Malthus, of course. But the idea ics are more likely than are laymen to regress, it seems as if there must have probably has always been a staple of hu- believe in abstract theories. (Academics been an original causal force. This sug-

35 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 gests a complete, and therefore closed, cist) and George Mitchell (the Texas oil- cheap lunch courtesy of the sweat of our system. man and developer) share this vision of ancestors’ brows in mental as well as For some, the closed-system vision limits with the non-doers? physical labor. arises because of a natural abhorrence of the loose-endedness of an open system. Misunderstanding and Lack of Historical An interesting example of how this vision permeates our thinking: If you say Misapplication of the Perspective, and that copper might be made of other met- Slogan “There is no free Propensity to Compare als, hearers say “alchemy.” When you point out that nuclear bombardment trans- lunch.” the Present to an mutes metals, the hearers say “not practi- The slogan “There is no free lunch” seems Idealized State Rather cal,” implying that it never could be prac- to imply that we have to pay for every- tical. They may be correct. But there is no thing we get. This is another case of a Than to the Actual Past logically binding impossibility theorem good thought going wrong by being ap- It is not surprising that most people are applicable here. One can only be sure that plied to situations it was not designed for. not aware that real prices of resources something is impossible or impractical if This slogan was originally intended to were higher in past years than now; this one can be sure that the state of knowl- suggest that the government cannot sup- requires adjusting for inflation, and ne- edge will not change in the future, that is, ply free lunches to all of us, that there is no cessitates knowledge of data back to (say) that capacities are limited because knowl- magic trick by which we can increase our l900 or l800. Hence it is not surprising that edge is limited. But isn’t this just what total national resources by passing laws views about impending resource scarcity people said in the past about the possibil- and setting up bureaucracies; rather, we are not informed by the contrary long-run ity of finding smaller constituent parts as taxpayers have to pay indirectly, some- trend of increasing availability. within the “fundamental” electron, say? time. It should surprise us, though, when And about the possibility of obtaining the In other contexts, however, there are mature experienced journalists in high vast amounts of energy that we get from free (or below full cost) lunches all the positions, people such as James Reston a small pile of stuff called uranium? Or for time. None of us always pays the full cost and John Oakes of the New York Times, that matter, getting vast amounts of heat of production for what we get. In the write about how bad things are now with- out of the black rocks that we call coal? modern world each generation gets its out reference to how things were in the The example of copper and “alchemy” is lunch at a lower cost of labor than did past. In l980 columnist Reston could write interesting for the infra-thinking that it earlier generations, because earlier gen- about “the civilized world that is now in brings into the open. erations responded to their economic such deep trouble,” saying that “you can The psychologies of open-system and problems with ingenuity and energy. Our hardly pick up a paper these days without closed-system thinking must be complex ancestors bequeathed us the intellectual wondering what’s wrong” and decrying and deep-rooted. Perhaps the latter is wherewithal to get our lunch, if not en- our lack of leadership. Can this man have related to focusing on the social equality tirely free, at least much cheaper than if lived through the depression of the l930’s, of distribution of a fixed pie, rather than we had to start from scratch. Compare Hitler, World War II, the Cold War, the on expanding the amount of pie to the what we “pay” to what Europeans had to Korean War, and the Vietnam War? And possible neglect of equity considerations; “pay” for lunch and the other meals a few ex-senior editorial writer Oakes repro- this focus often stems from the emotion of hundred years ago. They paid most of duces the pessimistic findings of the Glo- envy (Schoeck, l969). But whatever the every day’s work, whereas we can buy bal 2000 Report almost word for word, like roots, most puzzling is why people who the same amount of raw food with a small a press-conference handout. How can he, are themselves creative and imaginative fraction of the work time it cost them. too, have lived through such disastrous should lack faith in others’ capacities to And there is no economic or physical times in the past, when the environment respond to problems and shortages with force, and no concept in standard eco- was much more degraded and the mate- limit-expanding ideas. How can people nomic theory, that suggests that this pro- rials more scarce, and continue to write as as powerfully creative as John Bardeen gressive reduction in the cost of lunch if the world is headed straight toward (the only two-time Nobel-winning physi- cannot continue indefinitely. We eat our doom?

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EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 36 Lack of Distinction in Canada that are relatively large and in Greece and Rome, bring out this con- relatively small compared to the same clusion very nicely (Simon, 1980, or 1981, Between the Long Run industries in the U.S.(see Simon, 1981, pp. 200-201). and the Short Run 2nd edition forthcoming, Chapter 14) And On the related question of whether The distinction between the long run and Bernal in Science and Industry in the Nine- material well-being can be improved the short run is crucial to the economics of teenth Century (l953/l970) provides addi- through there being more ordinary per- population. In the developed world, ad- tional evidence — case studies of steel; sons — not geniuses — who contribute to ditional people — babies or immigrants electricity, light and power; chemistry, our knowledge in their everyday work, — are a burden in the short run. And bacteriology and biochemistry; and the the story of electricity and power produc- focusing only on the short-run burden theory of heat and energy in the l9th tion is again illuminating. Bernal de- leads to a negative judgment about popu- century — showing that innovations re- scribes the “stumbling progress of the lation growth. But in the long run, more spond to economic demand. In the case of first fifty years from l83l to l88l... the effort people mean a higher standard of living electricity, for example, “The barrier, or put into the development (l83l-l88l)...was for others. So the judgment about whether rather the absence of stimulus to advance, small.” The people who made the neces- more people are good or bad economi- was economic. Electricity developed sary technical developments “were not cally depends on how one trades off the quickly when it paid, not a moment be- geniuses...and others no more gifted could present versus the future. By most of my fore (p. l3l).” And a large population size have hit upon these ideas earlier if the calculations, the discount rate would have and density imply higher total demand, field had attracted enough workers (pp. to be quite high for additional people not ceteris paribus, which is why Edison’s 130-131). As said by Soichino Honda, the to have a positive present value. first street lighting was in New York City inventor and founder of the Japanese Furthermore, short-run costs are in- rather than in Montana. It is also clear that motorcycle and auto firm bearing his evitable and obvious, whereas long-run countries with more people produce more name, “Where 100 people think, there are benefits are hard to foresee. If your neigh- knowledge, assuming income is the same, 100 powers; if 1,000 people think, there bor has another child, surely your school e.g., Sweden vs. the U.S. And Bernal shows are 1,000 powers” (The Wall Street Journal, taxes will go up and there will be more how the power of final demand works Feb. 1, 1982, p. 15.) noise in your neighborhood. And when indirectly, too. “Once electric distribu- the additional child first goes to work, tion on a large scale was proved feasible Confusion Between per-worker income will be lower than and immensely profitable, then came a otherwise, at least for awhile. It is, how- demand for large efficient power sources Trends and Levels, ever, more difficult to foresee and to un- (p. l29),” leading to the development of Between Whether Things turbines. And the development of light derstand the possible long-run benefits. are Getting Better or Because the increase in knowledge cre- bulbs led to advances in creating vacua, ated by more people is non-material, it is after the subject “had stagnated for about Getting Worse and easy to overlook. Writers about popula- two hundred years.... Here was another Whether They are Good tion growth mention a greater number of clear case of the law of supply and de- mouths coming into the world, and more mand in the development of science and Now pairs of hands, but never mention more technology (p. l25).“ A frequent and crucial error in the think- brains arriving. This emphasis on physi- On the “supply side” there is also ing of the doomsayers is neglect of the cal consumption and production may be much misunderstanding, especially the lessons that experience teaches. And of- responsible for much unsound thinking belief that the number of potential inven- ten the doomsayers criticize their oppo- and fear about population growth. tors does not matter. One source of this nents on the grounds that we are extrapo- misunderstanding for some is the idea lating from the past on the assumption that, to paraphrase, “One need only con- that the past usually bears some resem- Disbelief in the trast innovation and creativity in tiny Ath- blance to the future. These critics prefer Relationship Between ens in the Golden Age with monstrous that we form our conclusions purely by Population and Calcutta” now, or Calcutta with Budapest analysis of the structural elements, physi- of the l930’s, to see that more people do cal and otherwise, that they decide are the Knowledge Creation not imply more technical knowledge be- most important variables. This is ironic, To many, it is implausible that additional ing produced. This argument leaves out because to the extent that we have knowl- people cause more technical knowledge the all-things-equal clause; Calcutta is edge of each of these elements, that knowl- and advance in productivity, ceteris poor. And, underlying this argument is edge is based upon experience — system- paribus. One source of misunderstand- the implied (but unwarranted) assump- atic and otherwise — of the operation of ing is the common belief that new techni- tion that Calcutta is poor because it has so those elements in history and in scientific cal knowledge usually arises spontane- many people. experience. As Macaulay, I believe, put it ously, and without connection to social If we make more appropriate com- about 150 years ago, If we cannot learn needs. But there is now ample evidence parisons — comparing Greece to itself from history, what can we learn from? that increased output and investment in a and Rome to itself during periods with This is not to say that the future is simply given industry induce more inventions to different population sizes and growth an extension of the past; the number of be made and applied. This “demand-side rates, and industries of various sizes in horses in the U.S. did not continue grow- effect,” as economists call it, can be seen in different countries now — we find that a ing throughout the 20th century (although systematic studies of learning-by-doing, larger population is associated with more I have read that there are more horses where the time required to complete an knowledge and productivity, because alive in the U.S. now than at the turn of the airplane or ship decreases as more units there are more potential inventors and century). Nor am I downplaying the key are made. The effect can also be seen in adopters of new technology. Graphs that role of theory, which is a generalized and systematic studies of comparative pro- plot the numbers of great discoveries, and formalized structure that embodies our ductivity in the industries in the U.K. and the population sizes in various centuries accumulated experience in a particular

37 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 field. What I am saying is that to assume cial” label which gives statements the full competition between countries, perhaps), that the future will bear no resemblance to authority of the federal government was which might (or might not) have been an the past in a particular context, without prominent in most newspaper and televi- economic loss. But given opportunity, extraordinarily weighty reasons to be- sion stories about the “Vanishing Farm- private enterprises will supply more ven- lieve that there has been a turning point, is land Crisis” of the early 1980s. If that tures than doomsayers expect, more to court serious error. document (and the report of the National quickly, and at less cost to public — espe- Many make an unwarranted logical Agricultural Lands Study) had not dis- cially in the field of natural resources — leap from the fact that things are not good played a government label, they probably partly because individuals bear costs of in some places to the fact that things are would never even have appeared in print, the failing ventures, rather than taxpay- getting worse everywhere. This leap is let alone been discussed in national pub- ers. coupled with a lack of historical perspec- lications, because their level of technical Concerning the difference in views of tive — for example, a sense of how much competence and scientific proof was so public and private performance: I imag- worse-off Mexico City and its inhabitants low. (On second thought, maybe my ined a conversation with a (say) potato- were twenty or fifty years ago compared confidence is misplaced. The Limits to chip distributor about possible competi- to today. And when the doomsayers Growth was widely publicized even with- tion by a government agency. I guessed cannot avoid admitting that at least some out an official label. But that book had the that his/her first reaction would be to of the trends in the past have not been backing of the wealthy Club of Rome and laugh at the possibility that a government toward things getting worse, but rather a hired public relations agency; the whole bureau could even come close to her/his toward things getting better, they often story was told in Science.) prices and quality without massive subsi- reply: But history is not a good guide in dies. But then she/he would reflect that if this connection, because we are now at a a government agency got into trouble turning point in history. Differences in because it could not compete, it could For example, when I say that the Conceptions of Human lower its prices to the competitive level, history of humankind is the history of lose money, and then reach into the public people responding to existing and im- Nature pocket to make up the losses. That would pending problems with solutions that The main interest of David Hume and be less funny, and not unrealistic; indeed, leave us better off than if the solution had Adam Smith was human nature, and they it is an accurate description of socialist never arisen, others sometimes poke fun came to study economics as an outgrowth enterprise East and West. at the notion that experience of the past is of that interest. Differences in concep- Another difference in views of hu- a sound basis for forecasting the future. tions of human nature are at the root of man nature concerns its changeability. The issue of whether we are now at a much disagreement about economic is- Reformers, starting perhaps most vividly turning point needs some close attention sues, and evidence about the validity of with William Godwin (to whose writing to dispatch it satisfactorily (see my 1984, these different views is relevant to deci- Malthus’ Essay on Population was a re- also in Simon, 1990, Selection 47). But all sions about the economic issues them- sponse) believe that human nature is quite throughout history people have felt that selves. (Unfortunately for the discipline malleable -for example, that self-inter- they are at a turning point, and it hasn’t of economics, that explicit focus of atten- ested behavior can be reduced by the turned out to be so. More generally, if we tion has been lost in the mathematics that proper social environment. This belief is cannot base our judgments about the fu- constitutes so much of modern “sophisti- very important in Marxism; it implies that ture largely upon past experience, in con- cated” and “rigorous” and “elegant” eco- one can design a social system that has junction with reasonable theoretical ex- nomics.) particular desired properties, and then planations of that experience, then all of For example, the doomsayers who expect people to be molded to fit that our experience is without value. I doubt desire more government intervention in system. In contrast, the Scottish moralists that many people really do wish to reject the production and consumption of natu- — David Hume, Adam Smith, and their experience as a teacher in this manner. ral resources, and the optimists who ar- teachers and friends — tended to see hu- gue for non-intervention of the govern- man nature as relatively immutable, which ment in resource markets, differ in their implies choosing a social and economic Belief That What is in views of how individuals and private en- system that produces the best results given Print and What is Said terprises behave in the face of economic that fixed human nature. “Officially,” Must Be opportunity; they also differ in their views of the performance of government per- MISUNDERSTANDING OF Right sonnel and agencies when entrusted with THE NECESSARY NATURE Consider this statement from a recent let- economic tasks. This thought first struck ter: me as I was out jogging one morning near OF AN EFFICIENT MODERN [Y]ou said that the transformation of Asheville, N. Carolina, and I found my- SOCIAL SYSTEM WITH farmland to urban use is far less than self on “Old Toll Road” going up a se- MANY PARTICIPANTS, society is led to believe. I find this cluded mountain. Long ago, private en- very outraging because I think you terprisers must have built that road in GOODS, AND made a very blind statement. You hopes of making a profit from traffic in PRODUCTION have given many people the idea that that difficult country. And the end result 2 we’re not really losing that much farm- of their private desires was a benefit for TECHNIQUES land than what the Government or the public that continues until today. In- People Yearn for an Department of Agriculture or Farmers terventionists are likely to believe that if claim. I have enclosed a pamphlet government does not provide such ser- Organization of Society [from the “official” National Agricul- vices, they will not be provided at all. Which Reflects the Best tural Lands Study] which is proof to I am not suggesting that government Aspects of the Mode of my claim. should play no role in our economy. Space Well, you might say, the writer doesn’t certainly would have been explored later Organization of the sound very sophisticated. But the “offi- without government action (or without Family

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 38 In a family, members share goods out of gathering, as love and altruism, and their decisions with a market. about individual and family activities are These are subtle (at least sometimes) affected by caring ideas, not easy thoughts for one another. But this mode to grasp, so it is of social organization cannot work nearly not surprising as effectively when a) individuals cannot that even well- know the preferences of all others in the educated lay- society, b) their capacity for empathizing persons often with another is diminished by lack of have not intimate relationship, c) there is no ac- thought them cepted hierarchy as there is between par- through and do ents and children, and d) the number of not understand goods and possible transactions is very them. large. But many persons find it abhorrent Two other to turn over the function of distribution to aspects of a the impersonal market. And market dis- market-di- tribution seems especially abhorrent when rected economy the goods seem to have (though they may that often are well not have) a particularly inelastic sup- not understood, ply and are especially important to physi- and whose lack cal survival — for example, food, land, of understand- and clean air and water. ing leads to the call for a di- rected society Belief in the Need for and to worry Centralized Control of about resources in a market so- Important Activities ciety: a) the ca- Hayek (1952) thinks that the belief in cen- pacity of mar- tralized control of economic activity in kets to deal with society is a misplaced analogy to the way the future; and engineers plan a dam or bridge, and he b) the capacity traces socialist theory back to the creation of correctly of the great engineering schools in France structured mar- at the turn of the l9th century. Whether or kets to deal with externalities. There is no lization this is an old story with Plato. As not his account of intellectual history is space to say more about these matters Popper put it, Plato “charmed all intellec- correct, Hayek’s analysis of the contem- here, however. tuals with his brilliance, flattering and porary sources of the belief in the need for Another possible reason people be- thrilling them by his demand that the control is sound, I think. Many people lieve in the need for a centrally-directed learned should rule” (l966, p. l99). believe that without planning and con- society is the belief that others who are not Along with this lack of belief in poor trols, the system just cannot work well. so well-educated and intelligent cannot people’s capacities to run their own lives For example, in a debate over whether figure out how to conduct self-support- well is likely to come disbelief that others Champaign County, Illinois, should per- ing lives that will also thereby contribute — and especially the uneducated and poor mit rezoning of farmland for industry, to economy and society. The belief that — can really create resources by way of people were heard to say, “I’m for growth, welfare support will be necessary for im- creating new ideas. Perhaps this disbelief but for controlled growth, of course.” When migrants — who are often thought is due in large part to common lack of you ask them why growth must be con- (wrongly) to come to the U.S. with little understanding of how such human inter- trolled by a planner or an agency, they education and knowledge of English — vention lies behind the resources that we look at you blankly, as if you are lacking stems from the arrogance of educated take for granted, e.g., the fertile Midwest- in elementary intelligence. people. ern prairie that was a malarial swamp Many seem to fear that chaos is the Beckmann and others have suggested before settlers drained it. inevitable result of lack of centralized con- that this view fits with intellectuals’ desire trol. Hayek argues that this belief in the to be needed by the society, and with their need for control is related to lack of under- belief that their trained intellects should Belief That Externalities standing of how a large group of people, therefore achieve for them places of spe- of Self-interested acting without any pre-arrangement, can cial importance and reward in the Actions are Usually Bad develop an orderly structure of produc- economy and society. As Beckmann says tion and exchange based on individual about a capitalistic society, “The highly Environmentalists worry that the unin- desires and perceptions of other’s desires skilled jetliner pilot and the lowly cleaner tended by-products — the “externalities” and intentions. He also mentions the of sewage systems get a reward beyond — of humankind’s economic activities common failure to understand the diffi- dollars — the heady knowledge that they (especially those that affect the environ- culty of organizing an economy nearly as are voluntarily supported because they ment) are malign even if the direct effects well by central planning, even with the are genuinely needed. Such a reward is of production and trade can be benign. aid of unlimited computing capacity and unknown to the professor of Turkish But I believe a case can be made that even the most detailed imaginable information medieval poetry” (l978).3 In Western civi- activities that are not intentionally con-

39 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 structive usually leave a positive legacy to nical possibilities when mis-applied to by other examples of similarly large worst- subsequent generations. That is, even the thinking about natural resources and the case risks that we routinely accept, such unintended aspects of humans’ use of environment. This way of thinking fo- as those of power-providing dams that land (and of other raw materials) tend to cuses only upon the dangers of a pro- might break and kill hundreds of thou- be profitable for those who come after- jected line of activity, and urges us to sands of people, or airplanes falling from ward. “play it safe.” When discussing a social the sky into stadia seating 70,000 people Take as an example the “borrow pits” scheme, a talented game theorist and I where all might be killed risks that are by the sides of turnpikes, from which kept disagreeing about whether particu- probabilistically greater than those from earth is taken for road-building. At first lar systems would work or not. Finally nuclear energy. There seems to be a value the pits seem a despoliation of nature, a we discovered that I focused upon the judgment at the bottom of the argument, scar upon the land. But borrow pits turn aggregate effects on average, whereas he a value which cannot be rebutted logi- out to be useful for fishing lakes and focused upon “worst-case analysis,” cally any more than other values can be reservoirs, and the land they are on is which he said is characteristic of his trade. rebutted logically. But it is possible to likely to be more valuable than if the pits And worst-case analysis causes one to point out costs of such policies that are had never been dug. reject as not attractive many possibilities being neglected in the discussion. It is Another example is a garbage dump. that on average are desirable. Much of the appropriate for a safety engineer not to be Later generations may find dumps profit- thinking of the environmental movement concerned with the costs of avoiding a able sources of recyclable materials. Even seems to be worst-case analysis. dangerous activity, because the cost/ben- a pumped-out oil well — that is, the empty efit calculation will be made at higher hole — probably has more value to subse- levels of management. But in discussion quent generations than does a similar spot Most puzzling is why of such activities as nuclear power, it without a hole. The hole may be used as would seem that all discussants have an a storage place for oil or other fluids, or people who are them- obligation to have a balanced view and for some as-yet-unknown purposes. And selves creative and imagi- not just focus on one side of the matter, the casing that is left in the dry well might because there is no arbiter in a court of be reclaimed profitably by future genera- native should lack faith in public opinion who will take into account tions. others' capacities to re- all sides of the matter, as higher levels of The explanation of this general phe- management are responsible for doing in nomenon is that humans’ activities tend spond to problems and an industrial setting. Also, it seems ap- to increase the order and decrease the shortages with limit-ex- propriate to point out in such discussions randomness of nature. We tend to bring that if we routinely follow such a line of like elements together, to concentrate panding ideas. thought, lives will be shorter and poorer, them. This properly can be exploited by and fewer people will get a chance to subsequent generations. Furthermore, enjoy life, because of the life-shortening humans perceive order, and create it. One Another analogy in another context: effects of air pollution from coal and the can see this if one looks from an airplane Nathan Leopold, of the Loeb-Leopold industrial accidents that kill so many for the signs of human habitation. Where murder case, wrote in his fascinating au- people in coal-mining and petroleum there are people (ants, too, of course) tobiography that it is extraordinarily dif- operations. there will be straight lines and smooth ficult to persuade prison administrations The case of hydroponic vegetable curves; otherwise, the face of nature is not to accept new ideas for running the prison growing may sharpen the argument. neat or ordered. because they know that a thousand pairs Hydroponics is now a profitable opera- Many acts that we tend to think of as of eyes are looking for the slightest loop- tion around Washington, D. C. for a good despoiling the land actually bestow in- hole in the new setup which can be ex- many farmers during the months when creased wealth upon subsequent genera- ploited for escape or other troublemaking. vegetables are not grown outdoors nearby tions. Of course this proposition is hard But as Einstein said about nature, God (Shelley Davis, “Roots Under Water”, The to test. But perhaps a mental comparison may be tricky but he (sic) is not malignly Washington Post, April 15, 1984, pp. D1, will help. Ask yourself which areas in trying to do us in. And our situation with D4). Hydroponic farming takes up only central Illinois will seem more valuable to respect to resources and the environment about one twelfth as much land as does subsequent generations — the places is not like that of a prison, and we need not ordinary agriculture, the article points where cities now are, or the places where think as do prison administrators or safety out. Shortage of cropland for growing farmlands are? engineers. food is one of the common arguments One sees evidence of this delayed Nuclear power debates provide many why population growth should slacken benefit in the Middle East. For hundreds instances of what we might call the now and must eventually cease. But the of years until recently, Turks and Arabs Leopold-safety engineer syndrome. Those mention of hydroponic farming usually occupied structures originally built by the who are against nuclear power point to evokes a long series of what-if objections. Romans 2,000 years ago. The ancient scenarios conceivably leading to, say, What if there will be a shortage of water? buildings saved the late-comers the trouble 50,000 deaths. Proponents of nuclear Of chemicals? Of sunlight? Of glass to of doing their own construction. Another power point out that the risk of such a build greenhouses? And on and on. It is example is the use of dressed stones in scenario occurring is minuscule, and the impossible to rule out every imaginative locations far away from where they were “expected number of deaths” -using “ex- scenario without detailed analysis. And dressed. One finds the lintels of door- pected” in the statistical sense -is very of course there is always the seemingly- ways from ancient Palestinian synagogues small. The anti-nukes are not impressed unrebuttable objection: This cannot go on in contemporary homes in Syria. by such a probabilistic argument, saying forever. We would even run out of room A related trait of mind is appropriate that the worst case has a meaning to us on earth for hydroponic farming. (Of for safety engineers but paralyses the so- that cannot be treated as part of any set of course there is plenty of room in space for cial will and causes rejection of new tech- averages. Nor are anti-nukes impressed spaceships carrying hydroponic farms, a

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 40 possibility for which the technology is National Academy of Sciences, Population Growth without troubling either reader or writer with already available without even waiting and Economic Development (Washington: National quotation notes or citations. for further developments. And hydro- Academy Press, 1986). In an important sense, the heart of the ponic farms can be operated as multi- Popper, Karl R., The Open Society and Its Enemies, economics of population and resources is the 5th ed., (Princeton: PUP, 1966). kind of thinking that is brought to bear upon the story plants with artificial light.) Each of Rosenberg, Nathan, Technology and American subject — what we might call the these questions is offered as argument Economic Growth (New York: Harper, 1972). “metaeconomics”. The needed kind of thinking against change and growth; the questioner Schoeck, Helmut, Envy (Indianapolis: Liberty — focusing on the indirect, long-run, diffuse would have us proceed as if hydroponic Press, 1969). influences rather than on the immediate and farming is not a real option. Simon, Julian L. The Ultimate Resource (Princeton; direct effects — does not excite the mind as do PUP, 1981, 2nd edition forthcoming). those two old bewitchers, exponential growth —— “Does Doom Loom?” Reason, April, 1984, and diminishing returns. That perhaps explains REFERENCES pp.31-35; why so many persons become and remain —— “Resources, Population, Enviroment: An bunkrapt about population and resources. Beckmann, Petr, What Attracts Intellectuals to Over-supply of False Bad News,” Science, 208, Socialism? (Boulder, Colo: Golem Press, Box 1342, June 27, 1980, pp.1431-1437. 2. This section is heavily influenced by Hayek’s Boulder, Colo 80306, 1978). ——, Population Matters (New Brunswick, N.J.: works. There also is a fair amount of common Bernal, J. D. Science and Industry in the Nineteenth Transaction, 1990). ground here with the literature on why people Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, United Nations Fund for Population Activities, are attracted to socialism (e.g., Kristol, l978; l953/l970). Population, Resources, and the Environment (New Beckmann, l978; Mises, 1972), because resources Ehrlich, Paul R., and Anne H. Ehrlich, The Popu- York: UNFPA, 1991). and environment are part of the “economic prob- lation Explosion (New York: Simon and Schuster, von Mises, Ludwig, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality lem” that socialism purports to “solve.” 1990). (South Holland, Ill., Libertarian Press, 1972). Gore, Albert, Jr., Earth in the Balance. 3. Consider this remark about summer work Hayek, Friedrich, The Counter-Revolution of Sci- cleaning up garbage from Lake Michigan ence (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1952). NOTES beaches: Kristol, Irving, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New I remember the mornings when the beach York: Basic Books, 1978). 1. Much of the unsound thinking about the was particularly filthy — the Fifth of July was Meadows, Donella H.; Dennis L. Meadows; nature of natural resources and their supply, always the worst — and halfway through the Jorgen Randers, and William W. Bahrens III, The and about the effect of additional people upon job, looking back and seeing only the bare golden Limits to Growth. (New York, Potomac Assoc., environment, resources, and the living stan- sand where before there had been a half-ton of 1972). dard, is discussed in my 1981 The Ultimate Re- garbage. Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, and source, and therefore will not be repeated here. I learned that summer the palpable satis- Jorgen Randers, Beyond the Limits (Post Mills, More generally, I have drawn upon my various faction of doing a job well, even if that job is Vermont: Chelsea Green, 1992). writings for words and thoughts contained here picking up garbage. (R. Simon, l982, p.7)

41 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation by John D. Barrow Ballantine Books, New York, 1991 Paperback $12.00, ISBN 0-449-90738-4 Reviewed by Peter McCluskey

Theories of Everything is a good exploration of the most funda- mental questions of physics, mathematics, and why we exist. It contains a number of the fasci- nating ideas that were discussed in The Anthropic Cosmological Prin- ciple (ACP), but is simple enough that it can be understood by people with no mathematical background (it has about ten simple equations, versus enough tensor equations in ACP to scare off most non-physicists). It has enough new ideas so that people who have read ACP will still find significant parts of it interesting. This is the book that Hawking’s Brief History of Time should have been. It describes attempts to unify forces, particles, space, time, and the initial condi- tions of the universe into a single coherent explanation, possibly even a single equation. The term “theory of everything” may be a somewhat exaggerated way to describe a unified theory encom- passing the essentials of physics, since it would no more explain the complete configuration of the universe than a perfect theory of thermodynamics would enable us to reli- suited for handling directions when they ably forecast next year’s weather. All it are not readily divided into space and would take is a little bit of chaos to make time), a model of 4 spatial dimensions prediction intractable. could be a more useful way of describing Barrow summarizes the history of things. In this case, the problem of ex- comprehensive theories, such as ancient plaining the “beginning” of the universe creation myths, and Roger Boscovitch’s fades away, as there is no starting point to Theory of Natural Philosophy (1758), which such a universe. proposed a unification of the gravitational, In ACP, Barrow and Tipler had ap- electrical and magnetic forces. peared to prove that the universe had a Barrow recounts the historical sepa- finite past by showing that if intelligent ration between laws describing the evolu- life had ever existed in our infinite causal tion of the universe and the initial condi- past, it would have taken over all that we tions that are treated as arbitrary inputs to can see. Barrow now describes a theory of the equations in those laws, and describes an “eternal” inflationary universe in which Reviews of Extropian Interest hints that a theory of quantum gravity regions of a universe which is infinite in would abolish that distinction, along with both time and space can undergo an infla- the distinction between time and space at tionary expansion of the kind that is pos- the beginning. Since time is not an explicit tulated to have occurred shortly after the component of quantum theories of cos- “big bang” in order to explain the large- The Transhuman Taste mology, time can be regarded as a phe- scale uniformity of the visible part of the nomenon which applies only to some universe. Each such expanded region sees parts of the universe. Closer to what we a dense big-bang-like past. As long as life think of as the origin (English is not well cannot evolve in the superhot unexpanded EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 42 regions of the universe, it can exist in infinitely many inflated independent universes. The effects of quasi-random connec- regions without being able to overrun newly created ones because tions of this nature would reportedly be to introduce random the rapid expansion in the early phases of each region insures that shifts in the values of the “constants” observed within each the lightspeed barrier isolates each region. “normal” region. One example is the cosmological constant (a If even the infinite spatial part of this idea is correct, then our search term Einstein added to General Relativity to allow the theory to for universal theories is seriously hampered by the likelyhood that the predict a stationary rather than expanding or contracting uni- visible portion of the universe has been selected for its ability to evolve verse), which is expected to be extremely close to zero for most life, and is therefore probably very unrepresentative of the conditions possible wormhole interconnections. that a truly general theory would say are typical. So what appear to be Barrow expresses concern about the possibility that a Theory universal laws may be special cases of something much more general. of Everything could be shown to be the only logically possible There are some numbers such as the ratio of the proton mass to the theory, and thus be an analytic truth, rather than a scientifically electron mass, which appear at first glance to be totally arbitrary, and falsifiable truth. I find this to be disappointing, as deductively therefore impossible to reduce to a principle derived from some more proven truths have withstood the test of time better than theories basic law. One of the ways they could have been determined, Barrow which are subject to falsifiability. While I doubt that such an suggests, is by the effects of numerous small wormholes (little larger analytic truth will be found, I consider falsifiability to be a crutch than the Planck length) connecting our region of the universe with to use when nothing better is available, and want analytic truths distant parts of itself or with other regions which would otherwise be to replace unprovable theories wherever possible.

In Our Own Image: Building an Artificial Person by Maureen Caudill Oxford University Press, 1992 242 pp hardcover; $22.00 ISBN 0-19-507338-X Reviewed by Derek Zahn

Books on Artificial Intelligence (AI) written for general audiences usually proceed either historically — tracing the development of the major AI ideas by focusing on the scientists responsible for them — or by presenting a case for the centrality of particular techniques or problems. In In Our Own Image: Building an Artificial Person, Maureen Caudill takes a different path; using the popular media image of The Android as a goal to be reached, she explores the problems that must be solved to achieve that goal. The exploration visits most of the research areas of AI, resulting in a satisfying and readable summary of the state of the art. The book has two sections; the first concentrates on techniques and research; the second looks at more philosophical issues. Of these, the first is far superior. She focuses in turn on the different capabilities that an android must have — sight, movement, memory, reasoning, speech, etc, and evaluates the methods that AI has developed to give machines those capabilities. Despite the broad scope of such a project, in less than 200 pages Caudill covers the territory skillfully, from the early insights into elled loosely on the way the brain works. Caudill believes reasoning and logic, through the focus on knowledge representa- that these approaches can and will be merged in the quest for tion, to the more recent emphasis on learning and parallel-process- a functioning android. ing alternatives to hard-wired computer programs. The explana- I had a few negative reactions as well, though. First, her tions are necessarily only overviews, but they are very clear and discussions of some of the newest directions that AI has taken easy to follow. For example, the neural network architectures — the use of evolutionary techniques, for example, are developed by Carpenter and Grossberg, which embody their Adap- divorced from the main text and included in her philosophi- tive Resonance Theory, are notoriously difficult to understand — cal speculations, without discussing how these emerging even for AI researchers. Caudill does a superb job of making their techniques will help achieve the project’s goals. Other hot operating principles clear. In fact, her explanations of various topics are not even mentioned, for instance: modelling neural network techniques were for me the strongest parts of the computation as a free market, the Rodney Brooks-led turn book. away from the functional decomposition of intelligence, As the chapters unfold, one of the central tensions in AI is Minsky’s Society of Mind model, and “distributed” AI, in revealed: the contrast in approach between traditional “symbolic” which problem-solving takes place in the interaction be- AI — in which aspects of the world are represented as discrete tween semi-autonomous agents who negotiate with one abstract symbols which are then operated on by the computer another. Also, the interesting engineering issues concerning (Expert Systems exemplify this approach) — and “connectionist” the construction of an android’s musculature, skin, and other AI, which focuses on adaptable, “subsymbolic” processing mod- “hardware”, are not reported — which is appropriate for an

43 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 introduction to AI but is a sad oversight for a book putatively about androids. My most severe disappointment was Caudill’s failure to address the integra- Mirror Worlds — Or the day software tion issue. AI researchers have divided puts the Universe in a shoebox... How cognition up into parts along much the same lines as Caudill, and (as she points it will happen and what it will mean out) the progress has been promising. But a central puzzle that AI is trying (and by David Gelernter. failing, currently) to solve is how to put Oxford University Press, 1992. New York. the pieces together. It seems that many of ISBN: 0-19-506812-2, 0-19-507906-X the hardest issues have somehow fallen between the cracks of the problem divi- sion. Caudill would have served her read- Reviewed by Harry Shapiro Hawk ers better by reporting this in a straight- forward way, even though it might have tempered her optimistic prognosis for Extropians will find Gelernter’s views “People were pretty sure, in 1791, that rapid progress along well-defined paths. appealing in many respects. He writes the industrial revolution had ‘hap- The second (much shorter) segment about how groups of uncoupled entities pened’. It was history... In retrospect, of the book takes a rather cursory look at can communicate and work together by little had changed... In 1791, the the philosophical and social consequences choice. That is certainly a metaphor for an industrial revolution was merely build- of androids. She hits the main obvious idealized Extropian community. ing up a head of steam... Glancing points: What does it mean for something Mirror Worlds is Gelernter’s predic- backwards from a vantage-point two to be alive? How will society react to tion of a software revolution that will centuries hence, 1991 will look a lot intelligent machines? Should they have allow us to enter into a real-time, dynamic like 1791. The real software revolu- rights? Would you let your daughter model of our world. We can enter it for tion won’t have much to do with fancy marry one? How will we feel when they pleasure and profit. We can send our robots, computers in education, ... or surpass us? But the analysis is rather software agents to do our bidding. It is the other hot topics that dominate this mechanical, and is completely divorced like the box Gibson’s character ‘Bobby’ is month’s hit parade. It will have to do from the concurrent changes that will be plugged into; a simulation of our Uni- with.... Mirror Worlds... Today, soft- sweeping society as other technologies verse running forward and in real-time. ware as a building material resembles are developed in the coming decades. Gelernter contends “[it] will allow us to mosaic tile. In the future, software Some readers who have been living in explore the world in unprecedented depth will metamorphose into a something caves may not have seen these issues be- and detail without leaving the comfort of more like stone or steel or concrete. fore, but most have — especially those home.” The metamorphosis has in fact (just) who will actually buy her book. I’d sug- Mirror Worlds is also a technical begun.” gest that the movie Blade Runner and a primer for creating highly modular soft- He then spends the remainder of the couple episodes of Star Trek do at least as ware for parallel and massively parallel good a job of making you think about the book writing about creating and using computers. It primes us with Gelernter’s ramifications of this fundamentally im- software tools. These tools are: Tuples view of computer architecture and how portant component of our future. Much which are passive data, Infomachines that can represent a “fine art form” in its written science fiction does even better. which are tuples actively running “their” But that is a minor part of her book. own right. Gelernter’s views have histori- programs, Ensembles which are groups For readers who are largely mystified by cally been unorthodox, especially his of Infomachines, Trellises, which are lay- the methods and issues of AI, I firmly strong believe in parallelism. You can ers of specialized Ensembles, and finally recommend In Our Own Image, on the expect to find his views refreshing, even if FGP machines (F=Fetch, G=Generalize, strength of Caudill’s considerable talent you don’t completely agree with them. P=Project) which are collections of mul- for clear explanation. In fact, were I teach- Like the clearly more Extropian-minded, tiple Trellises being manipulated to ex- ing an introductory AI course, I would Hans Moravec, Gelernter presents an in- tract inference and conclusions from a consider assigning this book as a first teresting thought experiment, based on vast sea of tuples which he calls week’s introductory reading. However, his actual research, of where he feels the Tuplespace. When he says vast sea of if you have taken such a course or have future of computer science and our soci- tuples he really means vast. He imagines independently followed AI, much of this ety will go. every sensor like I.C.U medical equip- book will probably be rehashes of things The prologue starts the book appeal- ment and every datum like a bid or an ask you already know (though the neural net ingly, Gelernter poetically writing, “tech- on some trading floor being available. material still may make it worthwhile). nology is the ocean on a bright cool Spring I first heard about David Gelernter These particular strengths and weak- day. Sparkling in the far distance; breath- when reading an article he had written for nesses aside, Caudill has done a service to takingly cold; exhilarating once you’ve the August, 1989 issue of Scientific Ameri- Extropians with this book, by bringing plunged in... The cold ocean is coming to can [Vol. 261; No. 2; Pg. 66]. He was the challenge more into public view. The meet you,” and extols, “Why not give it a explaining a new method for writing pro- creation of Androids will increase the try? Hold your breath. Let’s plunge.” grams that relied upon “anonymous un- intelligence that can be applied to progress The first chapter is devoted to ex- coupled communication,” where each in all endeavors, but additionally — as the plaining, in a non-technical way, what a “component that produces data need not book’s title suggests — it will help us simulation like his proposed Mirror know who will use it or when” and “com- understand the human mind and so em- Worlds would be like. He compares the ponents that require data need not know power our own self-transformations in view of software in 1991 to the view of who produces it.” Gelernter had devel- ways as yet unforseen. technology in 1791: oped such a system while a graduate

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 44 student; he called it Linda. Linda allows Trellis element is an Infomachine. All multiple processes to run and share data these Infomachines run separately and across multiple CPUs. simultaneously... In practice, we do In the SciAm article Gelernter wrote: things somewhat differently... Work- Linda programs inhabit it what we ers collaborate to make the whole call ‘tuple space.’ (A tuple is a chunk thing work predictably. Predictability of data; the term is a generalization of is crucial. We run the Trellis in a terms such as quadruple and quin- series of sweeps... we instruct each tuple.) Passive tuples are just data worker to run through its list... stick- available for reading or processing. ing with each one just long enough... Active tuples are subprograms, all When it is done, it waits until all the executing simultaneously, that con- rest have finished. Then all the work- sume and produce other tuples. Ac- ers proceed into the next sweep. Hence tive tuples turn into passive ones, avail- the ‘frequency’ of a Trellis... In a fast able for reading or processing, once Trellis, sweeps are short; the frequency they have finished executing. is high... In a slow Trellis, the oppo- site... It’s easy to imagine a Trellis He depicted a tuple space structured that includes human elements along- into a “trellis: a row of modules at the side the software ones. In a... Trellis, bottom connected to sensors in the real lower rungs act ‘instinctively.’ Higher world, a second, higher row to refine the levels look for the big picture... In data and make connections between dif- these areas, we could use people to ferent items, a third row for further refin- realize some of the higher-rung ele- ing and so on. Two-way communication ments... At some level of the hierar- between rows permits the lower-level chy, human elements start to inter- modules to alter their actions in response mingle with software ones. to queries or comments passed down from upper levels...” Gelernter calls such combinations, With many trellises connected into Turingware. different parts of the real world: hospi- What is largely missing from the book tals, traffic systems, your home’s heating is an in-depth focus on the agoric aspects system, the FAA flight control database, of the computer models Gelernter pre- and many more, at the highest level of sents. He does briefly mention Bernardo abstraction you would have a software Huberman’s work at Xerox. I would like model of the “universe.” That is a Mirror to see more about how bits of tuples are run better and smoother... My guess is World. bought, sold and traded. How FGP ma- that, by offering topsight to the millions Gelernter has clearly refined his think- chines will evolve a ‘correct’ ratio be- (not merely to the visionaries who have ing since the 1989 SciAM publication. He tween buying expensive data versus the monopolized it in the past), they speak also presents work by various graduate cost of building complex inference en- directly to the large, perpetually unsatis- students of his, who have been actually gines. However, despite the lack of such fied human craving to understand ‘what’s building the types of systems he describes. agoric concepts I don’t see Gelernter’s going on,’ to see things whole. For ‘rea- He presents the work of Researcher Scott overall architecture precluding them. sons’ that transcend the rational, they will Fertig who created a FGP environment In one other general sense is the over- be hard to resist.” I think that memetics for radiology diagnosis. This system with all work non-Extropian. For example, adds enough reason so that we can ratio- a very limited database of 70 cases was early in the book Gelernter spends time nally understand why humans want to able to correctly determine that 1) a new writing how a Mirror World connected understand the ‘whole.’ I fear Gelernter case was unlike anything it had seen be- into the heart of a democratic government means that such a better understanding of fore and 2) the breast tumor in question will allow citizens of that democracy ac- the whole will lead to better governments was malignant. tually seek out and find how it is actually rather than simply better societies. In this radiology example, there was working and thus make it work better. I Nevertheless, Gelernter sees that Mir- a human feeding in data to the computer. see such systems working in the opposite ror Worlds will force people to model and Gelernter sees a different type of human direction; namely showing why a strong interact with accurate rational models of interaction in future systems. He sees a central government can never work. Of the world. This is something that too human plugged into the top level of a course in a idealized Extropian PPL1 soci- many people don’t do. If Mirror Worlds trellis. He even shows a illustration with ety such a system would allow each com- can do this, then I think we will be work- a bunch of floating heads above and seem- munity member to monitor, to what ever ing our way towards a better society. ingly connected to a trellis. For any proto- degree desired, how well each citizen was If these ideas intrigue you or you posthuman, this is a example of how a meeting their contractual obligations. want more technical details, I strongly human consciousness could retain its iden- While not mentioning memes, recommend Mirror Worlds as a good start- tity, do profitable work and be connected Gelernter does write about people’s fear ing point. Since Linda is commercially to millions of other minds though a vast of the unknown. He, most likely, un- (and competitively) available from sev- data-scape (Gelernter’s Tuplespace). knowingly tells how Mirror Worlds will eral sources, for those inclined to tinker, Gelernter writes: fill the receptor site for that fear, “I’ve these ideas can soon become very real. A Trellis, it turns out is like a crystal... claimed that Mirror Worlds are a devel- When you turn it on it vibrates at a opment of a large potential importance. 1Privately Produced Law. See the article of this certain frequency... In concept each This is why... They will make the world title by Tom Morrow in Extropy #7.

45 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 Call For Papers: Extro 1: The First Extropy Institute Conference on Transhumanist Thought San Francisco, California, April 30 - May 1, 1994

Extropianism is a transhumanist phi- of any field. Necessary mathemati- Papers must be written in English, losophy: Like humanism it values cal formalism is encouraged, but must be 5,000 - 12,000 words in length, reason and sees no ground for be- detailed proofs of marginally sig- and must begin with an abstract of not lieving in supernatural external nificant results are not. Accuracy, more than 400 words. Papers must forces controlling our destiny. But rigor, and rationality are of course include a separate cover page (not transhumanism goes further in call- expected, but breadth of vision is part of the paper itself) containing the ing us to push beyond the simply also important. title, author, postal address, and email human stage of evolution. Where address if available. Submissions others see difficulties, we see chal- The following is a non-exhaustive should not have been previously pub- lenges. Where others give up, we list of appropriate topics for pa- lished or submitted to any journals or move forward. Where others say pers, to give an idea of what the refereed conferences or workshops. enough is enough, we say: For- conference is all about: Accepted papers must be presented ward! Upward! Outward! We es- at the conference. pouse personal, social, and techno- ♦ Polycentric law and voluntaris- Submission deadline is December 15, logical evolution into ever higher tic, market-based societies 1994. Authors will be notified of re- forms. Extropy Institute, and its pub- ♦ Neuroscience and the transfer view decisions by January 15, 1994. lication Extropy: The Journal of of consciousness into Camera ready copies of accepted Transhumanist Thought, seeks to non-biological media papers are due back by February 15, promote and develop these ideas, (uploading) 1994 for inclusion in the Conference which are summarized in the five ♦ Artificial Intelligence, genetic proceedings. Extropian Principles: algorithms, and neural • Boundless Expansion networks Please mail four (4) copies of papers to: • Self-Transformation ♦ Futurism Extropy Institute • Dynamic Optimism ♦ • Intelligent Technology Nanotechnology Extro 1 Conference ♦ • Spontaneous Order Cryptography and technologi 11860 Magnolia Avenue, Suite R cal aids to privacy Riverside, CA 92503 Extro 1 will be a rich, intellectually ♦ Logic and guides to effective Questions can be directed to invigorating gathering designed to thinking, such as General [email protected]. help push outward the boundaries Semantics, fuzzy logic of progress and possibility. It will ♦ Biostasis Proceedings will be available to con- be both a serious study and a joyful ♦ Philosophy of mind, self, and ference attendees at the conference, and will be available afterwards from celebration of humanity’s limitless identity potential and how it will be achieved. Extropy Institute. This call for papers ♦ Space travel, exploitation, and Besides presentations of accepted and other information about Extro 1 papers, the conference will feature habitation can be retrieved via anonymous ftp ♦ lectures by leading thinkers, panel Virtual reality from lynx.cs.wisc.edu in the directory discussions, the first Extropy Awards ♦ Life-extension pub/Extro-1. Also included there are banquet, and other events. ♦ Biological and neurological the full text of the Extropian Prin- augmentation ciples, and information about Extropy Submitted papers should as much ♦ Idea Futures, Hypertext, and Institute and the journal Extropy. as possible exploit interdisciplinary other information technologies ExI Conference Team connections, rather than presenting ♦ Transhumanist eupraxophy David Krieger, American Information results in a particular narrow sub- ♦ Exchange field. They should be aimed at an Self-organization and Max More, Extropy Institute intelligent, educated and interested complexity Derek Zahn, University of Wisconsin audience that is not necessarily fa- ♦ Artificial life miliar with the detailed background Forward! Upward! Outward!

EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 46 classified ads: Cross verbal swords in The (Libertarian) CONTRIBUTORS Connection, open-forum magazine since 1968. Subscribers may insert one page/ Harry Shapiro Hawk is the Manager of Computer services at Warwick issue free, unedited. Lots of stimulating Baker & Fiore Advertising. He holds a Master degree in Interactive conversation. Eight issues (one year) $20. Telecommunication from New York University. He is the Electronic Strauss, Box 3343X, Fairfax, VA 22038. Communications Officer for Extropy Institute and manages the Internet based Extropians mailing list. [email protected] For sale: Laserjet II Plus 300dpi laser printer, with Postscript Pacific Page car- David Krieger: David is Marketplace Administrator at the American tridge. Well under a year old. $500 or best Information Exchange (AMiX), Science Editor for Extropy, an Extropy offer. Contact the Extropy Institute office: 909-688-2323 Institute Director, and a former Technical Consultant to Star Trek: The Next Generation. [email protected]

Results of ExI Pledge Drive, held on the Peter McCluskey: Peter received a B.S. in Biology from Yale in 1978, Extropians e-mail list from October 21- and an M.S. in Computer Science from Brown in 1993. His master’s 30. (Originally reported in Exponent #3) Our thanks again: Without you, this is- thesis compared several neural network algorithms and genetic sue of Extropy probably wouldn't exist. programming for predicting the stock market and other time series. He is currently designing financial software for the MacGregor Karl Waldman $300** Group in Boston. [email protected] “CAW member & Extropian” $300 Ralph Merkle: Dr. Merkle received his Ph.D. from Stanford University Harry Shapiro $240+ in 1979 where he co-invented public key cryptography. He pursued T.O. Morrow $100 research in this area at Bell Northern Research until he joined Elxsi (a Eirikur Hallgrimmsson $100 computer start-up) in 1981. He left Elxsi to join Xerox PARC in 1988, Sam Shipman $100 where he is pursuing research in computational nanotechnology. Dr. David Nelson $100 Chris Moriondo $100 Merkle has six patents and has published extensively. Lee Nussbaum $80++ [email protected] Perry Metzger $60 Tim May $60 Max More: Editor of Extropy and President of Extropy Institute, Max Bob Grahame $53 received his BA in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics from Oxford Peter C. McCluskey $50 University, and now is writing his Ph.D dissertation at the University Mark Desilets $50 of Southern California on “The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Mark Venture $50 Transformation.” [email protected] or [email protected] Fred Moulton $50 Alexander Chislenko $50 Mike Price: BSc and MSc in Theoretical Physics from Imperial Kennita Watson $50 College, London. Specialist interests in cosmology and quantum field Richard Kennaway $50 Anthony Garcia $50 theories. Freelance systems engineer, software engineer, and project Carl Feynman $50 manager. Next issue joins Extropy's Editorial Committee as Theoreti- Steve Whitrow $50 cal Physics Editor. [email protected] Bill Eichman $30 Scott Meeks $30 Julian L. Simon: Perhaps call him Senior Junior — teaches business Robert Brooks $30 administration at the University of Maryland. He studies the econom- Anonymous $20 ics of population, and is now exploring and promulgating the Anonymous $20 resampling method of doing all statistics — a method (including the Mike Linksvayer $20 bootstrap) that he developed a quarter century ago. He invented and Kevin Q. Brown $20 promoted the volunteer scheme for handling airline oversales, from Andrea Gallagher $20 Chris Rasch $20 which you may have benefitted. **pledge of $25/month for one year Ralph Whelan: Vice President of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, +matching grants totalling $20/month ++pledge of $50 now and $30 in March Editor of Alcor's Cryonics magazine, and a director of Extropy Institute. His main interest is music, which he views as a tremendously Extropy #11 was produced on a Gateway 486 DX2 precise and complex form of thought/communication. His biggest 50 with 8Mb of RAM, a 230 Mb hard disk, 14" Crystal distraction is computer art/animation [email protected] Scan monitor, using Pagemaker 5.0, Word for Win- dows 2.0 and Aldus Freehand 3.1. Proofs were Derek Zahn: Derek Zahn recently escaped the higher educational printed at 600dpi on an HP Laserjet 4 with 6Mb system, fortunately only suffering a master's degree in Computer RAM. Layout by Max More. Science at the University of Wisconsin. He is presently Principal This issue was printed on a web press by Canyon Optimist at Luminous Software, and maintains the ExI-Essay FTP Printing, Inc., Anaheim, CA. archive. [email protected] Print run: 3,200

47 EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 Ó Ó ExI Audio Tapes, Books, T-Shirt How to Join the ExI Virtual Community Everything is Getting Better and Better – I’ll Bet On It! Extropy Institute sponsors, through by Julian Simon. the endeavor of ExI Electronic Com- Economist Julian Simon uses hard data to counter prevail- munications Officer Harry S. Hawk, ing gloomy beliefs about the current state of the world and its a number of electronic fora for direction. Practically all measures of human well-being sharing libertarian, life-extensionist, substantiate the Extropian’s dynamically optimistic views: pro-technology and other Life does tend to improve, though only through the efforts and Extropian ideas with bright, like- applied intelligence of free persons. This tape makes an minded individuals around the effective introduction to Simon’s ideas, and, lent out to your globe. The rapid evolution of these pessimistic friends, will serve as a valuable intellectual fora means that many of the de- catalyst. tails below have changed since $10.95 (Members $9.95) EC1 (1-hour audio) last issue. The most popular service is the Bionomics On Trial: A Discussion With Michael Extropians e-mail list, which boils over with lively discussion and de- Rothschild bate on numerous topics. To join, Rothschild outlines the main contentions of his book send a request to: Bionomics: Economy As Ecosystem, and responds to audi- [email protected] ence questions. Topics discussed include electronic eco- When sending your add request, systems; how bionomics effectively draws ‘liberals’ into indicate whether you want real support for free markets; the relation between Austrian/ time or digest mode. (If unsure, try process economics and bionomics; the role of government; the digest mode first!) The how far the economy as ecosystem analogy can be pushed. Extropians list is using the most ad- $12.95 (Members: $11.50) EC2 (80 minutes audio) vanced information-filtering soft- ware, allowing you to select which Postage: messages (topic, author, etc.) you $1 per tape. Overseas orders: Surface mail – $1.50 first tape, $1.25 receive and how you receive them. each additional tape. Contact ExI for airmail rates. There is also an Extropian con- ference on the Well, one of the BOOKS AVAILABLE (postage rates in parentheses): longest-running professionally run Maureen Caudill, In Our Own Image: Building An Artificial BBS systems. On the Well, send mail Person $23.00 ($2.00) to habs. K. Eric Drexler, Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manu- Another service is the ExI Essay facturing, and Computation $24.95 ($3.00) list, for posting longer, more care- Alan Lakein, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your fully prepared electronic manu- Life $4.95 ($1.00) scripts. To get on this list, send a message to: Marc Steigler, The Gentle Seduction $3.50 ($1.20) [email protected] Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep $5.99 ($1.50) Those ExI-Essay papers contain- ing explicit notices granting per- Forward! Upward! Outward! Into your T-Shirt! mission for redistribution are avail- able by anonymous FTP at Strike terror into the hearts of gloomy pessimists, lynx.cs.wisc.edu (IP address life-haters, and statists! 128.105.2.216). A list of available Proudly display your transhumanist colors! Yes, Extropy T- essays along with their file names is shirts are once again available in both men's Large and eXtra- in the file pub/ExI-Essay/INDEX. Any Large. These shirts, in blue, feature the five-spiral Extropy logo questions should go to Derek Zahn in black and gold up front, and the motto “Forward! Upward! Outward! Into the Future!” on the back. at [email protected]. The cost is $16 per shirt ($14 for ExI members), plus $1 postage. There are also two “local” lists for announcements and discussions in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Boston area. To join these lists, Check or money order in US dollars drawn on a US bank, send messages to: payable to “Extropy Institute.” Mail your order to: Extropy [email protected] Institute, Dept. S, 11860 Magnolia Avenue, Suite R, Riverside, [email protected] Ì CA 92503. Ì EXTROPY #11 Summer/Fall 1993 48