[ExI] Extropy IRC server?

[Robert Picone]

On 10/21/07, Kevin H <kevin.l.holmes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm new to the list as I've just recently discovered transhumanism and
> extropism and it's all very interesting and I think it aligns very well with
> my own evaluative standpoint: being both a natural optimist and a
> technophile (though the latter requires qualifications that I don't want to
> bore you with right now).
>
> But I saw on the web page on the extropy.org site about an IRC server
> however I haven't been able to log on.  Is the server still online?
>
> Also, I was wondering if anyone knows of a paper or website somewhere on the
> concept of extropy.  I know on Wikipedia it's said that extropy is no more
> than a metaphor, but it seems to me that there has to be something more to
> it.  I mean, how is it that life could emerge at all in a decaying universe
> proceeding towards entropy?  It seems to me that everything that has been
> accomplished so far on this planet, human life itself as an interesting
> spectacle, must have required the "consumption" of a great deal of order
> elsewhere.  So I'm thinking in the universe there must be some phenomena,
> like a machine in nature, that does just--consumes a great deal of order in
> the universe to produce certain peak regions of accelerated growth and
> extropy.  I don't know, does anyone know more about this?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kevin
>

It has thus far requited a gigantic fusion reactor to constantly
supply the energy necessary to actively oppose entropy, but I don't
see any reason why order, which isn't really in abundance in this
universe, would have to be destroyed to create order.  I don't see why
either order or disorder should be conserved, and it is a relatively
easy to think of a case where one has completely overtaken the other
(i.e. the heat death of the universe).