[extropy-chat] Being Extropic [was: the wrong Spike]

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Reason wrote:

> Hmm. What about the importance of information processing as a separate topic
> from the importance of information? Or the importance of a growth curve to
> information as opposed to preservation? If we're all up for preserving but
> not growth or processing, we start to look a lot like the Jarts from Greg
> Bear's novels.

I am unfamiliar with the Jarts -- but I was of course making a simplification
because the idea of preserving genomic information which is the product
of millions of years of evolution is very simple.  It can be done now and
it is extropic.  There are very separate discussions which would debate how
to preserve the highest amount of current information content (presumably
along the lines of freezing the brain of every human that dies) and/or create
the most information in the nearest possible future (which involve throwing
Bush's plans for visiting Mars into the garbage can and getting on with the
task of planetary dismantlement to build XYZZY-Brains).  But I was avoiding
those discussions since they raise much more controversial issues.

And the last time I raised an "ultimate" utilitarian proposal for a
plausible strategy for accelerating the increase in the information content
of the universe on the "extropians" list I got my butt kicked for even
proposing it.  So I will tend to stick to the "safe" proposals for now.

Robert

Just as a curious note (kind of studying the ExI reader list) -- who
knows the origin of XYZZY?  (I perhaps encountered it about 25 years
ago.)