The term extropy, coined by Tom Bell (T.O. Morrow) and defined by Max More in January 1988, as "the extent of a living or organizational system's intelligence, functional order, vitality, energy, life, experience, and capacity and drive for improvement and growth."[1] Extropy expresses a metaphor, rather than serving as a technical term, and so is not simply the opposite of entropy, although it is also considered the appropriate antonym. The philosophy of Extropy, written by Max More, is the original philosophy of transhumanism.
An additional definition of extropy is "estimate of how many distinct macrostates are possible for a given microstate". Macrostate is the amount of information possible to collect about an entity as a whole. While the macrostate of a stone involves only its shape mass and chemical composition, the macrostate of a human involves also data like friendships, political views, interests or the knowledge of languages. Thus the extropy of a human is higher than a stone.
Extropy is not necessarily a reciprocal of entropy. Plasma has very high entropy and crystal has very low, but both have rather low levels of extropy.[2]
In the philosophy of digital probabilistic physics, the extropy of a physical system is defined to be the self-information of the Markov chain probability of the physical system at a moment in time. This was to distinguish the probability of the Markov state of the physical system from the probability defined by entropy which creates ensembles of equivalent microstates.
- Extropic — any action or process that promotes extropy.[3]
See also[]
- Extropianism
- Digital probabilistic physics
- Negentropy
- Sustainability
- Systems thinking
- Systems philosophy
- Transhumanism
External links[]
- Principles of Extropy
- The Extropy Institute (closed in 2006)
sk:Extropia