From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Jul 29 1996 - 05:09:47 MDT
On Sat, 27 Jul 1996, Max More wrote:
> At 12:15 AM 7/27/96 -0500, Lyle Burkhead wrote:
>
> >Measure? in what units? Does this definition really say anything?
>
> Clearly it says a fair bit. It says, very basically, what extropy is and
> thus what it is not. As a brief definition it does not purport to explain
> the concept in depth. I have been torn between the virtues of brevity and
> informativeness in the definition. When I explain the idea verbally, I
> always expand on the definition, qualifying terms and ensuring the audience
> understands that it’s not intended as a techical term (it’s not meant to be
> exactly the opposite of entropy either in a thermodynamic or a information
> theoretic sense).
On the other hand, the wording seems to imply that extropy is
quantifiable. But it is probably no good idea to try to quantify it yet,
complexity theory is still struggling with finding a good definition of
complexity (which is definitely *somehow* interlinked with extropy).
> An earlier definition I used described extropy as "the process of
> increasing…" rather than as a measure. Someone objected to that. I don’t
> recall their grounds, though I presume it was that extropy should be the
> thing or collection of things being increased rather than the process itself.
Why not? I have begun to dislike reification (= turning concepts into
"things") lately; intelligence is not something you can increase (as if
it was some golden liquid in our brains), it is the ability to act/think
in an intelligent way. Extropy cannot be static, then it is not extropy.
Remember that the word is based on "Ex" ("out") and the "tropos" (move).
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