Extropian Ethics and the "Extrosattva"
Extropian ethical thinking is based on a melding of insights about the evolutionary value of cooperative life-strategies with classical capitalist values. What distinguishes extropians from our classical liberal and anarchist intellectual forbearers is our realization that sentient beings must find a moral and ethical framework that can withstand the utter transformation of the material circumstances of human life and the complete mutability of the self.
In game-theoretic terms, we are impressed by the apparent truth that reflexive defectors have low survival value in any social system requiring trade or in which cooperative action yields competitive advantage. At the other end of the spectrum, we see that reflexive cooperators reap equally unsatisfactory results from any iterated interaction. A middle strategy -- known by the charming schoolyard term, "tit-for-tat" -- appears to be the optimal strategy in essentially any social situation.
This somewhat abstract realization bears out millennia of human wisdom and common sense: An ethic of transparent reciprocity seems to arise spontaneously from the very fabric of the natural world of actors in society. Extropians see an open marketplace of maximally free individual actors is the ideally best structure for optimizing each individual's potential. From this realization, extropians come to endorse agoric systems wherever possible as not only the most efficient, but also the BEST way of life in any moral sense one can reconcile with a scientific view of reality.
What place, in this world, do values of kindness and charity have? One simple and direct answer is that a reputation for reciprocal kindness is very valuable to an individual. Being good is good for you. Or, to put it in terms of game theory, being KNOWN as good is good for you, in most instances -- the exception being that one should also be known to be FAIR and RECIPROCAL, i.e. a reputation for completely unqualified charity is ultimately bad for you.
How do these ideas and values translate into the transhuman and posthuman world? First, we will continue to live our lives somewhere along a spectrum of capability, i.e. in at least some aspects of our lives -- no matter how long or augmented -- our individual power, wealth and knowledge will be greater than that of some individuals and less than others. We will need to cooperate -- trade -- with moral entities both more and less powerful than ourselves, and we will need to do so on an ongoing basis. In fact, as immortalists, we expect that we will do so on an indefinitely extended basis. It will be a very long game, indeed. And throughout this game, our moral reputations will be just as important as the specifics of any isolated trade within any such hierarchy of capabilities.
When you interact with others over only the brief span of three score and ten years, and expect that only a very limited amount of movement through any hierarchy of capabilities will be possible over that time period, you may be unkind or "unreciprocal" ("defect", in game theoretic terms) quite a few times, and expect to get away with it over the anticipated term of the game. But where the game may go on indefinitely and the weak may transcend to unimaginably higher powers in the future, one takes a somewhat different view: The disenfranchised person to whom I am cruel today may be the demi-god of next century, able to exact a revenge of proportions I cannot imagine now. Even if the specific person to whom I am cruel now is extinguished, an immortal reputation for unkindness will be a significant handicap in transactions -- whether purely economic or not -- with entities who do persist and transcend.
All of which leads to an idea I have been cultivating for some time and for which Anton Sherwood has found a term I have been looking: "Extrosattva". The more I think about transhumanism and extropiansim, the more I am struck by the rich moral raw material to be found in classical Hinduism and Buddhism. The boddisattva is, for want of a better term, the Buddhist "saint"; the transcended (or almost transcended) individual who "hangs back" from complete nirvana to assist others in the process of enlightenment and transcendence. (The person of the boddisattva is the defining difference between classical hinayana and mahayana Buddhism, the former largely ignoring the possibility of assistance on the road to transcendence.) Further, the classical Hindu concept of "karma" makes great sense as an encapsulation of the wisdom of an ethic of reciprocal kindness in an essentially eternally-iterated prisoner's dilemma game.
The boddisattva is one for whom kindness is no burden, because of the liberation of the enlightenment that she has experienced. Freed from the illusion of the immutability of one's own consciousness, one is free to help others at little cost to one's self. This image translates to a conception of a post-human "Power": With complete mastery over material reality through advanced nanotechnology and intelligence augmentation, how simple it becomes to help others. Not every transcended Power would devote effort to such endeavors, just as every newly-enlightened buddha doesn't hang back from nirvana to assist others less enlightened. But that some will seems inevitable. For instance, the concept inherent in cryonics that the first-revived will devote themselves -- at least in part -- to reviving the rest, is entirely consistent with this image of rational charity. I hope that any reader who may pass the threshold before me will remember this essay
September 1997 (505 C.E.)
Return to Transhumanism and Extropianism
The spiral logo is a registered trademark of the Extropy Institute.