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E Part of the TESCREAL bundle

Extropianism

Optimism as an engineering project.

The first organized transhumanist movement — a libertarian, super-optimistic crusade to reverse entropy through reason, technology, and the conquest of death. The second letter of TESCREAL and the social network where the whole bundle was incubated.

Extropianism took the loose philosophy of transhumanism and turned it into a community. Founded by Max More in the late 1980s, it preached "perpetual progress," radical life extension, cryonics, and a near-religious faith that intelligence could fight back the universe's slide into disorder. Its mailing list and conferences gathered a roster of future power players — Minsky, Kurzweil, Assange, Bostrom, Hanson, Yudkowsky, even Jeffrey Epstein. Critics argue this was the incubator where academic transhumanism fused with Silicon Valley libertarianism and seeded nearly every movement that followed.

Overview

What it is

The war on entropy

The name is the whole thesis. Extropy was coined as the conceptual opposite of entropy — the physical law that everything tends toward disorder, decay, and death. Extropians proposed that intelligence and technology could push the other way: toward more order, more energy, more life, more capacity, without limit. Entropy was not destiny but an enemy to be defeated.

This reframed optimism as a duty rather than a mood. Where transhumanism made the abstract claim that humans should be improved, Extropianism supplied the attitude — a self-described "super-optimism" that treated aging, stupidity, scarcity, and death as solvable problems and treated despair as a kind of cowardice. It was transhumanism with a flag, a creed, and a clubhouse.

Max More builds the church

The British-born philosopher Max More (born Max O'Connor — he changed his name to signal his commitment to "always getting better") founded the Extropy Institute in 1988 with Tom Morrow, published the journal Extropy, and in 1990 wrote The Principles of Extropy: perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, and rational thinking.

More also gave transhumanism its working definition — "the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason." Extropianism was the first organized form of that movement: not a research program but a subculture, complete with a mailing list, conferences, and a libertarian political flavor that would prove enormously influential.

The incubator of the bundle

Extropianism matters less for its doctrines than for its guest list. The Extropians mailing list in the 1990s gathered AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, futurist Ray Kurzweil, a young Julian Assange, philosopher Nick Bostrom, economist Robin Hanson, a teenage Eliezer Yudkowsky — and the financier Jeffrey Epstein. It was, critics argue, the social network where academic transhumanism fused with Silicon Valley libertarianism.

From this milieu the rest of TESCREAL grew. Yudkowsky carried its memes into Singularitarianism and Rationalism; Bostrom into Longtermism; Hanson into the rationalist blogosphere. Émile P. Torres and Timnit Gebru argue Extropianism was the institutional bridge that carried the whole ideology — and, they contend, its eugenic assumptions — from a fringe newsletter into the boardrooms now building AI.

Core tenets

What its believers hold

The doctrines that recur across the movement's founders, theorists, and builders.

01

Fight entropy

The universe tends toward disorder and death; intelligence can and must push the other way. Reversing decay — biological and cosmic — is the project's organizing goal.

02

Perpetual progress

There is no natural ceiling on intelligence, lifespan, or capability. Improvement should be unbounded and continuous — "boundless expansion" in every dimension.

03

Self-transformation

Individuals should actively remake themselves — body, mind, and character — through reason, technology, and discipline. Max More changing his own name was the principle in miniature.

04

Practical optimism

Optimism is not a feeling but a method. Despair and fatalism are rejected as self-fulfilling; a "dynamic optimism" that acts to make good outcomes happen is treated as a duty.

05

Spontaneous order

Borrowing from libertarian and Hayekian thought, Extropians favored decentralized, self-organizing systems and free markets over central control — "open society" and "self-direction" over authority.

06

Death is optional

Mortality is an engineering failure, not a fact of life. Cryonics, life extension, and eventually uploading are the route out; accepting death is pathologized as "deathism."

Key concepts

The vocabulary

The specialized terms you need to read the movement in its own words.

Extropy
The coined opposite of entropy — a measure of a system's intelligence, energy, vitality, and capacity for growth. Increasing it is the movement's central aim.
The Principles of Extropy
Max More's founding creed (1990, revised through the 1990s): perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, and rational thinking.
Boundless expansion
The belief that there is no inherent limit to intelligence, lifespan, capability, or the reach of life into the cosmos — growth without ceiling.
Self-transformation
Continual, deliberate self-improvement of body, mind, and character through reason and technology rather than acceptance of one's given nature.
Dynamic optimism
Treating optimism as an active practice — choosing and working toward positive outcomes — rather than a passive mood or naive hope.
Intelligent technology
The principle that science and technology should be embraced and accelerated as the primary tools for transcending natural limits.
Spontaneous order
A preference for decentralized, self-organizing systems and free markets ("open society," "self-direction") over centralized authority — the movement's libertarian streak.
Deathism
A pejorative for the mainstream acceptance of mortality as natural or good — treated by Extropians as a pathology to be overcome.
Timeline

How it unfolded

1988
The Extropy Institute is founded
Max More and Tom Morrow (T.O. Morrow) launch the Extropy Institute and the journal Extropy, giving transhumanism its first organized home and its libertarian, super-optimist flavor.
1990
The Principles of Extropy
Max More publishes the movement's creed — perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, rational thinking — and defines transhumanism as improvement "through applied reason."
1991
The Extropians mailing list
The email list becomes the movement's nerve center, drawing cypherpunks, nanotech enthusiasts, and libertarian futurists into a single freewheeling conversation about transcending human limits.
1994
"Meet the Extropians"
Wired profiles the subculture, bringing its cryonics, life extension, and "super-optimism" to a mainstream tech audience and cementing its Silicon Valley reputation.
1990s
The roster assembles
The community gathers Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, a young Julian Assange, Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, a teenage Eliezer Yudkowsky — and Jeffrey Epstein. The social network of the future bundle forms.
1998
Spinning off the WTA
Extropian-adjacent figures Nick Bostrom and David Pearce found the World Transhumanist Association (later Humanity+), pushing the movement toward academic respectability and beyond Extropy's libertarian frame.
2006
The Extropy Institute closes
Declaring its "mission accomplished" — transhumanist ideas having gone mainstream — the institute shuts down. Its members and memes scatter into rationalism, EA, and the AI labs.
2023
TESCREAL names the lineage
Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres coin TESCREAL, placing Extropianism as the second letter and the incubator where transhumanism fused with Silicon Valley culture.
Key figures

The cast

Founders, theorists, builders, and financiers of the project.

Max More
Founder

Max More

b. 1964

Born Max O'Connor; changed his name to signal perpetual self-improvement. Founded the Extropy Institute (1988) and wrote The Principles of Extropy.

Wikipedia →
Tom Morrow (T.O. Morrow)
Co-founder

Tom Morrow (T.O. Morrow)

—

Pen name of the co-founder of the Extropy Institute and Extropy magazine alongside Max More. A play on "tomorrow."

Marvin Minsky
AI pioneer

Marvin Minsky

1927–2016

Turing Award-winning founder of MIT's AI Lab, drawn to the Extropian milieu. His "society of mind" framing fed the movement's faith in machine intelligence. Later named in connection to Epstein.

Wikipedia →
Ray Kurzweil
Futurist

Ray Kurzweil

b. 1948

Popularized the technological singularity and longevity escape velocity. Reportedly dismissed ordinary human experience as "noise" against the coming machine intelligence.

Wikipedia →
Julian Assange
Early member

Julian Assange

b. 1971

The future WikiLeaks founder was an early participant in the Extropian / cypherpunk crossover, years before his work on cryptography and leaks.

Wikipedia →
Nick Bostrom
Member → theorist

Nick Bostrom

b. 1973

Active in the Extropian milieu before co-founding the WTA. Carried the project into academic longtermism. A leaked racist email later forced a public apology.

Wikipedia →
Robin Hanson
Member → economist

Robin Hanson

b. 1959

Economist and Extropian who co-founded the Overcoming Bias blog — a direct ancestor of the rationalist community — and theorized about uploaded "em" economies.

Wikipedia →
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Member (teen) → ideologue

Eliezer Yudkowsky

b. 1979

Entered the Extropian community as a teenager, predicting superintelligence by 2020. Carried its memes into Singularitarianism and founded what became MIRI.

Wikipedia →
Jeffrey Epstein
Member / financier

Jeffrey Epstein

1953–2019

Transhumanist with eugenic aims — reportedly wanted to "seed the human race with his DNA" and arranged cryonic preservation. Funded figures across the milieu.

Wikipedia →
Key texts

The canon

The essays, declarations, and books that built the doctrine.

The Principles of Extropy (v3)

Max More

The movement's creed: perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, rational thinking.

Read ↗
1990–2003

Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy

Max More

More's essay reframing transhumanism as a coherent modern philosophy — the intellectual seed of organized Extropianism.

Read ↗
1990

Extropy (the journal)

Extropy Institute

The movement's magazine, where life extension, nanotech, cryonics, and libertarian futurism were debated. (Issue archived at the Internet Archive.)

Read ↗
1988–1996

Meet the Extropians

Ed Regis · Wired

The mainstream profile that introduced the subculture's super-optimism, cryonics, and self-transformation to the tech world.

Read ↗
1994

Are You a Transhuman?

FM-2030

Adjacent founding text that gave the early subculture the "transhuman" as a transitional being and shaped its self-image.

Read ↗
1989

The Transhumanist Declaration

WTA / Humanity+

The post-Extropian creed drafted as the movement professionalized — affirming enhancement, life extension, and morphological freedom.

Read ↗
1998
In their own words

On the record

Extropy: the extent of a system's intelligence, information, order, vitality, and capacity for improvement.
— Max More, The Principles of Extropy (paraphrased)
No more gods, no more faith, no more timid holding back. Let us blast out of our old forms, our ignorance, our weakness, and our mortality.
— Max More, "Letter to Mother Nature" (paraphrased)
Perpetual progress. Self-transformation. Practical optimism. Intelligent technology. Open society. Self-direction. Rational thinking.
— The seven Principles of Extropy
Extropianism is eugenics on steroids.
— Émile P. Torres, on the broader transhumanist lineage (paraphrased)
The critique

The case against

Extropianism sold itself as joyful, can-do optimism — a love of progress and a refusal to accept death. Its critics argue it was also where transhumanism acquired its most consequential and most troubling features: a hard libertarian politics, a contempt for ordinary human limits, and a guest list that would go on to shape the AI industry in its own image.

The incubator effect

Nearly every later TESCREAL movement traces members back to the Extropian list — Yudkowsky, Bostrom, Hanson. Critics argue its real legacy is not its ideas but the network it assembled and the assumptions it normalized.

Libertarianism baked in

"Spontaneous order" and "self-direction" imported a market-fundamentalist politics into transhumanism — the idea that the enhanced future should be governed by private wealth and weak states, not democratic control.

"Deathism" and contempt for limits

By pathologizing the acceptance of mortality and "biological fundamentalism," Extropians framed ordinary human values as disorders to be cured — a rhetorical move that recurs across the bundle.

The eugenic inheritance

As the first organized transhumanism, Extropianism carried forward the movement's founding premise that some human configurations are objectively superior. Epstein's presence in the milieu, Torres argues, was not an aberration but a symptom.

Inside the bundle

How it connects

Transhumanism does not stand alone. It feeds — and is fed by — the other letters of TESCREAL.

The network

The full web

People, organizations, and the ideologies this one bleeds into. Drag nodes, hover to isolate, scroll to zoom — or pop it out fullscreen.

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Sources

Citations & further reading

Primary documents and reporting used on this page. See the full References library → for the complete source list.

  1. 01
    Extropianism ↗Wikipedia
  2. 02
    Extropy Institute ↗Wikipedia
  3. 03
    Max More ↗Wikipedia
  4. 04
    The Principles of Extropy (v3) ↗Max More · Internet Archive
  5. 05
    Meet the Extropians ↗Ed Regis · Wired (1994)
  6. 06
    The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through AGI ↗Gebru & Torres · First Monday (2024)
  7. 07
    TESCREAL ↗Wikipedia
  8. 08
    Transhumanism ↗Wikipedia
  9. 09
    Cryonics ↗Wikipedia
  10. 10
    AI Is a Eugenics Project — interview with Émile P. Torres ↗The Stories We Tell · YouTube
Extropianism — connection network