Extropian Principles: SO Definition

Crosby_M (CrosbyM@po1.cpi.bls.gov)
Thu, 27 Feb 1997 13:10:29 -0500

Early last fall there was some discussion about replacing 'Spontaneous
Order' in BEST DO IT SO with 'Self Ownership'. If I recall,
Spontaneous Order was disliked because it was a term from biology that
seemed too submissive to whatever 'blind' evolution threw at us and
Self Ownership was preferred because it was more 'libertarian' or
suggestive of individual responsibility and creativity.

I was looking at Stuart Kauffman's _At Home In the Universe_ the other
day and noticed that the older term Spontaneous Order had been pretty
much replaced by the newer term 'Self Organization'. It's clearly
more extropic to use 'self' rather than 'spontaneous' because that
emphasizes the agent rather than the environment. Self Organization
seems like a nice compromise to me because 'organization' seems to
imply a combination of both the other two concepts: external order and
intrinsic ownership, along with the ability to chart one's own course
between the two.

Mark Crosby