The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)

http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

by clay • 17 years ago

72 25 17 years ago

clay• 17 years ago

I was surprised this wasn't posted here before. I would encourage everyone here to donate to the Methusaleh Foundation. You can promise to donate $25,000 and join the "300", which we're expecting will fill up by the end of the summer. :)

alexandros• 17 years ago

Sometimes stuff gets buried.. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=402205

lionhearted• 17 years ago

What a coincidence. A hacker friend just pointed me towards to this related piece today:

http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag...

Worth a watch. Talks about some of the details, addresses the same logical/ethical fallacies that hold people back.

reasonattlm3• 17 years ago

Moral: you get things done by getting things done, and the largest obstacles are conceptual - something that should be near and dear to many folk here.

I'm also suprised that the Fable wasn't previously posted. On the subject of the 300, you might read this detained rationale by Michael Rae:

http://www.longevitymeme.org/articles/viewarticle.cfm?articl...

tc2• 17 years ago

I'd hate for someone reading your comment to miss the article because they assume it is just a piece about procrastination.

This article is a compelling story that suggests there is a moral imperative to engage in anti-aging research, and that we have become blind, in our acceptance of our current mortality, to both the suffering that it causes, and to the fact that we can now hope to do something about it.

tc2• 17 years ago

This is a great modern fable. It overstates the moral imperative, however, by casting people as agents of the dragon, making them actively responsible for the death of others [1].

The truth of the matter is that working to defeat mortally is supererogatory -- as a young Spock put it, an act which is morally praiseworthy but not morally obligatory.

[1] Similar in spirit to the TOS episode, "A Taste of Armageddon," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

GavinB• 17 years ago

There's a common perception in the academic community that they face heavy resistance from those who think that "death gives life meaning," and that ending aging would harm "human dignity."

These feelings may be strong among philosophers and ethicists and the debate may rage in journals, but I don't think there's nearly so much resistance in the general population.

The challenge is proving that dramatic longevity extension is really possible. Most of modern medicine is really treatment of symptoms, not cures. We don't understand or have effective treatments for the underlying causes of most conditions.

reasonattlm3• 17 years ago

There are some pro-engineered-longevity ethicists. This fellow, for example, is a good example of someone mired in stereotypical ethicist viewpoints (e.g. social justice, redistribution, equality uber alles, etc) nonetheless constructing a rationale within his paradigm for all-out longevity research as fast as possible:

http://colinfarrelly.blogspot.com/2009/06/idealism-meets-rea...

rw• 17 years ago

Golly, a transhumanist interested in social justice issues!

If you're a humanist, you ought to be a transhumanist. Eliezer argues convincingly on this point. What is so hard about noting that if you are a transhumanist, you ought to be a humanist?

gaius• 17 years ago

The onus on "ethicists" is to do the work in what they consider to be an ethical way.

But all I see is people who've nothing to contribute to science themselves but nevertheless feel entitled to dictate terms to those that have.

radu_floricica2• 17 years ago

To some degree, I blame religion for this. Not the organized, dogmatic kind but the pervasive moral one, which whispers that it is not "right" to want more from life then your peers and your ancestors.

Also I think this is the same wider sentiment which applies not only to extending life span but to any kind of enhancement. At least in my culture, talking to a doctor about yourself without having any illness will get you a long stare.

tptacek• 17 years ago

Probably because they're pretty busy treating people who do have illnesses.

scorpioxy2• 17 years ago

I think he was referring to what people consider to be a life-threatening illness.

Then again, who's to say what an illness is. Are illnesses only thing that have an immediate threat on your life? What about ones that stop you from doing your job? What about conditions that stop you from living your life normally?

In my country and culture, psychological and mental illnesses, which are also "real illnesses" by medical terms, are also given the same stare.

radu_floricica2• 17 years ago

When you're talking about cars or computers there is a large market in optimizing performance and various tune-ups. Not so for the human body, at least not in the official establishment.

Doctors are not a finite resource, and they are not busy all the time. And still pretty much the only thing which is socially acceptable is having regular checkups. Anything else, from provigil and viagra to trying to get a customized diet is frowned upon. Why do you think there are so many diet sites out there? Because the people who could and should help you don't.

I think the custom diet is a great example. I have a slight calcium deficiency and I tend to drink coca-cola, which means I should compensate by taking occasional calcium supplements and staying in the sun. It is by no means an illness, and still this kind of things added over a 70 years life-time can really make a difference. And yet I don't see any services oriented to finding and solving small problems like that.

Hexstream• 17 years ago

Very similar in style to "The dragon in my garage":

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

reasonattlm3• 17 years ago

For an example of how tantalizingly close researchers are to making real progress in engineering away aspects of aging, you might look at the MitoSENS project at the SENS Foundation.

Firstly: mitochondrial DNA damage is convincingly very important in aging. There's a lot of research to support this, and a great deal more research to show how greatly the composition and function of mitochondria determines lifespan differences between species:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/10/how-age-damaged-m...

Secondly, we can move that DNA into the nucleus where it will continue to work to produce the necessary components of mitochondrial machinery long after the DNA in the mitochondria themselves is ragged:

http://www.sens.org/index.php?pagename=mitosens

And lastly the work of Marisol Corral-Debrinski is basically demonstrating how to do this in practice. Here's a video presentation from SENS3 - she's much further along now:

http://richardjschueler.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=5717...

As an alternative approach, researchers back in 2005 demonstrated an approach to replace all mitochondrial DNA in an organism, doing so in mice. Out with the old, in with the new:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/07/slightly-inside-1...

One last item: the FDA doesn't permit the development of therapies to treat aging. Period. So there's little venture money for it, and all promising research is then shoehorned into becoming sub-par treatments for specific age-related disease or just abandoned. All meaningful progress will occur in regions of the world where regulation is less horrid.

http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/the-portions-of-g... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-worl...

fluffster• 17 years ago

This TED talk about aging by Aubrey de Grey is very interesting: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can...

And please do think about cryonics once again: http://lesswrong.com/lw/wq/you_only_live_twice/

juliend23• 17 years ago

But what exactly is death?

What if it were a reward? What if we were all trying to avoid a beautiful reward?

req2• 17 years ago

But what exactly is a compiler error?

What if it were a warning? What if we were all trying to program a forbidden fruit?

juliend23• 17 years ago

Well, Sorry if i'm hurting someone's beliefs with my question. I'm still interested to know about other people's opinion on that question.

I found some interesting stuff on this page : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#Character...

juliend23• 17 years ago

You should not downmod people just because you don't agree with them. That's the Reddit style.

Ardit20• 17 years ago

I found the fable interesting, liked it even. Well written, it gave me some goosebumps at points. However where are the anti-dragonists. Surely the men on the street might not have the patience to read about an anti-dragon, they might however be willing to hear the process and how aging may be brought to an end. If our kings of our world are ignoring the petitions of our world's anti-dragonists, it seems that they have ye to take to the second stage, to raise the profile of their cause and attract donations and momentum.

In the fable, after the anti-dragonists went to the people, it seems they gathered a wide following. This might be because people really wanted to kill the dragon and also because they were told of how such a goal may realisticly be archived. We aren't told much on the other hand, only that some scientist in Oxford is working on aging. What the process is in simple layman language is not explained to combat the strong belief of many people that such people are well in a neverneverland.

I liked the fable, however I would like to see those who wrote it to practice what the anti-dragonists practised in the fable. Perhaps right now it is more important to gather momentum.

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)

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