
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) - clay
http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
======
radu_floricica
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
Probably because they're pretty busy treating people who do have illnesses.

~~~
scorpioxy
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.

~~~
jimmyjim
(I'm so very very sorry, but this is an off-topic comment. It seems that I
can't comment on old threads, and I cannot send private messages to users
either... so I'm stumped, and here I am.

You mentioned in one of your posts that you're an owner of the Natural 4000
keyboard - I just received mine from amazon (after picking up some symptoms of
RSI) -- I love it, except one little thing that has me thinking that I should
return this: the space bar is abnormally hard to depress. Is that so for your
4000 as well? Should I just return this keyboard and get another brand, or
should I request a different 4000 without this 'defect'? Thanks, and sorry
again for the odd manner of messaging.)

~~~
scorpioxy
You can always email me, my email is in the profile.

But as for your question. No, mine is fine although it is somewhat harder than
on other keyboards. You just get used to it over time. 4000s are odd, i have 2
and each have different quirks(but nothing too serious), so try replacing it.

------
GavinB
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.

~~~
reasonattlm
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...](http://colinfarrelly.blogspot.com/2009/06/idealism-meets-realism-
tackling-chronic.html)

~~~
rw
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?

------
lionhearted
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...](http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html)

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

------
reasonattlm
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...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/10/how-age-damaged-
mitochondria-cause-your-cells-to-damage-you.php)

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...](http://richardjschueler.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=57170)

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...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/07/slightly-inside-1.php)

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.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id=3237)
[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/the-portions-
of-g...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/the-portions-of-
government-focused-on-preventing-new-medicine.php)
[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-
worl...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-world-
without-the-fda.php)

------
reasonattlm
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...](http://www.longevitymeme.org/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=23)

~~~
tc
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.

------
tc
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>

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

------
fluffster
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...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html)

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

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

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

------
juliend2
But what exactly is death?

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

~~~
juliend2
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-
death_experience#Characteristics)

~~~
juliend2
You should not downmod people just because you don't agree with them. That's
the Reddit style.

------
Ardit20
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.

