
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) - AdeptusAquinas
https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
======
tschwimmer
Animated narration here:
[https://youtu.be/cZYNADOHhVY](https://youtu.be/cZYNADOHhVY)

------
pavlov
A world without natural death would have a very different attitude towards
children. There simply wouldn't be room for very many new people on a planet
populated by immortal 300-year-olds.

Most people wouldn't be able to start a family. The few who get the
opportunity would probably be carefully vetted by governments.

The dragon fable is emotional, but it doesn't address any of the questions of
what a "post-dragon" world of inevitable gerontocracy would look like. If
bodies don't fail, that doesn't automatically mean brains wouldn't decay. Will
the old people in power remain open to new ideas and challenges? Do we really
want immortal Bezos and Zuckerberg expanding their empires in perpetuity?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Most people wouldn 't be able to start a family. The few who get the
> opportunity would probably be carefully vetted by governments._

Maybe. Or maybe there would be a push to engineer deserts to be habitable. To
create undersea habitats. To colonize Mars and expand further. This might not
happen, but it is a solution.

Also, with more and more interesting things to do and without the societal
pressure to have children (as we have today), less people would even _want_ to
start a family. I believe the problem is manageable, and I don't buy the "we
have to die, so that new people can live (and die)" line of reasoning.

> _If bodies don 't fail, that doesn't automatically mean brains wouldn't
> decay._

It would probably happen. But that would be a nice problem to have.

> _Do we really want immortal Bezos and Zuckerberg expanding their empires in
> perpetuity?_

We seem to be managing this problem with wealthy _families_ , so we could
probably manage it with individuals as well.

~~~
mannykannot
It is not technical plausible that these measures would be effective enough to
avoid the necessity for the deep social changes that Pavlov outlined. I am
disappointed in Bostrom for ending his story just when it gets difficult.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The point of Bostrom's story was to get people to even consider aging as a
_solvable problem_. Someone else can (and should) write the "Life in post-
dragon world" essay.

------
ohazi
I absolutely despise this fable, and I'm annoyed at Bostrom for all the time
I've wasted trying to defend my position whenever it comes up.

The story is too simplistic for the point Bostrom is trying to make, even as a
fable. It treats the concept of death as a singular thing that ends up being
defeated by a literal magic bullet. I don't think a Manhattan Project style
effort will ever be capable of eradicating death like this, and I don't think
this is an unreasonable position to hold. We've already made incredible
progress in improving overall health, reducing mortality, and treating and
eradicating really horrible diseases. We already get to live 2-3 times as long
as our ancestors. I'm definitely not a Luddite trying to claim that this is
enough progress, or that this is how it's meant to be, but you'd have to be
willfully ignorant to miss the obvious fact that we're now at a point where
the return on effort for cutting edge health research is rapidly diminishing.
Perhaps we'll have a bio-renaissance, perhaps not, but even a renaissance
isn't likely going to take you to infinity.

Bostrom obviously expects pushback, as he spends a considerable fraction of
the fable "defending" his effort from "critics." But he doesn't understand his
critics or their criticism. In the story they take the form of caricatures of
luddites, penny-pinchers, and ignorant religious fools.

I absolutely support continuing research in health and longevity, but we
should be realistic about the effort required, the real possibility that
seemingly promising efforts will fail, and what we hope to achieve.
Eradicating cancer is a fantastic goal, but it's really fucking hard, might
not work in the general case, and isn't likely to increase best-case longevity
by a huge amount. After cancer no longer kills you, something else will.

Also, it would be nice to not be accused of being some sort of monsterous
death-worshiper whenever I express this view.

~~~
edflsafoiewq
You don't seem a death-worshipper. This is only skepticism about the
practicality of eliminating death, not a rejection of the central thesis that
"The dragon is bad!".

~~~
joe_the_user
Well, I am in favor of extending life indefinitely and even creating "back-
ups" of people.

But I think it's important to emphasize this would not be some easy victory or
simple change in society whose implications we wouldn't have to very carefully
consider.

There's everything from overpopulation to society become stagnant to universal
boredom and beyond to consider.

We humans are biological creatures. Aging is part of our present day existence
so this level of change would change a whole lot.

So, I don't necessarily disagree that "death is bad" but I think ONLY saying
may also be bad.

~~~
lopmotr
> There's everything from overpopulation to society become stagnant to
> universal boredom and beyond to consider.

If you stop to consider that at all, it's equivalent to stopping to consider
the idea that "old people are wasting our resources, maybe there's some value
in killing them off once they start repeating themselves too much". Because
it's the exact same thing but one is shoot them with a gun and the other is
deny them healthcare to prolong life. Nothing wrong with considering that of
course, but it should never be a reason to avoid discovering immortality.

------
tim333
Tl;dr, the 4878 word parable is the dragon that kills thousands each day
represents death and people say nothing can be done about it gets killed in
the end by a missile.

Bostrom then argues "we have compelling moral reasons to get rid of human
senescence." Which is kinda ok I guess though I'm not sure the analogy is very
good. Everyone seems in favour of better health and I'm in a minority who like
the idea of semi immortality through uploading but I'm not sure the dragon
story is very helpful here.

------
Zarkonnen
Ooh, let me post my comment from the last time this was posted here back in
2015:

One day, an anti-dragonist on a speaking tour visited a town. When he arrived,
most of the town's inns were already full, and he had to make do with a small
room in a small in in a run-down part of the town. The next morning, he stood
outside the inn on his soap box and told people about how the dragon could be
defeated. A small crowd gathered around him. When he had finished speaking, a
woman asked: "My children are hungry. My husband went off to war against the
tigers and never came back. How does killing the dragon help them?"

"Well, they too will one day be fed to the dragon!"

"But they are hungry now. My baby is very weak. She cries all the time. Even
if she doesn't die, she's going to grow up stunted."

"I'm sure you can find a way. Anyway, I'm here to talk about the dragon,
it's..."

Another interrupted him: "My son was killed by the king's men three weeks ago.
They laughed as they cut him down. No one will hear my case."

"Well, I'm sure they had a good reason. Your son was probably a criminal."

Another said: "My family beats me because I don't want to marry the man they
chose for me. Right now, I wouldn't mind being eaten."

"Listen. I'm not interested in the problems of you little people. They're not
my problems, and anyway, you're probably lying, or exaggerating, or just not
trying hard enough. But I'm scared of the dragon, because the dragon's going
to eat everyone, including me. So we should concentrate on that, don't you
agree?"

And the people rolled their eyes and walked away.

~~~
JoshTriplett
For every one person working on addressing aging and death, thousands are
looking at other problems. Nobody is advocating that every other problem
should be ignored, simply that we could stand to adjust the balance.

(Apart from that, I'd say that the caricature you're depicting is not
particularly good at responding to people in a productive or endearing way,
which is unrelated to the problem itself.)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Nobody is advocating that every other problem should be ignored, simply
that we could stand to adjust the balance.

Nick Bostrom's article is advocating exactly that:

 _Instead of a massive publicly-funded research program to halt aging, we
spend almost our entire health budget on health-care and on researching
individual diseases._

He seems to be saying that if we halt ageing, we'll stop dying from other
disease, or in any case that ageing is more important than any other disease.

~~~
nshepperd
The fact that you are more likely to die of every other disease after the age
of 30 is a direct consequence of aging. It _is_ more important than any other
disease. Also, that quote _does not_ say that every other disease should be
ignored, only that we should spend less than 100% of our budget on them.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Here's the entire quote:

 _(3) Administration became its own purpose. One seventh of the economy went
to dragon-administration (which is also the fraction of its GDP that the U.S.
spends on healthcare). Damage-limitation became such an exclusive focus that
it made people neglect the underlying cause. Instead of a massive publicly-
funded research program to halt aging, we spend almost our entire health
budget on health-care and on researching individual diseases._

He's equating the spending on health care with the "dragon-administration"
that he describes as a pointless, misguided task. So he believes we shouldn't
be spending that money on that sort of task, i.e. the US should not be
spending a seventh of its economy on healthcare, because that's just "damage
limitation".

He's further saying that _instead_ of "a massive publicly-funded research
program to halt aging" we're spending that money on "researching individual
diseases". In other words, he thinks that that money would be best spent on
that "massive publicly-funded research program". Else, what's the meaning of
"instead"?

Bostrom's belief is that halting ageing will cure all other disease. According
to his allegory, ageing is the one big disease that kills everyone eventually.
So if we cure it, we save everyone. Therefore, we should be working to cure
ageing and abandon all attempts to cure all other diseases. That's the morale
of the story: don't bother with tigers and snakes ("individual diseases"),
don't bother with dragon-administration (healthcare), just kill the dragon,
save the world.

Note that he's saying all that quite straight-faced, completely ignoring
infant deaths (5.6 million under-fives died in 2016) and deaths of people in
young age, i.e. many millions of deaths that have nothing to do with ageing
and that a magic immortality pill will never get the chance to help in the
first place, because they will be dead long before it can stop them from
ageing. He's not explaining how a cure for senescence will cure or prevent
infections, or genetic diseases, either.

His whole point is completely illogical, irrational, and it's obvious that
even people who broadly support it have not really realised what the heck that
guy's talking about.

~~~
Tomminn
His point is if you could keep the vast majority of the population to a
biological age of less than 30, you wouldn't need the vast majority of health
care.

------
edflsafoiewq
The conceit was rather obvious. I always find it strange when persuasive
writing takes the form of fiction.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Parables have a rich tradition dating back pretty much as far as written
things date back. The moral lesson they're trying to get across isn't so much
a twist as the whole of the thing.

~~~
edflsafoiewq
But there is no moral lesson here. This isn't Damon and Pythias, it's not
tutelary. It's argumentative. It does not make for a good narrative alone (at
least then you would know which side was able to attract the skill of an
artist!), its only content _is_ the argument. Only the argument is couched in
a fictional world that allows it to avoid addressing any counter-argument
altogether. The fact that it is followed by an _explicit_ argument only makes
it stranger.

------
internetman55
Does this relate to the dragon energy of Kanye West and Donald Trump?

------
dredmorbius
Slay this dragon (I doubt you can) and you will soon find he is greatly
missed.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Human life span has risen steadily in the last hundred years or so. The world
average life expectancy at birth in 1900 was 31. In 1950, it was 48. In 2014,
it was 71.5. That's an increase of 40 years achieved in 114 years of medical
advances.

In other words, far from the dragon of ageing getting bigger and bigger and
ever more hungry, humanity has been winning fight after fight after bloody
fight against this evil beast.

I cannot believe the chutzpah in Bostrom's allegory, that sweeps this
remarkable achievement aside as insignificant and misguided, with his
description of "the king" sending "his army" to fight minor, incompetent
battles against the lesser evils of "tigers and snakes" \- presumably that's
governments funding medical research into such minor threats as HIV and
malaria, that claim mere millions of people every year.

What's worse, he actually advocates that we set aside this actually,
currently, life-extending research and instead focus on finding ways to defeat
ageing: _" Instead of a massive publicly-funded research program to halt
aging, we spend almost our entire health budget on health-care and on
researching individual diseases."_

We already have the medical technology to save the lives of millions of people
in the developing world, who die of such "individual diseases" that are
treatable or preventable right now. And yet we don't provide those treatments
to the people who need them, because they can't afford them. We value the
profits of private enterprise more than long and healthy lives for everyone on
the planet. Long and healthy lives are for those who can afford Western
medicine- for the rest, well, tough. They live sick and die young.

This is the kind of ethical deficit we should be discussing: two thirds of the
world live significantly shorter, significantly less healthy lives than the
other third. We can fix this right now - and still keep looking for Nick
Bostrom's magical health-extending pills. And then make it available to
really-really everyone once we find it.

~~~
chroma
> Human life span has risen steadily in the last hundred years or so. The
> world average life expectancy at birth in 1900 was 31. In 1950, it was 48.
> In 2014, it was 71.5. That's an increase of 40 years achieved in 114 years
> of medical advances.

That's not true in the sense that most people think. Life expectancy at birth
has increased, but most of that has come from reductions in infant mortality.
Maximum life span has not increased. More people just die closer to it.

> We already have the medical technology to save the lives of millions of
> people in the developing world, who die of such "individual diseases" that
> are treatable or preventable right now. And yet we don't provide those
> treatments to the people who need them, because they can't afford them.

First, that's not true. For example: Malaria deaths have decreased by 25% in
just six years[1], mostly due to aid from wealthy western countries and
billionaires like Bill Gates.

Second, I doubt Bostrom is arguing against curing diseases such as malaria.
It's just that malaria kills 450,000 people per year, while aging kills more
than that _every week_. If we value lives equally, we should probably spend
much more on anti-aging research than we spend on malaria research. Sadly, the
opposite is the case. Billions are spent on malaria each year. The WHO alone
spends over $60 million per year on malaria. A generous estimate of anti-aging
research would be $10 million per year. So aging kills 100x more people than
malaria, but the world spends 100x more on malaria than anti-aging research.

> We value the profits of private enterprise more than long and healthy lives
> for everyone on the planet. Long and healthy lives are for those who can
> afford Western medicine- for the rest, well, tough. They live sick and die
> young.

That's _also_ not true. On every metric you care to measure, the developing
world has been catching up to the west. Global inequality is decreasing, not
increasing.[2] These improvements have come from a combination of government
efforts and private companies. And if you're going to do an accounting of
early deaths, governments will not come out ahead of private companies.

> This is the kind of ethical deficit we should be discussing: two thirds of
> the world live significantly shorter, significantly less healthy lives than
> the other third. We can fix this right now - and still keep looking for Nick
> Bostrom's magical health-extending pills. And then make it available to
> really-really everyone once we find it.

Every new technology starts off expensive. The original iPhone was too
expensive for most people, and it wasn't very good by today's standards. A
decade later, smartphones have gotten cheap enough for people to afford in the
developing world. The same thing has been happening with computers, cars,
televisions, radios, air travel, and medicine.

I think it's a good thing that some parts of the world have eliminated
malaria. I'm glad we didn't wait for a magical malaria-eliminating pill.
Likewise, I think it would be a good thing if some parts of the world
eliminated aging. The sooner that problem is solved in one place, the sooner
it will be solved everywhere.

1\. See table 6.4 in the WHO's World Malaria Report:
[http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-
report...](http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-
report-2017/report/en/)

2\. [https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-
inequality](https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Second, I doubt Bostrom is arguing against curing diseases such as malaria.

That's absolutely what he's arguning for. This is how he elucidates his
allegorical points about dragon-administration and war against tigers and
snakes:

 _(3) Administration became its own purpose. One seventh of the economy went
to dragon-administration (which is also the fraction of its GDP that the U.S.
spends on healthcare). Damage-limitation became such an exclusive focus that
it made people neglect the underlying cause. Instead of a massive publicly-
funded research program to halt aging, we spend almost our entire health
budget on health-care and on researching individual diseases._

He is clearly equating healthcare spending with "dragon administration".

If he believes that we should still spend as many resources in healthcare and
researching individual diseases, then why is he portraying these as futile and
misguided tasks, that have "become their own purpose"?

Also see the point I quoted above:

 _(5) The lack of a sense of proportion. A tiger killed a farmer. A rhumba of
rattlesnakes plagued a village. The king got rid of the tiger and the
rattlesnakes, and thereby did his people a service. Yet he was at fault,
because he got his priorities wrong._

The king "got his priorities wrong" because he went after lesser evils. That
doesn't seem like a resounding endorsement of continuing the research on
"individual diseases".

After all, Bostrom seems to believe that most causes of death will vanish if
we can halt ageing. So he's advocating that we stop bothering with every other
cause of death and focus our research on "the underlying cause" of all of
them, so we can save everyone in one go.

>> That's not true in the sense that most people think. Life expectancy at
birth has increased, but most of that has come from reductions in infant
mortality. Maximum life span has not increased. More people just die closer to
it.

In what sense is the fact that most people die at an older age not an
expansion of human life span? Are you saying we care about the mode, more than
we care about the mean?

That certainly seems to be Bostrom's way of thinking. I believe he is way more
interested of his chances to live to 300 than any other person's chance that
their kids will live to 70.

But that's not ethics. That's just pure selfishness.

>> First, that's not true. For example: Malaria deaths have decreased by 25%
in just six years[1], mostly due to aid from wealthy western countries and
billionaires like Bill Gates.

And yet:

    
    
        Examples of health inequities between countries:
    
        the infant mortality rate (the risk of a baby dying between birth and one year
        of age) is 2 per 1000 live births in Iceland and over 120 per 1000 live births
        in Mozambique;
    
        the lifetime risk of maternal death during or shortly after pregnancy is only 1
        in 17400 in Sweden but it is 1 in 8 in Afghanistan.
    

I am perhaps wrong to focus on health inequalities between countries, since
there are big inequalities in health within societies:

    
    
        Examples of health inequities within countries:
    
        in Bolivia, babies born to women with no education have infant mortality
        greater than 100 per 1000 live births, while the infant mortality rate of 
        babies born to mothers with at least secondary education is under 40 per 1000;
    
        life expectancy at birth among indigenous Australians is substantially lower
       (59.4 for males and 64.8 for females) than that of non-indigenous Australians 
       (76.6 and 82.0, respectively);
    

But I am not wrong to say that we do have the technology to save many millions
of lives lost to disease, right now, yet we don't because they can't afford
it.

Quotes from:
[http://www.who.int/social_determinants/thecommission/finalre...](http://www.who.int/social_determinants/thecommission/finalreport/key_concepts/en/)

>> On every metric you care to measure, the developing world has been catching
up to the west. Global inequality is decreasing, not increasing

And yet again:

    
    
      The benefits of the economic growth that has taken place over the last 25 
      years are unequally distributed. In 1980 the richest countries, containing 
      10% of the world’s population, had gross national income 60 times that of 
      the poorest countries, containing 10% of the world’s population. By 2005 
      this ratio had increased to 122.
    
      International flows of aid – grossly inadequate in themselves, and well 
      below the levels promised – are dwarfed by the scale of many poor 
      countries’ debt repayment obligations. The result is that, in many cases, 
      there is a net financial outflow from poorer to richer countries – an alarming 
      state of affairs. 
    

Same source.

Also, from the source you quote:

    
    
      Global income inequality is still very high and will stay
      very high for a long time
    

>> Every new technology starts off expensive. The original iPhone was too
expensive for most people, and it wasn't very good by today's standards. A
decade later, smartphones have gotten cheap enough for people to afford in the
developing world.

How many people in the developing world have iPhones?

~~~
nshepperd
> If he believes that we should still spend as many resources in healthcare
> and researching individual diseases, then why is he portraying these as
> futile and misguided tasks, that have "become their own purpose"?

Where are you getting "as many" from? You realize that it is in fact possible
to spend less money on a thing without spending $0? You're acting like we have
no choices between "spending 1/7 of our GDP on healthcare" and "ban all
healthcare forever".

> The king "got his priorities wrong" because he went after lesser evils. That
> doesn't seem like a resounding endorsement of continuing the research on
> "individual diseases".

Lesser evils are still evils. We should spend more than $0 on eradicating
them, but less than we spend on eradicating greater evils. That's what having
proper priorities means.

> After all, Bostrom seems to believe that most causes of death will vanish if
> we can halt ageing. So he's advocating that we stop bothering with every
> other cause of death and focus our research on "the underlying cause" of all
> of them, so we can save everyone in one go.

These inferences about what he believes are nonsense and unsupported by the
text.

> How many people in the developing world have iPhones?

Far more than did 10 years ago.

