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.<p>Most people wouldn't be able to start a family. The few who get the opportunity would probably be carefully vetted by governments.<p>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?
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Also, it would be nice to not be accused of being some sort of monsterous death-worshiper whenever I express this view.
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.<p>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.
Ooh, let me post my comment from the last time this was posted here back in 2015:<p>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?"<p>"Well, they too will one day be fed to the dragon!"<p>"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."<p>"I'm sure you can find a way. Anyway, I'm here to talk about the dragon, it's..."<p>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."<p>"Well, I'm sure they had a good reason. Your son was probably a criminal."<p>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."<p>"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?"<p>And the people rolled their eyes and walked away.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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: <i>"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."</i><p>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.<p>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.