There's something interesting about the way we as a species think about death. Say you're working on "immortality" or on "solving aging", and most people outside a small subset of the tech/SV crowd will think you're a megalomaniac or just plain crazy -- death is obviously a fact, and to attempt to overcome it pure hubris. Yet we spend an incredible amount of resources on prolonging life in various ways through lifestyle interventions, treatments, cures -- and handsomely reward and revere those who succeed in pushing our life expectancy ever so slightly upwards.
13 minute long CGP Grey video of this story: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY</a>
Looking back at this story now, I think I disagree with its argument. Yes, old age today is a costly drain on modern western societies but mostly because people are living much longer. If our society was accepting of euthanasia for people who don't want to suffer in old age as it was of trying to keep the old living as long as possible then maybe the cost wouldn't be so draining. The idea that we MUST live for as long as possible without any sense of what the person who's living through the suffering of the diseases that become more severe with old age shows how little we value those people. If we really did value the elderly we'd ask if they want to continue to live or allow them to choose to end their lives with their own subjective sense of dignity instead. This isn't to say I'm opposed to any kind of medical research to improve life in our final years. Anything that retains physical autonomy and removes pain from old age is great but the obsession with death itself is problematic to me. In my opinion, life ain't worth living if it leaves me in an adult diaper being constantly pumped full of drugs to just keep myself sane with the pain and indignities.
Some past threads:<p><i>The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24770566" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24770566</a> - Oct 2020 (91 comments)<p><i>The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16945915" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16945915</a> - April 2018 (71 comments)<p><i>The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (CGP Grey)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16920532" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16920532</a> - April 2018 (1 comment)<p><i>The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9559360" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9559360</a> - May 2015 (38 comments)<p><i>The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=656713" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=656713</a> - June 2009 (25 comments)
This is just silly.<p>It reminds me the time I went a meeting of the MIT nanotechnology study group at the MIT AI lab and the president of Alcor (the "frozen heads in a bottle" company) showed up... If I remember right he'd been charged with murder because he'd been accused of freezing somebody who wasn't quite dead yet and had just been acquitted.<p>In addition to the usual crowd we had a large contingent of middle aged and older rich women who seemed offended that the people at the study group asked tough questions of the speaker.<p>My feeling was that these people didn't feel like they'd gotten enough out of life and wanted to pretend that biological immortality was possible. Lately I came across this TV episode<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L59EubHFGk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L59EubHFGk</a><p>about someone with this attitude. Death is certainly not some tyrant that came recently, but it's something that's been part of life for at least a billion years.
I think the dragon-tyrant here should be interpreted as a metaphor specifically for death through aging, and not death generally. Because death is not any single condition (representable through a token), but the vast set of states that vastly outnumber the set of "living states".<p>Solving the problem of aging wouldn't solve the problem death, curing all sickness wouldn't solve the problem of death, preventing all accidents wouldn't solve the problem of death.<p>Indeed, if we get philosophical (and transhumanist), we need to find a reasonable definition of death (and life), possibly detached from the necessity of continuous physical existence.<p>[edited for readabiliy]
It seems like the metaphor is a bit meta? Tautological? Death is represented by death. This is a minor point, but distracting. Still... I hope for a well-supported contingent of warriors to slay the dragon. If not now, eventually.
The prospect of a society with significantly extended lifetimes is absolutely horrifying. My opinion does not frequently align with Elon Musk, but I fully agree with him on this one. Death is necessary for human progress. People, at the large scale, are not sufficiently capable of changing their deeply held convictions when the societal circumstances around them change. We need a mechanism for obsolete ideas and minds to grow senescent and die off, or we will be forever stagnant and bound to the ideals of 250 year old people.<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-believes-it-is-important-for-us-to-die-2021-12" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-believes-it-is-imp...</a>
I think that what frustrates me about the "cure aging" crowd is that they quite easily step over the homeless opioid addict on their front porch in SF on their way to the latest lecture. "Aging can be defeated! Oh, but this individual in front of me represents an insurmountable problem." It's quite easy to justify anything you do if you've already decided that an infinite number of (hypothetical) future people will benefit...