The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)
I absolutely despise this fable, and I&#x27;m annoyed at Bostrom for all the time I&#x27;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&#x27;t think a Manhattan Project style effort will ever be capable of eradicating death like this, and I don&#x27;t think this is an unreasonable position to hold. We&#x27;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&#x27;m definitely not a Luddite trying to claim that this is enough progress, or that this is how it&#x27;s meant to be, but you&#x27;d have to be willfully ignorant to miss the obvious fact that we&#x27;re now at a point where the return on effort for cutting edge health research is rapidly diminishing. Perhaps we&#x27;ll have a bio-renaissance, perhaps not, but even a renaissance isn&#x27;t likely going to take you to infinity.<p>Bostrom obviously expects pushback, as he spends a considerable fraction of the fable &quot;defending&quot; his effort from &quot;critics.&quot; But he doesn&#x27;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&#x27;s really fucking hard, might not work in the general case, and isn&#x27;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.