Well I don’t like the dragon parable either. It’s overlong, a bit condescending and ignores the core problem that anti-aging research has done a pretty poor job of showing concrete achievements, even if it’s right that it’s under-prioritized.
Hmm. I suppose I thought the point of “Dragon Tyrant” was not to narrowly advocate for the anti-aging research program; but rather to get people to take seriously the “naïve” idea that death is bad.
Or, more specifically, to say that even though ① defeating death seems like an insurmountable goal because death has always been around, and ② there are people advocating on a wide variety of grounds against attempting to defeat death, it is nonetheless reasonable and desirable to consider.
“Dragon Tyrant” uses the technique, common to sociology and “soft” science fiction (e.g. Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams), of making the familiar strange — taking something that we are so accustomed to that it is unquestioned, and portraying it as alien.
Well, solving death without solving aging wouldn’t be that great, so I tend to look at anti-aging as the main path.
I think that people who don’t get on the “death is bad” train do so because they don’t take seriously the idea that there’s any alternative. And certainly, if you’re 80 years old and in poor health and going around denying your own mortality, you’re probably in a worse mindset than somebody who accepts that they will soon die. Until research gets to a certain point, being a proud anti-deathist is just pretentious windmill-tilting.
In a few decades maybe technology will hold the serious possibility of living indefinitely, and people will be making choices about whether to receive certain therapies or genetically modify their children in some way; and the arguments to make will be much clearer.
But also, “Dragon Tyrant” is definitely kind of narrow because it very transparently calls politicians murderers for not putting more effort and funds into anti-death research, which is a bit more than the broad stuff you’re saying.
Hmm. I suppose I thought the point of “Dragon Tyrant” was not to narrowly advocate for the anti-aging research program; but rather to get people to take seriously the “naïve” idea that death is bad.
Or, more specifically, to say that even though ① defeating death seems like an insurmountable goal because death has always been around, and ② there are people advocating on a wide variety of grounds against attempting to defeat death, it is nonetheless reasonable and desirable to consider.
“Dragon Tyrant” uses the technique, common to sociology and “soft” science fiction (e.g. Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams), of making the familiar strange — taking something that we are so accustomed to that it is unquestioned, and portraying it as alien.
Well, solving death without solving aging wouldn’t be that great, so I tend to look at anti-aging as the main path.
I think that people who don’t get on the “death is bad” train do so because they don’t take seriously the idea that there’s any alternative. And certainly, if you’re 80 years old and in poor health and going around denying your own mortality, you’re probably in a worse mindset than somebody who accepts that they will soon die. Until research gets to a certain point, being a proud anti-deathist is just pretentious windmill-tilting.
In a few decades maybe technology will hold the serious possibility of living indefinitely, and people will be making choices about whether to receive certain therapies or genetically modify their children in some way; and the arguments to make will be much clearer.
But also, “Dragon Tyrant” is definitely kind of narrow because it very transparently calls politicians murderers for not putting more effort and funds into anti-death research, which is a bit more than the broad stuff you’re saying.