April 21st, 2004
The Fable Of The Dragon-Tyrant
Nick Bostrom is a transhumanist philosopher who writes about healthy life extension. Here, he has crafted a clever fable; a modern fairy tale. It reads well, and in the telling illuminates the history of a great and important battle: the fight against aging (or the great and powerful dragon-tyrant). As Bostrom says, "It matters which stories we tell ourselves." Aging and death have been viewed as inevitable for so long that we, as a society, are now slow to seize the chance to develop a cure. Every year of delay brings another fifty million deaths that might have been prevented.