The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

"The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" is an allegory by the philosopher Bostrom, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2005. A dragon demands a tribute of human lives every evening, and the kingdom it terrorizes first accepts the tribute, then organizes itself around it, and at last builds a weapon to kill the dragon. The dragon stands for aging.^[1]

The dragon is covered in scales that resist every weapon, and it lives on a mountain. At first it demands that "ten thousand men and women" be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at dark. The demand rises to eighty thousand and then to "one hundred thousand human beings". A railway is built to the mountain, with a train every twenty minutes, and the kingdom grows a bureaucracy around the tribute: registrars choose the victims, clerks pay pensions to the bereaved, and dragonologists study the animal. Spending on the dragon reaches one seventh of the economy.^[2]

Apologists keep the arrangement in place. Priests promise an afterlife without the dragon, and orators argue that the dragon has a right to be fed, that being eaten is part of what makes people human, and that the tribute keeps the population in check. A group of dragonologists led by a scientist develops a material that can pierce the scales, and a projectile to carry it, and sends the king a petition for money. He is busy leading his army against a tiger, and in the tumult the petition is "lost or forgotten". When it is found, the year's budget, the largest to date, has gone to a new railway track to the mountain. The dragonologists take their case to the public, and the king holds an open hearing. His morality adviser speaks well for the tribute. An elderly sage says, "Let the boy speak," and a small boy says that the dragon took his grandmother. The king answers, "Let's do it!"^[2]

Twelve years later the weapon is ready, and it kills the dragon. Grief for the years of delay overcomes the king, and the young man who comforts him turns out to be the boy from the hearing.^[2]

A closing section applies the story to human aging and sets out eight lessons: that a recurrent tragedy became "a fact of life, a statistic"; that the kingdom held a static view of technology; that administration became its own purpose; that the social good came apart from the good of people; that nobody kept a sense of proportion; that fine phrases and hollow rhetoric did the work of argument; that nobody appreciated the urgency; and that a changed world needs reorganizing. It states the allegory outright, "aging is, of course, represented by the dragon", and it puts the cost of delay at "approximately 70 lives per minute". The goal it argues for is a longer healthspan, the period of good health, as well as a longer life.^[2]

A shorter version of the fable appeared in Philosophy Now in 2012. In April 2018 the YouTube channel CGP Grey published an animated adaptation.^[3]

Kent Kemmish has said that Labyrinth of the Dragon Tyrant, the first of the games announced in "Early Releases on Maxine's Quest", is named for the fable.^[4] The game has had three titles: War on the Dragon Tyrant in an advertisement of 2021, Dragon Tyrant Must Die! on the sign-up form of the same year, and Labyrinth of the Dragon Tyrant in the memo of 2022. A later remake of the advertisement shortens the last to Lab of the Dragon Tyrant.^[5] The memo gives its science as "biomedical gerontology and rejuvenation medicine" and lists among its analytes "oxidized cholesterol", "foam cells" and "lysosomal preps".

The list recalls Kemmish's earlier work. On the LysoSENS project at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University he searched for "microbial enzymes capable of catabolizing intracellular aggregates implicated in age-related disease (notably 7-ketocholesterol in atherosclerosis)", according to his public CV.^[6] The 7-ketocholesterol of that sentence is an oxidized form of cholesterol. As of October 2026 the game exists as one prototype level of Maxine's Quest: a single wall, placed outside the area in which the player can move.^[7]

• Ideas and influences of Molecular Reality Corporation
• List of works that inspired Molecular Reality Corporation