I had a dream last night, and it made me think in a new way about many of the political and social issues we discuss here.
Dreams are funny things. They can seem as real and detailed as the "real" world in which we live, and yet at the same time they underscore how it is possible for people to believe in such wildly different points of view. Things which can seem completely irrational in the "real" world can seem completely rational in the dream world.
A dream I had a few weeks ago was progressing along like any typical dream, when suddenly it took a turn for the bizarre. I was driving down the road, next to a set of train tracks in my home town (sadly, I am over 2,000 miles from hometown at the moment, as was I at the time of the dream). I looked up into the sky, and I saw what appeared to be an airplane. As I looked closer, I realized it was a fighter jet, and I thought this was a little odd. Before I could really comprehend what I was seeing, the jet fired a missile, which I followed with my gaze. I then realized that the missile was tracking a very large airplane, bigger than any airplane I've seen (and I've seen B-52's and C5's), though not overwhelmingly so. But the plane's design was so bizarre that I immediately realized that it was an alien spacecraft (of course!). The missile struck home, and I watched the (alien!) plane slowly fall out of the sky and crash.
So there I was, shocked at what I had seen, and trying to make sense of the profound implications. Obviously, there was the element of proof of aliens. But then there was the more serious implication, that we had attacked them. And then I became aware of the "fact" that we had attacked them as a means of defense, and that clearly these aliens posed a threat. As I drove home, I ran into an underground resistance group, and I learned, or rather became aware of, the fact that the aliens had been trying to covertly overthrow society, and that the resistance movement had been successful in both protecting society and keeping this threat veiled from the public's attention. However, it was now clear that it would be only a matter of hours before the plot became public, and we had to figure out how to best control the threat and buffer the public's panic before the news broke.
And then I woke up. In hindsight, this was just a silly dream, and I have no idea where it even came from, since I don't really watch sci-fi movies anymore, and I hadn't been thinking about fighter jets or aliens the day before. My dreams, at least the weird and vivid ones, tend to relate very closely to things I was thinking about the day before (as is the biological nature of dreams). So I tried to figure out, where did THAT come from? But even as I did so, I have to admit that I was somewhat shaken. For the next few hours, and especially for those first 15 minutes after I woke up, I felt like I was in a changed world. I felt like something fundamental had changed, and that reality as I knew it was changed.
Before I could figure out why I had had the dream, I did make one connection that I truly value from this bizarre experience. The way I felt at discovering that aliens were real; the way I felt at learning that I was not the first to know, and that many dedicated people had been working on this problem; the way I felt at realizing that my world had changed, and that the things that I thought I understood or that I though were important were irrelevant... That's how the world will feel when the highly probable possibility of radically extending their lifespan becomes public knowledge.
Well, today I had a different dream. I don't remember much about the dream, but I do remember the end of it. Someone famous had died, someone who was not a religious figure but who was nonetheless religious, someone with a strong moral core. Out of this person's death erupted a strong movement by some religious organization to ban cloning, to ban all forms of cloning or research on embryos. I realized that the goal was wrong, but the way they used that person's death in their advertizements on TV, it was so poignant, that I couldn't help but be moved by them. I found myself wanting to agree with them, and I realized that the ban was going to be successful.
As this thought was occurring to me, I roused from my sleep. I wasn't too concerned about the dream, though I was still trying to shake the sympathy I had felt for this dead individual and the ads which had moved me to support a total ban.
As I was doing this, I had a sort of epiphany.
You see, it goes back to an article posted on Fight Aging! The article itself had been about stem cell research, though I don't remember the details. But I do remember that in the comments section, an argument had flared up between various pro-life people who were opposed to the destruction of embryos to harvest embryonic stem cells. Dr. de Grey had weighed in at one point, and back and forth it went.
But what had really struck me was the analogies people tried to use to describe adult and embryonic stem cells. Some were saying that it only makes sense to research both, while others were saying that adult stem cells make more sense, so why bother with the embryonic ones. Two points were immediately clear: 1) if there were no moral issues with using embryonic stem cells, then those who were so strongly advocating adult stem cells and wanting to deny embryonic stem cell research the chance to even fail would have been much less vocal on this issue, and indeed might have been demanding that stem cell research be allowed to be pursued (if for no other reason than to fail so that we could leave the issue behind). 2) both sides were using analogies that I felt were not proper to the magnitudes of the two types of research.
The analogy which I'll use to demonstrate how both sides are treating this is best summed up in this quote, which is itself a quote from someone else followed up by a rebuttal:
Further quotes build on this theme, and show how both sides treat the issue:"Limiting research to adult stem cells is like asking the government to develop an Air Force only using prop airplanes and ignoring the existence of jets."
Actually, based on the current state of the science, greatly expanding the existing research into embryonic stem cells is like asking the Air Force to put all its money into researching anti-gravity drives and stopping any further development of jet engines.
And this choice quote:research into both adult and embryonic stem cells is necessary. There will be some things more effectively treated by adult stem cells, other things that will be more effectively treated by embryonic stem cells.
The comment about propeller and jet power aircraft is telling. Both kinds of airplanes are useful for different applications. Providing funding for embryonic stem cells will not necessary come at the expense of adult stem cells. Both technologies will be developed concurrently. To suggest that the development of one will necessarly come at the expense of the other is to demonstrate a glaring lack of knowledge about biology.
Well, the argument continued to devolve from here, but it moved on to topics of the soul, and the efforts to analogize the necessity of researching both embryonic and adult stem cells were dropped.Why limit research to stem cells at all? You wouldn't let the Air Force go into battle with propellar planes, so why restrict research on 3-year-old kids? Just because you find harvesting organs from kids immoral, you shouldn't impose your personal morality on science!
Okay, with history in mind (as it has been in mine), and having just awoken from this dream, and still trying to shake that feeling I had of supporting sympathizing with those who would ban all forms of cloning and research with embryos, I began to think about a proper analogy for adult and embryonic stem cells.
And that's when I had my epiphany. For whatever reason, I began to think of Prometheus. No, not the member of ImmInst, but the Greek god. I began to think of his gift of fire, and how he had been punished for it. Why weren't we supposed to have fire? I'm not very keen on Greek mythology, so I couldn't remember exactly why it was that humans (mortals?) weren't allowed to have the knowledge of fire.
And bingo, it hit me! Embryonic stem cell research is today's fire! Allow that to sink in, and if you take nothing else from these random musings, remember that! Embryonic stem cell research today is as Fire was before Prometheus's gift!
Being for someone unknown reason in the mode of mythology and allegory, I immediately thought up a world in which man was not allowed to use fire, presumably by the gods. True to the form of Bostrom's Fable of the Dragon Tyrant, this was a world in which people did not age, per se. However, they were required each autumn to move another "day's journey" to the north, and as they did so, they reached a point some 70 or 80 days' journey north of the tropics from which they'd come where they could not survive the winters, and they died. Some made it further north than others, but they all eventually died. The tropics themselves were dangerous for the first few years after birth, due mainly to "fevers" (malaria I suppose).
And thus the people lived, forced to move north each autumn (whether forced by godly decree, or by circumstance (e.g. limited resources at each "camp"), or simply by social pressures and traditions), much as in Bostrom's fable.
But then something happened. Skins of animals were found to be useful for providing warmth, but this primitive society had trouble figuring out the best way to tailor such clothes. And it was discovered that fire itself could be used to keep warm, but that it must be taken from the sacred fires where new people were born.
And so the dilemma. Should the people put their efforts into improving clothing, or into improving their knowledge and control of fire? Clearly, the answer was skins, for the fire was forbidden by the gods.
The debate went on, and religious advocates of skins would point to the additional benefits of skins. Not only could they keep you warm, but they provide additional protection when walking through thickets and briar patches. In fact, they had a man who had been attacked in the jungle by a small tiger, and the tiger had only hurt him moderately because his thick skins protected his own otherwise fragile skin from the tiger's claws.
Clearly, skins were more effective and useful than fire, and given the moral implications of fire, it was forbidden that men should try to bring forth and try to understand the sacred fires.
And so time passed, and by and by, men found they could travel a little further north before they would be killed. Sure enough, as they travelled further north, they found more and more dangerous animals, and they were sure that their skins were a good idea. They pointed to those who would study fire and laughed: "Surely you would not have come so far north with your fire. How would you have protected yourself against these viscious wolves? They do not fear the fire, as we saw with the heretics who were killed last week. Surely their flames could not ward off the ravenous wolves!"
But the heretics continued to try. They tried in vain to explain that just because fire was not enough, that did not mean that fire was unnecessary. Surely the fire is just as important as the skins, and both would be necessary to survive the bitter north. But their warnings went unheeded.
Soon the men with their skins got even farther north, so far north that their skins could not completely keep the bitter cold at bay. Men died, but as they did so, the survivors tried to double and triple layer their already heavy and burdensome skins. For a while it worked, and they got further north. But they continued to die, and they weren't sure why.
They eventually figured out that the food this far north was poisonous. Even the few who could survive the cold could not survive the poisonous food. They realized it was not possible to go further north.
But then they saw others who looked to be in good health, and they were continuing their march northwards. "How is it that you can survive this bitter cold, the wild animals, and the poisoned food?"
The answer was simple. They had fire. With fire, they kept warm in cold too deep and biting for skins alone to protect them from. With fire, they could cook their food, and they found that this protected them from whatever poisons were in the food. And with their skins, they were protected from the wild animals.
And thus would these Far Northerners profess their success: "Someday, we may reach a place so cold and bleak that no food is to be found, and even then, with our fire and our skins, we'll be able to go no further. But had we limited ourselves only to skins, or only to fire, we know that we would not come as far as we have."
