Редактирование: The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (раздел)

== Allegory and arguments ==

The story argues that humans for most of history have lacked the tools to fight the monster of ageing and death, but advances in biotechnology put humanity in the same situation as the dragonologists in the story who discover a material harder than dragon scales: the potential to slow and even reverse ageing could be within reach. The fable thus addresses the themes of death acceptance and resignation to fate in the face of ageing and critiques the pro-aging trance.

Like the kingdom in the story, the United States spends approximately one-seventh of its GDP on healthcare. A vast bureaucracy exists to facilitate the process of ageing and death, and to research the various individual diseases caused by ageing, yet very little money is dedicated to the more ambitious and impactful project of ending ageing itself.

The story's chief morality advisor is the allegorical equivalent of a bioethicist, and Bostrom notes that many of the morality advisor's arguments about human dignity, the finitude of life, and death being an intrinsic part of the human experience are "lifted, mostly verbatim" from modern bioethicists arguing against research into life extension and the reversal of ageing. Like in the story, lofty rhetoric is used as a smokescreen to obscure the simple morality of the situation: ageing is bad because it kills people.