Is fighting aging controversial?

Google's announcement of Calico was covered by Time with the controversial headline "Can Google Solve Death"?  It was a grandiose title that leads one to think of immortality and whether humans should even be considering the question.  The negative responses normally didn't criticize the science, but were beliefs like "should humanity be working on this" or "we shouldn't live forever."

Really, I think aging research should be viewed like any other medical advance: stents, new drugs, pacemakers.  There's a lot we do which isn't "natural" with the goal of making human welfare better, and I think it's a worthy goal.  I don't know if aging research will pan out, but some mythical sense that it is a taboo isn't a good reason to reject it.   Here are my top reasons why aging research isn't controversial at all.

We'll still going to die
Even if we solve aging completely, we are still going to die.  After all, no amount of aging research is going to prevent me from trying to "hold my wee for a Wii", winning a Darwin Award. or kneeling over while playing Starcraft.

Proponents of anti aging research claim we will reach some sort of "longevity escape velocity" where we will figure out how to extend our lives by 20 years.  Then in those 20 years, we can figure out how to extend our lives by another 20 years.  I think they want to make anti aging research seem even more appealing by offering the holy grail itself - immortality!  I have a hard time getting my head around that. And I worry it turns people off from considering aging research since it violates some well known Hollywood taboos.

For me, I don't need immortality to support the idea of extending lifespan.  I'm happy with any additional years you give me however you give them to me.  But don't get me wrong - I'd love to be proved incorrect that immortality won't happen (and you can have the rest of my infinite lifetime to hold it against me).

Living longer is a historical trend
Life expectancy has gradually increased - probably since the beginning of human history - but certainly in the last 150 years we have data for.   Since 1850, life expectancy at birth has roughly doubled.  Even if you account for just those who have reached the age of 20 (which screens out much child mortality), you find that life expectancy has increased by over 40%.

We view a life expectancy of 70 or 80 as normal because we are used to it: not because it is "natural."  It's the result of decades of research and painstaking trial and error.  It'll be much more natural for us to all die young of any of the myriad of diseases we now have cures for.  If we somehow extend life expectancy to 120 years or so, we'd get pretty used to that too.

It's just another therapy
Sometimes people say things like "But I don't want to live that long." I don't really understand that because if we do have some breakthrough in fighting aging, it'll come like any other therapy. It'll be an optional therapy that people can take or not. No one forces someone to take high blood pressure medication or get a stent, but sure enough people tend to do so since it increases their lifespan.  Not to mention that we know plenty of ways you can reduce your life expectancy if living longer is a problem.

"Newsflash: Medical researchers are conducting medical research"
So all in all, I think anti aging research should be far less controversial than "solving death." It's just like another research task that is likely to be a dead end, but could lead to some good.  It's likely we'll still die (if it even works at all), we'll just live longer (like we have for all of history), and it'll be an optional therapy (that you can take just like other drugs).  And that is why I don't think fighting aging is controversial at all.

Book Review: The Making of the Atomic Bomb

I read The Making of the Atomic Bomb which was recommended to me by Mike Munie.  I thought it was a great book which somehow explained to me both the history and science of the project in an accessible way.  Here are some thoughts impressions the book left on me:

The huge power of government to turn things on.  The Manhattan Project was initially stalled behind a ineffective committee but soon became a top priority where cost was not an option.  If there was a question of what to do, the answer was often "just do both."  Before reading this book, I did not know that the atomic bombs dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were actually entirely different designs, both of which were created during the Manhattan Project.  Another scary fact: approximately 130,000 people were employed at the project at its peak - roughly the size of the entire American automobile industry!

Predicting the (sometimes scary) future.  I tend to think that the future is so uncertain that it is impossible to predict what will happen.  It is impressive that some scientists were able to imagine the atomic bomb more than a decade before it was completed.  For example, Leo Szilard thought about a sustaining chain reaction with neutrons in 1933 (before fission was even discovered).  After confirming that neutrons multiplied in nuclear fission in 1939, Szilard and many other scientists realized that a bomb was theoretically possible.  James Chadwick (the discoverer of the neutron) conducted more experiments on the feasibility of the bomb in 1940.  Later, he had this to say: "I did realize how very serious it could be.  And I had then to start taking sleeping pills.  It was the only remedy. I've never stopped since then.  It's 28 years, and I don't think I've missed a single night in all those 28 years."

An Inspiring, Big Goal.  The book emphasizes that having a big, audacious, and clear goal is inspiring.  Working on the project was a pain: scientists couldn't tell their spouses about their work, they would be relocated to the middle of a dessert, and they would live in with barracks-like conditions.  At the same time, being a part of a major undertaking that would win the war was so appealing that most accepted.

Great Leadership.  Leslie Groves and Oppenheimer organized the Manhattan project from the military and scientific side (respectively).  They seem to have universally earned the respect of their peers.  I was especially interested to read about how Groves (who was not a top physicist) immediately earned respect (for example, the scientists were worried they would not have enough ore, but Groves found a source of uranium just 1 day after being assigned the job).

The horrors of war.  The book did a good job of balancing the amazing scientific discoveries and accomplishments of the Manhattan project with the pain of war.  For example, Rhodes argues that bombers were not accurate enough to hit military targets so were instead used to just kill civilians (which was euphemistically called hurting "morale").  The end of the book describes graphically the effects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I won't leave any gruesome quotes here, but I hope war never comes to this again.

Are iOS games more blockbuster driven than even Hollywood?

We classically hear about some industries (such as movies, pharmaceautical drugs or games) as having a blockbuster business model.  The top products make a ton of money, making up for all the loses of the average product.

I've always thought that the iOS game market might rely even more on blockbusters than Hollywood itself.  Sensortower recently released their app leaderboards, which estimate how much each App is worth.  I obviously can't say whether or not their estimates are correct (and they don't claim to be representing revenue exactly), but I just took it as the truth and compared it with the top grossing movies of 2012.

I represented the revenue of each game or movie as a percentage of the top grossing example in its category. The results are interesting - movies exhibited a much flatter curve than the iPhone games.

Why is this?  It could be because more people discover iPhone games by looking at the top charts, whereas movie recommendations work in a variety of ways.  It could be that it is difficult to market to a niche iPhone game segment compared to a niche movie segment - leading to mass market games being most popular.  And it could be because the top iPhone games really are that much better than the 100th iPhone game.