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It kills me every time I read about how the world's nth-fastest computer is just used to simulate nuclear explosions, so it was a delight to see that they're pl

It kills me every time I read about how the world's nth-fastest computer is just used to simulate nuclear explosions, so it was a delight to see that they're planning on using this one for some good.

realityking 11y ago
My perspective: I'd rather haven them spend money on simulating bombs in fancy computers, than having actual nuclear tests. Yes, a world without nculear weapons would be nice. Unfortunately that ship has sailed.
melling 11y ago
And it kills me every time someone makes a silly comment like this. Someone has to spend the large amount of money for the R&D. Your model of how the world works is flawed. We went to the moon because of the Cold War. The military paid for the development of the Internet. GPS? Supersonic flight? Nuclear energy? Autonomous vehicles? I wish private industry would do more. Every company should have a Bell Labs.
- danharaj 11y ago
  Are you extolling the virtues of a world that was shaped by the threat of nuclear annihilation for multiple generations?
  - striking 11y ago
    You can't deny that some of that stuff is pretty sweet. And ignoring where it came from requires rewriting history.
    - danharaj 11y ago
      I would not have wagered the world for what we got out of it. The fact that we're around to talk about it is fine and all, but the last century is not a good model for any century.
  - steego 11y ago
    I think he was extolling the virtues of large scale R&D spending and adding that the Cold War happened to be the impetus for this spending. He parts with: "I wish private industry would do more." That seems to suggest his main point is large R&D spending, not the virtues of the Cold War.
  - melling 11y ago
    No, militaries has been funding R&D long before the nuclear age. http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online/age/1910/military.cfm http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online... Rather than tell us how much you hate the military and capitalism maybe you can figure out a better way? I'd love to see more non-military funding. Perhaps medical research could be used to increase public interest in funding supercomputer research?
    - danharaj 11y ago
      > Rather than tell us how much you hate the military and capitalism maybe you can figure out a better way. Well, knowing a few scientists, I can say that I know well the creative and inquiring spirits that advance us. The world is structured so that the people who do the actual development and discovery have to sell their talents to the logic of property and capital, either directly, or to the government that enforces that structure. So, I think we're probably in agreement on the forces wherefrom those technologies came. I think we're also in agreement on whose behalf those forces act. I think we're probably in disagreement that capital is any better a master than the government it is in collusion with.
      - melling 11y ago
        There may be a better solution. Just because no one has found it doesn't mean we can't do better. However, I'm not one for cursing the darkness. Light a small candle and lead the way.
        danharaj 11y ago
        I think the solution is fewer solutions. When I am working well with others, there's nothing much to fuss about. When there are conflicts, it's not ideology or a system that wins the day. I think we two would collaborate just fine without such stuff, for instance. What works in conflict is the willingness to discard systems and ideas. Or, even better, the lack of willfulness to enforce systems and ideas in the first place. Being conceptually slippery enough to get out of any problem comes naturally to skillful people in their fields. The situation at hand provides all the impetus for theory and practice there is. Conflict thrives off of superfluity: superfluous methods, superfluous justifications, and superfluous issues. Methodology and structure gets in the way of skillfulness. I know that real human power scales on its own without armies and guns forcing it into a certain shape. People collaborate and collude very easily. People form groups very easily. People associate with people. It's probably the only culturally universal thing people do (well of course; culture only makes sense when there are associating people). If we want association to work well, groups need to be able to disintegrate as easily as they come together. People need to be slippery, too. Without what makes groups cohere, they disintegrate on their own. When you see violence and hierarchy used to keep groups coherent, it means they've lost the essential power that makes them useful. People like achieving status. Status is a social signal, and it communicates both ways. Status is not held like a title. Titles wax and wane in the status they confer just like every other human object and activity. When we pretend status can be held, that it can be concentrated and preserved, we get problems. If we let status come and go by its own logic, we'd have no problems with status. A society where status is maintained by a legal system will have hierarchies, and it will certainly have problems. So ways that our current systems-- not just capitalism, fail: Labor is not free. Association is not free. Status is not free. Even skillful people who believe in property as an organizing force wish to be locally free in these ways. Skillful people want to work unimpeded by the politics of labor, associating with likeminded people unimpeded by the politics of social groups, praised for the inherent virtue of their actions and unimpeded by the politics of status. They only believe in property because it helps them manage the world that is beyond their control, beyond the means of their skill. They use property to create a bubble in which they can live that is free from its control. People who believe in property because they enjoy its logic, enjoy the wheeling and dealing, enjoy the frantic rush to get more of it, who feel more worthwhile the more property they have are nervous people, who can never be fulfilled, because property's logic does not lead to fullness, the only conclusion is 'not enough', the only purpose is 'more'. I don't know how many people in the latter category actually exist. I suspect enough to cause a great deal of problems. In any case they require the assent of everyone else. I think all I have to say to everyone else is this: The world without property is still full and whole, is still just, is still full of vitality, is still nourishing, and receptive to human power.
flyingfsck 11y ago
I work in this field. The short of it is: there is more money out there for PIs to get defense related grants vs cure for cancer type grants. Some of it is for good, e.g. modeling where to dispatch mobile hospitals for the Ebola outbreak. Modeling the world's population doing things like fleeing a dirty bomb takes an astonishing amount of compute if you want answers in a timely fashion.
madaxe_again 11y ago
99% of the compute time on this will probably be used for weapons, combat and civil emergency wargame simulations - but that doesn't make for good PR so of course they don't mention it in this sycophantic fluff piece.
- jakub_h 11y ago
  However, since the US military recently labeled climate change as the #1 national security threat to the US or something like that, maybe we could hope for some climate science on the side? ;-)
joeyrobert 11y ago
It's better than doing the real thing.
__mp 11y ago
I have access to the 6th fastest super computer and I'm pretty sure that it is not used to simulate nuclear explosions.
- azaras 11y ago
  What does it simulate? Thanks.
  - ssully 11y ago
    Argonne National Labs, which is 5th fastest I think, is used for weather models, material science, and more[1] [1]http://www.alcf.anl.gov/ http://www.alcf.anl.gov/
    - dekhn 11y ago
      There are dual-use systems which run classified and non-classified codes (they can be partitioned.. They typically live at LANL or LLNL rather than ANL or Berkeley (Berkeley in particlar doesn't do any classified work). Note that most classified codes are actually physics/material/explosion/plasma physics simulations and you can't always tell they are running on your system. I checked the list of projects running on ALCF and I see some pretty obvious nuclear weapon stockpile stewardship and weapon design projects, such as "Validation Simulations of Macroscopic Burning-Plasma Dynamics"
      - Trombone12 11y ago
        Nucleosynthesis of heavier materials in supernova explosions and neutron star mergers are two cases of problems that I guess are used for "publicly" validating dark codes. (I know a guy that Los Alamos is trying to recruit to do some dark work for them, and he does nucleosynthesis in neutron star mergers.)
        dekhn 11y ago
        Those would be useful, but typically the validation codes use terms like "multiscale combustion physics" or "coupled neutron/radiation transport". I think the folks simulating supernova and neutron stars have a lot of physics overlaps, but I don't think that data is used directly for stockpile stewardship.
graphene 11y ago
I don't know if this is what you're referring to, but a common application for government-owned supercomputers is simulating the degredation of nuclear warheads. The degradation of the fissile material as well as its surroundings is highly critical to a nation's security, and also very hard to model well. Of course in an ideal world those cycles would be used to help cure cancer, but given that these warheads exist, it's probably a good idea to invest resources into getting an idea of what shape they're in.
- twoodfin 11y ago
  The old way to do that was to blow one of them up every so often. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty put a stop to that.

It kills me every time I read about how the world's nth-fastest computer is just used to simulate nuclear explosions, so it was a delight to see that they're planning on using this one for some good.

realityking 11y ago

My perspective: I'd rather haven them spend money on simulating bombs in fancy computers, than having actual nuclear tests. Yes, a world without nculear weapons would be nice. Unfortunately that ship has sailed.

melling 11y ago

And it kills me every time someone makes a silly comment like this. Someone has to spend the large amount of money for the R&D. Your model of how the world works is flawed. We went to the moon because of the Cold War. The military paid for the development of the Internet. GPS? Supersonic flight? Nuclear energy? Autonomous vehicles? I wish private industry would do more. Every company should have a Bell Labs.

danharaj 11y ago
Are you extolling the virtues of a world that was shaped by the threat of nuclear annihilation for multiple generations?
- striking 11y ago
  You can't deny that some of that stuff is pretty sweet. And ignoring where it came from requires rewriting history.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    I would not have wagered the world for what we got out of it. The fact that we're around to talk about it is fine and all, but the last century is not a good model for any century.
- steego 11y ago
  I think he was extolling the virtues of large scale R&D spending and adding that the Cold War happened to be the impetus for this spending. He parts with: "I wish private industry would do more." That seems to suggest his main point is large R&D spending, not the virtues of the Cold War.
- melling 11y ago
  No, militaries has been funding R&D long before the nuclear age. http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online/age/1910/military.cfm http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online... Rather than tell us how much you hate the military and capitalism maybe you can figure out a better way? I'd love to see more non-military funding. Perhaps medical research could be used to increase public interest in funding supercomputer research?
  - danharaj 11y ago
    > Rather than tell us how much you hate the military and capitalism maybe you can figure out a better way. Well, knowing a few scientists, I can say that I know well the creative and inquiring spirits that advance us. The world is structured so that the people who do the actual development and discovery have to sell their talents to the logic of property and capital, either directly, or to the government that enforces that structure. So, I think we're probably in agreement on the forces wherefrom those technologies came. I think we're also in agreement on whose behalf those forces act. I think we're probably in disagreement that capital is any better a master than the government it is in collusion with.
    - melling 11y ago
      There may be a better solution. Just because no one has found it doesn't mean we can't do better. However, I'm not one for cursing the darkness. Light a small candle and lead the way.
      - danharaj 11y ago
        I think the solution is fewer solutions. When I am working well with others, there's nothing much to fuss about. When there are conflicts, it's not ideology or a system that wins the day. I think we two would collaborate just fine without such stuff, for instance. What works in conflict is the willingness to discard systems and ideas. Or, even better, the lack of willfulness to enforce systems and ideas in the first place. Being conceptually slippery enough to get out of any problem comes naturally to skillful people in their fields. The situation at hand provides all the impetus for theory and practice there is. Conflict thrives off of superfluity: superfluous methods, superfluous justifications, and superfluous issues. Methodology and structure gets in the way of skillfulness. I know that real human power scales on its own without armies and guns forcing it into a certain shape. People collaborate and collude very easily. People form groups very easily. People associate with people. It's probably the only culturally universal thing people do (well of course; culture only makes sense when there are associating people). If we want association to work well, groups need to be able to disintegrate as easily as they come together. People need to be slippery, too. Without what makes groups cohere, they disintegrate on their own. When you see violence and hierarchy used to keep groups coherent, it means they've lost the essential power that makes them useful. People like achieving status. Status is a social signal, and it communicates both ways. Status is not held like a title. Titles wax and wane in the status they confer just like every other human object and activity. When we pretend status can be held, that it can be concentrated and preserved, we get problems. If we let status come and go by its own logic, we'd have no problems with status. A society where status is maintained by a legal system will have hierarchies, and it will certainly have problems. So ways that our current systems-- not just capitalism, fail: Labor is not free. Association is not free. Status is not free. Even skillful people who believe in property as an organizing force wish to be locally free in these ways. Skillful people want to work unimpeded by the politics of labor, associating with likeminded people unimpeded by the politics of social groups, praised for the inherent virtue of their actions and unimpeded by the politics of status. They only believe in property because it helps them manage the world that is beyond their control, beyond the means of their skill. They use property to create a bubble in which they can live that is free from its control. People who believe in property because they enjoy its logic, enjoy the wheeling and dealing, enjoy the frantic rush to get more of it, who feel more worthwhile the more property they have are nervous people, who can never be fulfilled, because property's logic does not lead to fullness, the only conclusion is 'not enough', the only purpose is 'more'. I don't know how many people in the latter category actually exist. I suspect enough to cause a great deal of problems. In any case they require the assent of everyone else. I think all I have to say to everyone else is this: The world without property is still full and whole, is still just, is still full of vitality, is still nourishing, and receptive to human power.

flyingfsck 11y ago

I work in this field. The short of it is: there is more money out there for PIs to get defense related grants vs cure for cancer type grants. Some of it is for good, e.g. modeling where to dispatch mobile hospitals for the Ebola outbreak. Modeling the world's population doing things like fleeing a dirty bomb takes an astonishing amount of compute if you want answers in a timely fashion.

madaxe_again 11y ago

99% of the compute time on this will probably be used for weapons, combat and civil emergency wargame simulations - but that doesn't make for good PR so of course they don't mention it in this sycophantic fluff piece.

jakub_h 11y ago
However, since the US military recently labeled climate change as the #1 national security threat to the US or something like that, maybe we could hope for some climate science on the side? ;-)

joeyrobert 11y ago

It's better than doing the real thing.

__mp 11y ago

I have access to the 6th fastest super computer and I'm pretty sure that it is not used to simulate nuclear explosions.

azaras 11y ago
What does it simulate? Thanks.
- ssully 11y ago
  Argonne National Labs, which is 5th fastest I think, is used for weather models, material science, and more[1] [1]http://www.alcf.anl.gov/ http://www.alcf.anl.gov/
  - dekhn 11y ago
    There are dual-use systems which run classified and non-classified codes (they can be partitioned.. They typically live at LANL or LLNL rather than ANL or Berkeley (Berkeley in particlar doesn't do any classified work). Note that most classified codes are actually physics/material/explosion/plasma physics simulations and you can't always tell they are running on your system. I checked the list of projects running on ALCF and I see some pretty obvious nuclear weapon stockpile stewardship and weapon design projects, such as "Validation Simulations of Macroscopic Burning-Plasma Dynamics"
    - Trombone12 11y ago
      Nucleosynthesis of heavier materials in supernova explosions and neutron star mergers are two cases of problems that I guess are used for "publicly" validating dark codes. (I know a guy that Los Alamos is trying to recruit to do some dark work for them, and he does nucleosynthesis in neutron star mergers.)
      - dekhn 11y ago
        Those would be useful, but typically the validation codes use terms like "multiscale combustion physics" or "coupled neutron/radiation transport". I think the folks simulating supernova and neutron stars have a lot of physics overlaps, but I don't think that data is used directly for stockpile stewardship.

graphene 11y ago

I don't know if this is what you're referring to, but a common application for government-owned supercomputers is simulating the degredation of nuclear warheads. The degradation of the fissile material as well as its surroundings is highly critical to a nation's security, and also very hard to model well. Of course in an ideal world those cycles would be used to help cure cancer, but given that these warheads exist, it's probably a good idea to invest resources into getting an idea of what shape they're in.

twoodfin 11y ago
The old way to do that was to blow one of them up every so often. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty put a stop to that.