Legends don’t have to make sense. They just have to be beautiful. Or at least interesting.

― Terry Pratchett

Along with the purchase of a big computer and the press releases trumpeting its massive power comes another form of systemic bullshit, the heroic calculation. Such heroic calculations provide massive insight into the World through this profoundly important scientific instrument, or so we are told. It is the largest simulation ever of these particular exotic phenomena and provides new perspectives as surely as the expensive new microscope or powerful telescope. The problem with these massive calculations is that this profound capability is a myth and largely complete and utter bullshit. The heroic calculation is an enormous pain-in-the-ass to perform, which justifies the heroism, but the utility of the calculation is completely over-stated. It is a stunt to “show” that the computer works, and sell its importance through propagating bullshit.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

― Bertrand Russell

The calculation is usually characterized by how many computational elements it contains especially if it sounds like a lot (billions, so it must be great!), and how many floating operations it took (trillions and trillions, so of course its pretty awesome). These big numbers are completely meaningless and simply exist to sell the massiveness of the whole thing to unwitting lay people. Even more they say nothing whatsoever about the quality or utility of the calculation. These massive hero calculations are rarely assessed in any systematic way that defines any sense of uncertainty or accuracy. They are simply great because they are so fucking massive and huge. They are great because they are computed on this massive computer that cost a shitload of money too.

These calculations do have a utility in their trailblazing nature, but it is limited. These calculations shake out the kinks from using a new computing platform, or working at the scale that these calculation demand. As vehicles for doing science they are generically terrible, and the press releases touting the scientific achievements are bullshit. Instead the honest view of what is achieved is a voyage into the wilds of computing. The computation is done with shaky code, shaky compilers, and shaky operating systems on a shaky computer. They are achievements of will and patience too, but not science or engineering. Some day five years down the road calculation of the scale done for these heroic calculations become common. This is their achievement and it is important, but just not to the level we promote today.

Perseverance is the act of true role models and heroes.

― Liza M. Wiemer

These calculations are largely just marketing for the expensive computers. As vehicles for science these calculations are largely useless. Science needs to be done properly. Proper science does not mean one big massive calculation, proper science means a whole bunch of smaller calculations whose purpose is to carefully study a problem and determine the quality of the simulation. One calculation is never the answer; it is the ensemble of many calculations that make for good computational science. If you see a massive calculation touted as a scientific achievement your mind should immediately ask the question, how do I know its any good? Are those conducting said big calculations careful and self-critical?

The bigger the dream, the better the story.

― Richelle E. Goodrich

A worse side effect of the hero calculation is the distortion of the scientific process to both the public, but the scientific community at large. Far too much modeling and simulation is conducted in this hero mode. The standard for quality from the hero mode calculations is unfortunately the common approach for science to proceed. It makes for lousy science and worse engineering. It is common to see the heroic stunt calculation lauded by management as a stunning achievement despite it being an intrinsically poor conduct of simulation and modeling. These stunts rarely have any verification, validation or uncertainty quantification done on them. They are simply supposed to be accurate by virtue of their massiveness. They are simply the money shot for the massive computer we just spent so much on.

The problem is the nature of quantifying the uncertainties and accuracy of a modeling exercise conducted through simulation. These hero calculations are one-off exercises. They are not part of simulation campaigns that produce results that might be utilized effectively as part of quality work. They can be useful “what if” explorations of phenomena or hypotheses, but whatever the hero calculations find needs to be scrutinized heavily. A full spectrum of verification, validation and uncertainty quantification is needed to bring the hero calculation’s finding into repute. This process is science or engineering done right and its too boring for the sort of bullshit press releases we market our programs through.

A good example comes in the creation of models for complex systems. The common approach is to hand craft the model to utilize every bit of available resource and include every detail possible. This creates models that can only be run once or maybe a handful of times. The modeling approach does not lend itself to the creation of consistent models that have a coarser representation. This coarser representation could be used to assess accuracy (through solution verification), or conduct detailed uncertainty estimation. The detailed model simply can’t be used this way. It uses so much of the available computing resource that it can’t be refined either.

Don’t try to follow trends. Create them.

― Simon Zingerman

It may be the best single calculation that might be conducted, but its quality is unknown. The key question is what is important, the unknown quality of the single calculation (an presumed to be good one) or a sequence of presumably lower quality, but fully assessed calculations? The scientific method would come down firmly on the side of the assessed lower quality simulations. Their assessment makes them useful and reliable, while the presumably superior single calculation is an unknown entity.

In other words, scientists don’t concentrate on what they know, which is considerable but also miniscule, but rather on what they don’t know. The one big fact is that science traffics in ignorance, cultivates it, and is driven by it.

― Stuart Firestein

In the end we need to wean ourselves from our addiction to the fiction of the hero calculation. These calculations make for good press releases, but lousy science and even worse engineering. They distort modeling and simulation into something it is not, and certainly something it shouldn’t be. It’s high time to kill the hero, reject the legend and replace them with hardworking foot soldiers. We need to recognize that the hero calculation has a limited value, which is primarily associated with its trailblazing character in computing, but not its scientific value.

Superficiality is the curse of the modern world.

― Matthew Kelly

 

 

 

Or

A Social Revolution is taking us to the Edge of Civil War

We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it.

― Clay Shirky

I was talking to some people a week ago about the times we live in. I wondered aloud if this is what the 1960’s felt like with societal upheaval seemingly everywhere. Are we in the midst of a similar level of upheaval that will leave a much different World in its wake? Looking at the World the signs of major change and the inevitable reaction to it are everywhere. The ubiquity of the Internet through mobile computing is changing society in a myriad of ways. Demographics are approaching tipping points while the inequality of wealth is at or over an economic tipping point. Open bigotry, racism and class struggle are erupting across the World. Fear mongering and demagoguery are the stock and trade of politicians seeking to benefit from the under-currents of discomfort. The populace is afraid and the political opportunists are poised to take advantage.

Terrorism and ISIS are simply symptoms of the times rather than driving forces. The same for the rise of right wing extremism in the United States (and Europe); it is a symptom of the times. They seem to be driving the issues and debate, but instead should be viewed as the most glaring evidence of the conflict poised to erupt. Both of these major problems are simply rather natural reactions to the upset of numerous equilibriums we once relied upon. Numerous forces have destabilized our society and reactionary movements are to be expected as a result.

Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.

― Richard Rohr

My conclusion is that today’s World is in the midst of changes and conflict that may be larger, more dangerous and more pervasive than anything we have seen for centuries. The 1960’s were tranquil by comparison to the storm we are living through.

The essence of Conservatism is fear: fear of what is not understood, fear of change, fear of the new, fear of what’s different, fear of the other.

― Gene Pozniak

While the two symptoms would seem to be at odd with each other, they are actually allies, forces of conservatism trying to overthrow the vast changes pushing forth out of demographics, economics and technology. Both ISIS and right wing extremism have strong religious elements combined with a distain for the new, liberalism arising everywhere. The new societal structures emerging are terrifying to the traditional elements in society. Nothing spurs a conservative response like feminism, sexuality and gender. Both have elements of violence in their approach being pervasive with ISIS and still on the fringe with right wing extremists, but becoming more normative. While both use technology to varying degrees in furthering their cause ultimately technology is one of the elements driving these forces toward reactionary extremist views.

Through the open warfare conducted by the fearful right wing in the West and terrorism from the Islamic World, we see effective combat against the forces of change in society across the World. Whether it is directly through violence as with ISIS or the rise of the National Security state in the West, the open, pluralistic and secular society is driven back into the shadows. In many respects the impact of terrorism is similar to the military-law enforcement’s response to it; the freedom of the populations exposed to it is reduced. It acts to squash the liberalization of society by violence or the response to it. Fear of terrorism is the greatest impact of terrorism and its most powerful weapon. The right wing reactionary movements in the West act to empower terrorists by stoking the elements of fear in society. These right wing movements use fear to further their own goals for pushing back against secular elements.

When we change the way we communicate, we change society

― Clay Shirky

In this way ISIS and the right are allies. They both seek to drive social progress backwards and revert the rules of life back to the middle ages. They hate each other because of bigoted religious views held on both sides, but socially their aims are quite similar. Both seek to impose a religious rule at home and across the world largely in reaction to the discomfort arising from the vast changes in society that make them
uncomfortable. Religion in this case is simply a tool of the fearful to drive away the changes that drive their discomfort. Perhaps nothing stokes the fear of the reactionary elements like sex. Whether it is the empowerment of women in society toward equality, freedom of sexual expression, normalization of homosexuality, broader changes in the definition of marriage, or gender, these conservative elements respond with anger, violence and fear.

Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.

― Clay Shirky

Of course this societal Molotov’s cocktail is fueled by more than just sexuality; it has an economic element to push it over the top. We have an economic system that is near crisis. In the United States the inequality of wealth is near an all-time high. In the past this level of inequality preceded massive upheavals. Society stands on the brink of tumbling into despotic governance or rampant corruption if it isn’t already there. The rich know this and work actively to control the levers of power to hold onto and increase their ill-gotten wealth.

[N]ew technology enables new kinds of group-forming.

― Clay Shirky

In the Islamic World this sort of inequality is epidemic and provides a fertile breeding ground for the sort of political-religious extremism that ISIS is. Nothing would defuse this ticking time bomb better than economic equality and education. Ignorance and poverty are the fuel for the violent extremism we see. Moreover the United States in particular and the World in general is well on its way to creating the same elements with itself due to corrupt and incompetent governance. This volatile mixture is itself the recipe for revolution or societal free-fall, but even more problems contend to make these times uniquely dangerous.

How is the United States at once the most conservative and commercial AND the most revolutionary society on Earth?

― Christopher Hitchens

Technology allows new things to happen, new ways of communicating, and new ways of living, and new ways of working. Each of these threatens the status quo and stokes discomfort especially among those not ready for change. In many respects technology has the impact of enabling the inequality to grow, but also democratize the masses and allow liberalization of many social norms. The rich and powerful have the advantage of training and education, buying technology, but have the disadvantage of being conservative and not accepting changes. The key to the discussion is the ubiquity of the technology’s capacity to create the environment for change and the threat it poses to the foundation of our lives.

One of the biggest changes in our society is the shift from prevention to reaction…

― Clay Shirky

This has played out in the Arab spring. Social media played a role in powering a popular uprising only to see much of the progress undone by reactionary counter-movements. To a large respect the cancer that is ISIS arose from this environment. Just as ISIS uses social media to spread its message, the populist movements similarly utilize this means to boost their power base. While the use of social media by ISIS is disquieting, the power of social media is strongly slanted towards being a force for liberalizing social structures across the World. To win the fight against forces like ISIS we must simply have faith that the force of light and good are stronger than the dark. Social media is like everything in humanity; it can be used for good or evil to equal measures. Those who would destroy its power because of fear act in a manner that makes them evil. The fear used and powering the right wing reactionary movement is itself an evil that must be defeated.

Collaboration is not an absolute good.

― Clay Shirky

The final element is this recipe for crisis is environmental danger. There is a combination of issues that will produce tremendous opportunities for warfare, violence and chaos. Climate change is an active element in producing and exaggerating economic and political problems Worldwide. Shortages of food, water and energy create wars and fuel elements of extremist movements. Every aspect of society that reacts poorly to social changes is driven further by environmental crises. Together these elements produce a deep well of danger for much of the World. At the same time we see the right wing reactionary apparatus is geared to denying the impact of environmental change. To a large degree this reaction is dominated by the business element’s desire to not kill the goose that is laying golden eggs.

What is changing in society? We are in the midst of massive changes in how our social structures work.

At the same time as this massive social change, we see economic conditions that are primed for conflict. The levels of inequality both nationally and internationally have evolved to a level that threatens the stability of society by themselves. We already dodged a bullet seven years ago when our financial system almost collapsed. We have done far to little to assure that the sort of bubble that created that problem cannot happen again. Instead we are primed for another crisis. In the United States the steady decline in the middle class is producing an increasingly stratified country. Levels of poverty are growing and the educational system that serves to buoy citizens against the downward forces is falling apart. The economic conditions produce a real source of fear and are useful for collecting people into fear-driven angry mobs.

The increasingly level of corpulent wealth among the rich is working to remove resources from society as a whole, and pitting the rich against the poor. The rich are growing in their ability to control the levers of political power primarily to attempt to stabilize the economic and legal systems in a manner that benefits the rich. The fear of change, terrorism and race is a perfect vehicle for the rich to exploit. All of these things create a recipe for an angry mob under the control of the rich and powerful. Right now the angry mob is supporting Donald Trump, and aren’t exactlyacting as the rich (aside from Trump) would like. The rich may get the last laugh and put one of their own puppets in control of the mob. Overall it is simply another element in looking toward a chaotic outcome.

The social fabric of society is also changing in ways that stoke the fears of the populace. Technology is changing how we interact with one another in a myriad of ways. Facebook is the simplest and perhaps most innocuous of these forces. Other aspects of the Internet and mobile apps have a greater degree of impact on society. Changes in how relationships form, develop and proceed are undergoing fundamental changes. The nature of the family unit, marriage and our basic identity as adults is evolving. Your tribe no longer depends upon locality, but now can form remotely and far more specifically a person’s interests and desired social niche.

The deepest penetration of this change has been seen in the societal adoption of gay marriage, but it is the tip of a societal iceberg. It is driven by a massive change in societal comfort with homosexuality. Almost everyone now knows an openly gay person, and sees them as someone who needs their rights to be respected. Beyond gay marriage movements are afoot to normalize polyamourous relationships, open marriage, and other forms of family and relationship dynamics. Online and mobile communication allows new communities to form without intersecting with traditional mediums of social structure.

Sexual freedom that provided one of the key elements for the 1960’s is undergoing a new renaissance revolving around mobile computing. Mobile apps and new forms of dating like Tinder, OKCupid are the most innocuous forms for these changes in the relationship landscape. The forces of conservatism are horrified and fearful of these changes, and are mobilizing to push back against them. All of this is ripe for deep and wrenching conflict on new social battlefields. Just as the forces of liberalization utilize modern technology, the forces arrayed against changes organize themselves with modern technology too (ISIS is an example!).

All of this comes together to challenge the traditional views of what constitutes moral behavior. Discussions of morality become the fuel for the right wing reactionary movements. This produces a deep societal tension between those who are freed by personal prisons through liberalization of morality and those whose power is magnified by the older moral norms. LBGT issues are a common lightning rod for polarization of the two sides of the equation. While LBGT is the epitome of the tensions around morality, it is the tip of the iceberg. All the elements in the modern World conspire to create quantries to be solved and challenges to traditional morality.

In the United States and Europe right wing extremism is a reaction to all of the change. There is a pervasive social, religious and racial basis to these reactionary movements. They are responding to all of the changes seen across society at large. The combination of quickly growing minority populations in Europe and the impending minority majority in the United States has the traditional white majorities terrified. The combination of gender, sexual and social changes in the structure of families and relationships are furthering the depth of fear of change. All of this is driven by a combination of demographic shifts, technology and generational changes that are inevitable. This does not mean that the forces of status quo will not fight back. The resistance to change will be mighty and the potential for violence is rather extreme.

ISIS is another reactionary force. It is a reaction to a broad based economic deprivation and widespread corruption in the Islamic World. Of course the West has had a hand in creating the elements in Islamic society that have produced ISIS. The form of extreme religious views is simply a detail, not the core of the problem. ISIS is not an Islamic movement; it is driven by large scale poverty, lack of opportunity and powerless masses. It derives its power and manpower base from the millions of poor, uneducated and desperate masses in the Islamic World. The elements of religious extremism play to lack of economic power and uneducated populace whether it is Islamic or Christian.

The irony of ISIS is how alike the American and European right wing movements they are. They should be allies and thankfully they cannot be. The truth is that the right wing movements in the West help ISIS with every bomb they drop and every right they suppress. The liberalization of the West is the single greatest weapon against ISIS. Feminism, secular society, mass media and sexuality all work to undermine the right wing whether it is Christian-based or Islamic. Our movies, television, Facebook and yes our porn all work to hurt ISIS. When the right wing religious zealots in the West attack any of these liberal forces, they help ISIS. The right wing in the West would like to unplug everything that would act to undermine ISIS.

Change is here; change is upon us. There is no going back, but there is going to be deep conflict around all these beachheads. The forces of inequality and traditional society will not go away quietly. Traditional religion, gender, family and inequality will not relinquish their power without a fight. The changes in society are giving power to the disenfranchised, and they will not go back into the shadows without a fight either. This is a recipe for conflict, warfare and perhaps even revolution. We may be set for a period of change in society that will make the 1960’s look like a peaceful serene episode in history.

This creates the recipe for war.

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.

― Albert Camus

 

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

― Voltaire

It probably isn’t much of a stretch to say that science takes on the characteristics of the era in which it is conducted. When I look at science today, it seems to reflect the basic character of the time we live in: timidity born of baseless fear, short-term thinking and goals with a general lack of imagination. Science like many things in society is swept up in the overall sea of culture and experience. Perhaps it might be too much to ask for science to have a differing tone than other aspects of our World. On the other hand, the downsides to the current milieu with regard to science are stark and obvious. Science is in complete disarray and we are to blame.

For example, I work largely on a National project with enormously aggressive goals and sweep. I’ve worked in this program for two decades. This is Science-based Stockpile Stewardship (SBSS). This is the answer of the United States to the cessation of nuclear weapons’ testing and an important cornerstone of the effective test ban. To succeed it must be executed in a bold and fearless fashion with an unerring long-term vision aided by expressive creativity. The reality is so different. Our national leaders declare success without any basis in truth. It is part of the overall problem where the actual definition of success sews the seeds of failure. The actual program falls so far short of its vision as to be nearly comical if it weren’t so important.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

― Theodore Roosevelt

Why then is the reality so different from this expression of the character of success? For all of its vision and importance, SBSS is caught up in the realities of today and the political nature of science today. As our political climate has become a festering and poisonous environment, the conduct of science has taken on a similar air. Part of this issue comes from the public funding of science, which is an absolute necessity considering the utter wasting away of corporate science. The imposition of short-term thinking as the principle organizing principle for industry has obliterated basic research at the corporate level. Unfortunately the corporate mantra has been adopted by the government as a way of improving the quality of governance. This has simply multiplied the harm done by the sort-term thinking and its ability to ravage any long-term accomplishments.

As a nation we can’t even take care of our roads, bridges, airports in a reasonable fashion because it’s payoff is not realized immediately. The undoing of the Nation’s infrastructure and failure to invest in its 21st Century equivalents is a clear and present danger to the economic future of the United States. Yet inaction rules the political response to the obvious need for investment. Science, whose benefits are far more ephemeral, is far more difficult to manage in a similarly long-term fashion. Like infrastructure, the investment in science is utterly inadequate and the destructive management environment imposed on it then compounds this inadequacy. Everything from politics to business is operating in a completely short-term, immediate payoff fashion. Almost everything must show progress and payoff quarterly and all long-term interests are scarified at this altar.

The truth is that short-term thinking is bad for business, bad for science, bad for careers, bad for everyone except those at the top. It only benefits activities like finance as a way of powering their moneymaking shell game. It benefits the very rich and their rent-seeking behavior. We get sold a complete line of bullshit in calling all the finance “investment” when it is simply moving money around to make more money. The middle class has been sold on this strategy through their retirement accounts, but this is the equivalent of a bribe as it only buys their acceptance of a system that harms the middle-class in the long-term. The only interest that truly benefits is the status quo that is locked in from this focus. For science, the short-term thinking is simply destructive and a recipe for mediocrity and lack of progress. Again, the problems are only seen in the long-term when the lack of scientific progress will harm our descendants.

Despite this obvious downside of defining all benefit in a short-term fashion everyone has bought this idea hook, line and sinker. The quarterly report driven attitude is driven by a false belief that it is good for business. All it is good for is driving the stock market and money around in the giant shell game that finance is today. In the process we have systematically destroyed many business interests and undermined the economic well being of the entire World. As bad as this is the damage to the conduct of science is greater. It has destroyed the scientific vitality of corporate laboratories. Discoveries that could have been the basis of the future economy are now being driven out of existence. Our World will be poorer; lives will be shorter in the long run due to the shortsighted, risk adverse and fear-driven policies of today.

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

― Robert F. Kennedy

For me I see my life and career playing out in this shitty time. I could have been part of something bold and wonderful with science providing the backbone of an important societal endeavor. Instead we are destroying research institutions through utter neglect. We are wasting careers and lives in pushing down risks due to irrational fears. All of this is done in service to short-term thinking that benefits the rich and powerful. No one else benefits from the short-term thinking, no one, it is simply a vehicle for empowering the status quo and assuring that the identities of those on top do not change. It is the straightjacket through which lack of social mobility arises.

How did all this happen?

All one has to do is look at the political environment today. Americans and perhaps the entire Western world have never been more fearful and afraid. At the same time the World has never been more peaceful. Our society and so-called leaders amp up every little fear and problem into a giant boogieman when the actual reality is completely opposite. We have never ever been safer than today. This is true even with the orgy of gun violence in the United States. The powers that be use the tiny danger of terrorism to drive the forces of the status quo while utterly ignoring larger dangers (like firearms). The truth is that we have never had less to fear. Yet fear is the driving force politically and used to sell fear-spewing candidates to a weak, shivering populace. Fear sells products to people whether is drugs, cars, media content, guns, or almost anything else. Our mass media is simply a tool of their corporate overlords with the ultimate design to enslave us to the status quo. Our society runs on fear and fear is used to enslave the populace. Science is simply an innocent bystander slain by the societal drive-by.

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.

― Ken Robinson

The consequence of this constant fear-mongering and risk avoidance is a societal timidity. This timidity is a slow-motion surrender to the forces of stasis and decay. In almost all endeavors fortune favors the bold and aggressive, yet everything in the system discourages such attitudes. We have a socially imposed lack of confidence born of fear and enforced by systematic cowardice. The result is a broad-based diminishment of accomplishment. All the while the forces of the establishment openly crow about their successes and achievements publically while privately undermining every attempt to actually produce progress. We have reaped a World that makes Orwell’s vision of 1984 seem remarkably prescient.

To produce the sort of progress we are capable of the system needs to support it. Fear must be tamped down and reduced, and risks should be actively encouraged. We should seek aggressive and bold paths forward perhaps approached with some degree of reckless abandon, or the sort of over-confidence that allows the impossible to be achieved. Rather than squash progress at every opportunity, it needs to be fertilized and nurtured. Today’s systems effectively strangle the infant progress in its crib, aborting virtually every attempt to do anything that breaks the mold. You never hear a proposal being criticized for not being risky enough, only being too risky.

In the process we stay within the realm of the known and keep the unknown at bay. The unknown is where progress lives along with risk and fear. Without courting failure we cannot produce anything new. Today’s management looks for everything that could go wrong with a bold research path, and rarely looks for what could go right. We seek that safe and obvious incremental path because it will almost surely succeed with a little bit of competent effort.

This thinking infests the approach to high performance computing where a tried and true path of relying upon Moore’s law has powered modest improvements for decades. At the same time we have avoided progress in other areas of computing with greater benefits, but also greater risks and higher probabilities of failure. A prime example of this disservice can be found in numerical linear algebra where the solution of sparse systems has stagnated for decades. All the effort has been consumed by moving the existing methods to the new computing platforms, and little or nothing on improving the methods themselves. Orders of magnitude in performance improvements have been scarified to fear and risk avoidance. Let’s not forget that the principle beneficiaries of the current supercomputing program are computer vendors who will receive great sums of money to produce the monstrous computers being contemplated. These horrible machines will sap the resources left over to actually use them and simply compound the stasis already evident in the field.

Perhaps no area of modeling and simulation has been more neglected than the physical models used. We are in a decades long trajectory where the basic assumptions of the physical models used in simulation have been fixed. Despite rapidly accumulating evidence of the utter lack of applicability and appropriateness of many models forming the basis of codes, the models remain fixed. In a number of cases key assumptions such as separation of scales has broken down, yet no attempt has been made to overhaul the models. If a model is flawed no amount of raw computing power can save it, yet we are devoting massive resources and political will to increasing raw computing power.

It is quite evident that the key to successful modeling and simulation is not found in computer power, but rather in a variety of other activities. Rather than pursue a path that leads to greater success, but requires greater risk and more opportunity for failure, we pursue the path that seems safe. We need to focus on models, methods and algorithms along with innovative uses of computing. Instead we hold all of these aspects fixed while pursuing a host of rather safe and pedestrian activities that will do little to improve science. The lack of bold visionary leadership in scientific computing is somewhere between depressing and pathetic.

In a very clear way we are taking enormous risks with our future. We are accumulating massive long-term risk by consistently taking the low-risk short-term path. This is clearest when examining the state of the careers in science. Once we allowed people to aggressively pursue research with a high change of failure, but the possibility of massive payoffs. Today we timidly pursue incremental progress, yet view this as enormously risky. The greatest risk of the continued pursuit of a computing hardware driven path in high performance computing is the destruction of promising scientific careers, and the destruction of a balanced program for advancing modeling and simulation. Make no mistake, the current approach to modeling and simulation is completely unbalanced. It is timid. It lacks creativity. It lacks vitality. It is not science-based; it is fear-based. It is the result of an unhealthy fixation on short-term thinking about progress.

I work in computing, so I see the field rather fully. I am fairly certain that the attributes seen in computing are fairly broadly applicable to science in general. In areas close to computing and essential for progress, the same symptoms are there. By all accounts, experimental science is in even worse shape than computational science; theoretical physics even more so. The failings of experimental and theoretical science are profoundly evident in the lack of any vibrancy or vitality in modeling for computing, as they are the source of change. In both bases the state of these fields should roundly condemn SBSS to utter and complete failure. Those in power have declared success in SBSS, but the evidence is all to the contrary.

Perhaps my greatest concern is that these issues are all embedded with a societal environment that shows no sign of changing without great upheaval. Such an upheaval would be enormously painful, but perhaps greatly overdue. The last upheaval of such a magnitude was the 1960’s and probably created the environment we have today. The level of income and societal inequality we have today in unsustainable, and probably creates a social instability that will sooner or later explode. Perhaps we are seeing the beginnings of this, and it might be the best thing in the end.

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.

― Claude Lévi-Strauss