When I examine the arc of my career I see a repeated over-emphasis on focusing on computers instead of balanced progress. The first epoch happened in the mid-1990’s where buying fast computers was sold to replace nuclear testing. We are in the midst of a longer period of only focusing on computers (the Exascale project). This is a simple narrative and sells. It is also wrong. Progress depends on support for broader activities. The result is a diminished level of progress. We are witnessing this again with AI via DeepSeek’s revelations this week.
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” ― Steve Jobs
Progress is not Guaranteed
I’ve devoted my life to science and its progress. The promise of doing exactly this was the reason I joined Los Alamos back in 1989. Their track record in science was stellar, powered by a pantheon of science superstars. I was honored and lucky to join them. At that time Los Alamos still had a marvelous spirit of discovery. I benefited from a fantastic sense of generosity from my fellow scientists who shared their knowledge with me. It made me who I am, and shaped my career. The other thing that has been a centerpiece of my career there and later is stockpile stewardship. This program is the care and understanding of the nuclear weapons stockpile using science and engineering. A big part of this program is the use of modeling and simulation as a tool so that testing the nukes is unnecessary.
A big part of modeling and simulation is computers. The truth is that the bigger the computer the better. Well, not necessarily big, but faster computers are “always” better. There is a caveat to the “always” that needs deep consideration. Faster and bigger is always better comes with caveats and those conditions are subtle and complex. Being subtle and complex they are ignored. Ignored at our peril. Even science has succumbed to the superficial nature of today’s society. In a nutshell, many technical fundamentals need to be in place for the bigger and faster is better to hold. Today those fundamentals are at risk. The risk comes from them being ignored with astounding regularity.
To review, one of the key aspects of stockpile stewardship when it was initiated in the mid-1990s was simulating nuclear weapons. The original approach was basically to put computer codes on the fastest computers in the World. The program happened exactly at the time that the basic approach to high-performance computing changed from Cray vector computers to massively parallel computing. This meant rewriting the codes to use this new type of computer. The process of replacing the old codes (deemed legacy codes) was difficult. This was because the legacy codes were used to design and analyze weapons during the test era. So the legacy codes were subjected to repeated testing against difficult experiments. Thus legacy codes were trusted and ably used. Therefore they were held onto and revered almost as sacred. It took more than a decade to replace them and it was a mighty struggle.
The program did not explicitly want to produce better codes with better methods or algorithms or physics. Nonetheless, some of this happened because methods, algorithms, and physics make a big difference in modeling quality. This almost happened in a subrosa fashion as modernized codes only really meant codes running on modern computers.
Simple Narratives Win
“Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation.” ― Richard Feynman
The reason for this is easy to see. A faster computer is obviously better than a slower computer. The speed makes for an easy narrative about improvement. We live in an age where simple narratives rule. The public and politicians alike seem to recoil from complex and subtle explanations or solutions. In the wake of this trend, we see a loss of effectiveness and a massive waste of resources. The constant din of a simple solution to progress is reliance on computing power to solely carry progress. This did not make sense in the era when Moore’s law was in effect. It makes even less sense with Moore’s law being dead.
Moore’s law was an empirical law about the growth of power in computing over a long period. It was first observed by Gordon Moore in 1965 and held until around 2015. It was a powerful exponential law that had computer power doubling every 18 months to 2 years. If one does the math over that 50-year period (a factor of about a million). This yields phenomenal speed-ups in computing. Physical limits of computing hardware basically led to the slowing down and end of Moore’s law. Computers are speeding up, but much more slowly now. The response to the government funding was to then focus on computing, which is mind-blowing. The money was applied to try to bring the dead patient to life. This produced the National Exascale program with its focus on computing hardware.
Why is this so dumb?
Over the long history of computational science other advances have been as beneficial as computing power. In a nutshell, algorithmic advances have led to more improvements than computing. In the modern era, the focus and support for algorithmic advances have slowed to a trickle. Even in the early years the algorithmic advances received less support but had an equal or greater impact on computing capability. Nonetheless, the support never reflected the value of the approach. The reasons will be explored next.
“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” ― Albert Einstein
Algorithmic advances never created the sort of steady improvement of Moore’s law. They tend to be episodic and unpredictable. Modern project management is not suitable for such things. Progress is often fallow for long periods with a sudden advance. In a low-trust environment, this is unacceptable. Algorithmic research is extremely risky. Again, the risk is something that low trust annihilates. The long-term impact of the failure to invest in algorithmic work is a profound and massive reduction in computing benefits. I would argue that we have lost orders of magnitude of computing ability through a lack of investment in algorithms alone.
Reality is Complex
As I was writing the news broke of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI Chatbot that shattered the narratives around LLMs. The assumptions that American companies and the government had about advancing AI were overturned.
Why did this happen?
Our actions as a nation forced the Chinese to adapt and innovate. American companies were following the path of brute force. This was exactly like the computational science’s exascale program. The warning signs have been brewing for a while. The LLMs are running out of data to scale. We are running out of computer power too. The energy demands were huge and excessive. We are starting to see AI as a threat to the environment. The training of LLM models is inefficient and very expensive. In a nutshell, the brute force approach was about to collapse as a source of progress. This was predictable.
This problem was ripe for disruption and a bolt from the blue. DeepSeek looks like that bolt.
I will return to this. The narrative applies to our approach to computational science more broadly. We have an overreliance on brute force while discounting and ignoring the power of innovation and efficiency. We can all see the lessons embedded in the DeepSeek episode unfolding have been present and obvious for years. Obvious does not mean that they are acknowledged. Obvious does not compel our leaders to action. The overreliance on computing power is a simple narrative that is hard to dislodge unless is smacks us in the face.
Here is the truth and a lesson worth holding close. Reality is a real motherfucker. Reality is complex and dangerous. Reality will eventually win every battle. Reality is undefeated. Reality will fuck you up. This is the maxim of “fuck around and find out.”
There are many paths to progress. As exemplified by the DeepSeek example when we are denied the obvious path, people innovate. In computational science in the USA, we have made computer power the obvious choice. At the same time, other paths are ignored and systematically divested from. In some cases, paths to progress are explicitly removed from possibility. This looks like a doubling down on the focus on the approach being taken even as evidence piles up that it’s stupid. The worst part of this is the outright ignorance and avoidance of learning from the past. We ought to know better because the evidence is overwhelming.
Balance and Opportunity
“The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.” ― Albert Einstein
Over the long time computational science has progressed on many fronts. There is no doubt that raw computing power is part of the reason. Computers are tangible and obvious signposts to progress. Various eras of computational science are clearly marked by the computers used to do the science. Early computers are far different than vector crays, or massively parallel computers. Today’s massive GPU computers and data centers are emblematic of today. Models, algorithms, and computer codes are far more abstract and less obvious to the casual observer. Nonetheless, the abstract aspects of progress are essential, and perhaps more important.
The models produced by the codes are solved using algorithms that harness computer power. The computers are useless without them. A bad algorithm assures that the computer itself is used ineffectively and wastes time and energy. Almost the entire utility of modeling and simulation is bound to modeling, thus its importance. Computer code has become an important part of modern life with an entire discipline devoted to it. At least the code is somewhat paid attention to.
The problem with models and algorithms is twofold. Above I focused upon the abstract nature of them as a problem. Being abstract they are difficult to understand. They have a second more difficult issue surrounding their progress. This is the episodic nature of progress. Both models and algorithms require difficult theoretical work highly prone to failure for progress. Often improvements are many years apart with extensive failure. At the same time when modeling or algorithms do improve, the leap in performance is large and essentially discontinuous. It looks like a quantum leap as opposed to the incremental steady climb of Moore’s law. Risk-averse program managers wanting predictable outcomes recoil from this. As a result, the work in this area is not favored. Years of failure are punished rather than seen as laying the ground for glorious success. All of this equals the choking off of progress in these areas.
The damage to the potential progress is massive. Rather than seeing a balanced approach to progress, we put all our effort into incremental computing growth. The equal or greater source of progress is ignored because we don’t know how to manage it. Computer codes move along being adapted to new computers, but encoding old models and algorithms. These new codes would nominally be perfect vehicles for introducing new algorithms and models. More often than not the codes simply move along reimplementing old models and algorithms. In many cases, we simply get the same wrong answers with poor efficiency for a greater cost. This is nothing short of a tragedy.
On occasion, we get a peek at these things. The example of DeepSeek is one such view and it was a shock. Suddenly we saw that everything we thought and had been told about LLMs was suspect. The reason for this is the acceptance of the narrative that the quality of LLMs is built on massive data and computing. The breakthrough we saw a couple years ago was powered by an algorithm (ChatGPT and LLMs were enabled by the “Transformer” algorithm). After this, we were lulled into just seeing it deriving from raw computational power. Plus it was great for NVIDIA stock and our 401Ks. It did not spur and investment into what actually drove the progress.
The algorithm was the actual “secret sauce.”
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” ― Albert Einstein
Why are we such idiots? Why do we make the same mistakes over and over? Seeing the rise of computing focus while everything else fades. We learn nothing from the past. Reality is coming for us again.
“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” ― Alan Turing
Recently, I took a trip with my elderly father. What stood out to me was the kindness, generosity and decency of everyone we encountered. This contrasts with the general discourse highlighted every day online, or in politics. This seems to say that in person we are better. Somehow we need to get our true selves engaged more and our online avatars less. If we don’t things are going to go to shit.
“I’m inspired by the people I meet in my travels–hearing their stories, seeing the hardships they overcome, their fundamental optimism and decency.” ― Barack Obama
Common Decency
Recently, I took a trip with my dad. We flew from Albuquerque to Minneapolis via a connection in Denver. The purpose was a visit to the Mayo Clinic for treatment. My brother and his wife both work at Mayo and have access to care there for my dad. It was an extremely difficult trip because of my dad’s condition. He is 87, and has multiple medical issues including near blindness. He is quite weak and needs a wheelchair in the airport. Just for reference, I am 61 and while I am fit, strong, and vibrant; I’m not a young man. This was one of the hardest flights I’ve ever taken. By the time I handed my dad off to my brother, I was exhausted emotionally and tired physically.
When I reflected upon the day traveling, one thing stood out to me. Everyone we encountered was great. People were helpful. People were generous. People were kind. At every juncture, the airport employees, the airline employees, and our fellow passengers treated us wonderfully. People observed the situation and gave my dad deference and care. People helped us and stepped aside. Flight attendants were so helpful, ingenious, and kind. I saw lots of extra effort to help us and make the best of a very difficult situation. What I saw was Americans being the best versions of themselves and it was phenomenal. It was a tonic after the recent months of horror.
With everything else going on in the USA, it also made me say “What the fuck?”
Uncommon Indecency
“A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
The entire experience of this flight is in direct conflict with what we see elsewhere in American society. All the evidence would point to Americans being mean, cruel, and thoughtless. We see anger and ignorance everywhere. We just elected a petty, cruel, and selfish man as President. The incoming President displays these characteristics all the time. Somehow Americans overlooked his obvious shortcomings, and appalling character when voting. We are about to be led by someone who is the worst of us.
In person, I saw Americans who were the complete opposite. I saw people who exemplified the care and love of their common man. I saw something that gave me pride and hope. Yet in the engagement and discourse we see every day in the news and online, Americans are horrendous to others. We can all ask why? and examine the causes for this dissonance. One would think we want to be our best selves rather than our worst.
So WTF?
I think the key difference is the prevalence of our online self and remote discourse. The online world seems to encourage a level of vitriol and negativity commonly called trolling. Social media platforms like X (Twitter) and FaceBook thrive on this sort of awful dialog. We all say and talk to people in ways that we’d never do in person. Somehow society has transformed into a reflection of this dynamic more broadly. Our politics has become like social media and unremittingly ugly. We have decided to elect the trolls to run the country. Instead of the common decency I saw in person, we see ugliness and hate. A government is the reflection of its people. Rather than good and decency like we are in person, we have chosen evil and indecency.
In every respect our lives would be better off if Americans treated each other better. Having seen what is possible on this trip this much is obvious. People can be good to each other. They can act with kindness, love, and respect to their fellow man. This stands in stark and genuine contrast to the dynamic seen every day in the news and online. People have it in them to be better. I fear that we need to be led to do good. Right now, we are being led to be the opposite. I hope we do not lose sight of what is possible.
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.” ― Noam Chomsky,
I recently discovered that one of my best friends had died. Jim was one of the most important people in my life. But I only discovered his death 21 months after it happened. There are reasons for this. To put this in context, I’ll talk about the death of three people who have touched my life for good and ill. There are lessons to learn from each of them. Among these lessons are what people mean and how I should leave life myself when my time comes.
This essay will be about death and life. It will be a little raw. If that’s not what you’re prepared for don’t read on, or come back later when you are.
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
How to Say Goodbye
A few weeks ago, my week started off wondering about a friend, wondering if that friend was still alive. She wasn’t. It was the week after Thanksgiving, and work was spinning up anew after the holiday. The day before Thanksgiving, my friend, Sandy, sent me a brief text: “Thank you for being a good friend and lover.” Sandy had been sick for over a year, afflicted with cancer. Later in the morning, my worry was confirmed. Sandy had passed away that morning. Her kids posted the news on her Facebook profile. The message the previous Wednesday was goodbye, and a heartfelt thanks.
I hadn’t seen her since the previous February when she told me of being worried about the cancer. Her brother had died from cancer, and it seemed to run in the family. We kept in touch through texting, and I knew generally how she was doing. Her treatments worked for a bit until they didn’t. I knew she had a PET scan. I also know how that can work. I remember the moment of seeing my father-in-law’s PET scan and knowing then that the end was near. It is a test that can be a release or a death sentence. I suspect this was what happened to Sandy. She was a lovely lady who loved heavy metal. We shared an enjoyment of Alice in Chains quite often when we got together. She was a casual friend, what someone would call a “FWB”. Still, she said goodbye and left me a thank you for the time we had.
We had closure.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” ― Mark Twain
A photo of Jim from 2013 at a Mathematical Workshop he helped organize.
How Not to Say Goodbye
Sandy’s death filled me with a modest melancholy, but it was also expected. I had time to prepare and understand the context of our friendship. The very next day, I awoke to find a Facebook message that hit me hard. The previous evening, I posted the last of my series on my career, the Requiem series, with its focus this time on my time at Sandia. My friend Peter, who is a Mechanical Engineering Professor, asked about Jim. The three of us worked together in Los Alamos during Peter’s postdoc there.
About once every two or three months for the past eight years someone asks me about Jim: how can I get in touch with him? The presumption is that I will know how to contact him. I don’t, as I will explain shortly. When I woke the next morning another friend, Raphael, who is a Professor in France, notified me about Jim’s status.
My friend Jim was dead.
He had died the previous March (March 1, 2023, which I discovered via internet searches) and had managed to donate his math books to the University. He had time and knew he was going to die. He lived in a very small village in France with his wife. It was beautifully decorated in the fashion of New Mexico houses, too. That was it. I knew nothing else. Jim was gone. Worse yet, there was no closure, and there would be none.
For most of us who knew him, Jim disappeared in August 2016. I remember well our final conversation over lunch at Hot Rocks in Los Alamos a few months prior. I remember a somewhat contentious and heated discussion of the state of the Country and Lab. My own life was unsettled at that time. Jim was upset at the United States and the possibility of Trump being elected. Los Alamos had lost its luster and was disappointing him. Maybe he was disappointed with me, too. I’d been getting tattooed and had an open marriage. Maybe I wasn’t the person he thought I was. Who knows? It was a final conversation unfit for two people who had experienced so much life together. It was not a worthy goodbye to someone so important to me.
When I say Jim “disappeared”, I mean it. Aside from Raphael, no one had heard from him. Every friend I contacted since informing them that Jim had died knew nothing about his fate. I spent much of the next week contacting people who worked with Jim via e-mail and Facebook. In every case I got a note of sadness and surprise, but never anyone who said, “Yes, I had heard.” As this sank in, I felt a little bit of relief in the feeling that Jim left everyone behind. I wasn’t singled out either for good or ill. He ghosted everyone. A few friends talked about other people who disappeared suddenly, too. In every case, the disappearance of a friend is a source of pain.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” ― Elie Wiesel
Closure and Perspective
One of the things that lingers with me with Jim’s death is the lack of closure. Closure as a process is a precarious and challenging concept. My wife has struggled with it as a relationship she had ended without any closure. Later over time, she got some closure, but it was deeply unsatisfying, too. It did not meet expectations at all. With Jim, nothing ever came, and he approached death without any attempt to close the door with me, or anyone else. So, it is left to the living to find a way to close this chapter of our continuing lives.
Someone else I knew died without giving me any closure. Unlike Jim, this person had a horrible influence on my life. Sam was one of the most toxic people I have ever met. The fact that he was placed in a position of leadership was an indictment of people’s judgment. He was disingenuous to his core; he was also manipulative and vindictive. He abused power. All of this is generally ignorable except the fact that I was the object of this abuse. He was behind one of the worst things in my adult life. With his death, the minute chance of apology was gone.
Any closure or forgiveness on my part was purely one-sided. I need this, too. I need to forgive Sam for his horrible behavior. I need to move on. It is a work in progress. Sam’s death was a genuine tragedy. In addition to the personal side of it, Sam never had a chance to be a better person. He never could heal from whatever demons drove him to such monstrous behavior. I can give myself some closure in that he was a victim of an environment that created his dysfunction, and a system that rewarded him for it. He hurt me badly and likely didn’t care at all. He didn’t care about the well-being of others in his charge. He acted with cowardice and dishonestly toward me. This is a sad way for someone to live. I can learn from this and work toward being a better human from the lesson.
I can also take this lack of closure forward to putting Jim’s life in perspective and how he impacted my life.
“Closure is just as delusive-it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.” ― Stephen Grosz
Jim was a great influence on my life. He was a good man, and I am richer for knowing him. I have worked with many great and wonderful people during my career, but Jim stands out. We had a great bond of friendship and shared numerous battles and adventures in an exciting time. For this reason, the way Jim deserted me hurt especially deeply. Anyone who knew us would have assumed Jim would stay in touch with me. His abandonment of me and all things American was painful. It is worth some deeper consideration. Perhaps, for Jim, it was simply too painful to continue engaging with all of us.
I met Jim in 1996 as we joined the hydrodynamics group in X-Division. The burgeoning ASCI program was injecting life into a weapon’s program that had been in freefall since the end of the Cold War. Our group leader, Len, had the wisdom to introduce Jim and I, seeing we might work well together. It was a stroke of genius by Len. Jim and I shared basic ethics and goals in work but also complimented each other almost perfectly. I was creative and free-thinking but lacked attention to detail at times. Jim was more confined in thinking but had meticulous attention to detail. We helped each other with our differing strengths coupled with a common vision. Together we began to sketch out a collaboration that would stretch into the next 20 years. A fast friendship made the work even better.
I had a crisis that left me with a better workplace balance. Gone was my sense of imposter syndrome, replaced with confidence. I was now imbued with the sort of scientific superiority and spirit that made Los Alamos special. Both of us inserted ourselves into the sense of possibility that ASCI gave us. We had freedom and could explore modeling nuclear weapons with computers. Together, we understood that scientific credibility in the simulations relied upon evidence. That evidence was found in verification and validation. Verification is the proof that a simulation is mathematically correct. Validation is evidence that the simulation models something close to objective physical reality.
Jim was blessed with mathematical skill and precision. He also had attention to detail that powered him to a PhD from Caltech. My pedestrian education from the University of New Mexico felt like an anchor. I graduated with a doctorate from Los Alamos. It was far greater and broader than any university could have given me. I had creativity and big ideas with an ability to dream big. Together, we were far better than either of us could be, separately. Jim was also generous and connected well with people. Both of us grew as scientists and our statures grew. We were a great team.
We were a dynamic duo with an eager energy. Ideas would bounce from each other. Throughout our time working together, the friendship grew. We also pushed each other to new heights. We hosted the first TriLab V&V workshop, and Jim’s ideas gave my own extra bite and swag. He came up with the idea of the seven deadly sins slide with the imagery of Hieronymus Bosch to spice it up. We crafted proposals together to work on the most difficult validation problems—images of turbulent chaotic flows central to our mission. Together, we joined the trips to Russia in scientific diplomacy that were part of the hope for lasting peace after the Cold War.
These trips to Russia opened a new level of connection. Jim took the hardest part of the travel and built a level of trust with the Russians. His encouragement brought me along for trips there. I went on seven international trips for this program. Two of these trips were to Vienna for a conference we hosted that included the Russians. One trip was to Ekaterinburg, 12 time zones away in January. Temperatures were as cold as –10°F. The other four trips were to Moscow, and then a train ride to Sarov. Sarov is the place where the Soviet nuclear program was born.
These trips were long and intense. It was the hardest travel I’ve ever done. Jim was a consummate traveler, always ready for every problem. On one particularly difficult trip, we ended up with nicknames. Jim’s was “Candyman”, because of his perpetual supply of homeopathic remedies. He was like a little pharmacy away from home. I remember needing stool softeners halfway into a trip and Jim having them at the ready. My nickname was “Gutterball”, characterizing my own tendency to see the dirty in everything. I could propel any conversation into the gutter in short order.
I remember one of the funniest things Jim ever said. It was 2005 and we were walking past the new NSSB building at LANL. I asked, “When will it be completed?” being completely serious for once.
Jim replied in a completely deadpan way, “When the flaming eye of Sauron is placed on top of it!”
We erupted in gut-wrenching laughter. It also tells you how Jim felt about the new Los Alamos management. This was also a harbinger of disappointments to come.
Right before I left Los Alamos, I was a manager. Jim was one of my employees. Jim was a model employee, being the best in a group full of stars. I can’t think of someone easier to manage. When I left Los Alamos in 2007, Jim followed me to Sandia shortly thereafter. The changes in Los Alamos didn’t sit well with him either.
In retrospect, I think Jim’s movement to Sandia was a twofold break from his past. On the one hand, he was searching for work that felt good. Los Alamos’ decline was stark and heartbreaking. I was providing a naive sunny-side-up view of Sandia. I suspect he never forgave me for that. Jim’s time at Sandia was unhappy. He saw it far clearer than I did. I worry that he blamed me for it and the lack of disclosure of Sandia’s faults and shortcomings. We continued to work together at Sandia, doing some great work. Nothing we did at Sandia could hit the heights Los Alamos gave us.
“To say goodbye is to die a little.” ― Raymond Chandler
With time, Sandia wore out its welcome with Jim. He still lived near Santa Fe with his wife Celine. Celine was French and a nurse. It was clear that Jim’s plan upon retirement was to live in France with its public single-provider health care. France also had a better lifestyle and attitudes than America’s nasty dog-eat-dog culture. Gradually—and then suddenly—Sandia became harder for Jim to integrate his life with. Jim left Sandia and went back to Los Alamos. He and I stayed in touch, but a space had opened. Los Alamos had also declined and was disappointing. The United States felt increasingly foreign too. In August 2016, Jim left the United States without any notice, or information about where he was. I never saw him again.
“How lucky I am to have known somebody and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful.” ― Evans G. Valens
I will never know the answers. I can just look at the evidence. Jim had lost faith in Los Alamos, Sandia, and the United States. I was seemingly included in his condemnations, or not. It was and remains heartbreaking to me. Jim was as close to a brother as I had at work. We fostered a deep friendship of immense value to me. I won’t ever lose that. I am eternally grateful for knowing him and having him as a friend. I hope Jim felt the same way. I simply don’t know the answers.
It tells me that I need to work on forgiveness and connection. I want to feel the love and gratitude for Jim. I hope others feel the same for me when the time comes.
“Time doesn’t heal all wounds, only distance can lessen the sting of them.” ― Shannon Alder
Most of us would be love to be recognized as an expert at something. One would think it is a way to be professionally successful. The path to expertise runs through skills and experience, but takes a bit more to actually achieve. An expert sees what can’t be taught, and has the ability to move past current knowledge and practice. The expert can solve novel problems and adapt the state of the art. Expertise is earned through hard lessons that include many mistakes and failures. It also needs to be valued and respected to be born. It is an uneven and long journey guided by grit, determination and talent. Today, the expert is also the subject of critique. Expertise is under attack. Thus, expertise today is a dangerous and perilous endeavor.
“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.” ― Werner Heisenberg
The Path of Expertise
“We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don’t know what we’re talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.” ― Jonah Lehrer
The start of expertise is always the same. You learn the basics and fundamentals of a field. First, the foundational principles are imparted to the burgeoning expert. With the foundation in place, the student turns to a focus in a given area. This follows a similar path with the knowledge be found in textbooks, or the literature. Ultimately, the student needs to begin to start the process of reproducing the state of the art independently. This means known results are recreated and compared with the standard. In this process, the student begins to pick up and demonstrate competence. In that competence gradually confidence is established. At this point the student is still not an expert. The student is a skilled practitioner. Most stop there and go no further.
Along the way important milestones occur that begin to lay the groundwork for expertise. Key among these are beginning to make the same mistakes as the preceding experts. This gets to a feature of the existing literature and knowledge for a field, mistakes and traps are not reported. Success is usually the only thing published. Often a mentorship can be established with an existing expert who provides the growing expert with guidance. Through the mistakes, guidance and lessons learned, the skilled novice inches their way toward expertise. At this point the novice is on the precipice of expertise. There is one more critical step forward to complete.
“This is a fundamental truth about any sort of practice: If you never push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve.” ― Anders Ericsson
Raw talent and ability is part of the picture, but offers traps that many fall into. There are many very talented students who basically become skilled technicians. The example of the perfect student who’s perfectionism rules their life. The valedictorian from high school is often the epitome of this person. A great student to be sure, but trapped by perfectionism. To become an expert you need the talent and grit, but you have to step into the unknown to risk and experience failure. Often as I’ve seen the perfectionist can’t break from the mold that created the success as a student. They never become an expert.
Being a perfectionist is antithetical to expertise. Given that many gifted and excellent students are perfectionists this might be counter-intuitive. A perfectionism will push a person away from failure and failing is a key part of becoming an expert. Perfectionists often stay within the boundaries of the known, and the boundaries of the known do not contain expertise. Doing what is needed to be an expert requires courage. The perfectionist is skilled, but their excellence in tinged with mediocrity. If you see someone who never fails and always does great work that person is almost certainly not an expert. Expertise is born from pushing hard past limits into the unknown, which invariably leads to mistakes and failure. The perfectionist must cast off their tendencies and the courage to take a leap into the unknown.
“Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability, it turns out, because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.” ― Gretchen Rubin
Experts Matter?
I’ve always operated under the assumption that expertise is both good and matters. Experts can produce results that mere technicians cannot produce. They solve problems that were unforeseen and unexpected. There is a distinct and substantial difference between competence and expertise.
It has been recognized that experts are treated with distrust and suspicion today. This is a consequence of the unfortunate value system in the current world. There is very little doubt that expertise is under attack from all quarters. There is an entire political movement that is devoted to ignoring expertise. They are in power and operate under the premise that reality can be messaged. We see business interests built on expertise that have shed experts because they are too expensive. Boeing is a prime example. The reality is that Boeing likely a reflection of the danger rather than being an outlier.
If you want results for the long term, experts are essential. In the short term experts are terrible for the balance sheet. This is where politics and business intersect. Current trends are focused intently on the short term. Quarterly results are all that matter. Experts are simply lots of difficult reality that is cheaper to ignore. Until it isn’t. Reality will eventually assert itself. Planes crash or doors fall off. Hurricanes happen and make landfall. Reality will eventually win, and the hedge that experts represent need to be present. Then the experts are be worth every penny spent on them. Today, I wonder, will they be present to step up when needed?
I see this at work. You would think that at a National Laboratory experts would rule. They do not. Experts are a pain in the ass. When reality bites, and it will, the expert will save your ass. In these days it would seem that the message matters and reality is at bay. It is simply a matter of time, reality cannot be denied. That said, we saw experts being repudiated during Covid. More than a million people died and experts were continually beaten down or ignored. One needs to wonder, what sort of disaster would it take for the experts to be valued?
When we look at the consequences of rejection of expertise, Boeing looks like an herald of the future. I remember 20 years ago at Los Alamos taking a meeting with a Boeing engineer. He told us that Boeing eviscerated its work on turbulence getting rid of almost everyone working in the field. Only the expert who “solved” the problem was retained (Spalart) , and no more progress was needed. They had declared the problem to be solved. An absolutely ridiculous notion on the face of it. It turns out that the repudiation of expertise was even broader at Boeing. Then starting with the building of the 787 then the 737 Max, the problems started to manifest in reality. Delays and quality control problems plagued the 787. Then the actual engineering work created flaws that crashed two 737 Max planes by foreign airlines. The problems continued with a door flying off a plane more recently.
All of this seeded by the removal and rejection of expertise by the company. All of this done to improve the bottom line and the short-term financial health of the Company. Reality hit hard and now Boeing is in free fall. A sterling reputation built over decades was destroyed by cheapness and greed. The same motivations and drives are present all across the business world, and replicated at places I work. I see financial factors treated as essential and primal to success. Expertise and technical quality are afterthoughts and simply assumed to be in place.
The result is mismanagement of technical work and a collapse of expertise. The lack of trust present across society results in a fear of failure. This in turn becomes management malpractice. We are graded on how we perform on key milestones. We are basically told that these milestones cannot fail. Thus we create milestones that are too easy and can’t fail. The result being a systematic dumbing down of the most important work we do to avoid the possibility of failure. It is also the highest profile work we do, which ironically is engineered to be mediocre.
This gets to some factors in the creation of experts which are cultural and emotional. The culture of the organization needs to support the expert in several key ways. First the activities needed to develop and maintain expertise must be encouraged and resources be provided. Secondly, the expert needs to be respected and valued. The novice can easily observe whether expertise is encouraged by the management. More importantly they can see whether being an expert matters and their views are respected.
We can ask some key questions about the culture. Is being an expert a path to professional success? Does the organization provide opportunities to experts? Is being an expert a path to being supported with ease? If these questions are answeredaffirmatively, experts are a natural outcome.
The answer to each of these questions is now in the negative. In the business world (e.g., Boeing) and the Labs we can see this. Its consequences are starting to become obvious.
When I look at my career the answers to these questions provide a guide. When the answers were affirmative, the expertise was built and grew. When the answers were negative, expertise retreated and languished. Experts are not free, nor does their quality and availability come without broader implications. If the evidence is that expertise is not valued, one won’t put effort into being one. Without experts we cannot meet our greatest challenges with solutions that work. In the long run we can expect reality to ultimately expose our short-term strategy as flawed. It will be a failure in the bad sense of it.
Expertise is Dangerous and Expensive
“The death of expertise is not just a rejection of existing knowledge. It is fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are the foundations of modern civilization.” ― Thomas M. Nichols
In an environment that prioritizes perfectionism and allows for few or no mistakes, an expert is seen as the problem. The expert sees past the trivial and looks deeper. The perfect rarely survives past the superficial observation. The short-term management solution is to get rid of and ignore the experts. We are seeing how that worked out for Boeing. Reality bites and bites hard. What I suspect is that Boeing is simply the most evident example of a broader war on experts. Reality will show itself and expose the gaps in our strategy.
The Covid Pandemic was another example of how experts are not listened to or respected today.If the expert provides something that is uncomfortable or difficult, the current response is to ignore them. Even worse, the response is to make them a villain. The best example is the vitriol directed toward Anthony Fauci. The same is directed toward experts far and wide in less obvious ways. We simply see managers penalize and punish experts for providing a preview of reality. Usually you get the feedback that you need to work on your messaging. Be more positive and stop being a “negative Nelly.” The only good news message is broad and clear across society at large. The National Labs are no different and its hollowing them out.
“Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn’t happen.” ― Malcolm Gladwell
One can see the retreat of verification and validation in this light. If one is focused on perfect success V&V is the enemy. V&V is all about finding the problems with a body of work. If one looks carefully at virtually any work with V&V, problems are found. These problems are a direct assault on perfectionism. Accepting V&V examinations and evidence usually chafes the perfectionist. The simplest way for the perfectionist to survive the examination is reject it, or not do it all. This explains the retreat of V&V and the decline in the quality of the work done.
The recent death Jimmy Carter offers a window into some of the systemic problems underlying the death of expertise. While so laudable as a former President, Carter is derided for his time in office. Front and center in this assessment is the infamous “malaise” speech. It is seen as the end of the success in office as Carter called out the public in ways that ring true then and today. He was replaced in office by Reagan who foreshadowed the feel good form of communication we see replicated today. He was also an actor and public figure who mastered media. This episode also coincides with the demise of expertise as essential to success. It does not seem that these events are independent, but rather part of the same problem.
“These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything” ― Thomas M. Nichols
Nobody enjoys failure. It is generally not celebrated. In fact, it is generally feared and reviled. It is rarely seen as the origin of true success, but that is what it is. Innovation and creation often come from failure. Yet, we see a lack of encouragement to allow failure. Instead, it is feared by most. Instead of harnessing failure, we tend to hide it. In doing so we miss the opportunities for amazing progress. If used properly, failure is the path to learning and growth. In it, we can find rebirth and redemption. Without it, we sink into stagnation and mediocrity.
Like many posts of the past, I am returning to writing about a talk that I am to be giving. The issue is that it is a five-minute talk. What I have here is not five minutes of content. So, I need to boil it down to the essence that’ll be work for later. For now, enjoy the full treatment this topic deserves. At the end of the new material is a reprint of a blog post written for Sandia Labs internally.
Fear of Failure
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” ― T.S. Eliot
Failure is bad.
Failure is embarrassing.
Failure should be avoided.
Failure is to be feared.
If we listen to our leaders at work and in politics we hear celebrations of success. Our meetings are full of stories of accomplishments and victory. When someone does something well it is promoted as the thing for others to follow. If you want to be that person you should do everything possible to succeed. Our leaders are selling us a lie, and to succeed you should first fail instead. Successes like we hear about are usually half the story or less. Our leaders are telling us half-truths that make success seem like a simple story. It is not. More often than not, success, true success is built upon failure.
If the story of success does not include failure as an integral part of it, that success is likely hollow. If there is not an element of failure, the success is likely the product of low expectations. Rather than aim high and try to succeed greatly, we choose easy expectations. Very rarely does great success come without difficulty. Those difficulties are numerous failures. Yet when we listen to what our managers say and do, failure is to be avoided. Failure is a source of shame. Failure is to be feared. This is management malpractice. We are missing any opportunity for greatness in the process.
“life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.” ― Anaïs Nin
I wrote a blog post for Sandia recently on the subject (the November ND Post). It was a nice piece although the ground rules for writing at Sandia are different than here. It was far more vanilla and bland than what I’d normally write (because Sandia requires dull flavorless prose). Of course, this is actually part of the problem with the institution. Part of failure is taking risks, and in writing maybe offending someone is a risk. Fuck people like that! I’m going to be a lot spicer here. I will also include the actual post at the end of this one along with links to earlier takes on this important, timely, and timeless topic.
Failure is the Route to Success
“Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.” ― John F. Kennedy
If we could get our managers to talk about failure, it would be a breakthrough. I’ll not hold my breath on this happening. Managers are much better at pretending everything is great. They like to believe that success can happen without difficulty. Yet difficulties and failures are usually essential to any story of success. These failures are actually the interesting part of the story too. The result is a far more boring version of what we do.
Failure is essential to learning. Research is learning. So the obvious conclusion is that if we want to have research success and learn more, we need to fail. Part of embracing failure is pushing the boundaries of what you know, or what you can do. The key is to learn from those failures. The key is to use failure to build yourself. I can provide a few lessons from my own life as object lessons in failure.
“In any case you mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald,Tender Is the Night
I’ve written several times about the failure at the heart of one of my greater achievements professionally. My most cited paper is on a numerical method called volume tracking. At the weapons labs, this is a very important method. In the 1980’s David Youngs from AWE introduced a new way to do this that was quickly adopted in the USA too. In the early 1990’s I became interested in this method at Los Alamos. It was essential to how our weapon’s codes simulated multiple material hydrodynamics. This was the thing I wanted to do and become an expert at. I’d already contacted Doug Kothe in the Theoretical Division and started building a collaboration. The way I approached learning about it was the tried and true method of first reproducing the state of the art. Once you can reproduce the state of the art, you then try to advance it. This is the way expertise is gained. You are not an expert by knowing the state of the art; you are an expert when you can advance it.
I had seen how Youngs’ method was coded up at Los Alamos, and I worked to independently implement it myself. I did this successfully and set about testing the method using verification problems. These included some new problems I had adapted to testing volume tracking more strenuously (my first advance of the state of the art). Everything was working as desired. Then I tried to improve the method and everything went awry. Suddenly my attempt was a failure! I could never debug it properly. The way the method was written at Los Alamos had too much cyclomatic complexity (which is logical intensity). I needed to go back to the drawing board. I went back to the origins of the method and decided to try something new. I would compose the method through computational geometry operations. Suddenly the implementation was tractable and successfully debugged. We published the method along with our new tests. This paper now has more than 2000 citations. Even better the actual code I wrote is still being used by Los Alamos in one of its mainstream codes.
All of this success is founded on a failure. Without the failure, the success would have been less.
“Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.” ― Edward Abbey
In a greater sense, the greatest successes of my life are all founded on huge failures. Each of these failures was heavy and inescapable. Each pushed me back to the drawing board to reimplement part of my life. Each time I needed to rethink something essential to how I lived. My life today is almost entirely shaped by these three episodes. Without the failures, I would be someone different, far less successful, or happy.
I’ve talked about the end of my first year of grad school. I dropped a class and did poorly in another during the Spring Semester. Each class was essential to how I wanted my future to play out. Together these failures showed me that my dreams were dying. If I didn’t change I wouldn’t accomplish my goals. I had to completely rethink my approach to school. The way I had succeeded as an undergrad or high school student did not work. I needed to be mre serious and put much more effort into my studies. I made a huge investment in time and effort to become a different student. I changed how I approached learning and acting in a school setting. I became completely different in academics. This change laid the groundwork for success at Los Alamos too.
“Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say “yes” to life?” ― Paulo Coelho
Later on in my time at Los Alamos, I had a string of panic attacks. My work-life balance was completely out of whack. I was working way too hard and sacrificing too much as a husband and parent. I needed to rebalance my life. The way I approached my early career was no longer working for the full breadth of my life. In that decision, I gave up on my imposter syndrome and accepted my success. I walked away as a better husband, better father, and a confident (perhaps even imposing) scientist. I changed myself from the man who had nearly fallen apart. A truism learned through the pain of this failure is that it is the source of wisdom.
Later on, as I approached midlife, I found that I was not happy hiding myself at work. The result was tattoos and a more open self away from work. I also found that my marriage was not monogamous. In the wake of that I discovered my natural tendency toward open love and non-monogamy. In the failure of my traditional monogamous marriage, a new relationship was born. I became a new version of myself with a new marriage. I’ve often said that I have had three different marriages to the same woman. Each rebirth had us growing together instead of apart. Every time I failed, I stepped up to rebuild my life from the ground up. I needed to change and all my success is found by learning from those failures. Everything I value today comes from the fountain of growth that are failures.
“Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.” ― George Bernard Shaw
Barriers to Progress
The verification and validation (V&V) program offers a unique window into attitudes toward failure. If functioning properly V&V would find failures all the time. In fact, it does, but usually, the response is to paper over or cover up the failure. Rarely, if ever, does the failure result in an appropriate action to fix the underlying problem. There seems to be an attitude that everything should be working now. We should just be able to model and simulate everything perfectly. An honest assessment of validation would tell us that our models are deeply imperfect. We resort to calibration of virtually every serious model. Yet we sell it as the epitome of success. Instead, it is a failure we haven’t learned from.
“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” ― Chuck Palahniuk
With the practice of verification, this tendency is even worse. Part of it is how verification is packaged. Code verification is about finding bugs. A code bug is just wrong and simple to fix. Solution verification is just an exercise in numerical error and after the exascale program that should be a thing of the past too. Both of these viewpoints are utterly wrong-headed. Verification can find fundamental issues with a code. These are places where the code simply does not work at all. Our shock codes offer a perfect example of this, yet our managers ignore these problems. They make excuses to justify their inattention to serious issues. This is the wrong sort of failure and they desire to not even admit it. Numerical errors still vex our calculations even with our limitless computing power (especially compared to 30 years ago). Instead, we embrace the view of success and push failure away.
Almost nothing we do spells out our unhealthy view of failure like V&V does. It holds a mirror up to our capabilities and often shows our faults. Most of the time is a response that screams “our shit doesn’t stink!” After ignoring the evidence you are not better, and your shit still stinks.
“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
It might be very good to look in the mirror. Are you an “A” student always chasing the top grade in a class? This might describe a lot of you, and it might be the thing holding you back. If you end up afraid to fail, your growth will end. All you’ll be good at is what others created. You will never create anything of your own. Creation is an act of destruction too. You are destroying barriers and creating new paths where none existed before. Sometimes the limits you learned of need to be unlearned. This is the art of failure in the right way. Too many great students cannot throw off the limits of being right and let themselves be wrong. Only through being wrong can a new path be crafted leading to genuine innovation.
Our expectations of ourselves are often our worst enemy. Sometimes we avoid failure because of shame. We see failure reflecting on our qualities. The right way to see failure is feedback. We are being offered a chance to learn about what is needed for success. The variable is the extent of our grasp for success. This is a key point: if you never fail, you aren’t trying. You very clearly are not performing anywhere close to your potential. Lack of failure is actually a red flag. The only way to grow and learn is to fail. Having a distinct fear of failure is a fear of growth and change. Failure is about defining your limits and working past them.
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” ― Ralph Ellison,Invisible Man
A great way of seeing this is through the concept of flow. Flow is where you become fully enveloped in a task with time melting away. One of the most common ways to experience flow is play. If you are playing and fully enjoying yourself with a pure focus, you are in the flow. The key to being in flow is a degree of challenge that requires you to be fully engaged. Challenge means failure is always a possibility. Success is important too. Flow comes from being close to the edge of your competence. Results are a mix of success and failure. You have mostly success keeping you encouraged, but enough failure to grow, learn, and require full attention. A great question is what gets you to flow? Does work ever put you in this state? If not, how can it?
What gets me into a state of flow? At work, I get into the analysis of numerical methods either deriving them or finding their stability or accuracy. My tool of choice is Mathematica. I used to get into flow while running especially in Los Alamos as my mind would wander and free associate. Running is one of the things I really miss about getting older. I also got into flow while refereeing soccer. I had limits to my competence as a ref, and it always pulled me into full attention. Really great sex can produce a flow state too. Part of this admission is the connection of sex to play along with the possibility of failure. A flow state is one of the greatest feelings in life.
What really stands in the way of success. Fear! So many of us are afraid of failing because somehow it will reflect on our worth. There is a sense of shame that powers a lot of this fear. This is hopelessly a misguided principle to adopt. Sacrificing greater success to avoid the fear of failing is worse than cowardice. It is a denial of the potential for growth and the expansion of knowledge. Life is about learning, growing and changing. As always this is a voyage into the unknown, and unknown is where fear lives. Only through the encouragement and trust of our fellow travelers can this voyage be safely taken. Unfortunately in recent times the fear of failure is real. It is real because those in positions of power will attack it as if it was a personal failing. This is simply abuse of power in the worst sense. It is outright incompetence and an invitation to mediocrity. My greatest fear is that we’ve already embraced mediocrity fully and our failure is complete.
“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” ― Rumi
Take the Leap
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” ― William Faulkner
Honestly when I think of today’s labs, I rarely think of failure. We have a bunch of employees who may have never failed, or at least admitted to it. If they did fail they might try to hide it from view. We need some fucking leadership with balls to break the mold. Let’s talk about how to fuck up well. The way to really kick ass is to fuck up, admit it, learn a thing or two, and try again, try better. Take a chance and risk it all for a bigger reward. What I see instead is extremely competent mediocrity. Taking a risk recognizes the virtuous cycle of failing, with learning and growing from the experience. The need to get out of our collective comfort zones and push the boundaries. We need to trust ourselves and each other and embrace failure.
Failure is good.
Failure is necessary.
Failure should be sought.
Only fear the failure that you don’t learn from.
I’ve been writing about this for years with themes on failure, risk and trust part of this witch’s brew of dysfunction. The problems I discuss here have been on my mind for years.
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”– Michael Jordan, American businessman and former basketball player. Widely considered one of the best basketball players of all time
If you know anything about basketball, you know that Michael Jordan (MJ) is the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT). Even after the storied careers of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, MJ still holds that title. His highlight reels are jaw-dropping even now, twenty years after he last played. Jordan knows a thing or two about success and greatness: he won six NBA championships and an Olympic gold medal. And one thing that MJ understands better than anyone is that all success is built on failure. He is the epitome of Nike’s slogan, “Just Do It.”
The foundation of excellence and success is failure
MJ was a master of being in the zone and teams were constantly struggling to pause his pace of play. Maybe you, too, have been doing something and suddenly realized hours have melted away. If so, you’ve experienced something called “being in a state of flow.” I experienced flow when I started writing this first draft: the words just effortlessly appeared on the page. This “flow” concept was discovered by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who found that to achieve this state, one must be challenged by the task. He stated that one should be failing at a task between 20-30 percent of the time. Fail too much, and you’ll be discouraged; fail too infrequently, and you’ll be bored. One needs a delicate balance between those extremes. People who achieve excellence in all forms of endeavor experience flow in the process. The lesson is that failure is necessary to achieve optimal performance.
Failure’s role in success
Speaking of optimal performance, I’m sure we can all be proud of the United States’ moon landing in 1969. But did you know this massive success was built on numerous spectacular failures? Early on, the American rocket program experienced repeated launch pad explosions and other mishaps. During the height of the Cold War, the United States was in a neck-and-neck battle for scientific superiority with the Soviet Union, and they already beat us into space with Sputnik 1 and sending the first human into orbit around the Earth. Yet we persisted. Even with further setbacks, such as the disastrous Apollo 1 fire that tragically killed three astronauts, we persevered and became the first to put man on the moon. This event stands as a pinnacle of American achievement.
Our nuclear weapons program is also filled with stories of failure paving the way to success. In 1944, the Manhattan Project was in the midst of developing the first atomic bomb, and Sandia was just a division of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Part of the Manhattan Project involved having two physicists (Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman, both of whom later won Nobel Prizes in Physics in consecutive years in the 1960s) simulate an implosion on a computer using two separate algorithms: one developed by physicist Tony Skryme and the other by another brilliant mind of the 20th century, John von Neumann. Notably, Bethe and Feynman had spectacular failures in their attempts when using Von Neumann’s algorithm. They did have success in the spring of 1944 when using a completely different method developed by Skryme.
However, the algorithm developed by von Neumann was considered more critical to advancing nuclear weapons. So, after WWII, failure did not deter LANL from pursuing improvements to von Neumann’s method. Another enterprising genius, Richard Richtmyer, found a way to make von Neumann’s method work, and this has since become the absolute workhorse of nuclear weapons design. In fact, the failure of the original method and the ability to learn from it paved the way for a technique still in use today. This method has been used to design the entire stockpile, save for those first couple of designs. (See: Morgan, Nathaniel R., and Billy J. Archer. “On the origins of Lagrangian hydrodynamic methods.” Nuclear Technology 207, no. sup1 (2021): S147-S175.)
Failure as a vehicle for greater discovery and success
In the mid 1990s when I was working at LANL, I wrote a paper with colleague Doug Kothe (our current Division 1000 Associate Laboratories Director), and this paper has now been cited over 2,000 times (See: Reconstructing Volume Tracking). The computer code we described is still being used in one of the main stockpile analysis codes at LANL. This is a story of success, but it didn’t start that way; it was failure that laid the foundation.
One of the key methodologies in weapons’ codes at LANL is interface tracking, and a specific method used in many of these codes was developed by British scientist David Youngs, MBE. I knew mastering this code was important to the Lab’s mission, so I set about to implement the code from scratch and then improve it. To my delight, I succeeded and then went about creating necessary improvements. At this point, unfortunately, everything fell apart. My implementation was too complex and ultimately proved impossible to debug.
I went back to the drawing board. First, I needed to learn a totally new field of computational geometry. Next, I devised a way to implement the method that was simple and easy to debug. Now I could improve the method without issues, and all because I had gone through an earlier disaster. Without my failure, the creation of something better would never have happened. Looking at these codes today, one can see they are implemented as I discovered them. I crucially changed a fundamental method and contributed to an important methodology for simulating our stockpile, and all of this success was based on a failure.
Failure as a goal
I leave you with some words of wisdom: embrace your failures. Sandians aren’t going to fill out our annual goals with all the failures we hope to make this year, but maybe we should! Ironically, we might succeed more and more grandly if we failed more and more consistently. This is only true if we fail the right way – if we learn from our failures and use them to fuel something greater. Failure is the lifeblood of all success. We should embrace it.
“I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it’s an illusion to me. Failure always made me try harder next time.”
In debates around almost anything today, extremes rule. When extreme views are taken it always favors the conservative/status quo side. The progressive’s more extreme views are a loser. To provide progressive views that will win the day, nuance and subtlety need to be embraced. This means letting go of dogmatic ideology and making compromises. Simple extreme views are rarely fit for progress only playing into the conservative’s hands. Reasonable and moderate positions can offer progress in a manner that more people are comfortable with. This is the path to genuine progress.
“Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance” ― Albert Maysles
The extremes are ruining today
We are witnessing the broad consequences of extremes ruling the political dynamic. The conversations nationally are dominated by extreme views on the left and the right. One of the prevailing issues is that conservative extremes are more acceptable to broad swaths of the population. Why? Conservative ideas are familiar while progressive ideas are not. Thus progressive ideas carry a burden conservative ideas are free of. This is especially true of cultural topics but carries over to economics and foreign affairs. I’ve also seen this apply in the scientific and technical realms.
In my professional life I work with computer codes that simulate things in the national security world. I am paid to work on things that are very energetic and either lead to or cause explosions. These problems are extremely challenging and always push the limits of technology. Nonetheless, these problems have been successfully solved. Moreover, the codes solving them have been around for decades. At Los Alamos, the first calculations started during the Manhattan Project. At Sandia, the calculations began in the late 1960’s. As such in either place there is a successful status quo. At every juncture, smart people got the job done and successfully simulated stuff. This utility preserved the continued use of simulation and its support institutionally.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” ― Clare Boothe Luce
The rub is that the first way to do things is crude and clumsy. This produces a status quo that many practical people hold onto. Once simulation became commonplace and powerful, the way it is done became entrenched. The users of the results started to become invested in maintaining the status quo. They would resist changes to how things were done. This produced what was called legacy codes. Through huge efforts, the legacy codes were replaced with modern codes on modern computers. Now the replacement codes are the status quo. Improving or changing them is resisted as were the original legacy codes.
The same thing happens in politics and culture. Change requires massive effort, and once the change sets in, resistance builds as it becomes the status quo. The way to see the 2024 election is through the lens of resistance to change. Conservative politics is driven by resistance and reaction to change. They are the counter to progress and the discomfort with it. The same thing happens in science and technology. The key is that the status quo always has the advantage of simplicity. Change is always really hard and resisted by those who believe things are good enough..
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
We need real answers
In science, we have Occam’s razor where the simplest solution is favored. Invariably, the existing practice or solution is seen as simple. It exists and works for all, but the most keen observers. This is true for public policy or science. In my life, we see this with computer codes and simulation. The status quo says “The current stuff is getting the job done, why change? plus it’s expensive and difficult, it could fail too.” All of this forms the natural resistance to change. It’s easier to simply stick with the status quo. I’ve seen this time and time again at work. Right now, the status quo is winning. Like our political world, science where I am is conservative and progress is resisted.
“It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.” ― Isaac Asimov,Foundation
With little modification, this dynamic applies to politics. The basic principles I’ve seen at work apply broadly to policy. Take economic policy where unbridled capitalism is status quo. The issues it causes are profound, but change is scary. Plus capitalism has immense power available to maintain itself through propaganda. In cultural affairs, traditional relationships are the most common and have the advantage. The simple message of two biological sexes or a simple monogamous marriage of a man and woman is seen as settled. Any change feels uncomfortable for a majority of people and even downright scary. All of this powers the conservatives to use this fear to their advantage.
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein
When doing scientific work, the arguments for changing status quo practices are deep and nuanced. The status quo already works and always has the advantage. Any progress is difficult and has an uphill battle. In science, we have the scientific method to level the playing field. Even then the status quo has an advantage over better solutions. The spirit of science is very much focused on progress. In engineering the balance is far more tilted toward conservatism.
Sometimes the advantage of progress needs to be so strong that the improvement is obvious. Progress happens only when it is demonstrated. This looks like a revolution, but really it is a long process where someone takes a chance and shows the status quo what it is missing. This process is behind the time lag between discovery and broad acceptance of new ideas. There is a large bit of chance to this. This is also incredibly frustrating to us scientific progressives.
To look at this in public policy there are many examples. No single example may be more instructive than marriage equality. In a very short time, the idea of gay people marrying moved from unthinkable to broad acceptance. How did this happen?
“It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.” ― Mark Lawrence,Prince of Thorns
I think the reasons for success go back to tragedy. The plague of AIDS struck the gay community hard ravaging and killing broadly. On the one hand, it galvanized the gay community toward action. Their activism fell short of moving the public until the illness began to appear in the broader public. Ryan White was a child who got AIDS through the blood supply. Suddenly AIDS was more than just a gay disease. The tide turned with treatments and medicine coming eventually to subdue the disease.
The activism left a deeper mark on society. The gay community was drawn together and part of their activism was “coming out”. All of a sudden many gay people were known to broad swaths of society. They were present as coworkers, neighbors, and friends. Someone being gay suddenly became normal and commonplace. This created the necessary empathy and compassion to make marriage equality sensible. It went from unthinkable to the law of the land in a flash.
“When you dig just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, everyone’s love life is original and interesting and nuanced and defies any easy definition.” ― Taylor Jenkins Reid,The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
In my opinion, this should be the model for the progressives. The way marriage equality went from unthinkable to acceptable should be studied and deconstructed. Progressives need to apply these lessons to their causes. This requires a level of nuance and subtle action rather than what is seen as extreme and fear-causing. Simplicity always favors the status quo. Progressives, however right they are about a subject should avoid simplicity and embrace nuance.
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ― Leo Tolstoy
I’m getting close to the decision to retire. I’m looking back at my career, trying to put things in perspective. By most accounts, it has been a great career, but it is also short of what it could have been. I have some genuine disappointments. I’ve seen a lot and accomplished some great things. In this Requiem, I’ve talked about my young life. I expanded and looked back at the heart of my professional career in Los Alamos, the apex of my career. Those years made me who I am as a scientist.
Now I am at the closing chapter of my career, the time I have spent at Sandia National Labs. It is too close to have a full perspective, and I cannot offer full disclosure either. I can offer a deep sense of disappointment and sadness about how it has worked out. It has not been a place to fulfill my potential, and, in retrospect, never could have. I made my choices and the results are a wonderful full life, but a loss of professional success in trade.
It was October 2006, and I was convinced that things were not going to get better at Los Alamos. The new management team was awful. The new corporate partners were corrupting the essence of the Lab. My oldest child was in middle school, and I was concerned he wouldn’t do well as a teen in Los Alamos. The small-town nature of Los Alamos was starting to get under our skin too. You often would know people three or four or five ways. Work lives and personal lives were not separate, they were completely intertwined. Los Alamos was closing in on us and we needed space.
During that October, I went to a biannual conference put on by the nuclear weapons community focused on computational modeling. This time it was held in Los Alamos. The nuclear weapons world of the USA and the UK joined to talk about computers, modeling, and computational physics. It is totally my jam. Sandia National Labs sent a contingent, including my friend Tim Trucano. I approached him and a Sandia manager there (Randy Summers) with the potential of moving. They were very excited, and before long, I had an interview and shortly thereafter a job offer.
I left Los Alamos Lab on February 16, 2007, and began at Sandia the following Monday. It was MLK day, which Sandia unwisely doesn’t take as a holiday, but Los Alamos does. Maybe this little detail was a sign, and in retrospect, one I should have heeded. I was going to work in Computer Research Institute (“1400” in Sandia’s annoying schema for organizational names… no names, just numbers). My job was to work on a code development team for the MHD code “Alegra”. Alegra is a magneto-hydrodynamic code developed originally under the ASCI program. Another harbinger of issues was its lack of support from ASCI (not ASC, because a permanent program can be an initiative for so long). Alegra was then mostly supported by the US Army for analyzing things like advanced armor concepts. The reality was that I was wildly overqualified for the job. The funding and the code were horrendously constrained, and the code base was around 15 years old and all in C++.
It was a good team with good people. I let myself focus on that and approached the job with optimism and an open mind. Again, with the benefit of time, this was a naive approach. I should have been far more guarded. A big piece of this statement is that the forces that fucked up Los Alamos were present at Sandia. Sandia had always been a little corporate-managed originally by Bell Labs. In 1994 the management changed to Lockheed-Martin. The low-trust corporate management approach was firmly entrenched at Sandia.
The decline in the quality of work, science, and culture at Los Alamos was actually a national problem. Sandia was also in decline. Los Alamos took the blow of being corporately managed; Sandia was already a corporation. The management was terrible for science, but great at giving the government what it asked for. The National Labs were being pulled down by the same forces making the United States awful. The same forces we’ve seen unleashed over the past 10 years with toxic political effects. There is no escaping the decline we found ourselves in. Professionally, I should have been more pragmatic and less hopeful with my new circumstances.
A few things stand out about that time. My move got swallowed by the housing crisis of 2007 and we lost our shirt in real estate selling in Los Alamos. If we’d been three months earlier, we would have escaped, and been about $100,000 better off.
The director of our Center at Sandia also moved from Los Alamos almost at the same time as me. James Peery had started at Sandia then moved to Los Alamos for a time to run the ASC program. He was also on a corporate bid team to manage Los Alamos that did not get the job. He moved to a job managing the Center where he had started at Sandia. Unlike me, Sandia was perfectly suited for him. James is now the Laboratory Director at Sandia, retiring soon.
A few things were evident upon my arrival. A lot of administrative details were immensely better at Sandia. For example, one of the worst things about Los Alamos was travel reimbursement. At Sandia, this process was fast and seamless. The timecard application was great, too. It would have been great, except Sandia is a complete asshole to employees about some auxiliary regulations around the travel credit card. Sandians are obsessive followers of rules and regulations. It is an engineering lab and small “c” conservative organization from top to bottom.
Another difficult thing is Sandia’s devotion to information control and the practice of “need-to-know”. This is baked into their culture. Stepping back from this, one can see that Sandia was corporate in every way, and did mundane bullshit far better than Los Alamos. Thus, in every way that does not matter to National Security Science, it was an improvement. The engineering at Sandia is repressively backward and grounded in the past. Science at Sandia is peripheral and always counterculture. I have learned that culture is almost immutable, and Sandia’s culture does not fit me at all.
My take on Sandia is going to be quite harsh, so I’ll disarm this assessment a bit. On a broader scale, Sandia is a great employer. Most people would be lucky to work there. The reasons for this are twofold: First, most employers in the USA are terrible to employees, and I had been gifted an incredible experience at Los Alamos to start my career. The current Los Alamos and Sandia never stood a chance at living up to that start of my career. Secondly, the Labs have declined greatly largely due to the forces that are sieging America at large. These forces are bipartisan. Distrust and bullshit are coming from both the left and the right. Therefore, a significant drop in workplace satisfaction occurred when I left Los Alamos. Another drop would await me at Sandia. The thing that meant the most about Los Alamos was the culture. I fit into Los Alamos culture, and Sandia’s culture is unnatural for me.
Another red flag with my hire at Sandia was my ranking as a staff member. There were limits in the level I could be hired. These limits existed because they’d been abused in the past with a political hire. I would have to wait a few years to be promoted. Still, there are shades of lack of recognition professionally by Sandia. This theme is still rife today. Back in 2007, I was approaching the job with possibility and generosity. That spirit was not returned by Sandia. Sandia’s ethos was far different from Los Alamos. This was a foreign culture and not one that I was suited for.
A couple years ago, I had an epiphany about this contrast. I was at a conference. There was a contingent of Los Alamos staff there along with my coworkers at Sandia. During the meeting, I noticed that my behavior around the Los Alamos people was completely different than the Sandia ones. The people from Los Alamos were not old friends or people I knew well. In reality, I knew the Sandians better. I realized that I was “code-switching.” It made me realize that the culture and environment at Sandia were oppressive to me. The self I was with Los Alamos staff was far closer to the real me. With Sandia’s staff, I buried and censored myself. This was an absolutely jarring realization. The conclusion was that at Sandia, I could not be myself, either personally or professionally.
So as 2007 sped along, I worked to fit in and do my work. I wanted to make this succeed and I gave Sandia a lot of space. I gave it a lot more space and the benefit of the doubt than it deserved.
On the Alegra team, we did some good work despite all of this. We did run into a crisis early in my Sandia career. The ASC funding was being dropped even further, and the Army sponsorship was at risk. We needed to produce a code that was more robust and handled difficult situations better. The gauntlet was thrown down: either we improve, or Army funding would shrink until it was gone. The project would die. I immediately set about to devise a strategy to solve the problem. It was all hands on deck. No solution was off the table. In the end, we fixed the code with success that exceeded our wildest expectations. This effort remains today as the highlight of my time at Sandia. This was as good as Sandia would ever get for me. It was some really great work.
When I compare this with what I did at Los Alamos, this makes that highlight almost seem tragic. It barely held a candle to what I achieved in Los Alamos.
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” ― Steve Jobs
This quote is from an Apple marketing pitch. It describes the best of Los Alamos and captures the ideals of that Lab. If I took the quote and wrote the exact opposite, it would capture the worst of Sandia (albeit slightly unfairly).
This is Not the Right Place for Me
“An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.” ― Kahlil Gibran
Recently, the focus of how much tragedy has become evident. In many respects, what stands out at Sandia is a lack of respect and use of expertise. Throughout my career, I have developed extensive expertise and Sandia simply ignores it. That expertise is one of the most important parts of Stockpile Stewardship. I have a unique knowledge of modeling and simulation—specifically the codes, methods and models used to do it. Part of this can easily be seen in how retirees are treated by the Labs. At Sandia, the prevailing attitude is “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” This contrasts with Los Alamos, where retirees and their knowledge are welcome and ever-present. Right now, it is these aspects that exemplify how I see Sandia. The core of my professional identity and accomplishments are not valuable to the institution. I do not feel welcome or even useful when it is obvious I should be.
There is so much more that feels bad. I put a great deal of goodwill into my first few years at Sandia. My inability to bring my real self to work began to get under my skin. (Actually, it influenced what I got on my skin too; more on that later.) The underlying Sandia culture is buttoned up and uptight as hell. It is not a place where free thought and debate happen. Even worse, it is a place that does not feel accepting of differences. While I am a middle-aged cis-gendered white man, I am not typical in many ways. None of those differences feel accepted openly. The workplace feels confined and truly limited in acceptance. I can’t bring either my personal or professional self to work. I am careful to see this feeling as a balance of intrinsic cultural differences from the shitshow of today’s America. I am sure it is a mix of innate culture and current trends.
One of the hardest aspects of working at Sandia was determining a professional development path. Why work hard at developing myself when Sandia already could not use my skills? When I walked in the door in 2007, my skills already exceeded what Sandia could use. In retrospect, I could have worked harder and hid myself at work. It would have been valuable at the office, but harmful to my being. Thus, a plan was hatched to work on my writing with focus.
This was the genesis of my blog. I would write regularly and publish the writing to be seen by others. Writing to be read by others is essential. In retrospect, the blog was one of the best things I did while at Sandia. It also made me a better scientist. Writing is thinking deeply. I would write about presentations I would give, and I approached those talks having thought deeply about the topics. In the end, thinking deeply was viewed as counter-productive unless those thoughts aligned with Sandia’s views.
Unfortunately, the blog ended up being the worst thing that happened to me at Sandia, too. The way I stopped writing exemplified the worst of the Lab but aligned perfectly with its culture. In a way, I should have seen this outcome coming at me clearly. Instead, I was optimistic and trusting. That trust was never returned. I hate saying this, but events clearly point to the worst possible reading of how the blog ended.
This Will Not End Well
In 2013, I turned 50 and started to exhibit many signs of the canonical midlife crisis. Today I see it differently, but one of the signs of the crisis was getting my first tattoo in October. Since then, I’ve gotten 25 more. They fall into some general themes: my science, primal imagery, and philosophical expressions of love and freedom. I’ve come to realize that the tattoos were a personal expression in the environment that limited it. The tattoos were also very essentially modern and fit to Albuquerque culture. The irony is that Sandia culture is orthogonal to Albuquerque culture. I was not going to be stuck into the Sandia straightjacket. I wanted to express myself freely and fully. By putting the expression on my body, I would not be silenced. I don’t think it was a conscious thought, but rather a reaction to the day job with my real self. As the past decade has unfolded, my true self and my work self have diverged rather precipitously. The subtle differences I expressed moved toward a primal scream.
I wrote this blog consistently from 2014-2018. I stopped writing it because I was given no choice in 2018. In a culturally consistent passive-aggressive manner, I was forced to stop. The form of this force was a Sandia ethics investigation. It came from an anonymous source (although I am relatively certain of the identity of the source). The investigation and charges were absurd. The entire blog was done in plain view and as a part of my professional development plan. It was done with permission. I would give the link to my blog at the end of my professional talks. The blog was good for my professional skills and performance. It was only bad for professional success where blind obedience to power is demanded. In a healthy culture, it would have been celebrated. In an unhealthy culture, the blog was a threat.
The problem was that I expressed views that were not the same as my management. I was part of a rather ill-conceived national program that was contributing to the decline in American scientific supremacy. I said as much in the blog. Worse yet, I had an audience of peers, thus I was dangerous. I could be shut up through force—and I was. This program was big money, and in today’s world is all about money. Money is power and truth is determined by power. Opposing the monied interests is dangerous.
I stood down so I could continue to support my family and my life. Intellectual honesty and debate about what are best are not on the menu today. The people in charge of the Labs and our science funding are not open to questioning their priorities. This lack of debate is part of what is fueling the decline of American supremacy in science.
I licked my wounds. The ethics investigation is the worst blight in my entire professional life. It may be the worst thing of my entire adult life, but I’ll admit this means I have a charmed life.
As I attempted to recover, the pandemic arose. The country and the world shut down. We all worked from home for months as most of my work went online. I discovered a massive relief in this arrangement. Even in this lockdown, I felt freedom. I did not have to go to work and put on a disingenuous mask every day. It made me realize how incredibly unhappy Sandia had made me. In the past couple of years, the depth of my dismay professionally has deepened. It has transitioned to a mourning of opportunity lost and disappointment.
Hindsight is usually a biased way to look at things. The reasons for my move to Sandia and Albuquerque were varied. The professional reasons were naive and quixotic. I approached the new Lab with optimism and hope that was not grounded in actual possibility. I pushed away many obvious signs of disaster for years. I should have been more guarded and far less trusting. That said, I moved for reasons in my personal life. I moved for my family. It was better professionally for my wife and offered better opportunities for my children. We had aging parents to care for.
Each of these concerns played out differently, but all were valid. For my own part, I have changed over these years in many interesting and exciting ways. In sum, I would not trade the benefits and advances in myself and my personal life for professional success. Nonetheless, professional success was sacrificed in the move.
Professionally, Sandia has been just okay. By my own standards, my professional accomplishments have been a severe disappointment. The way my blog was treated figures heavily into my assessment. It was a huge insult and attack on me personally. The lack of professional respect is palpable. The lack of use for my vast professional knowledge and skills is appalling.
This is not to say one cannot be successful at Sandia. It is to say that *I* would never succeed at Sandia. It is not the right place for me to succeed. In the same breath, I can succeed as a person, where I am now. It could also be true that Los Alamos might have been a worse place for that personal success. You really can’t have it all.
Today, I feel like my work has mostly been a waste of my time. It is easy to see how I could have used my skills and knowledge better than they were at Sandia. Perhaps in closing, this is my challenge for the future: to find a valuable path for contribution suitable for my precious time left. I did give Sandia a chance, and that effort was not met nor rewarded in kind.
I have not decided when to retire, or what I will do after retirement. What will happen is taking shape. Felicia is retired and I’m learning from her experience. It is just clear to me that it is around the corner. While my professional life at Sandia was substandard, my life is good. I would not trade the success in my personal life for the sort of professional success I would aspire toward. Perhaps the lesson is a sort of balance to life. Maybe you simply can’t have it all and choices are made. I made mine. I stand by the outcomes.
Finally, I want to give endless love and gratitude to those who have enriched my life and been my friends. I have known many wonderful people who have made my time at work vastly better. Each of them has helped me be a better person and taught me so much. Nothing would have been as good without them. I greatly appreciate Meera Collier for graciously editing my writing, and helping to make it better than I could manage myself.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”— Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
Important Papers Written While At Sandia
Banks, Jeffrey W., T. Aslam, and William J. Rider. “On sub-linear convergence for linearly degenerate waves in capturing schemes.” Journal of Computational Physics 227, no. 14 (2008): 6985-7002.
Mattsson, Ann E., and William J. Rider. “Artificial viscosity: back to the basics.” International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids 77, no. 7 (2015): 400-417.
Rider, W. J., E. Love, M. K. Wong, O. E. Strack, S. V. Petney, and D. A. Labreche. “Adaptive methods for multi‐material ALE hydrodynamics.” International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids 65, no. 11‐12 (2011): 1325-1337.
Robinson, Allen, Thomas Brunner, Susan Carroll, Richard Drake, Christopher Garasi, Thomas Gardiner, Thomas Haill et al. “ALEGRA: An arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian multimaterial, multiphysics code.” In 46th aiaa aerospace sciences meeting and exhibit, p. 1235. 2008.
Rider, William, Walt Witkowski, James R. Kamm, and Tim Wildey. “Robust verification analysis.” Journal of Computational Physics 307 (2016): 146-163.
Rider, William J. “Reconsidering remap methods.” International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids 76, no. 9 (2014): 587-610.
Love, E., William J. Rider, and Guglielmo Scovazzi. “Stability analysis of a predictor/multi-corrector method for staggered-grid Lagrangian shock hydrodynamics.” Journal of Computational Physics 228, no. 20 (2009): 7543-7564.
Hills, Richard Guy, Walter R. Witkowski, Angel Urbina, William J. Rider, and Timothy Guy Trucano. Development of a fourth generation predictive capability maturity model. No. SAND2013-8051. Sandia National Lab.(SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States), 2013.
Barlow, Andrew J., Pierre-Henri Maire, William J. Rider, Robert N. Rieben, and Mikhail J. Shashkov. “Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian methods for modeling high-speed compressible multimaterial flows.” Journal of Computational Physics 322 (2016): 603-665.
Alexander, Francis, Ann Almgren, John Bell, Amitava Bhattacharjee, Jacqueline Chen, Phil Colella, David Daniel et al. “Exascale applications: skin in the game.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 378, no. 2166 (2020): 20190056.
Kamm, James R., Jerry S. Brock, Scott T. Brandon, David L. Cotrell, Bryan Johnson, Patrick Knupp, William J. Rider, Timothy G. Trucano, and V. Gregory Weirs. Enhanced verification test suite for physics simulation codes. No. LA-14379. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States), 2008.
Yanilkin, Yury V., Evgeny A. Goncharov, Vadim Yu Kolobyanin, Vitaly V. Sadchikov, James R. Kamm, Mikhail J. Shashkov, and William J. Rider. “Multi-material pressure relaxation methods for Lagrangian hydrodynamics.” Computers & Fluids83 (2013): 137-143.
Weirs, V. Gregory, James R. Kamm, Laura P. Swiler, Stefano Tarantola, Marco Ratto, Brian M. Adams, William J. Rider, and Michael S. Eldred. “Sensitivity analysis techniques applied to a system of hyperbolic conservation laws.”
I’m getting close to the decision to retire. I’m looking back at my career, trying to put things in perspective. By most accounts, it has been a great career, but it is also short of what it could have been. I’m going to express some genuine disappointment. I’ve seen a lot and accomplished some great things. I’ve talked about my young life, and now I get to my professional career. My years in Los Alamos were the apex of my career. Those years made me who I am as a scientist. I could have done so much more, too, but bad decisions and bad people cost me a lot.
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” ― Seneca
My Early Years at Los Alamos
I arrived in Los Alamos on June 19, 1989, to start work. I got a job in a group that did nuclear reactor safety analysis. They had lots of new money to support the “new production reactor” replacing old Cold War infrastructure. I was beside myself with joy in getting such a great job. I did not realize how fortunate I was. I put in my paperwork for a clearance and started to set up a fully adult life. We rented a place on North Mesa in Los Alamos and my wife started taking classes at the local university extension. For my own part, I took exactly one semester away from school. In the Spring semester, I would return to my pursuit of a PhD. This got to the nature of Los Alamos at that time. The Lab was expansively generous with knowledge and the pursuit of education. My classes were covered by work, and my coworkers were open and generous with their knowledge. I also made a bunch of friends in those years that I keep today.
Little did I know that the world would change dramatically before the end of the year. In November 1989, I walked in from a day at work to something that hit me like a freight train. I walked into the house with my cool Los Alamos work briefcase full of papers to read at night. What I saw caused me to promptly drop it at my feet. I stared at the TV, mouth agape, at people dancing on top of the Berlin Wall. I knew at that moment that everything was going to change, the Cold War was over.
Everything changed over the next few years with how the Lab worked. Change was already taking place with the elements of decline in place since Reagan was elected in 1980. The end of the Cold War just accelerated the process tremendously. Meanwhile, I was focused on finishing my PhD work. I got through with classes and focused on my thesis. As part of this, I wrote a series of papers. The focus was my choice. I had fallen in love with hyperbolic conservation laws and their numerical solution. At Los Alamos, I could dig in and devour the literature. At first, I focused on flux-corrected transport (FCT). Over time, these methods lost appeal because of their lack of mathematical rigor. I was drawn to total variation diminishing (TVD) methods. These methods had a strong mathematical foundation and were a springboard to rigor.
One of my papers tried to draw the linkages between these two families of methods. It was the first paper I wrote in this area. This paper got lost in the review. I had unwittingly stepped in the middle of a little holy war between these camps. At first, I got a review from Ami Harten who said “This is great, publish immediately.” I was over the moon. My second review was from Steve Zalesak who savaged the paper. It was as deflating as Harten’s review was a boost. The paper then slipped into limbo, and five years later I allowed it to be buried. I had moved on. It was a deeply painful lesson about the personal politics of research. It was good work and the analysis was solid. The problem is that it identified the mathematical weaknesses of FCT. This didn’t mean FCT was a bad method, but it did say it had some weaknesses. TVD has other weaknesses like it is too dissipative. The camps were unable to navigate the space between themselves rationally and I was a casualty.
Another highlight of working at Los Alamos is meeting my heroes. While I was at the University of New Mexico, I started to read the works of Frank Harlow. It was the start of my love of numerical methods. At Los Alamos, I met Frank and eventually came to count him as a treasured colleague and friend. I also met a couple of Nobel Prize winners (Bethe and Gell-Mann), and other heroes. The most notable of these heroes is Peter Lax. As I got into modern numerical methods, Peter’s work loomed ever greater. Eventually, Peter visited Los Alamos to help celebrate Burt Wendroff’s 70th birthday. I was able to give a talk to an audience of greats including Peter. This was a real career highlight.
Finally, in early 1992, I finished my PhD. The godfather of the Los Alamos reactor safety code, Dennis Liles, was my advisor. I had been working on nuclear reactor safety, including developing advanced numerical methods for tracking materials. There, I was able to hone my craft, but it was also severely limited. I needed to move to the core of the Lab from the periphery. The core of Los Alamos is nuclear weapons work, which is done with supercomputers. A job ad in the Lab Newspaper featured my opportunity. My boss knew I needed a new start, and showed me the ad. I made the move. I was ready for new challenges, and they were coming.
Opportunity Knocks
I didn’t make this change without some groundwork. As part of a hair-brained scheme for transforming nuclear waste, I started to study the tracking of interfaces. When solving such problems at Los Alamos, Frank Harlow’s group T-3 is the place to do it. A young staff member, Doug Kothe, was leading the way in this topic. I met Doug to talk about it. As was the nature at Los Alamos in those days, Doug was generous with his time and expertise. This generosity was everywhere in Los Alamos and I could pick the brain of experts all over. The meeting with Doug was the beginning of an incredible collaboration. He and I did some seminal work on volume-tracking methods. It is notable that volume tracking is an essential algorithm in many Los Alamos codes. The paper Doug and I wrote is still my most highly cited work. Moreover, the work we did is still used by the top computer code in Los Alamos to do essential work on our nuclear stockpile.
I also got a huge break in my new group, C-3. I could foster my collaboration with Doug and start working with some other big names on a national project. I started to work on a project for numerical combustion modeling with John Bell (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, LLNL, those days) and Phil Colella (UC Berkeley). This would be a crash course in all sorts of numerical methods. I would learn compressible flow ala Colella, and incompressible flow ala Bell. I would also learn numerical linear algebra and high-performance computing. The things I learned on this project would change the direction of my career. I did a study of the broad class of incompressible flow solvers that would have likely been capable of being a second PhD thesis. It was an incredible opportunity.
Of course, all of this happened while the Cold War ended and the world changed. But I was sheltered from the fallout. The changes elsewhere in Los Alamos were massive. Nuclear weapons testing had ended, and the Lab’s budget was in freefall. Something new was brewing, the Stockpile Stewardship program, and the idea of simulating weapons on supercomputers was the alternative. I was involved with planning and scoping this program at the outset. Little did I know that this program would fund me for the rest of my career. I also made a move to a new group in the famous (or infamous) X-Division, the Applied Theoretical Physics Division, the belly of the beast. I was going to work in the heart of the nuclear weapons program in the hydrodynamics group. In the meantime, I had bought a house in White Rock (Los Alamos “suburb”), and my first son Kenneth had been born. My wife had finished her bachelor’s degree in business at UNM, too. Los Alamos by in large is a great place to raise kids and a blast from the past in terms of lifestyle.
How did I end up in X-Division?
In the basement in the computing division was Bo’s gym. I would go there during the workday and work out. I would spend a long time on a Stairmaster machine and read technical papers constantly. They would be covered in sweat, and I would pitch them off the machine. This guy would come over and see what I was reading. He took an interest, and it seemed we were interested in the same things. His name was Len Margolin, and he was the group leader for the Hydrodynamics group. Len and I would also form a collaboration that lasted for more than a decade and has echoes today. He was a great boss and is a good friend.
“No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.” ― Randy Pausch
The Belly of the Beast
In 1996 I made the move to Len’s group. There was a new program called the Advanced Scientific Computing Initiative (ASCI) that revitalized work in Los Alamos (LLNL and Sandia too). Vistas were opening and work was exciting. The power of possibility was in the air. I got an office in Los Alamos’ old administration building, a bit of a cinderblock shithole that I still have vivid dreams about. I was in Room 247B and next door in 247C was Wen Ho Lee (more on him later). I went about learning as much as I could about how X-Division did its work and how I could contribute. Len gave me a broad aegis to study numerical methods. I did lots of really great things like writing my own Von Neumann-Richtmyer Lagrangian code. I have little interest in such methods, but I found this exercise to be extremely useful. It was part of a heady time of possibility where the future seemed to be created in plain sight.
As part of the growth in ASCI Len hired some heavy hitters from other Labs. One was my old friend from graduate school, Dana Knoll, and his colleague, Vince Mousseau. We began a collaboration on using the multigrid knowledge I had now with Newton-Krylov methods. We were applying it to radiation transport, which is a major focus of X-Division. We did some really great research and wrote lots of highly cited papers.
During this period of time, I had a particular personal moment that stuck out. In all honesty, my early time at Los Alamos was rife with imposter syndrome. Given my history and the talent I was working with, I felt like I was over my head. This was especially true after receiving my PhD, and I started working more closely with the elite. They were accomplished and brilliant. I also had this strong personal sense of responsibility as a breadwinner for my family. Having a second child, Jackson, only compounded this feeling. So I was working very hard and putting in lots of hours.
The issue was that my wife needed more from me in terms of domestic support. This sense of duty was a consequence of the values and priorities of a man as I was raised. These were also horribly antiquated views. Finally, this all came to a head. I had to choose, and the result was a terrifying series of panic attacks, the resolution of which left me with the need to rebalance my life. I needed to be more of a parent and less of an over-achiever.
I also started to work with Jim Kamm at that time. Jim and I worked incredibly well together with our strengths complimenting each other phenomenally. I would work with Jim continuously for nearly 20 years until he disappeared in 2017. Jim also marked my entry into the verification and validation (V&V) program, which has been a focus since 1998. A big part of that program is Tim Trucano, who might rightly be called the father of it. He and I met in Washington, DC in January 1999 at a Blue Ribbon Panel review of ASCI. I gave the briefing on Hydrodynamics, and Tim on V&V. It was a huge shift in the ASCI program, and I was part of it. Tim is now a dear friend.
The “Troubles”
As things moved forward, the year 1999 marked a major change in the Lab’s fortunes. It was the beginning of a series of scandals that destroyed the Lab’s reputation. In late November, my wife and I were going to a dinner party, and on the way, we listened to the news that talked about potential spying at Los Alamos. It mentioned the suspect was a Chinese-American scientist. I quipped to her that there was a guy at work who seemed suspicious if I had to guess. I was thinking of Wen Ho Lee. Two weeks later, he was arrested. It was announced by Peter Jennings on the Nightly National News. It felt like a gunshot. I was stunned. The lead story in the country was all about someone I knew well and worked with. Nothing would ever be the same again at Los Alamos. The havoc this wrought was pure destruction.
My own connection to these events is oddly coincidental. The father of my best friend from high school presided over Wen Ho’s first bail hearing. He was denied bail there, a decision that was repeated during time before his trial. He was held in bad conditions as well. Surely a small, slight Chinese man charged with treason would have been killed in short order in the general prison population. There are lots of criminals who consider themselves patriots. Back at work, things just spiraled into the bizarre as my highly classified workplace came under endless scrutiny and attention. Some of that attention would be public through coverage by the media, and other attention through legal proceedings.
The case against Lee was shaped by politics rather than common sense. The case was also driven by the same toxic politics that have exploded over the past 20 years. In the world of stockpile stewardship, the computer codes he downloaded were the focus of the investigation. This focus was driven by the computer code focus of stockpile stewardship and the ASC program. It is arguable—and I think correctly so—that this was the weakest case against him. Events would seem to have validated my view. Along the way, I was amongst the people interviewed by the FBI about the case. My work and Wen Ho’s were close enough that entanglements were certain. People I knew would be talked about in court and testify as well. The overall feeling was surreal.
As time went by, the trial was looming in the future. Events would intercede to take things to another level. In May 2000, the forest service started a controlled burn in Bandelier National Monument. It quickly turned into an uncontrolled massive forest fire. The fire streamed North fueled by a drought-ravaged forest and springtime winds. Eventually, it threatened the city of Los Alamos and the Lab. We were all evacuated from town and the fire became an inferno. Again, Los Alamos was atop the national news. Meanwhile, something else was brewing at the Lab, triggered by the fire. Some highly classified hard discs had gone missing. Someone went to secure them from the potential fire, and they were gone. Again, this event happened in a place I knew and had been in. People I knew well were at the core of it.
The Lab looked in vain for the hard discs for a month. Right before the time expired, we had a meeting of X-Division. We were implored to tell them if we knew about this thing they were missing. They couldn’t tell us what it was that was missing due to security rules. It was more surreal. The capper to the meeting was its closing. Our Associate Director, Stephen Younger, closed it by threatening everyone. He said, “If you know something speak up, remember what happened to the Rosenburgs.” No one did. This time the FBI came in force. Agents were everywhere.
The hard discs would be found eventually a few doors down from where they were lost, behind a photocopier by a weapons’ designer. Before that, something even bigger happened. The FBI mistreated one of the people responsible for the hard discs (although unlikely to be responsible for them being missing). This enraged the Los Alamos coworkers. It ended up with a cooling-off period after one of the weapons designers gave the FBI agents a Nazi salute. The saluted agent happened to be Jewish. So the shit hit the fan. The abused staff member was also friends with the star witness in the Wen Ho Lee case. So he ended up not favorably disposed toward the government and its case. He testified in the case, and it did not go well for the prosecution. Soon, the case against Wen Ho was dropped. Nonetheless, the damage was done. Worse yet, more damage was coming.
The awful events were not over yet by a long shot. It was late 2003. I personally was doing some soul- and job-searching. I had a couple of things I was trying. I had applied for and interviewed for a job at Lawrence Livermore, and they offered me the job, but the pay offer was crappy. My wife didn’t have a job out there, either. Real estate in the East Bay was insanely high (and still is). I also applied for a management job at Los Alamos. I remember not getting the management job, and in the meeting telling me this, being told “You are too decisive,” whatever that means. When the meeting ended, my Division Leader was called away by something happening that was both troubling and familiar. More classified hard discs were missing. Los Alamos also had a new lab director, Pete Nanos, a former vice admiral in the navy. More importantly, Pete was a fucking asshole.
The missing hard discs were bad enough, but then another thing went wrong. In a lab, a young student intern was hurt. She was observing the alignment of a laser, and it shined directly into her eye. Nanos lost his shit and shut the lab down. There was to be no work, and we all needed to be punished. He also insulted the staff calling them “Cowboys and Buttheads.” He dressed down people in public. All of this is a failure to do anything to help matters. (As I look back, the style was reminiscent of our current President-elect.) Nanos was a master of demotivation. He was easily the worst Director Los Alamos ever had. He left nothing but destruction in his wake.
Personally, I was in a weird place. I had spent the previous week at a conference in Toronto. I had decided that I could not take the Livermore job. It was too risky, and we would have to sacrifice too much. We would have also gotten stuck in financial and real estate collapse (although I still did, just not catastrophically). I would stick with the job at Los Alamos, even with the Lab shutdown. I was headed to Cambridge for another conference the next week. On my way home to do laundry and pack for the trip, I received three calls from management telling me I could not go. I spent the weekend getting permission to e-mail my talk to a Livermore colleague to present the talk for me. This was how ridiculous the whole situation was.
I went to work Monday and accepted a position as a temporary deputy group leader. My friend, John, the group leader, was in Scotland, out of contact on vacation (he got that job over me). The week spiraled out of control. Our permanent deputy group leader retired on the spot midweek as the environment of fear was overwhelming. So, by the end of the week, I was the group leader, albeit for a short time. This period produced resistance at the Lab amongst the staff as Nanos burned all the bridges. He was despised by all. He offered no respect and received none in return. For example, he committed a security violation by speaking openly about an active investigation. The authorities let him off the hook by declassifying it. Nanos deserved no respect (feels similar to someone else, doesn’t it?).
Eventually, Nanos departed as an utter failure. He was replaced, but the damage was almost immeasurable to the Lab. During this time, the University of California was replaced as management. Too much damage had been done to the Lab’s reputation. Gone was the generous culture I prized and gone was the public trust. Management was replaced by a multi-headed hydra of corporate overseers. Amongst them is the endlessly awful, incompetent, and corrupt Bechtel who used Los Alamos to dump its corporate toxic waste. UC still had a role and Livermore managers came in as directors. They were very good and ultimately fought endlessly with the idiots from Bechtel.
I’ll relay one more story of scandal to close out the lunacy of the time. One of the small problems involved a menial worker who was scanning old documents into an electronic form. The work was classified, and she fell behind, so she took it home. She was kind-hearted and let a meth-head sleep on her couch. He boosted the USB drive and sold it. In the final analysis, I knew the meth head. He was the brother of my son’s teammate on the local soccer team. Small towns make for weird connections! The thing that stands out about all this was how close all these troubles were to my life. I always knew someone at the center of them. It was part of being in a small town and being close to the center of the Lab’s core mission.
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt
I would be remiss in not talking about my technical work at this time. One of the best and most successful projects I’ve ever worked on happened amid all this chaos. Together with Len Margolin, we studied at topic known as “implicit subgrid modeling” under the auspices of laboratory-directed research and development (LDRD). The output from this project was incredible, including a book and a bevy of highly cited papers. It is a continuing source of great pride for me. It serves as a sterling example of what is possible with the right environment and a generous culture.
It also is a project that highlights what is (or was) great about Los Alamos. This modeling applies to turbulence, and turbulence was a topic that used to scare the shit out of me. The combination of intellectual generosity and mission-focused motivation. Back in late 1997 during the holiday break, I decided that I needed to learn about turbulence. I started off by reading a whole slew of books and papers. The key was that I also could tap the experience and knowledge of experts at the Lab. I could be exposed to the brilliance of some of the greatest minds on the subject. I could grow into the topic and gain the confidence needed to contribute to progress. It is this spirit that the “troubles” destroyed. The damage was to the Lab, the nation and the world, and to scientific progress.
In this same time period I also had the opportunity to write my first book. I was approached by an acquaintance, Dimitris Drikakis from the UK. He was part of a contract with Springer-Verlag for a book. It was a follow-on to an immensely successful book by Toro. It turned out that Toro had run into some significant personal problems, and had to drop out. Dimitris approached me and I accepted. I had a large body of work in the focal area for the book, low-speed and incompressible flows. He and I worked on the book including a week where I hosted Dimitris. I had the lab’s support and resources. I will say that the support from Springer-Verlag left much to be desired. This later came into real contrast with the incredibly good experience with Cambridge University Press. Still I had written and published my first book.
I took a management job for a year there working for Paul Hommert. Paul was a great manager (although at Sandia, I would learn all about his shortcomings). It was a great experience, but largely told me that managing was not how I wanted to spend my life. There was a moment I’ll always remember. One of my peers, Bob Little told me about handing Wen Ho Lee his at risk for RIF notice. He wondered what that would mean for how this played out. We would not name people at risk for RIF. I would still tell my staff member of his danger so he could get his work and personal life together in time to matter.
It was at this time that I explored working at Sandia. I met with Tim Trucano and Randy Summers at a classified conference in 2006. They wanted to offer me a job and I wanted out of the nuthouse.
Next, I will discuss my move to Sandia National Labs in February 2007.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde
References
Rider, William J., and Douglas B. Kothe. “Reconstructing volume tracking.” Journal of computational physics 141, no. 2 (1998): 112-152.
Rider, William, and Douglas Kothe. “Stretching and tearing interface tracking methods.” In 12th computational fluid dynamics conference, p. 1717. 1995.
Grinstein, Fernando F., Len G. Margolin, and William J. Rider, eds. Implicit large eddy simulation. Vol. 10. Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2007.
Drikakis, Dimitris, and William Rider. High-resolution methods for incompressible and low-speed flows. Springer Science & Business Media, 2005.
Puckett, Elbridge Gerry, Ann S. Almgren, John B. Bell, Daniel L. Marcus, and William J. Rider. “A high-order projection method for tracking fluid interfaces in variable density incompressible flows.” Journal of computational physics 130, no. 2 (1997): 269-282.
Margolin, Len G., and William J. Rider. “A rationale for implicit turbulence modelling.” International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids 39, no. 9 (2002): 821-841.
Margolin, Len G., William J. Rider, and Fernando F. Grinstein. “Modeling turbulent flow with implicit LES.” Journal of Turbulence 7 (2006): N15.
Rider, William J. “Revisiting wall heating.” Journal of Computational Physics 162, no. 2 (2000): 395-410.
Rider, William J., Jeffrey A. Greenough, and James R. Kamm. “Accurate monotonicity-and extrema-preserving methods through adaptive nonlinear hybridizations.” Journal of Computational Physics 225, no. 2 (2007): 1827-1848.
Greenough, J. A., and W. J. Rider. “A quantitative comparison of numerical methods for the compressible Euler equations: fifth-order WENO and piecewise-linear Godunov.” Journal of Computational Physics 196, no. 1 (2004): 259-281.
Kamm, James R., Jerry S. Brock, Scott T. Brandon, David L. Cotrell, Bryan Johnson, Patrick Knupp, William J. Rider, Timothy G. Trucano, and V. Gregory Weirs. Enhanced verification test suite for physics simulation codes. No. LA-14379. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States), 2008.
Rider, William J., and Len G. Margolin. “Simple modifications of monotonicity-preserving limiter.” Journal of Computational Physics 174, no. 1 (2001): 473-488.
Mousseau, V. A., D. A. Knoll, and W. J. Rider. “Physics-based preconditioning and the Newton–Krylov method for non-equilibrium radiation diffusion.” Journal of computational physics 160, no. 2 (2000): 743-765.
Knoll, Dana A., and William J. Rider. “A Multigrid Preconditioned Newton–Krylov Method.” SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing 21, no. 2 (1999): 691-710.
Knoll, D. A., W. J. Rider, and G. L. Olson. “Nonlinear convergence, accuracy, and time step control in nonequilibrium radiation diffusion.” Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer 70, no. 1 (2001): 25-36.
I’m getting close to the decision to retire. I’m looking back at my career trying to put things in perspective. By most accounts it has been a great career, but it is also short of what it could have been. I’m going to express some genuine disappointment. I’ve seen a lot and accomplished some great things. I could have done so much more too, but bad decisions and people cost me a lot.
How it Started?
Maybe this is indulgent? Maybe this is a really bad idea? but fuck it, I’m going to do this. This is sort of a rough draft of an obituary too. Writing your own obituary is supposed to be good for your perspective. Perhaps that argues for doing this after all.
My Origin
I am an Army brat. My dad was an officer in the US Army, field artillery. A lot of his focus was on missiles, nuclear tipped ones. As will become infinitely clear my life was shaped by nuclear weapons. I was born in September 1963 right before Kennedy was assassinated. If you do the gestational math I was conceived in November 1962 right after the Cuban Missle Crisis. This is not a random happenstance. I was an actual Cuban Missile Crisis baby. My dad deployed as part of 1st Armored Division to Mississippi waiting to invade Cuba. He makes light of it now, but this is very close to a near death experience. He was a forward artillery observer, parashooting in, a very low life expectency pursuit. After the crisis ended it was time to create a family. Me.
The theme of nuclear weapons comes up over and over in my life. This is especially true being in New Mexico. My grandfather planned the invasion of Japan in WW2 for the US Army. He was also part of the occupation force after the war. The invasion was unnecessary because the first atomic weapons hastened the end of the war. My wife’s father came to New Mexico after being drafted to work at Los Alamos in 1946. Then it was still a secret city. Thus he reported to PO Box 1663 like those who were part of the Manhattan Project. He worked on nukes as part of the military for most of the rest of his life. I eventually worked at Los Alamos and then Sandia on nukes as well. My life has been intimately shaped by nukes and the Cold War. The end of the Cold War also created some immense challenges that still play out today.
By the time I was born my dad was in Greece, Macedonia. He was with a nuclear armed 8 inch howitzer battery with the M33 warhead (as I later discovered). Nine months later I was in Germany in the alps at a town called Oberammergau. I spent three years there. He was off to Vietnam after that and I went to my parent’s home town of Spokane with my mom who was pregnant with my brother. After my father returned we went to Texas for a few months that were not memorable. Then for the entirety of my elementary school years I lived in Lawton Oklahoma. My dad was at Fort Sill, the field artillery school for the Army. I’ve noted it was an ideal place to be that age.I had the immense freedom of a kid in the 1970’s. I played expansively with some great friends, Claude and Pat. The creek in our neighborhood the focus on incredible fun. The same town would have been hideous as a teen. I visited recently to see where I’d lived almost 50 years ago. It was surreal, and I was overly generous about what my teen years would have been there.
After this I moved to Germany for my early adolesence. I had always been young for my school year, so my parents held me back a year (good practice for young men). I redid my sixth grade year and after that I was old for my year. For two years I lived in Achaffenburg (1975-1977). I played football and got my big growth spurt the summer before seventh grade. My dad was the XO of a Lance missle battalion (more nukes). We moved to Stuttgart where my dad worked for the Seventh Corp headquarters. A fun fact is that my dad worked for George S. Patton III (son of the famous one). I went to school with George S. Patton IV. I went to the eighth and ninth grades there. I really started my love of science there with an infatuation with nuclear rockets to Mars. Los Alamos developed those rockets before the program was cancelled in 1974.
New Mexico
In 1979 we moved back to the states to Albuquerque. My dad had extended the stay in Germany to allow this. He was an avid tennis player, and didn’t like shoveling snow as he did growing up in Spokane. I was a sophomore in high school and went to Eldorado high school. A highlight of high school was being a state champion in football. While I contributed having a future NFL starting quarterback (Jim Everett) makes a difference for a team. I also wrestled with modest success (2nd in the city as a Senior). After high school I entered the University of New Mexico studying nuclear engineering. My undergrad days were unremarkable with mediocre grades. I was also married and working full time for the bulk of those years, so my plate was full. I met my wife Felicia two weeks after high school graduation. We were working at McDonalds.
So having mediocre grades and BS in Nuclear Engineering meant no jobs were coming my way. I did the second best thing entering graduate school at UNM (cause who else was taking my mediocre ass!). I went to grad school and continued my track record of mediocrity. At the end of this year I had a moment that stands out as one of three huge crises in my life. The moment was my final in an incompressible fluid dynamics class. My grade sucked. I looked around and realized I was not applying myself. I was letting myself down. I’d also dropped a class on computational physics taught by Jerry Brackbill from Los Alamos too. These classes defined topics I was passionate about, but I couldn’t succeed at them.
During these undergrad years a couple things defined me beyond school. Number one of these things was my romance with Felicia. We met and dated briefly before my Freshman year. We quit dating, but our friendship blossomed. We shared classes in Air Force ROTC, and continued to work together at McDonalds. In the Spring she went to work at another store, but also reached out to me. We became closer and closer as friends.
A pivotal moment was the Spring fitness run and weigh in. The Air Force requirements were that I only weigh 205 pounds, the weight I carried as an 18 year old. I would have to use my skills a wrestler to cut weight. I also had to do a timed run, but I was extremely fit for a big guy. Felicia hated running. At the end she made it, but it was a struggle. I waited for her then helped and comforted her. The guy she was dating ignored her. We were on a trajectory to being a couple. It took til the end of the summer, but it happened. It was a little bit thanks to a sexy co-worker, Lana, who wanted to date me too. In the end, I chose Felicia although Lana was pretty exciting. Felicia and I have been together ever since. We moved in together in February 1984 and married in July of 1985. As a married guy I worked very hard becoming a manager at McDonalds. I worked my way all the way up to First Assistant manager. I was taking a full load of classes too along with 50-60 hours of work a week. It would be the hardest I’ve ever worked or ever will work.
The Moment makes the Man
This was the moment I resolved to fix my shit. No more poor grades or dropping classes! I spent the entire summer learning all the stuff I had failed to learn as an undergrad. I returned to school and just killed it. I had a banner year and finished my Master’s degree. I got a research project for my PhD from NASA. At the same time my new confidence started to undermine my relationship with my advisor. I finally snapped. I could not work with him any longer. As it turns out I had the qualifications needed for a job by this point. In early 1989 a bunch of programs were hungry for people like me. I had a Masters degree in Nuclear Engineering, was a USA citizen and had a pulse. I had six job interviews and six job offers. I took the best job available, Los Alamos National Lab. My crisis a year earlier set me on a path for one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Next time, the years in Los Alamos get the treatment.
“You’re overthinking it.’ ‘I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.” ― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
tl;dr
The anxiety is sky-high everywhere you look. The uncertainty is huge and palpable. The upcoming election feels like a doom or a massive relief. This is true no matter who you support. In the meantime, everything seems perpetually frozen. We are all waiting to see what kind of World will greet us in 2025. Will we have hope, or enter into an apocalyptic hellscape? The likely outcome will be something in-between no matter who wins.
“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.” ― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
What I see?
The Nation seems like it is in a purgatory. It matters little who you support to feel this way. Both sides are running on fear of the other. The stakes of the election seem impossibly high and this is paralyzing everyone. All decisions and actions stemming from our governance have ground to a halt. I see it at work where nothing is happening. Everything seems to be frozen in place, waiting for the resolution. That resolution could be swift on November 5th, and that would be kind and merciful. That resolution could take all the way into December and even to January 6th. This would be brutal and the freeze would only deepen.
“Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.” ― C. H. Spurgeon
On the one hand, the society we know is being described in terms of doom and horror. For some people this feels true, and they crave change. It seems to me that they simply want to elect a destroyer who will sweep aside the reality that isn’t working for them. They care little about the nature of the destruction. The system we have today is not working for them. This is not entirely true of course. Others (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, …) see a system that stands in the way of their greed and domination. In Trump, they see their savior, or their ally, or their dupe, and the path toward annihilation of society’s order. I see the problems too, but want someone to fix them.
On the other side, we have normalcy. Ironically this normalcy is the problem and the strength. Part of the normal is the multiple factions comprising the Democratic party. There are many entrenched interests. We have the people who want progress and acceptance socially for women and LBGTQ people. The biggest block of people is the educated and succeeding part of America. These people are generally okay and doing alright in the current system. They see tearing the current system apart as dangerous. They don’t like the system and often see imperfections, but don’t want to destroy it. They would get on board to fix it. The key is that many people benefit from the current system.
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
What is the reality?
Somewhere between the nihilism of the Trump faction and the normies is truth. Our system is a fucking mess. We have profoundly great inequality in society. We see those losing, the poor and blue-collar folks and the ultra-rich teaming up to take on the educated and reasonably well-off. Social and work life is incredibly uncomfortable. This is due to political, social, and sexual dynamics that are a powderkeg. We all walk around on eggshells almost everywhere. The homeless population is exploding. They are the sign that many are falling off the edge of society. We are not taking care of our citizens and throwing them to the wolves. The government over-regulates and is incredibly inefficient. Everything is getting worse and nothing is getting fixed (systems, roads, etc,…). From where I sit I can see multiple National security programs floundering under the weight of all of this.
At the forefront of our woes as a society are young men. Current society is not working for them. I see it in the young men I know personally and at work. Many of them are flocking toward Trump. His fake masculinity and toughness appeal to them. He puts on an MMA/WWE version of masculinity that is cartoonish. The problem for the Democrats is a lack of response. Tim Walz is part of the reaction. He represents a better more modern form of masculinity, but his impact is dimming. The whole thing has taken gender politics to new dysfunctional highs. Women are under siege from the right, and the type of men they promote is truly toxic. The problem is that the Democrats do not offer something in return. They support movements that seemingly oppose men. This may cost them the election.
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
What I fear?
So you reader might be wondering that with all the problems I see why would I support the normie point-of-view. I really don’t. The issue is the Trump-MAGA won’t fix any problems. They only destroy and only work to make our problems worse. Trump will surely make the inequality worse and do nothing for the common man. He will give them “red meat” in attacking their enemies and doing various cruel things. At the same time, he will enable people like Elon Musk to get even richer. They will continue to exist in a world that 99.99% of Americans can’t fathom. Trump won’t make political corruption leave. He will weaponize it for himself and shift the corruption to help him. Putting a criminal and corrupt man in charge will only supercharge the problem.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” ― Frank Herbert
My real fear is that none of our problems as a Nation will be addressed for many more years. All the problems will just get worse while Americans continue to be divided into warring tribes. I fear bigotry and hatred will be legitimized and supercharged. Progress for women and LBGTQ people will be erased. The American evangelical movement will rule like an American Taliban imposing their morality on everyone. Homeless people will grow and be criminalized rather than helped. Regulation will be destroyed and greed will be pursued absent any morality or ethics. Those with money can escape law, morality, and justice with even greater ease. If you support Trump you are not necessarily a bigot, but you are okay with being ruled by one.
The worst thing I can imagine is myself dying with an epitaph: “born into a democracy; died under a dictator.” America will be swept aside and cast into the dustbin. Worse yet, we could descend into war or simply be auctioned off. If the level of incompetence is allowed to continue unabated our Nation cannot survive. We will fall into incompetence and corruption fueled purely by greed and malice.
Were it the malice of a foreign invaded, it wouldn’t hurt so much. This is the worst case, but little doubt that Trump 2.0 would be a giant shit show. Trump 1.0 was a shit show, but at least some adults with actual ethics were there to limit it. The adults are all gone now.
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” ― Victor Frankl
How to Cope?
The thing to remember most of all is that none of us can control what is going to happen. This is the result of forces and events beyond any of our control We are taking part, but only in the smallest way. We are for the most part observers. We will react to the events and our lives will be shaped by them. The shape of the future will be drawn by what is about to occur. This is a big deal. Not knowing what this future holds is the source of the anxiety.
I think the first thing to put your arms around is that things will be bad no matter what. It is a matter of degree. History in the long run is on the side of all of this shit working out. The USA has survived many horrible events and eras. We have continued to exist and even thrive through it all. We will most likely muddle our way through this disaster. In a sense, this is the answer of tragic optimism. Nonetheless, this is a moment of peril for the USA not experienced since the Civil War. Even the fascist threat of World War two didn’t feature this level of threat. Now the fascist threat is inside our Nation. About half the voters seem okay with being led by that fascist.
“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” ― Victor Frankl
Nonetheless, we should probably be OK, eventually. We’ve been alright before and weathered storms. The biggest question in that statement is how much blood will be shed to get us there. Can we navigate this crisis without killing a lot of our fellow citizens? Can we break the fever and start solving our very real problems in a rational, constructive way? The alternative is a rampant destruction of our institutions and governance followed by a reconstruction. At best, this will be a near-death experience. It will be a truly shitty way to exist.
Americans are fond of saying they hate the government. The thing is that our government is us, and not some separate entity. The lesson is that we hate ourselves. The choice is ours, but I’m not confident we have wisdom. It would be far better to rectify problems and create a government we can love and be proud of. A government that reflects the best of our people and our legacy. In about a week, the future will begin to show itself.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein
The Regularized Singularity 