It kills me every time I read about how the world's nth-fastest computer is just used to simulate nuclear explosions, so it was a delight to see that they're planning on using this one for some good.
Of course in an ideal world those cycles would be used to help cure cancer, but given that these warheads exist, it's probably a good idea to invest resources into getting an idea of what shape they're in.
We went to the moon because of the Cold War. The military paid for the development of the Internet. GPS? Supersonic flight? Nuclear energy? Autonomous vehicles?
I wish private industry would do more. Every company should have a Bell Labs.
http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online...
Rather than tell us how much you hate the military and capitalism maybe you can figure out a better way?
I'd love to see more non-military funding. Perhaps medical research could be used to increase public interest in funding supercomputer research?
Well, knowing a few scientists, I can say that I know well the creative and inquiring spirits that advance us. The world is structured so that the people who do the actual development and discovery have to sell their talents to the logic of property and capital, either directly, or to the government that enforces that structure.
So, I think we're probably in agreement on the forces wherefrom those technologies came. I think we're also in agreement on whose behalf those forces act. I think we're probably in disagreement that capital is any better a master than the government it is in collusion with.
Being conceptually slippery enough to get out of any problem comes naturally to skillful people in their fields. The situation at hand provides all the impetus for theory and practice there is. Conflict thrives off of superfluity: superfluous methods, superfluous justifications, and superfluous issues. Methodology and structure gets in the way of skillfulness.
I know that real human power scales on its own without armies and guns forcing it into a certain shape. People collaborate and collude very easily. People form groups very easily. People associate with people. It's probably the only culturally universal thing people do (well of course; culture only makes sense when there are associating people).
If we want association to work well, groups need to be able to disintegrate as easily as they come together. People need to be slippery, too. Without what makes groups cohere, they disintegrate on their own. When you see violence and hierarchy used to keep groups coherent, it means they've lost the essential power that makes them useful.
People like achieving status. Status is a social signal, and it communicates both ways. Status is not held like a title. Titles wax and wane in the status they confer just like every other human object and activity. When we pretend status can be held, that it can be concentrated and preserved, we get problems. If we let status come and go by its own logic, we'd have no problems with status. A society where status is maintained by a legal system will have hierarchies, and it will certainly have problems.
So ways that our current systems-- not just capitalism, fail: Labor is not free. Association is not free. Status is not free.
Even skillful people who believe in property as an organizing force wish to be locally free in these ways. Skillful people want to work unimpeded by the politics of labor, associating with likeminded people unimpeded by the politics of social groups, praised for the inherent virtue of their actions and unimpeded by the politics of status. They only believe in property because it helps them manage the world that is beyond their control, beyond the means of their skill. They use property to create a bubble in which they can live that is free from its control.
People who believe in property because they enjoy its logic, enjoy the wheeling and dealing, enjoy the frantic rush to get more of it, who feel more worthwhile the more property they have are nervous people, who can never be fulfilled, because property's logic does not lead to fullness, the only conclusion is 'not enough', the only purpose is 'more'.
I don't know how many people in the latter category actually exist. I suspect enough to cause a great deal of problems. In any case they require the assent of everyone else. I think all I have to say to everyone else is this:
The world without property is still full and whole, is still just, is still full of vitality, is still nourishing, and receptive to human power.
He parts with: "I wish private industry would do more." That seems to suggest his main point is large R&D spending, not the virtues of the Cold War.
Yes, a world without nculear weapons would be nice. Unfortunately that ship has sailed.
Thanks.
Mostly non embarrassingly parallel problems, where its high speed interconnect pays off.
Otherwise data parallel is an other phrase that is used for the same concept.
I checked the list of projects running on ALCF and I see some pretty obvious nuclear weapon stockpile stewardship and weapon design projects, such as "Validation Simulations of Macroscopic Burning-Plasma Dynamics"
(I know a guy that Los Alamos is trying to recruit to do some dark work for them, and he does nucleosynthesis in neutron star mergers.)
I think the folks simulating supernova and neutron stars have a lot of physics overlaps, but I don't think that data is used directly for stockpile stewardship.