The Loneliness of the Computational Scientist
One of the things I worked on in graduate school was how hydrogen atoms turned into hydrogen molecules, and how that affected how the first stars in the Universe formed. Solving the differential equations that described this process was a tricky business, and often led to “ringing” around the true solution by overshooting, or undershooting, and cyclically over-correcting as it tried to converge.
I think that some of the communities I circulate in are in danger of over-correcting. They started because people felt isolated, and sought connection with peers, but they’re teetering on the brink of implicit exclusion through homogeneity.
Building Without Any Edge Pieces
I started graduate school in the Fall of 2003. My graduate work was in computational astrophysics — I ran simulations of the formation of the first stars in the Universe. At the time, and today as well, the primary mechanisms of investigating the first stars are all mediated by conducting computer simulations.
Running simulations is an interesting experience. Even today, it’s like a window into a hybrid of time periods — at times, the code is highly modernized, utilizing advanced features of recent programming languages, and at other times it is time-tested code passed down like a set of revered documents.
When I was in graduate school, “social coding” hadn’t quite become the buzzword it is now. There was communication over email, and there were some folks just a cubicle over that I could talk with, but when I was looking at a piece of code, it was just me and the code. Some of the work I did was writing new modules from scratch, but much of it was modifying or enhancing existing code. Sometimes that felt like receiving transmissions from the past, sometimes it just felt like trying to re-assemble a jigsaw puzzle someone else didn’t know they were constructing. (And then once they had gotten the bit of the picture they wanted, they pulled out all the edge pieces.)
This isn’t to say being a computational scientist is bad, or that the code is bad — it’s just how it was. It is a fundamentally lonely operation. My days were spent having a conversation with something that was simply unable to converse back.
But even if it could talk back, the reality of it is that in the field I was in, folks were generally expected to be vertically integrated stacks. We collaborated within the group (“Help me out with this?”), and outside of the group (“Sure, use the simulation platform we built”), but for the most part, we still did most everything on our own. We were responsible for generating initial conditions, implementing whatever physics we were exploring, running the simulations, analyzing the results, and then writing up the paper.
Stronger Together
In some ways, things are different now.
We still have a lot of the same ways of communicating, even if they’re wrapped differently — chat, email, face-to-face, forums. But now people are using them a lot more, at least in the crowds I circulate in. At any given moment, there are a couple dozen folks on the yt slack — and they don’t just talk about yt, but things related to computational astrophysics, things they’re interested in, things that might create new collaborations or even new friendships. I remember the dawning of this time, when these communities started forming; yt was a bit late to the game, but we found our way to IRC, to email lists, to in-person meetings.
I’m increasingly starting to think that communities that start like this, where people come together for a particular thing, for a particular task, have the ability to grow and to expand. I started to realize this when I began to evaluate my relationship with the communities I frequent — what I expect from them, the interactions I have in them, and even the way that I rely on them. Even the communities that started for one purpose can expand, can meet additional needs.
When I want to know “Anybody know the latest work on synthetic observations of the WHIM?” I know where to go, who to ask, and I don’t feel like I am disturbing them. If I am speculating about how to execute a complex version control maneuver, I know where to go. And people share information about new papers, upcoming conferences and events, and just idle chit-chatter. I have built social capital in these communities.
Even if researchers are still vertical stacks, maybe they can find other vertical stacks they can talk to. Having a space where tools, understanding and information can be shared is an enormous value for everyone.
Overturn Power Structures
When I was in college, I used to think about “interest-oriented” communities. Usually I lurked in these, but I’d follow forums about things that I was interested in — miniature gaming, science fiction shows, typesetting and font fandom, that sort of thing. The thing is, though, this type of self-selection has a tendency to lead to pretty homogeneous “communities.”
And with the communities that I want to be involved in now, that’s the type of tendency we need to defend against. I’ve just spent a thousand words talking about how things used to be worse, and how pleased I am that now, for me, they’re better. That is not enough. These communities can’t just be a transplant of power structures, providing support for the already-supported. For these communities to be a step forward, they must challenge the power structures that inspired their development.
We must diversify because it’s the right thing to do. Yes, pragmatically, it makes us more effective. But using that as motivation is worth challenging in depth, as in this fascinating article at Model View Culture; assimilation is not the same as liberation, and being in a truly diverse community means giving up dominance. And furthermore, it’s hard, especially with intersectional diversity (MVC again).
But, it’s the right thing to do.
If something doesn’t change, and change quickly, these communities that I am so happy about, that I feel such honor to see grow and form, will simply reinforce existing power structures. If they end up just being a place where I can hang out with people just like me, then the “value” they provide is not worth it. It will be an over-correction from isolation to exclusion.
Do the Work
Here’s my challenge to myself: expand. I challenge myself to help make my communities more diverse; I should do this not because it makes them better but because it is an inherent moral obligation. That means they will be uncomfortable at times; distinguishing inclusion from assimilation requires discomfort for the group that has traditionally been in power.
It’s time to be humble, to invite, to engage, to listen and to learn, and most importantly to experience that discomfort.
Thank you to Safia Abdalla, Nathan Goldbaum, Meghan Kirkpatrick, August Muench, and Greg Wilson for reading and providing feedback on a draft of this post.
