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LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

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Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#71
post #30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing more revolutionary than a discovery of a new class of materials. After all, we often name eras throughout our history after them :) (Stone age, etc) I wonder what was involved in the discovery of stone.

A rigorous peer review by graduate students.

I see the potential for a Far Side cartoon in that...

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#72

Saw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying off some labs to actually try to replicate the process. The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to attempt to have the process replicated and buy opti…

A few things:

* the paper wasn’t ready, and internal drama is what led to it being released

* I’ve read that the process of making it is quite difficult. There probably are not many samples out there in the world

Basically, it wasn’t ready for primetime, but I believe it’s close

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#73
post #6

Been following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials (think: powder). Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in the field. Just some graduate cour…

Why is it hard to make in bulk? I thought the chemicals were easy and cheap to obtain, and then you bake it at a high temp? What makes it difficult?

The variables that lead to its formation are not all accounted for yet. The process is understood, but it doesn’t always work. So there must be something missing every now and then.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#74

Saw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying off some labs to actually try to replicate the process. The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to attempt to have the process replicated and buy opti…

The stock market is no different, there's inequality in access to information there too.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#75
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stone Age Bronze Age Iron Age I would add Steel Age here LK-99 Age

Given that human flight and putting things in space rely on Aluminium, I think that's worth a mention too.

And the beverage can! While it seems mundane it's extremely effective at what it does and it's actually recyclable (unlike most things).

I think a silicon age would be appropriate too.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#76
post #54

Saw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying off some labs to actually try to replicate the process. The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to attempt to have the process replicated and buy opti…

This type of instictive negative reaction to prediction markets is, unfortunately, common, but, I think, misguided. Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways of aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing the best predictions. Having good legible predictions of impactful events such as LK-99 replication is extremely useful for society - it would be an invaluable input for a savvy polic…

What do these prediction markets produce? Some people are saying "yes" and others are saying "no", and the answer is either "yes" or "no", but why bother spending money on predicting when society can spend money on replicating it? Wouldn't an actual replication attempt be more useful?

> The latter is a perfectly reasonable thing to do - it's not easy for an average person to "pay off some lab", but if they provide liquidity to the prediction market they are giving an explicit subsidy for anyone that can answer the question.

Is any of this liquidity going to actual (replication) research, because if it is not, again: what are these markets tangibly producing? Moving a bunch of numbers around a ledger does not seem very useful.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#77
post #6

Been following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials (think: powder). Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in the field. Just some graduate cour…

Why is it hard to make in bulk? I thought the chemicals were easy and cheap to obtain, and then you bake it at a high temp? What makes it difficult?

If it was well understood what made it difficult, odds are it would be improving fast.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#78
post #54

Saw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying off some labs to actually try to replicate the process. The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to attempt to have the process replicated and buy opti…

This type of instictive negative reaction to prediction markets is, unfortunately, common, but, I think, misguided. Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways of aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing the best predictions. Having good legible predictions of impactful events such as LK-99 replication is extremely useful for society - it would be an invaluable input for a savvy polic…

The issue is there’s zero utility in aggregating knowledge on LK-99 as apposed to simply running these experiments. It’s going to take weeks not decades for someone to replicate it.

Markets are useful when people act more efficiently based on the information, but there’s no efficiency to be gained here.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#79
post #54

Saw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying off some labs to actually try to replicate the process. The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to attempt to have the process replicated and buy opti…

This type of instictive negative reaction to prediction markets is, unfortunately, common, but, I think, misguided. Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways of aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing the best predictions. Having good legible predictions of impactful events such as LK-99 replication is extremely useful for society - it would be an invaluable input for a savvy polic…

Not to take away from your point, but there is a better way than prediction markets, and that's careful objective research by non-experts (https://goodjudgment.com/).

It's been shown that teams of such researchers consistently beat prediction markets on these sorts of topics. Anecdotal evidence suggests it might be that the presence of experts and cultural preconceptions corrupt prediction markets enough to diverge the result from the "wisdom of the crowd" effect.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#80
post #6

Been following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials (think: powder). Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in the field. Just some graduate cour…

Why is it hard to make in bulk? I thought the chemicals were easy and cheap to obtain, and then you bake it at a high temp? What makes it difficult?

Note that “bulk” in this context means a single large chunk, not a large quanitity.
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