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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

#111

Post by bhouston »

ssijak wrote: post #66

For such an important discovery (if it is real), that seems it could be replicated in a few days, if I were the team that did the discovery, I would create a video recording of the whole process and all the measurements and share it with the textual article. It sounds like that would provide for an easier way to replicate plus more proofs of the discovery.

The team that did the discovery seems disorganized and amateurish though, and with the multiple papers all submitted at the same time by competing factions, riff with infighting - but they stuck with a hunch for longer than anyone else and followed it doggedly. If it turns out to be true, it will be a great movie with an underdog making one of the biggest discoveries of the century.

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

#113

Post by alchemist1e9 »

croes wrote: post #102
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely and people might be interested that in this case the prediction market for LK-99 is reacting in real time to new tweets from people trying to replicate. The “yes” spike to 32c yesterday was in response to a twitter account posting an image of a levitating grain in a tube. The credibility of that replication attempt was then evaluated by many and the market backed off afterwards. There is always a subtle an…

Because markets aren't nearly as clever as is always claimed. Lehmann Brothers anyone?

More like governments aren’t as clever as claimed. The markets would have put all the bad actors out of business permanently and redistributed the resources (like shinny new buildings and engineers) to areas where they would better be utilized.

Instead it was turned into an opportunity to launder money at planetary scale.

This likely hints to why the truth about the benefits of brutally efficient free markets is distorted in education, it would require the teaching of the remarkable incompetence of collectivism and governments! which we know who won’t like that.

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

#114

Post by jacquesm »

oneshtein wrote: post #91
tomrod wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone mentions cold fusion, they are explicitly referencing a net energy-producing process that operates at room temperature. That isn't what you are referencing.

> Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. Wikipedia It works at near room temperature. The goal of the reactor in the video is to produce isotopes. It does the job.

It can not ever produce net energy in this setting, so no, it doesn't do the job.

It is in a room, but the temperature inside that vessel is anywhere north of 35,000 C. Unless you have a very hot room that isn't 'room temperature' by any stretch of the definition. Note that room temperature is about the temperature of the process not the temperature of the building containing that process.

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

#115

Post by alchemist1e9 »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #109
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A version of that probably happened last night with Lk-99, the “Iris” replication claim. Why do think it’s such a problem? Those are the risks of speculating and the market adjusted back downwards in very short order. If Iris was a manipulator the gains were minimal and fleeting. The anti-markets comments all over this are so unfortunate and misguided. By your own logic don’t you just prove that a real lab is now pot…

But a fraud was perpetrated and the scammer got away. The markets are supposed to ignore that? Money was taken out of the market by a bad actor. If anything this encourages quick fraud over slow honesty.

Markets don’t ignore it, they learn from it. They don’t need you or any authority to protect them.

Edit: Understand that the scammer has to buy, then release the false information, and then sell. They only “scam” the buyers that don’t critically assess this new information, such as it’s provenance and quality. This means that over time only the best analysts survive and thrive. Smart speculators likely sold the spike, limiting the number of buyers the manipulator could find. This scenario is actually an argument FOR prediction markets.

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

#117

Post by dist-epoch »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #94
dist-epoch wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this scenario: I am the PI of a laboratory. I buy up the market and (falsely) announce that I succeeded in replication. Sell and make profit. Then a couple of days later I announce that I made a terrible mistake. How do you prevent this scenario? I did nothing illegal, I just "not noticed the mistake I made".

A version of that probably happened last night with Lk-99, the “Iris” replication claim. Why do think it’s such a problem? Those are the risks of speculating and the market adjusted back downwards in very short order. If Iris was a manipulator the gains were minimal and fleeting. The anti-markets comments all over this are so unfortunate and misguided. By your own logic don’t you just prove that a real lab is now pot…

The base prior (the market price) is that this will not replicate. This scenario is a way to make a quick buck claiming the opposite without doing any actual hard work.

In regular markets you can't just say "we increased our sales 1000%" and a week later "oops, sorry, misplaced decimal dot". You can do that in prediction markets.

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

#118

Post by civilitty »

tinco wrote: post #83
throw0101a wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

They're producing the wisdom of the crowd, which is a real and highly accurate piece of information. It's quite difficult and expensive to produce information as fast and reliable by other means. And they don't cost much, it's mostly money being moved around. edit: I interpreted it as asking wether prediction markets in general produce value. In this specific case I'm 100% with you, they're absolutely useless in pred…

There is literally zero wisdom in the crowd about a brand new just discovered material that’s only ever been produced by one small group by definition.

This market fetishism is out of control.

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

#119

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

Regardless if LK-99 is truly a Room-Temperature Superconductor or not, only 112 years passed since Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered superconductivity on April 8, 1911, 4 PM [1] [2]: resistance not futile, but "practically zero". The first loaf of sliced bread was sold commercially on July 7, 1928 [3]. The rate of progress is astonishing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heike_Kamerlingh_Onnes#Superco...

[2] 2010, "The discovery of superconductivity", https://www.ilorentz.org/history/cold/DelftKes_HKO_PT.pdf

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Frederick_Rohwedder

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

#120

Post by japoco »

Turskarama wrote: post #81
toth wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

LK-99 is a brand new material that almost nobody knows anything about. The market is not a knowledge aggregate, it is vibes based.

You are severely underestimating how good vibes from a lot of people are at giving good estimates.
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