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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

#131

Post by morelisp »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #87
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…

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…

Looking past your "rah rah financialization" partisanship, one question:

Why is a prediction market for replication per se more interesting than the existing market of all the public companies who would be enriched / wiped out based on the result?

(Note that "well, the effect would be too small" flips just as easily around to, the smaller markets are obviously way too noisy given what people are actually getting away with...)

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

#133

Post by cmilton »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #113
croes wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dist…

At what cost though? Surely the wealthy will continue on like nothing ever happened while the rest of us are here holding the bag.

Markets seem to benefit some much more than others. Not everyone wants to play this game.

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

#134

Post by cptaj »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #20

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 worst part is that those market people are delusional enough to believe what they say.

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

#135

Post by tomrod »

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.

Aye, it produces neutron isotopes, but not at room temperature and not with a net excess of energy.

It's the difference between going on a Sunday walk and a Monday commute. Yes, technically, your body is physically moving places, but the similarities don't extend much beyond that point nor would we encourage mistaking one for the other.

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

#136

Post by sgregnt »

aqme28 wrote: post #124
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".

Or the opposite. I successfully replicate in my lab, but the price on Yes is high, so I make a post about how there definitely isn't superconductivity, buy up all the Yes, and then say "Woops I made a mistake. It really does superconduct." OP is downplaying the shenanigans that can go on here. The only way to prevent it is some sort of SEC insider trading or market manipulation laws.

The market already takes this possibility into account

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

#137

Post by constantcrying »

danbruc wrote: post #18
jboggan wrote: post #4

This live crowdsourced approach is a far better way to test and refine hypotheses than peer review and the current state of science journals.

Only as long as the experiments are reasonably simple. There are probably still some things requiring only simple experiments to be discovered, but most of the low hanging fruit has probably already been consumed by a couple of centuries of experimentation and scientific progress.

The single most famous mathematical result this century (solution ofthe Poincaré conjecture) was verified by consensus after the claimed proof was published to arxiv.

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

#138

Post by trompetenaccoun »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #60
eurleif wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor...

I like that that website seems to use just smallish penny amounts, no big betting amounts. And that it's a simple formula; if you're right, you win $1 per share, if you lose, you get nothing. There's one about whether Trump wins the election with everyone voting 'no', so the winners will gain fractions of pennies on their bet. But if he does win, those voting 'yes' can gain 99% of their bet.

The concept isn't bad but the problem with these markets isn't necessarily the amounts played, rather it's how they're resolved. What exactly counts as 'event has happened' and 'event has not happened'? I think Polymarket uses some kind of oracle¹ to establish the outcomes. What I know for sure is that there have been a couple of cases of fraudulently set up markets already, so anyone who wants to bet has to really understand the conditions before jumping in, even if they're very sure about the outcome.

Again, I think it's a cool concept but I'd advice people to stay away from touching these until there's a solution for that problem. The small amounts people are betting are likely a reflection of this problem, because it's hard to understand if the setup is trustworthy.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_oracle

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

#139

Post by rcme »

7moritz7 wrote: post #116
WaffleIronMaker wrote: post #10

Note that the original table has been more recently updated: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe...

So what is the wordpress post for?

Basically theft.

> This is (initially) a copy of Guderian2nd’s table on the discussion thread on Spacebattles with a bit of cleanup. I’ve rewritten most of the notes to be more concise as I track the updates myself, where I can.

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

#140

Post by ssijak »

junon wrote: post #132
ssijak wrote: post #112

This twitter handle contains some interesting back story investigation https://twitter.com/8teAPi

Where? I just see bandwagoning from a shitpost account.

start here then go to comments for branching out https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685960703658860544
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