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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

#151

Post by scotty79 »

toth wrote: post #54
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…

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…

> Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways of aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing the best predictions.

They would be true if people with most money and appetite for risk were also the most knowledgeable and smart.

They are not. As you can easily tell from recent coverage of idiocy of even the richest people who have propensity for big bets.

It has been researched and discovered that people with more money do not make smarter bets than those with far less. So at best, looking at prediction markets, gives you exactly as much knowledge as polling random people on the streets and asking them what would they bet on.

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

#152

Post by concordDance »

mellosouls wrote: post #108
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t observe a frequent knee jerk like anti-markets reaction from comments across HN? What are good examples of their “disbenefits”?

You don’t observe a frequent knee jerk like anti-markets reaction from comments across HN? I find HN one of the most balanced online forums on most subjects. What are good examples of their “disbenefits”? The race to the bottom is all around us.

> The race to the bottom is all around us.

Isn't this more a side effect of corporations, advertising and corruption rather than markets themselves?

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

#153

Post by alchemist1e9 »

morelisp wrote: post #131
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…

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…

What are people getting away with exactly? Prediction markets more rapidly expose fraud and misinformation than without them.

Generally the decision to list a market or contract is based on providing specific utility and information. They provide a better signal to noise and therefore provide risk management as well.

The fact you believe markets are a “partisan” topic illustrates exactly the problem. They are objectively and scientifically an important and critical part of humanity, which isn’t taught.

As I’ve said elsewhere there reason is obvious as in teaching such facts and information will require simultaneously teach about how horrific and harmful governments have been, and we know who won’t like that.

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

#154

Post by nonethewiser »

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…

So practically speaking, what can you do with the fact that X% of fans (because people betting are enthusiasts) think LK-99 will reproduce and Y% think it wont?

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

#155

Post by Corrado »

pushkine wrote: post #145

I've only seen one picture of an alleged successful replication yet: https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856

Since Twitter is no longer allowing public access to posts, it would be better to not link to it. Or better yet, re-post the tweet somewhere else and link to that.

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

#156

Post by concordDance »

morelisp wrote: post #131
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…

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…

More directly about the actual issues policy makers care about, so you lose less info to confounders.

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

#158

Post by sgt101 »

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…

A perfect market would do this, but it would also suffer from other well documented problems.. the markets we have are very far from disinterested allocation optimization systems.

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

#160

Post by oneshtein »

tomrod wrote: post #135
oneshtein wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

35 thousand Kelvin in a "cold" nuclear fusion reactor is much closer to room temperature than the temperature in a "hot" nuclear fusion reactor. Both types of reactors do not produce excess energy, but the cold reactor has already found application while the hot reactor will be ready in 25 years. Which kind of reactor is hoax?
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