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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

#171

Post by morelisp »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #153
morelisp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 objecti…

Exposing fraud you created the environment for is not particularly interesting.

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

#172

Post by morelisp »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #115
TehCorwiz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> They only “scam” the buyers that don’t critically assess this new information

Yes correct that is a scam, no scare quotes. A scam doesn't become less of scam because it worked or didn't work.

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

#173

Post by barelyauser »

justinclift wrote: post #63
incrudible wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just making a bet does not really spend the money, it will just change hands, presumably from the less informed to the more informed, who should be able to eventually spend it more wisely. As far as forcing the outcome, if it turns out to be possible, but the market got it all wrong, there is your incentive to give it a shot regardless.

> making a bet does not really spend the money, it will just change hands Pretty sure most people would call the money changing hands "spending" that money.

Yes, but the original post means "spending" as "making good use of if" or "putting it to a productive end". People betting money has very little effect on the world. But consider the case where I pay you to be idle for an hour. I destroyed 1 hour of your labor, you got paid but we are not in any shape or form richer because of it. Or consider people attending a charity event. They pay to attend, then spent 1 hour having fun. After the event, they will have to in fact labor to provide the charity when the fund raising event starts to spent its money. There is no cheating nature.

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

#174

Post by morelisp »

concordDance wrote: post #156
morelisp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Markets are perfect except when they don't capture "actual issues" and then you need different markets with different participants? How does this support market primacy?

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

#175

Post by alchemist1e9 »

morelisp wrote: post #171
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 objecti…

Exposing fraud you created the environment for is not particularly interesting.

Oh so fraudulent SC claims would have no better avenues without prediction markets? I’d argue they would have more and with more capacity not less!

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

#176

Post by jiggawatts »

guywhocodes wrote: post #5
ccity88 wrote: post #2

Iris Alexandra's twitter is especially enthralling. Seems like so much discoveries and innovation happens from computer science to physics, chemistry and biology all from people with anime profile pictures.

I hope we get a video from Iris proving it's not glued to the support, if they were able to produce a levitating grain that's amazing. Regardless if superconducting or not.

That's a small enough sample that static electricity alone could explain the "levitation".

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

#178

Post by twoodfin »

amelius wrote: post #164
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…

Counterargument. Prediction markets could also be used to hedge. E.g. if you invest in technology around LK-99, and then use prediction market to prevent going bankrupt in case you were wrong. THUS: it doesn't mean that prediction markets give good predictions. By the way. Do you have some data on that? I.e., statistics of prediction markets being right vs wrong?

The hedge is still a signal of the degree of risk you ascribe to the possibility your technology won’t work.

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

#179

Post by kibwen »

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…

"Real capitalism has never been tried."

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

#180

Post by Rzor »

andersa wrote: post #163
heliophobicdude wrote: post #159

I've been live following this thread: https://twitter.com/iris_igb/status/1685731177523449856

This thread is super frustrating. The person posting it does not at all seem interested in actually demonstrating the effect works... how can you have such a sample and only post this one image which could easily be created by gluing a pebble to the glass? Where's the video of it in action! I want this material to be real so badly.

We all do, andersa. We all do. I can feel the disappointment brewing. Deep down, I'm almost ready for the archetypal "measurement error".
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