LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by ajuc » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #103

mellosouls wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always a subtle anti-markets theme on many HN debates, likely from highly educated ans literate posters. I believe we still in this age simply don’t provide proper education on the massive benefits that markets bring to so mang problems I think we are all too aware of markets and their benefits and disbenefits. It's not clear why you think the "education" is missing only in one direction.

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

Child labor.

Slave trade.

Sweatshops.

1000 different environmental catastrophes.

You know, the reasons we have regulation. We had markets FIRST, then we got regulation on top of that, and we never looked back.

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

#212

Post by tinco » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:14 PM UTC

gilleain wrote: post #201

tinco wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you heard the one about the Emperor of China's nose? https://imaginatorium.org/stuff/nose.htm Basically, making an average of a large number of estimates of an unknown value will (of course) fail if most/none of the estimators have any idea of the actual value being estimated.

I don't think I've seen that before. But the article you linked doesn't make the conclusion you suggest at all, instead they pose a corrected value. If indeed no one estimating had no information at all, the average length of Chinese person's nose would be close to that corrected value.

It's the same with this topic. You won't get an answer to the question "Is this particular paper true or not?" but you'll get an answer to the question "Are papers submitted under these circumstances making claims like this likely to be true?". The crowd will only answer the question they can answer. I think that's from "Thinking fast and slow".

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

#213

Post by aionaiodfgnio » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:16 PM UTC

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…

You are well outside mainstream economics. The existence of market failures is only disputed by a tiny minority of economists. You can disagree with the consensus of experts, of course, but it's ridiculous to claim they don't have the "proper education".

I don't think you even realize that your beliefs are fringe.

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

#214

Post by staticautomatic » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:16 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #62

matusp wrote: post #38

It is interesting to see how much of the replication is done by the Chinese and how little is done by the Western countries. Is this the difference between the making-stuff-happen attitude and the sclerotic attitude?

In one of the notes it says > Red phosphorus cannot be obtained on short notice from a new customer in the USA due to DEA restrictions

So we just need some fireworks companies to get after reproducing it, then?

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

#215

Post by Simon_O_Rourke » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

This is a race that I earnestly hope either someone wins quickly, or everyone loses... again rather quickly. For incredible claims you typically require incredible evidence, at the moment we're slightly better than hearsay but we've a long way to go get conclusive proof.

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

#216

Post by jonmumm » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #104

tinco wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"They're producing the wisdom of the crowd, which is a real and highly accurate piece of information." I have strong doubts, that the wisdom of the crowd here is competent in judging whether a revolutionary new superconductor is real, or not.

what's an alternative that is better?

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

#217

Post by rcme » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #196

rcme wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually copying someone else’s work without permission is considered (intellectual property) theft. Also, this person just copied the initial work but isn’t as committed to keeping things up to date. Much better to use the original source.

Except in the case of citation.

No, citing who you copy doesn’t remove copyright protection.

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

#218

Post by MayeulC » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:23 PM UTC

oneshtein wrote: post #146

jacquesm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

35kK in this reactor is much closer to room temperature than 150MK in ITER, isn't?

Look, call 35K cold if you want. It's relatively easy to make some fusion at home [1] at even colder temperatures. However, the real issue here is __producing__ energy (edit: more than you put in). This has never been done in a sustained way (H-bombs produce net energy, there were some promising inertial confinement and tokamak results recently, but never for sustained periods of time).

And in the chain, it's pointed out quite clearly that everybody understands "cold fusion" as referring to "net positive energy".

[1]: https://fusor.net/board/index.php

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

#219

Post by orangepurple » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:24 PM UTC

est wrote: post #53

Why does China alone have so many reproduction attemps? I assumed it would be tried everywhere.

China has more people, more money to spend on research, more equipment, more manufacturing base, more STEM graduates, more everything, and all of that by huge margins.

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

#220

Post by danparsonson » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #151

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…

> 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 discover…

This exactly - the idea that a whole load of well informed people are driving a prediction market is about as realistic as saying that crypto investors are all experts in economics.