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LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

nature.com

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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#211

Post by JeremyNT »

Waterluvian wrote: post #11
thinkingkong wrote: post #2

It’s disappointing news but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. To me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences, uses, the order of magnitude improvements we’d see in certain costs or areas. Pumps, MRIs, power grids, chips, etc. Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics.

Agreed! There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. I had all kinds of exciting conversations about what a validated, commercially viable LK-99 could produce. Why would I e…

> When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world.

I feel like this line is doing a lot of lifting in your comment.

The problem is that as lay people we are completely unequipped to gauge a claim like this. I followed along on HN and there were plenty of posts by people who were giving LK-99 crazy odds of success, fueled in no small part by viral videos of outright hoaxes from pseudonymous "researchers."

It's fun, in a science fiction-y way, to speculate on what a material with the supposed properties might have meant for the world, but the degree of skepticism that should have been applied was lacking for many.

There's a tendency on HN and similar forums to devour new developments - almost a fanaticism about learning the newest/latest/best before the general public. But in this case, a truly extraordinary claim had been proposed, and it was even published without the researchers' consent. There was precious little reason to give it any attention at all at that phase.

If people had viewed LK-99's properties as "almost surely science fiction" all along, I could find myself agreeing with you, but that's really not how this played out. Sadly this event showed there's a market for hyping up weak claims that people will be poor at evaluating, and I guess we can probably expect more of them.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#213

Post by HaZeust »

haswell wrote: post #52
HaZeust wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot please these people, simply put. These folks STILL want the ESSENCE of a shared respect and excitement from the common man for scientific progression - and these folks are the same people, mind you, that speak loudly on the ignorance of the cluster groups within the "anti-science" big tent. But when these same folks see a glimpse of collective curiosity for science and methodologies among a lot of people,…

I think a different way to frame this is that an Internet discussion will involve people with opinions across the spectrum. I don’t think this is about pleasing “these people”, but about recognizing which attitudes are useful and which are not. Encountering some mix of all of the above is a product of the diversity of people involved in the conversation, and not necessarily “these people” wanting it both ways.

My framing is fine, in my biased opinion. Saying, "You can't please these people about this" is essentially the same as saying "Their attitude about this is not useful" - though one might be more polite.

Maybe I went amiss, maybe I need perspective, but I don't see why a consideration for a re-frame is necessary if one still gets their point across; albeit maybe with more "passion" than necessary.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#214

Post by imchillyb »

xwdv wrote: post #135
thinkingkong wrote: post #2

It’s disappointing news but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. To me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences, uses, the order of magnitude improvements we’d see in certain costs or areas. Pumps, MRIs, power grids, chips, etc. Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics.

I disagree. I get pissed off when revolutionary scientific news is brought to me only to turn out to be some bogus crap. I don’t care about the replication and peer review process, it’s not fun, it’s banal. I would much rather have preferred to learn about LK-99 once it was confirmed to be a room temp superconductor, and if it wasn’t then I’d rather never hear about it. Now I have to walk back explanations I gave to…

> I will look like a god damn idiot.

Pride isn’t a good look or smell.

Try humility instead. You may not like to eat humble pie, but others love to watch that.

Also, perhaps some introspection would give nuance to why being wrong bothers you so much.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#215

Post by OJFord »

darth_avocado wrote: post #120
OJFord wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it doesn't preclude him being expert (or just doing work) in anything else? e.g. you might be a C++ expert, but also proficient in Python, and currently working professionally in Rust?

Right but it’s more like someone is an expert in the “async” method. You’d expect them to be expert in whatever language they’re using, so the framing threw me off.

Yeah I get what you mean. Could just be a quirk of the reporting too - like you might write a lot of async python, comment on some hot topic case using that knowledge, GIL removal say, and then get labelled 'async functions expert Darth Avocado' when really you'd never think of yourself that way.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#216

Post by dheera »

penjelly wrote: post #200
dheera wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> were responsible for the sharp drops in electrical resistivity and partial levitation over a magnet Are these properties still useful? If something can levitate without being a superconductor it is already useful for a LOT of things.

diamagnetic material exist, and no theyre not nearly as useful as a superconductor with 0 resistance.

Diamagnetic levitation is extremely weak, which makes it much less practically useful, and also reduces its entertainment value (if you can levitate things 2 cm above the surface the 2 billion children in the world will be all over the stuff; the 1-2 mm you can get with bismuth diamagnetism isn't particularly impressive.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#217

Post by plorg »

archepyx wrote: post #31
Waterluvian wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. I had all kinds of exciting conversations about what a validated, commercially viable LK-99 could produce. Why would I e…

HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism". This is probably because people (i) were not aware that there had been many other hypes about RTSC before but less publicly visible all proved to be false, (ii) not being able to accurately judge the technical quality of the initial evidence, (iii) uncritically believing that the data in the initial preprints was proof for superconductivity because their…

HN demonstrated its common ability to surface prolific posters who identify as autodidacts and appear to have gone on a Wikipedia binge this morning, but who nonetheless speak with a confidence that until now may only have been demonstrated by ChatGPT.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#218

Post by jklinger410 »

This was absolutely a fun and worthwhile experience for everyone involved. A lot of people got more interested in current materials science because of this. We watched a large community spring up out of nowhere to investigate a new discovery.

It was really an incredible thing to witness, and I see only good things came of it.

I can't really understand the sour grapes commenters in this thread. Not sure if they just want to feel smarter/better than everyone else who went along for this ride, or if they really hold the belief that the best science should be gate-kept in universities and not discussed in a wider context.

Strong get off my lawn energy.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#219

Post by penjelly »

mempko wrote: post #16
chubot wrote: post #5

Well I'm kinda glad I missed this whole news cycle IMO this phenomenon seems to be kind of an artifact of modern media -- I feel like in the old days, peers would have settled it among themselves, and we would have never heard about it The same thing happens in tech -- there is a lot of stuff that people talk about, that ends up being worth ignoring ... I always bring up that whole news cycle in 2017 about a potentia…

It's better to miss news cycles, but at least this one was about exciting science instead of dreadful politics.

this particular news cycle was the final straw for me using twitter. Its not worth 1-3day new cycle is 99% of claims are bs
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