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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.
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Also, "not a superconductor" means that it can't superconduct at any temperature. Where is the evidence of that? Or it's just clickbait?
By that logic we might as well say that wood is a superconductor Nobody has tested it at 0.0000000000000K after all
And science isn't about saying wood isn't a superconductor because it's impractical to test. That's not a result. You may be getting science confused with engineering.
The internet has taught me to never trust material science advancements at face value. Batteries, solar power, superconductors, nanomaterials.. Even when they legit work, there is usually a straight forward reason why it just isn't feasible, and that is conveniently left out of the press release. I have to go to the HN comment section to get disappointed once again.
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> Jain, a copper-sulfide expert I would have never known that people are actual experts in one material. This is impressive.
https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the-te... A number of years back I had an email from a bloke called Elon Musk. I was vaguely aware of who he was but not very. At the time I was the global expert in a very weird alloy (the market for it was perhaps 5 or 10 tonnes a year. A very weird and minority interest alloy). It was aluminium scandium, which the Russians had developed to compete with Nasa’s u…
That's called management, not engineering.
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Yet we're all the better for it happening. Even for the original researchers - maybe it would've taken them another 10 years to get to a similar conclusion. Now, they can take the next step and not waste more time.
Seems like this followed the same rule of internet answers: Ask a question and you'll get crickets. Answer a question wrong and you'll get tonnes of people telling you the right answer.
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> Plus I don't think it's really relevant to what I'm saying given I'm not making a claim about how any specific individual or group reacted, but that it's odd when there's people who treat an optimistic outlook as an error. An optimistic outlook without a semi-plausible basis that you can convincingly elaborate on, or link a vaguely credible source doing so, IS an error, at least going by HN norms.
Optimism isn’t gullibility! It is just an attitude that values positive possibilities over fretting about negative possibilities. Especially in cases where there is a small chance of a huge upside, relative to virtually no downside. We didn’t lose any superconductors. :) I don’t recall anyone on HN erroneously declaring the material was definitely a new superconductor before subsequent evidence arrived at a consisten…
To clarify, I was referring to "An optimistic outlook" in terms of actual assertions/claims/etc. that are written down on-the-record in public.
Of course HN users can have the general abstract sentiment of optimism at anytime in their mind. I don't think there are any norms around internal sentiments.
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.
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I think this kind of excitement followed up with "wasn't anything after all" is both dangerous and wrong. When science is done badly (which arguably shouldn't be considered science), which then leads the public to have elevated expectations, only then for science to be done right and disprove and reject the original "findings", public trust in science is ever so slightly damaged.
I think you're conflating PR with the science underneath. PR is something we cannot control -- and avoiding releasing results in a (semi-vain?) attempt to control PR arguably does more harm than releasing them does. The sea makes waves as it will. We can moderate as much as we are able. I think the rest is simply a matter of accepting that things happen as they do out of our control. We can only truly impact ---- and…
Medicine/psychology/sociology and their inability to do replication is not science.
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I really wish less people would give pseudo-anon accounts this much credence. Literally no good science has (ever?) been done on Twitter/X, it's mostly just stupid equivocating. Much thanks goes out to the actual scientists out there working in labs and publishing their findings. The academic/publishing process is far from perfect already (conflicts of interest, funding, political pressure, institutional pressure, pe…
A 4chan user solved a 25yo combinatorics problem. If it can be done there why not twitter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292061