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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
by TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
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 options on the outcome once they confirm their findings in order to cash out. Which gives me strong feelings of scamming the uninformed and gullible.
As for comments on LK-99 itself, I don't understand why nobody has gotten their hands on an existing sample to verify that it's legitimate. Shouldn't the minimum requirements be a magnet and the material sample, to demonstrate it floating through the meissner effect?
- incrudible 3y agoJust 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.
- justinclift 3y ago> 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.
- barelyauser 3y agoYes, 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- amelius 3y ago> Shouldn't the minimum requirements be a magnet and the material sample, to demonstrate it floating through the meissner effect? The minimum requirements should be that it doesn't heat up when you send a large current through it.
- yreg 3y agoAre there any prediction markets where you can bet money on this? I thought people talked only about Moneyfold, which is just a game. (You cannot take money out of it, although you can use it to make a charity donation.) I suspect that people on actual real money market would make different predictions to Manifold.
- yorwba 3y agoPolymarket uses real money, I think https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor-real https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor...
- eurleif 3y agohttps://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor-real https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor...
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoI like that that website seems to use just smallish penny amounts, no big betting amounts. And that it's a simple formula; if you're right, you win $1 per share, if you lose, you get nothing. There's one about whether Trump wins the election with everyone voting 'no', so the winners will gain fractions of pennies on their bet. But if he does win, those voting 'yes' can gain 99% of their bet.
- trompetenaccoun 3y agoThe concept isn't bad but the problem with these markets isn't necessarily the amounts played, rather it's how they're resolved. What exactly counts as 'event has happened' and 'event has not happened'? I think Polymarket uses some kind of oracle¹ to establish the outcomes. What I know for sure is that there have been a couple of cases of fraudulently set up markets already, so anyone who wants to bet has to really understand the conditions before jumping in, even if they're very sure about the outcome. Again, I think it's a cool concept but I'd advice people to stay away from touching these until there's a solution for that problem. The small amounts people are betting are likely a reflection of this problem, because it's hard to understand if the setup is trustworthy. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_oracle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_oracle
- toth 3y agoThis 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 policy maker for instance. What I think is silly is that vastly bigger amounts of money are put in betting markets for any mildly important sportsball game. Meanwhile, markets on LK99 replication, one of the most potentially important possibilities in the world right now have only on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars in them. And there is no scamming involved. If you are participating in a prediction market, either you have some reason you believe you know something the market does not or you should expect you are simply subsidizing those with better information. 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 liquidity to the prediction market they are giving an explicit subsidy for anyone that can answer the question.
- social_quotient 3y agoI agree with you and think it parallels the equity market a bit. Stock prices embody the market's collective knowledge, expectations, and emotions about a company's current and future value. And to your point if you are blindly investing or blindly buying via instruments like ETFs you can end up subsidizing those with more/better information.
- throw0101a 3y agoWhat 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 liquidity to the prediction market they are giving an explicit subsidy for anyone that can answer the question. Is any of this liquidity going to actual (replication) research, because if it is not, again: what are these markets tangibly producing? Moving a bunch of numbers around a ledger does not seem very useful.
- jacquesm 3y agoThat's not all that different from how the financial crisis came to be: derivatives on top of bad loans. Here it is bad bets on top of a possible phenomenon that probably none of the participants in the bets have any insight in.
- fallingknife 3y agoThe bets were never the issue. The leverage in the banking system was. The bad bets were just the spark that lit it. The prediction markets are not leveraged
- sudosysgen 3y agoNo reason why they wouldn't become leveraged.
- beowulfey 3y agoA few things: * the paper wasn’t ready, and internal drama is what led to it being released * I’ve read that the process of making it is quite difficult. There probably are not many samples out there in the world Basically, it wasn’t ready for primetime, but I believe it’s close
- TrailMixRaisin 3y agoThe topic on how hard or easy it is to replicate seems to be as fast changing as other information. The first time I read about it, it was deemed to be super easy as all you needed are the two base materials and a vacuum furnace. But with all the drama involved I would not be surprised if the process is actually very complicated.
- qingcharles 3y agoThe paper is vague unfortunately. Here are some of the questions Andrew McCalip has (and he is fairly far along the path of actually making LK99): Precursors: •What level of purity is required for the precursor materials? •Are there any necessary preparatory steps for the precursors just before use? •What are the required particle sizes for the precursor materials? Thermal steps: •What is the environment (air or vacuum) for the Lanarkite reaction? •What are the temperature ramp-up and ramp-down rates for all three reactions? •Are there any thermal annealing steps involved? •How sensitive is LK99 to the duration of the final 925°C step? Results: •Could you elaborate on the observed differences between the bulk material and the thin film? •Does the bulk material share the same composition as the thin film? •How repeatable is the prescribed recipe, is SC behavior stochastic across samples? •Could you provide details on the equipment used, setup photos, and procedures employed to measure the critical current in response to an applied magnetic field, as seen in figure 8 of paper 3? Thin film deposition: •What type of glass substrate was used in the vapor deposition process for the thin film? •Could the exact set-point temperatures of the tungsten boat be provided, instead of ranges? (e.g., 550 ℃ to 900 ℃, 900℃ to 2000 ℃) •In patent figure 22, from which region was the resistivity value taken? The light gray or the dark gray area? https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1685891722675687424 https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1685891722675687424
- c7DJTLrn 3y agoThe stock market is no different, there's inequality in access to information there too.
- ummonk 3y agoIt's worse than that. If you've confirmed results, you now have an incentive not to publish your results, instead building up a market position on prediction markets for as long as possible.
- killerstorm 3y agoNo. You're incentivized to build a market prosition on prediction markets, or sell your information to somebody who can. (E.g. if a lab has a replication proof it might partner with a trading firm to maximize their profit.) But there's definitely no incentive to do it "for as long as possible". E.g. once the trader gets into a favorable position, they are incentivized to reveal their information ASAP to be able to take profit.
- ummonk 3y agoThe amount of market position you (or someone you have sold the information to) can build up is limited by market liquidity / trade volumes.
- andrepd 3y agoIt's like they say, when all you have is a hammer...
- cptaj 3y agoThe worst part is that those market people are delusional enough to believe what they say.
- JonChesterfield 3y ago> buy options on the outcome once they confirm their findings in order to cash out What stops that being textbook insider trading?
- cubefox 3y agoNote that real prediction markets with money are currently illegal in the US because of some legacy law. So Polymarket (currently the major prediction market I believe) is only usable outside the US anyway. Currently the only US alternative is play money. Manifold and Metaculus use this system. Metaculus doesn't really use play "money", but a non-zero-sum system to award points for more accurate predictions. It's in both cases a game and an exercise in checking how well-calibrated your beliefs about the future are. And here is the canonical FAQ on prediction markets, and the social/policy benefits they could have: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prediction-market-faq https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prediction-market-faq
- kulahan 3y agoI was absolutely certain I saw a photo of LK-99 floating over (partially, part of it was still touching) a magnet. Of course, this proves nothing as it's a photo, but I have this memory of seeing it, so maybe someone else saw it in some official capacity.