7 ms·

> Worst case scenario, we got another class of high temp (warmer than liquid nitrogen but cold enough that applications are limited) superconductor but nothing

> Worst case scenario, we got another class of high temp (warmer than liquid nitrogen but cold enough that applications are limited) superconductor but nothing revolutionary since at this point, it is pretty conclusive that there is something interesting with LK-99. I don't think that's the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is that there is actually nothing interesting with LK-99, and everything we've seen that suggests otherwise is experimenter bias heaped on top of experimental error. I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results.

46Bit 3y ago
Agreed. Even the 100K zero-resistance claim isn't holding up to scrutiny https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686901855358427136 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686901855358427136 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686832552252784641 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686832552252784641
throwawaymaths 3y ago
You're right that this is the worst case scenario, but each interesting replication or semi-replication, even sloppy replication, or theoretical model erodes at that. Being perma-skeptic is as bad as being a perma-fanboy Anyways your memory is really short. Don't you remember how when it first came out (not even a week ago) everyone was hollering that it was fake? Inb4 "extraordinary claims...": there is no fundamental reason for superconductivity in general to be impossible at RT.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > You're right that this is the worst case scenario, but each interesting replication or semi-replication, even sloppy replication, or theoretical model erodes at that. Not really. The ur-example of the worst-case scenario is cold fusion, and as we were reminded by somebody [1] early on, is that the first replications of the Fleischmann–Pons experiment were actually successful to some degree. Those initial replications were later retracted when it was found that there was experimental error that could observe the same phenomenon, and other replication attempts were reporting outright failure instead of partial success. > Anyways your memory is really short. Don't you remember how when it first came out (not even a week ago) everyone was hollering that it was fake? Your memory is really short. The first thread was 8 days ago [2], over a week ago. I've just been perusing those comments quickly, and there's very few accusations of it being fake. The dominant sentiment is along the lines of "big, if true" or "please let it be true", and there's only a few top-level comments casting any shade on its plausibility. But the threads since the weekend have largely seemed to cast aside even the limited skepticism once opined. [1] I'd love to credit them, but sorry, trying to dig out which comment out of several hundred splayed out across the various early threads was the one I remembered is more work than I can devote at the time. Edit: credit is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183, thanks to segfaultbuserr for finding the link. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624
  - segfaultbuserr 3y ago
    > I'd love to credit them, but sorry, trying to dig out which comment out of several hundred splayed out across the various early threads was the one I remembered is more work than I can devote at the time. It was posted by curiousObject at [1]. I upvoted that thread and participated in that discussion (including adding extra information on why cold fusion experiments were inherently problematic), so I have the link. As the submitter of the current paper, I'm cautiously optimistic based on the recent theoretical and experimental results. But I strongly agree with you that a repetition of cold fusion's initial false-positive replication "success" is a real risk. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183
  - HelloNurse 3y ago
    Fortunately, observing a levitating fleck of diamagnetic material is far less error prone than measuring heat or neutrons in a messy cold fusion experiment.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
      Exactly this.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    Yeah apologies, I was seeing lots of hot takes that it was fake on other platforms (like Twitter)
- atoav 3y ago
  I read through this thread and I can't help to feel reminded of the discussion about cryptocurrencies. So many people that want to believe, rational people that try to explain why it has to work when there is just not enough information right now. As if we believing it will change the outcome of the replication everybody that doesn't believe is shunned and called a heretic. Suddenly people that studied social sciences try to explain to me (a certified electrical engineer) why this is a big deal, because they saw a few videos on youtube about it, with theories of how this solves all energy problems that are so far removed from practical reality that this can only become a let-down. Note: I am cautiously optimistic myself, but damn, just wait and don't overhype it.
  - kolinko 3y ago
    As for crypto, tgere is nothing to believe in - it’s doing well after 14 years.
    - atoav 3y ago
      You mean cryptography? Yeah, thanks to let's encrypt we are now reaching widespread adoption of TLS. You barely see any http websites anymore thanks to that.
      - jfk13 3y ago
        You know perfectly well that's not what they meant.
        kaba0 3y ago
        Cryptocurrencies on the other hand don’t seem to be doing all thar well. Their hype-phase is definitely over and not many actually useful use cases remained.
        atoav 3y ago
        Sure, but I am against the idea that from now on "crypto" has to be forever referenced to some ponzi schemes that provide no actual value.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  > Being perma-skeptic is as bad as being a perma-fanboy Not really? Perma-skeptic will be far more accurate than perma-fanboy. Depends on context but for example believing every get-rich-quick scheme will get you robbed by scammers, while perma-skeptic will miss very occasional actual opportunity. Obviously catching and exploiting great opportunities would be even better, but of these two perma-skeptic is better.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > Perma-skeptic will be far more accurate than perma-fanboy. That's not accuracy, that's statistics. Once you bias for the expected outcome the perma skeptic will be just as often wrong or right as the perma optimist. They have no information about the thing they are talking about, they only have information about that expected outcome based on previous observations. If they had information about the thing itself they wouldn't be wrong for those things that turn out to be true (but then, I guess they wouldn't be perma skeptics to begin with). So, a perma skeptic misses all of the real stuff and a perma optimist misses all of the bad stuff. Neither shows intelligence.
    - fallingknife 3y ago
      Perma optimist has more fun, though
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        That's a fact.
tomohelix 3y ago
Personally, I think we are past the point of this being nothing. There have been multiple confirmations of at least something unexplained going on. Maybe all of them are wrong but honestly, that is more of an extraordinary claim than saying this is something interesting, just not a full on room temp superconductor.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  It's not that extraordinary. When people rush to replicate an experiment, everybody with a positive result has something to publish very quickly, and everybody with a negative result need a lot more time to be certain of it. The kinds of results we are seeing are very hard to get by chance or due to bad experimental setup. But as a rule, we can't really differentiate a real thing from random noise in as little time as have passed.
  - jseip 3y ago
    "It's not that extraordinary." How is that possibly true? LK-99 is already amongst the highest-temperature superconductors ever found (with that claim substantiated by at least two independent research teams as of this moment).
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      I don't know if you work in this field, but you are putting way too much faith in what has been reported so far People are way, way overconfident. Most people in the field would not be willing to put it at >50% odds at this point.
      - eric_cc 3y ago
        > Most people in the field would not be willing to put it at >50% odds at this point. Do you have a source for this claim? It sounds like you just made it up.
        3y ago
highwaylights 3y ago
Waiting to see either way just like everyone else, but.. > I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results. .. really? You’re surprised by this?
blueprint 3y ago
> The worst case scenario is that there is actually nothing interesting with LK-99, and everything we've seen that suggests otherwise is experimenter bias heaped on top of experimental error. well while we're one-upping each other I'm pretty sure the worst case scenario is some lk99 synthesizer actually creates a black hole which gobbles up the planet.
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  An lk99 synthesizer creating a false vacuum decay would be worse.
  - blueprint 3y ago
    true! or an lk99 synthesizer accidentally generating the waveform of Never Gonna Give You Up
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  What if thats where all black holes come from and thats why we haven’t found any aliens? Just a misfortune reality that “accidental blackhole” is lower on the tech tree than fast space travel.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- bluGill 3y ago
  sure, but that is unlikely. If massive black holes opened up in labs then it would have already done so. Probably by chance in the dinosaur age.
cthalupa 3y ago
> I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results. There's plenty of people that are skeptical and making it a point to tell everyone they are skeptical. There's plenty of people that are skeptical that are still engaging on the possibility of it being real because it is interesting to do so. There are plenty of people discussing potential pitfalls in the papers being written and experiments being done. But ultimately talking to people in the comments on HN is a form of entertainment for most of the people engaging, and skepticism is a lot less entertaining for most people in general than being enthusiastic and engaging on possibilities. It's not surprising that people going somewhere for engagement and entertainment are doing the thing that is more fun to the majority. I doubt the majority of people that are excited about it would place serious money on it being true - I sure wouldn't. But I am having fun watching the developments, talking about things to the minimal extent I understand, and thinking about the Cool Stuff that would become possible if we were to suddenly have a new room temp ambient pressure semiconductor
- _0ffh 3y ago
  Ha, I've been talking about the same topic with an experimental physics professor friend of mine. He was just not interested at all, like "I've seen stuff like that so many times before, I'm not interested at this point. I may look at it when there's a publication in a serious journal." while I was like "Hey it's popcorn time, this is a fun ride, whatever the outcome!". =)
  - vinnyvichy 3y ago
    Speaking as an academic, I really hope they don't ever publish in a serious journal even if it turns out to replicate. Did your friend take Ranga Dias seriously because that was published in Nature? I understand there's a lot of noise, but one of the things one learns is to cut out noise without having to rely on journal brand
    - _0ffh 3y ago
      Nope, he didn't. You're getting the wrong message here. That publication is necessary to arouse his interest doesn't mean it's sufficient to make him believe anything. Those are different things. Peer review for publication is just meant to cut out the obvious crap. It's not a guaranty, and nobody who knows this stuff thinks it is.
jjallen 3y ago
The reason I don't think this is the case is that they have literally been working on this thing for a quarter of a century. While the people involved are not full on superconductor experts, they are also not super stupid and realize that their claim is a huge one. How could you work on something for years and years and years, make a claim that it is the first room temperature SC and be _totally_ wrong about it. Even if they only worked on it for ten years, I don't think they are totally wrong. I think what has happened is that they rushed to publish the paper and the reason it has not been replicated is that they don't even know how to reliably make the material yet. This is why the methods to make it are not in the paper -- because they don't even know how to do it. Remember they were forced to publish this paper by a rogue former employee.
- blharr 3y ago
  Being wrong in such a complicated field is always possible. Your personal experience and expertise can only go so far.
- verisimi 3y ago
  Can you really be working with a material for a quarter of a century AND not know how to make the material?
  - kaba0 3y ago
    While I have no expertise in material science, it is definitely not some minecraft crafting - depending on the procedure, you may get only few percents of useful output that you may have no way to further purify. At least for chemistry, it is often a completely different paper that introduces an efficient way for actually mass-producing the given chemical. The first one is more like a proof of concept throwaway code, if we want an analogy.
Tade0 3y ago
> I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results. You're not seeing them because every thread with a significant percentage of sceptical voices trips the HN flamewar detector, which goes off when there are more comments than upvotes. I've counted three threads where this happened. It's the reason why the front page wasn't plastered with LK-99 news.
- sparrowInHand 3y ago
  So, the accurate term for scientific debate on HN is a cold-flamewar?
  - gus_massa 3y ago
    Sometimes the mods remove the automatic "flamewar" penalty. Sometimes the add manual penalties. My guess is that they are triying to keep in the front page only the last 1 or 2 articles that has an important update and enought discusion. You can send them an email asking for clarification. (I don't expect they have hard rules about this, only some general principles and hopefuly good judgement calls.)
    - sparrowInHand 3y ago
      Wouldnt a emotional keyword filter make for better statistical flamewar detection? Also, i guess length of comment might be a strong indicator of thread degeneration. Finally you could create fields of expertease for every account (upvoted comments keywords) and ban threads with non-experts majority commenting.
      - gus_massa 3y ago
        > Wouldn't a emotional keyword filter make for better statistical flamewar detection? Something like http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html but fine tuned to flamewars? Perhaps. The mods have some easy automatic criteria, the flags, vouches and upvotes from users, and then apply manual moderation on top of that. It may be hard to distinguish a good discussion about a war from a bad discussion about icecream. Or replace war and icecream with your favorite topics. > Also, i guess length of comment might be a strong indicator of thread degeneration. I like that. Very short comments are usually bad, but huge wall of text too. Perhaps they have something more advanced and never told us. It may be part of the secret sauce. (Or it may be good that they pretend they have advanced stuff, so people behave better.) > Finally you could create fields of expertise for every account (upvoted comments keywords) and ban threads with non-experts majority commenting. It's an interesting idea, but my guess is that it's too hard. I'm not sure which tags apply to me. In some topics I'm mathematician, but I comment a lot in physics stuff because I have an unfinished degree in physics. But it depend on the area. In some areas I know a lot and in others I can just skim the article and look at the graphics. [1] My guess is that non-experts are always the majority. For me the important part is that the comments by experts float near the top. There are also some interesting comments from non-experts, sometimes with a good reply from an expert. Upvoting good comments is very important to make the discusion better. [1] Protip: Reading medicine studies, remember to Ctr+F "exclusion", because sometimes after the study started they excluded some of the subjects, like the guy that had 100% success after excluding the 1 dead and 5 other weird cases.
doingtheiroming 3y ago
There’s plenty of skepticism. It’s the zero-cost position here. But there are good and bad skeptical positions. The good one involves people attempting to replicate and publishing results whether positive, negative or somewhere in between. The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”. If there’s a real problem, it’s that we have still not made publication of negative results sufficiently attractive. That’s still a problem throughout science and one we desperately need to address since it is what would let us think more clearly in situations like this.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”. You put it perfectly. I'm mostly skeptical and very guardedly optimistic because something seems to be happening. But I've very carefully marked each and every one of my comments with 'assuming this is true' or 'if this is true' to avoid the impression that I'm already convinced. I'm not. But I'm on the side of everybody getting their hands and their lab gear dirty: they are the ones doing the work and they are the ones who put their time (and sometimes their reputations) on the line. That starts off with the original Korean team but also goes for everybody else that has rolled up their sleeves and gone to work. Those people have an audience now, thanks to all these connected media and it's great to see the scientific process acting out in the open for a change where everybody gets to see how the sausage is made. Meanwhile the Debbie Downers have probably never seen the insides of a lab and have never made anything, they're just taking the default position because it doesn't require any work at all and has the highest likelihood of being true. But I very quietly hope that they're wrong and I also hope that if they are wrong that they will own it. Unqualified negativity is just as dumb as unqualified positivity, it just looks smarter, but it isn't a sign of intelligence.
  - SantalBlush 3y ago
    I think the unqualified negativitiy is based on a common misunderstanding of the scientific process, that if one finds any shortcoming in a result--be it applied or theoretical--one can throw the entire work in the trash under the pretense of falsification. But this is wrong. Science is about weighing the totality of evidence, and refining that evidence in one direction or another over many iterations.
DrBazza 3y ago
> I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results. HN is supposed to have a high signal-to-noise for comments. I'm skeptical about this. I think it's the modern Pons + Fleishmann, but I won't post that on every thread because it contributes nothing. There's more insightful, and interesting comments about chemistry than anything I can write that would add to the discussion.
SanderNL 3y ago
It's good to keep an open mind both ways, but "skepticism" without either interesting or convincing arguments is IMO just as useless. We all know there is a good chance it turns out to be a dud. We all know cold fusion/emdrive/superluminal experiments turned out to be duds. We all know this. I wonder what news do "skeptics" have to bring to the table. Nothing a skeptic has to say changes anything. We are all - except for the handful of actual experts here - amateurs at best, but probably ignorant peasants. Just about anything we have to say about it is just noise. I'd favor the positive noise, but that's just me. Imagine being at a football game: "This game could easily be lost! Ah, see, another pass failed. Don't get your hopes up! Please don't cheer, please wait until the very last moment and then wait another hour to have administrative confirmation. Then wait two weeks. Then you may cheer, but only modestly."
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  > It's good to keep an open mind both ways, but "skepticism" without either interesting or convincing arguments is IMO just as useless. skepticism is an useful filter > I wonder what news do "skeptics" have to bring to the table. reminder of "We all know there is a good chance it turns out to be a dud. We all know cold fusion/emdrive/superluminal experiments turned out to be duds. We all know this." not everyone knows this
  - SanderNL 3y ago
    Thank god for the skeptics. I might have gotten enthused about something. Can you imagine the implications of that? My god, please tell me someone is going to stop me from being mildly entertained before it gets out of hand. Agents of reason, please enlighten us with your eternal negativity so that we may perceive clearly the folly of our excited ways.
  - HelloMcFly 3y ago
    > not everyone knows this I actually think far more people know this than done; it wouldn't surprise me if it truly is practically "everyone" on Hacker News. But what is the expectation here? Must every comment thinking about the possibilities or being excited by incremental evidence of support be prefaced with a note of skepticism? Must we engage in such ritualistic behavior in order to be seen as anything other than hopeless scientific romantics? I must pour a bucket of cold water on my own head before feeling even an ounce of optimism? Optimism carries the possible - even likely - cost of disappointment, and in the wrong company can create the same in others. Pessimism is beneficial, but it doesn't have to be worn on one's sleeve at all times lest it sap joy and color from the world. This is a community of enthusiasts, we can be enthusiastic without also being hopeless idiots lurching from one false discovery to the next.
23B1 3y ago
We skeptics have just grown tired of arguing (with everyone, on everything, all of the time)
stephencanon 3y ago
Why would skeptics waste their time commenting on LK-99 threads? There are much better things to do.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Because this is potentially a big deal. Skeptics who understand they can be wrong will want to follow this, but they don't want to get their hopes up.
stonemetal12 3y ago
I think it comes down to a lack of knowledge. I was pretty skeptical of the original claim, since RT has been a goal for a long time and no one has achieved it . So far all the repro attempts I have seen mention temps around 100K. I don't follow SC so 100k sounds "really cold" to me. It matches with my shallow understanding of SC "it is really cold". Maybe that is really warm in SC land. Either way there hasn't been a near freezing repro so I have grown more skeptical of the original claim.
- cthalupa 3y ago
  100K is very cold. But if this result pans out, it's a very good thing for the possibility that LK99 really is an RTAPS. There are a lot of explanations as to why they might not see bulk superconductivity at room temp - impurities in the sample (or the impurities being the SC) being the big one. If LK99 is a superconductor at all, but not a RTAPS, it would be quite strange for the South Korean team to have made a mistake. It's quite difficult to accidentally cool something down to 100K, and if they were just getting false positives on their testing for superconductivity, it would be a massive coincidence that it happened to actually be one at 100K. We're also seeing a lot of videos that show strong diamagnetism - this doesn't mean it's a superconductor, but all superconductors are perfect diamagnets. We have some unverified videos that seem to show things beyond just diamagnetism, with the material being stable in suspension over a single magnet, which a regular diamagnetic material cannot do. These pieces of material are too small to have been cooled down to 100K and stay there for the duration shown, as well as no frost appearing, etc., which would be quite difficult at that temperature in an environment with any humidity. I think the bigger concern is around whether or not this is a valid result at all - the Real Deal scientists discussing it seem to have mixed thoughts there, particularly around the noise floor of the instrumentation equipment, etc. Some say that that doesn't matter, others say that it does, particularly since we don't see the kind of on/off drop you would in other superconductors, etc. At worst, this replication attempt's result is from a misunderstanding of how their equipment works in this condition. At best it provides evidence in favor of LK99 being an RTAPS.
TheRealPomax 3y ago
I'd go one step further. The worst case is they made up data enough to seem plausible, knowing full well replication is impossible, but their institution wanted their name in a major publication so they were told to make shit up and get published.

46Bit 3y ago

Agreed. Even the 100K zero-resistance claim isn't holding up to scrutiny https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686901855358427136 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686901855358427136 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686832552252784641 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686832552252784641

throwawaymaths 3y ago

You're right that this is the worst case scenario, but each interesting replication or semi-replication, even sloppy replication, or theoretical model erodes at that. Being perma-skeptic is as bad as being a perma-fanboy Anyways your memory is really short. Don't you remember how when it first came out (not even a week ago) everyone was hollering that it was fake? Inb4 "extraordinary claims...": there is no fundamental reason for superconductivity in general to be impossible at RT.

jcranmer 3y ago
> You're right that this is the worst case scenario, but each interesting replication or semi-replication, even sloppy replication, or theoretical model erodes at that. Not really. The ur-example of the worst-case scenario is cold fusion, and as we were reminded by somebody [1] early on, is that the first replications of the Fleischmann–Pons experiment were actually successful to some degree. Those initial replications were later retracted when it was found that there was experimental error that could observe the same phenomenon, and other replication attempts were reporting outright failure instead of partial success. > Anyways your memory is really short. Don't you remember how when it first came out (not even a week ago) everyone was hollering that it was fake? Your memory is really short. The first thread was 8 days ago [2], over a week ago. I've just been perusing those comments quickly, and there's very few accusations of it being fake. The dominant sentiment is along the lines of "big, if true" or "please let it be true", and there's only a few top-level comments casting any shade on its plausibility. But the threads since the weekend have largely seemed to cast aside even the limited skepticism once opined. [1] I'd love to credit them, but sorry, trying to dig out which comment out of several hundred splayed out across the various early threads was the one I remembered is more work than I can devote at the time. Edit: credit is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183, thanks to segfaultbuserr for finding the link. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624
- segfaultbuserr 3y ago
  > I'd love to credit them, but sorry, trying to dig out which comment out of several hundred splayed out across the various early threads was the one I remembered is more work than I can devote at the time. It was posted by curiousObject at [1]. I upvoted that thread and participated in that discussion (including adding extra information on why cold fusion experiments were inherently problematic), so I have the link. As the submitter of the current paper, I'm cautiously optimistic based on the recent theoretical and experimental results. But I strongly agree with you that a repetition of cold fusion's initial false-positive replication "success" is a real risk. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183
- HelloNurse 3y ago
  Fortunately, observing a levitating fleck of diamagnetic material is far less error prone than measuring heat or neutrons in a messy cold fusion experiment.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    Exactly this.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  Yeah apologies, I was seeing lots of hot takes that it was fake on other platforms (like Twitter)
atoav 3y ago
I read through this thread and I can't help to feel reminded of the discussion about cryptocurrencies. So many people that want to believe, rational people that try to explain why it has to work when there is just not enough information right now. As if we believing it will change the outcome of the replication everybody that doesn't believe is shunned and called a heretic. Suddenly people that studied social sciences try to explain to me (a certified electrical engineer) why this is a big deal, because they saw a few videos on youtube about it, with theories of how this solves all energy problems that are so far removed from practical reality that this can only become a let-down. Note: I am cautiously optimistic myself, but damn, just wait and don't overhype it.
- kolinko 3y ago
  As for crypto, tgere is nothing to believe in - it’s doing well after 14 years.
  - atoav 3y ago
    You mean cryptography? Yeah, thanks to let's encrypt we are now reaching widespread adoption of TLS. You barely see any http websites anymore thanks to that.
    - jfk13 3y ago
      You know perfectly well that's not what they meant.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        Cryptocurrencies on the other hand don’t seem to be doing all thar well. Their hype-phase is definitely over and not many actually useful use cases remained.
      - atoav 3y ago
        Sure, but I am against the idea that from now on "crypto" has to be forever referenced to some ponzi schemes that provide no actual value.
matkoniecz 3y ago
> Being perma-skeptic is as bad as being a perma-fanboy Not really? Perma-skeptic will be far more accurate than perma-fanboy. Depends on context but for example believing every get-rich-quick scheme will get you robbed by scammers, while perma-skeptic will miss very occasional actual opportunity. Obviously catching and exploiting great opportunities would be even better, but of these two perma-skeptic is better.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > Perma-skeptic will be far more accurate than perma-fanboy. That's not accuracy, that's statistics. Once you bias for the expected outcome the perma skeptic will be just as often wrong or right as the perma optimist. They have no information about the thing they are talking about, they only have information about that expected outcome based on previous observations. If they had information about the thing itself they wouldn't be wrong for those things that turn out to be true (but then, I guess they wouldn't be perma skeptics to begin with). So, a perma skeptic misses all of the real stuff and a perma optimist misses all of the bad stuff. Neither shows intelligence.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    Perma optimist has more fun, though
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      That's a fact.

tomohelix 3y ago

Personally, I think we are past the point of this being nothing. There have been multiple confirmations of at least something unexplained going on. Maybe all of them are wrong but honestly, that is more of an extraordinary claim than saying this is something interesting, just not a full on room temp superconductor.

marcosdumay 3y ago
It's not that extraordinary. When people rush to replicate an experiment, everybody with a positive result has something to publish very quickly, and everybody with a negative result need a lot more time to be certain of it. The kinds of results we are seeing are very hard to get by chance or due to bad experimental setup. But as a rule, we can't really differentiate a real thing from random noise in as little time as have passed.
- jseip 3y ago
  "It's not that extraordinary." How is that possibly true? LK-99 is already amongst the highest-temperature superconductors ever found (with that claim substantiated by at least two independent research teams as of this moment).
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    I don't know if you work in this field, but you are putting way too much faith in what has been reported so far People are way, way overconfident. Most people in the field would not be willing to put it at >50% odds at this point.
    - eric_cc 3y ago
      > Most people in the field would not be willing to put it at >50% odds at this point. Do you have a source for this claim? It sounds like you just made it up.
      - 3y ago

highwaylights 3y ago

Waiting to see either way just like everyone else, but.. > I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results. .. really? You’re surprised by this?

blueprint 3y ago

> The worst case scenario is that there is actually nothing interesting with LK-99, and everything we've seen that suggests otherwise is experimenter bias heaped on top of experimental error. well while we're one-upping each other I'm pretty sure the worst case scenario is some lk99 synthesizer actually creates a black hole which gobbles up the planet.

anonuser123456 3y ago
An lk99 synthesizer creating a false vacuum decay would be worse.
- blueprint 3y ago
  true! or an lk99 synthesizer accidentally generating the waveform of Never Gonna Give You Up
nonethewiser 3y ago
What if thats where all black holes come from and thats why we haven’t found any aliens? Just a misfortune reality that “accidental blackhole” is lower on the tech tree than fast space travel.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bluGill 3y ago
sure, but that is unlikely. If massive black holes opened up in labs then it would have already done so. Probably by chance in the dinosaur age.

cthalupa 3y ago

> I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results. There's plenty of people that are skeptical and making it a point to tell everyone they are skeptical. There's plenty of people that are skeptical that are still engaging on the possibility of it being real because it is interesting to do so. There are plenty of people discussing potential pitfalls in the papers being written and experiments being done. But ultimately talking to people in the comments on HN is a form of entertainment for most of the people engaging, and skepticism is a lot less entertaining for most people in general than being enthusiastic and engaging on possibilities. It's not surprising that people going somewhere for engagement and entertainment are doing the thing that is more fun to the majority. I doubt the majority of people that are excited about it would place serious money on it being true - I sure wouldn't. But I am having fun watching the developments, talking about things to the minimal extent I understand, and thinking about the Cool Stuff that would become possible if we were to suddenly have a new room temp ambient pressure semiconductor

_0ffh 3y ago
Ha, I've been talking about the same topic with an experimental physics professor friend of mine. He was just not interested at all, like "I've seen stuff like that so many times before, I'm not interested at this point. I may look at it when there's a publication in a serious journal." while I was like "Hey it's popcorn time, this is a fun ride, whatever the outcome!". =)
- vinnyvichy 3y ago
  Speaking as an academic, I really hope they don't ever publish in a serious journal even if it turns out to replicate. Did your friend take Ranga Dias seriously because that was published in Nature? I understand there's a lot of noise, but one of the things one learns is to cut out noise without having to rely on journal brand
  - _0ffh 3y ago
    Nope, he didn't. You're getting the wrong message here. That publication is necessary to arouse his interest doesn't mean it's sufficient to make him believe anything. Those are different things. Peer review for publication is just meant to cut out the obvious crap. It's not a guaranty, and nobody who knows this stuff thinks it is.

jjallen 3y ago

The reason I don't think this is the case is that they have literally been working on this thing for a quarter of a century. While the people involved are not full on superconductor experts, they are also not super stupid and realize that their claim is a huge one. How could you work on something for years and years and years, make a claim that it is the first room temperature SC and be _totally_ wrong about it. Even if they only worked on it for ten years, I don't think they are totally wrong. I think what has happened is that they rushed to publish the paper and the reason it has not been replicated is that they don't even know how to reliably make the material yet. This is why the methods to make it are not in the paper -- because they don't even know how to do it. Remember they were forced to publish this paper by a rogue former employee.

blharr 3y ago
Being wrong in such a complicated field is always possible. Your personal experience and expertise can only go so far.
verisimi 3y ago
Can you really be working with a material for a quarter of a century AND not know how to make the material?
- kaba0 3y ago
  While I have no expertise in material science, it is definitely not some minecraft crafting - depending on the procedure, you may get only few percents of useful output that you may have no way to further purify. At least for chemistry, it is often a completely different paper that introduces an efficient way for actually mass-producing the given chemical. The first one is more like a proof of concept throwaway code, if we want an analogy.

Tade0 3y ago

> I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results. You're not seeing them because every thread with a significant percentage of sceptical voices trips the HN flamewar detector, which goes off when there are more comments than upvotes. I've counted three threads where this happened. It's the reason why the front page wasn't plastered with LK-99 news.

sparrowInHand 3y ago
So, the accurate term for scientific debate on HN is a cold-flamewar?
- gus_massa 3y ago
  Sometimes the mods remove the automatic "flamewar" penalty. Sometimes the add manual penalties. My guess is that they are triying to keep in the front page only the last 1 or 2 articles that has an important update and enought discusion. You can send them an email asking for clarification. (I don't expect they have hard rules about this, only some general principles and hopefuly good judgement calls.)
  - sparrowInHand 3y ago
    Wouldnt a emotional keyword filter make for better statistical flamewar detection? Also, i guess length of comment might be a strong indicator of thread degeneration. Finally you could create fields of expertease for every account (upvoted comments keywords) and ban threads with non-experts majority commenting.
    - gus_massa 3y ago
      > Wouldn't a emotional keyword filter make for better statistical flamewar detection? Something like http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html but fine tuned to flamewars? Perhaps. The mods have some easy automatic criteria, the flags, vouches and upvotes from users, and then apply manual moderation on top of that. It may be hard to distinguish a good discussion about a war from a bad discussion about icecream. Or replace war and icecream with your favorite topics. > Also, i guess length of comment might be a strong indicator of thread degeneration. I like that. Very short comments are usually bad, but huge wall of text too. Perhaps they have something more advanced and never told us. It may be part of the secret sauce. (Or it may be good that they pretend they have advanced stuff, so people behave better.) > Finally you could create fields of expertise for every account (upvoted comments keywords) and ban threads with non-experts majority commenting. It's an interesting idea, but my guess is that it's too hard. I'm not sure which tags apply to me. In some topics I'm mathematician, but I comment a lot in physics stuff because I have an unfinished degree in physics. But it depend on the area. In some areas I know a lot and in others I can just skim the article and look at the graphics. [1] My guess is that non-experts are always the majority. For me the important part is that the comments by experts float near the top. There are also some interesting comments from non-experts, sometimes with a good reply from an expert. Upvoting good comments is very important to make the discusion better. [1] Protip: Reading medicine studies, remember to Ctr+F "exclusion", because sometimes after the study started they excluded some of the subjects, like the guy that had 100% success after excluding the 1 dead and 5 other weird cases.

doingtheiroming 3y ago

There’s plenty of skepticism. It’s the zero-cost position here. But there are good and bad skeptical positions. The good one involves people attempting to replicate and publishing results whether positive, negative or somewhere in between. The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”. If there’s a real problem, it’s that we have still not made publication of negative results sufficiently attractive. That’s still a problem throughout science and one we desperately need to address since it is what would let us think more clearly in situations like this.

jacquesm 3y ago
> The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”. You put it perfectly. I'm mostly skeptical and very guardedly optimistic because something seems to be happening. But I've very carefully marked each and every one of my comments with 'assuming this is true' or 'if this is true' to avoid the impression that I'm already convinced. I'm not. But I'm on the side of everybody getting their hands and their lab gear dirty: they are the ones doing the work and they are the ones who put their time (and sometimes their reputations) on the line. That starts off with the original Korean team but also goes for everybody else that has rolled up their sleeves and gone to work. Those people have an audience now, thanks to all these connected media and it's great to see the scientific process acting out in the open for a change where everybody gets to see how the sausage is made. Meanwhile the Debbie Downers have probably never seen the insides of a lab and have never made anything, they're just taking the default position because it doesn't require any work at all and has the highest likelihood of being true. But I very quietly hope that they're wrong and I also hope that if they are wrong that they will own it. Unqualified negativity is just as dumb as unqualified positivity, it just looks smarter, but it isn't a sign of intelligence.
- SantalBlush 3y ago
  I think the unqualified negativitiy is based on a common misunderstanding of the scientific process, that if one finds any shortcoming in a result--be it applied or theoretical--one can throw the entire work in the trash under the pretense of falsification. But this is wrong. Science is about weighing the totality of evidence, and refining that evidence in one direction or another over many iterations.

DrBazza 3y ago

> I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results. HN is supposed to have a high signal-to-noise for comments. I'm skeptical about this. I think it's the modern Pons + Fleishmann, but I won't post that on every thread because it contributes nothing. There's more insightful, and interesting comments about chemistry than anything I can write that would add to the discussion.

SanderNL 3y ago

It's good to keep an open mind both ways, but "skepticism" without either interesting or convincing arguments is IMO just as useless. We all know there is a good chance it turns out to be a dud. We all know cold fusion/emdrive/superluminal experiments turned out to be duds. We all know this. I wonder what news do "skeptics" have to bring to the table. Nothing a skeptic has to say changes anything. We are all - except for the handful of actual experts here - amateurs at best, but probably ignorant peasants. Just about anything we have to say about it is just noise. I'd favor the positive noise, but that's just me. Imagine being at a football game: "This game could easily be lost! Ah, see, another pass failed. Don't get your hopes up! Please don't cheer, please wait until the very last moment and then wait another hour to have administrative confirmation. Then wait two weeks. Then you may cheer, but only modestly."

deleted 3y ago
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matkoniecz 3y ago
> It's good to keep an open mind both ways, but "skepticism" without either interesting or convincing arguments is IMO just as useless. skepticism is an useful filter > I wonder what news do "skeptics" have to bring to the table. reminder of "We all know there is a good chance it turns out to be a dud. We all know cold fusion/emdrive/superluminal experiments turned out to be duds. We all know this." not everyone knows this
- SanderNL 3y ago
  Thank god for the skeptics. I might have gotten enthused about something. Can you imagine the implications of that? My god, please tell me someone is going to stop me from being mildly entertained before it gets out of hand. Agents of reason, please enlighten us with your eternal negativity so that we may perceive clearly the folly of our excited ways.
- HelloMcFly 3y ago
  > not everyone knows this I actually think far more people know this than done; it wouldn't surprise me if it truly is practically "everyone" on Hacker News. But what is the expectation here? Must every comment thinking about the possibilities or being excited by incremental evidence of support be prefaced with a note of skepticism? Must we engage in such ritualistic behavior in order to be seen as anything other than hopeless scientific romantics? I must pour a bucket of cold water on my own head before feeling even an ounce of optimism? Optimism carries the possible - even likely - cost of disappointment, and in the wrong company can create the same in others. Pessimism is beneficial, but it doesn't have to be worn on one's sleeve at all times lest it sap joy and color from the world. This is a community of enthusiasts, we can be enthusiastic without also being hopeless idiots lurching from one false discovery to the next.

23B1 3y ago

We skeptics have just grown tired of arguing (with everyone, on everything, all of the time)

stephencanon 3y ago

Why would skeptics waste their time commenting on LK-99 threads? There are much better things to do.

bluGill 3y ago
Because this is potentially a big deal. Skeptics who understand they can be wrong will want to follow this, but they don't want to get their hopes up.

stonemetal12 3y ago

I think it comes down to a lack of knowledge. I was pretty skeptical of the original claim, since RT has been a goal for a long time and no one has achieved it . So far all the repro attempts I have seen mention temps around 100K. I don't follow SC so 100k sounds "really cold" to me. It matches with my shallow understanding of SC "it is really cold". Maybe that is really warm in SC land. Either way there hasn't been a near freezing repro so I have grown more skeptical of the original claim.

cthalupa 3y ago
100K is very cold. But if this result pans out, it's a very good thing for the possibility that LK99 really is an RTAPS. There are a lot of explanations as to why they might not see bulk superconductivity at room temp - impurities in the sample (or the impurities being the SC) being the big one. If LK99 is a superconductor at all, but not a RTAPS, it would be quite strange for the South Korean team to have made a mistake. It's quite difficult to accidentally cool something down to 100K, and if they were just getting false positives on their testing for superconductivity, it would be a massive coincidence that it happened to actually be one at 100K. We're also seeing a lot of videos that show strong diamagnetism - this doesn't mean it's a superconductor, but all superconductors are perfect diamagnets. We have some unverified videos that seem to show things beyond just diamagnetism, with the material being stable in suspension over a single magnet, which a regular diamagnetic material cannot do. These pieces of material are too small to have been cooled down to 100K and stay there for the duration shown, as well as no frost appearing, etc., which would be quite difficult at that temperature in an environment with any humidity. I think the bigger concern is around whether or not this is a valid result at all - the Real Deal scientists discussing it seem to have mixed thoughts there, particularly around the noise floor of the instrumentation equipment, etc. Some say that that doesn't matter, others say that it does, particularly since we don't see the kind of on/off drop you would in other superconductors, etc. At worst, this replication attempt's result is from a misunderstanding of how their equipment works in this condition. At best it provides evidence in favor of LK99 being an RTAPS.

TheRealPomax 3y ago

I'd go one step further. The worst case is they made up data enough to seem plausible, knowing full well replication is impossible, but their institution wanted their name in a major publication so they were told to make shit up and get published.