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archepyx commented on LK-99 isn’t a superconductor   nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
Waterluvian · 2 years ago
I find it perilous to treat an entire community as it if has one voice. Ie. "the HN discussion" as a singular entity with a singular binary state on its skepticism. Someone else could equally claim that the HN community was super pessimistic and skeptical about it, because I certainly saw a lot of that too!

While a convenient abstraction, it plays into our biases to notice and remember only some of the discourse.

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.

archepyx · 2 years ago
Optimistic outlook without reasonable skepticism is probably at least something you should not strive to achieve.
archepyx commented on LK-99 isn’t a superconductor   nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
Waterluvian · 2 years ago
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 ever be inclined to feel that there's pie on my face now that we've got fairly strong evidence refuting the claims?

archepyx · 2 years ago
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 authors said so.

archepyx commented on Cargo Cult Science (1974) [pdf]   calteches.library.caltech... · Posted by u/_cnhi
throw18376 · 2 years ago
I have heard that some anthropologists now have a more complicated view of the cargo cults. They argue that, even if there was some notion of making cargo appear, their main purpose was more political and social. It was an opportunity for the locals to move around in organized groups, even march around doing military drills, without causing the colonial leadership to panic and retaliate. It would bind people together socially and get them used to coordinating under a leader, whose legitimacy would be enhanced.

Sometimes people now claim that "cargo cult science" is not really a good analogy and should be abandoned.

However, I think this newer understanding of cargo cults may actually make it an even better analogy.

Even if a line of scientific ideas is mostly fake and its research practices can't possibly lead to truth, participating in this ritual of fake research, giving talks about it, and other science-shaped activities, still does bind the participants together. It lends prestige to the leaders of the field. It gives everyone a way to coordinate politically around securing funding and legitimacy from higher powers for their fake research area. And we've seen you really can keep a field going this way for a very long time even if the planes never land.

archepyx · 2 years ago
Wikipedia seems to be a good first stop here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult and contains several other useful references for entering the rabbit hole of what these cults are and why they appeared.
archepyx commented on First order transition in [LK-99] containing Cu2S   arxiv.org/abs/2308.04353... · Posted by u/iflp
archepyx · 2 years ago
The wag who dubbed various false alarms of room temperature superconductivity in the 1990s as USOs (Unidentified Superconducting Objects) got it quite right.

First there is the condensed-matter equivalent of blurry photos of floating saucers (or small disks like here) and lots of excitement, followed by investigations either not seeing anything or identifying the objects as weather ballons. The social media reaction is also similar.

This preprint identifies a weather balloon that was conspicuously close the site of the original photographs.

archepyx commented on Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be   science.org/content/blog-... · Posted by u/etiam
archepyx · 2 years ago
Another comment from a well informed source on the topic: https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1684255515944034304

Also, on the sentences in the manuscripts trying to explain the effect: I think that is wild guess at best. The measurement results done in the manuscripts probably can be taken at at face value (at least until there is a reproduction). Whether they really indicate superconductivity or something else that looks like it in some of the aspects is then a different question.

archepyx commented on AirPods don't “just work”   philip.design/blog/airpod... · Posted by u/knowingathing
easton · 4 years ago
The "low audio quality after/during conference" problem as I understand it is because of the SCO codec used for Bluetooth microphone stuff (which is lower bandwidth but allows you to speak and listen at the same time). It takes a few seconds for the AirPods to switch back to their usual codec.

Is there a way to fix this without ditching Bluetooth?

archepyx · 4 years ago
Get a headset that has Faststream or bidirectional APTX-LL A2DP vendor codec, and use it with BT stack that implements these codecs (e.g. Linux/Pipewire). Such devices are very hard to find, and aptx-ll in most devices is not bidirectional. I know only some headsets by Avantree that have it.

Or, wait for a few years for Bluetooth 5.2 LE Audio be available in consumer devices.

archepyx commented on AirPods don't “just work”   philip.design/blog/airpod... · Posted by u/knowingathing
eptcyka · 4 years ago
It's definitely not an issue with bandwidth, instead it's an issue of standardization. There just doesn't exist a bluetooth profile that supports high quality duplex audio communications between two devices. It's pathetic.
archepyx · 4 years ago
There are vendor A2DP codecs that support duplex audio (faststream; aptx-ll optionally) but very few devices implement them. Software support is also fairly bad, although on Linux Pipewire does support them.

Also iirc CSR has a vendor codec (Auristream) in SCO transport that supposedly provides higher quality. Not sure how much better it is, or what software supports it.

So certainly better duplex quality is achievable. But there may be some licensing, hardware, or software support constraints that have prevented them from becoming more common.

u/archepyx

KarmaCake day33January 26, 2022View Original