phoenixstrike (u/phoenixstrike)

phoenixstrike commented on A room-temperature superconductor? New developments science.org/content/blog-... · Posted by u/nneonneo

arcticfox · 2 years ago

I am also completely baffled by this! So many stupid mouse-model medical discovery stories over the years and actually zero LK-99 coverage.

It doesn't even matter if it works or not as for whether it's newsworthy; the mystery, human backstory, and Argonne/China/independent scientists jumping to replicate alone is a whole swathe of viable and fascinating topics ready to be published.

The crazy thing is NYT just bothered to publish a story about the Dias superconductor paper retraction; a paper that had never even crossed my radar in the first place because TBH I don't care about superconductors unless they're going to be a huge step change in practical applications, which the Dias "finding" wasn't.

What are they doing?!

phoenixstrike · 2 years ago

Almost all of the stories in major newspapers are commissioned ("pitched") by interest groups that want to see that article published. It's why a lot of articles contain quotes from weirdly specific people with middle-office titles in specific organizations. Journalists aren't cold calling random office workers to get these quotes. An outline of an article is provided, journalists do some minimal fact-checking and write it out into a proper article. Beat writers that cover a specific topic regularly and have made their own contacts in that field are an exception.

phoenixstrike commented on Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real? scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/... · Posted by u/mutant_glofish

bloopernova · 2 years ago

I apologize if I came across as insinuating it was an error, I was just asking you for your assessment of the chances it could be an error.

I'm not well versed in the subtleties of physics experiment measurement, so I figured I'd ask. It's difficult for a layperson to determine which "side" is right when battle lines are drawn after these types of announcements.

phoenixstrike · 2 years ago

I know, I did not think for a moment that you were making such an accusation. I was referring to the other comments on HN/reddit over the past week making those accusations. Sorry if my comment came off that way.

phoenixstrike commented on Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real? scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/... · Posted by u/mutant_glofish

bloopernova · 2 years ago

What do you think the chances are of it being a measurement/instruments error?

Edited to add: I am not a physicist. I don't know the subtleties of measuring experiments, and it was not my intention to state that there was a measurement error. I just wanted to ask someone for their assessment of the chances it was an error.

It's a little depressing that people are so quick to assume the worst of others, but I get why. The online flamewars fought over every announcement of this type would definitely put people on guard. Heck, on the UAP thread yesterday I immediately leapt to snarking about extraordinary announcements being bogus and I feel bad that I probably attacked it for no reason other than to feel cool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36886221

phoenixstrike · 2 years ago

Small. Imperfect contact, unplugged terminals, etc. These are not 1st year grad students who don't know what they are doing. The authors have decades of research and fabrication experience, and publications to back it up. Comments that insinuate it could be those kind of novice mistakes (other comments on HN/reddit, not yours) are frankly insulting and speaks to a profound arrogance in being unable to accept a new discovery.

phoenixstrike commented on Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real? scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/... · Posted by u/mutant_glofish

phoenixstrike · 2 years ago

I am going to attempt to address the common nitpicks in one fell swoop:

1. Rushed publication, plot quality, grammar, etc. Get over yourselves. This is a pre-print for an instant-Nobel, next-tier-of-civilization level discovery. The proper publication will come in due time. Waiting for a more complete verification is a sheltered view. Being first matters. Things changed after the J/Psi discovery in 1974. For those that don't know, Sam Ting discovered it first, yet sat on it for months waiting for a complete verification. Then Richter's group also discovered it months later and Ting was forced to publish at the same time and share the Nobel. This changed the publication attitude in the field significantly. Being first matters.

2. "Terrible science." Again, get over yourselves. Just because the preprint doesn't match your taste specifically doesn't mean it's bad science. You can't satisfy everyone- there will ALWAYS be someone who complains about some missing measurement or plot they view as essential. Most of the time, the 'missing' component is directly related to their own work. In other words, people want to see what they understandd as being important to them, also reflected in other publications. That does not mean it's a valid criticism. It's nitpicking.

The most realistic timeline is 2-3 months for a positive verification. 6 months for a negative verification. If it works, it will be quicker because a positive reproduction needs less work. A negative verification needs to be more thorough and will take more time.

phoenixstrike commented on Looming demise of the 10x developer – an era of enthusiast programmers is ending blog.testdouble.com/posts... · Posted by u/rrampage

phoenixstrike · 2 years ago

Is this satire? I find it difficult to believe this can be serious. If so, this is a sad example of the "i am very smart" culture that is rampant in tech these days.

phoenixstrike commented on Now Reddit are coming for the individual personal subreddits toot.cat/@dredmorbius/110... · Posted by u/dredmorbius

tyingq · 3 years ago

OCR of the notice screenshot:

"We are aware that you have chosen to close your community at this time. Mods have a right to take a break from moderating, or decide that you don't want to be a mod anymore. But active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active.

Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection.

Our goal here is to ensure that existing mod teams establish a path forward to make sure your subreddit is available for the community that has made its home here. If you are willing to reopen and maintain the community, please take steps to begin that process. Many communities have chosen to go restricted for a period of time before becoming fully open, to avoid a flood of traffic.

If this community remains private, we will reach out soon with information on what next steps will take place."

phoenixstrike · 3 years ago

This is one of the most important points IMO that does not seem to be on people's minds. Just because you were the first person to think of making a subreddit about some topic doesn't mean you should perpetually have the power to unilaterally make decisions about the community, its users, and its content.

I am happy this API drama has run the gamut and is now tackling what has always been the true issue head-on: anonymous, first-come first-serve moderators of user communities. I have been on reddit for 15 years. These users have the loudest voice, have historically placed more importance on themselves than there actually is, and have an unhealthy amount of power over the content.

If you've ever been on the wrong side of a power-trip by a moderator, you know what I mean. It's super frustrating to be banned or silenced from a sub because one of the mods didn't like what you said. Here I am, one of thousands of like-minded users wanting to participate in a sub about some topic, but my ability to do so is totally at the whim of this anonymous person who is just another user like me but doesn't have to answer to anyone.

We see time and time again that this power gets into the head of many moderators and they begin to exert personal control over the community. Mod drama on reddit is a taint. "But not all mods are like that." Yes they are, on long timescales. Generalization is useful. Many commenters, here included, miss the big picture. APIs/tools/UI will come and go. Reddit has a large cultural moat and that is a fact. Nitpicking details is petty.

In the context of an upcoming potential IPO, it makes sense for reddit to do the following:

Standardize the subreddits, the rules and terms of use, and consolidate control. Make the reddit experience predictable, not wildly variant at the whims of a handful of mods who control a vastly disproportionate amount of subreddits and content. Replacing mods with AI filters is a prime use case.

I will also look forward to a clampdown on nsfw subreddits. Sexuality is kryptonite to the stock market. And good riddance. Every time I start typing a word on the subreddit search, like 5 different variations of a nsfw sub for that word come up. It's frankly gross. An idea floating around is to jettison the nsfw subs into a separate business that can compete with OF. This is a fine idea.

spez gets a lot of shit for what he says, but at least he's putting his face and name next to his words and taking ownership of them. I don't see any mods or supporters of this 'protest' posting with their name and face. Tells you all you need to know.

phoenixstrike commented on Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes earth.com/news/breakthrou... · Posted by u/webdoodle

idlewords · 3 years ago

The key claim in the paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.12310.pdf) is that there are detectable changes in cosmic ray activity around 15 days before major seismic events. One posited mechanism is that stuff happens deep in the earth that affects the magnetic field first, and then kicks off some big earthquake. But they don't rule out loopier ideas (like sunspot activity driving changes in the Earth's dynamo that then kick off earthquakes).

One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying different binning techniques and delays until they got a signal. I'd love to hear the opinion of someone who knows this field on the soundness of this research.

phoenixstrike · 3 years ago

This is good research.

>One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying different binning techniques and delays until they got a signal.

There is nothing wrong with this. In fact this is how most science is done. This is pure experiment - try things and see what comes up.

You're conflating this step with step three of the general way things have traditionally been done in physics:

1. An experiment shows a previously unexplained phenomena.

2. A theory is made to explain the results and predict the results of a future experiment.

3. A future experiment is undertaken with this theory in mind, to see if it has predictive power. If the predictions are correct, it is a good theory.

Your comment is referring to step three. The experiment in the paper is step one.

phoenixstrike commented on Black holes finally proven mathematically stable quantamagazine.org/black-... · Posted by u/shantanu_sharma

lotw_dot_site · 3 years ago

At a certain point of abstraction, theoretical physics almost never has any direct correlation with empirical reality. It is most often used as a way to give the paradigm lenses that color our thoughts nice little workouts. (One can also apply Wittgenstein's notion of language games here.)

If, by the term "black hole", a person is referring to some object that has the shape of a mathematical point, then it just doesn't make much sense to call it a thing that relates to the world of observation. (The postulates of Quantum Mechanics dictate that physical objects must be fundamentally spread out in the form of wave functions.)

Solutions to simplistic kinds of mathematics come in the form of idealizations called "points". But physical reality is fundamentally spatial, and the necessary maths must involve things like topological manifolds, which brings us directly to the doorstep of String Theory, which is not so much a "theory" but rather a broad category that consists of the entire spectrum of all possible Quantum Field Theories. String Theorists, in fact, are always speculating over the possibility of some given theory's existence, such as when Witten spoke of a mysterious "M-theory" in the mid-90's.

phoenixstrike · 3 years ago

Just plain wrong.

  The postulates of Quantum Mechanics dictate that physical objects must be fundamentally spread out in the form of wave functions.

Even a senior undergraduate knows that QM is not resolved with GR. To quote a QM postulate like this as an argument against point-like objects in reality reveals more about your level of education in physics than anything else.

  At a certain point of abstraction, theoretical physics almost never has any direct correlation with empirical reality.

  Solutions to simplistic kinds of mathematics come in the form of idealizations called "points". But physical reality is fundamentally spatial...

Just so wrong... Empirical reality, as you like to say, specifically in collider physics, tells us that fundamental particles are point-like as far down as we can see.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but you are just being obtuse and passing by with a layman's philosophy and masking your lack of knowledge with stiff sentences.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's not true.

phoenixstrike commented on Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports stdio.sangwhan.com/wtf-ja... · Posted by u/hardmaru

phoenixstrike · 6 years ago

Popular opinion in the US regarding the integrity of various countries' coronavirus reporting is hilarious. Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Meanwhile, nobody is batting an eye at Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers.

Hey guys, maybe China was just having literally the same organizational problems the US is having now leading to underreporting of numbers, back in Jan-Feb when every commenter on reddit and HN were saying China was covering it up.

Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? Anyone who has the slightest awareness of how Japan works knows that this is par for the course. And no, it's not just the government brainwashing the people. The people are complacent in this and defend their government by rejecting criticism and continuing to vote them in office.