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.
> 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, thanks to segfaultbuserr for finding the link.
> 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.
Fortunately, observing a levitating fleck of diamagnetic material is far less error prone than measuring heat or neutrons in a messy cold fusion experiment.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
> I read through this thread and I can't help to feel reminded of the discussion about cryptocurrencies.
Same. Some people are simply wired to be perma-skeptics / perma-bears / perma-negative. This community is still full of people who truly don’t grasp how world changing bitcoin is. They are in complete denial, most often parroting unoriginal talking points that they’ve been handed from others.
It’s easier to bypass deep thinking and deep learning and just imitate being an expert. It takes courage to admit being ignorant.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an expert in superconductors. I doubt most people in this thread are. But they are parroting and making ignorant predictions - just like crypto.
I'll not take a personal stance on crypto in this comment, but it's really a stretch to try and compare the two.
No one debates that there are significant and important uses for RTAPS. Lots of people debate if there are significant and important uses for cryptocurrency.
As I said I feel reminded of the discussions, I did not compare this scientific finding to crypto-assets per se. What I did however compare is the way this finding is being discussed in comparison to how crypto-assets have been discussed at a certain point in time.
More specifically I was comparing a specific trait of some actors in both of these discussions (the "I want to believe"-type). I stand behind that observation, although I see how people can read more into my comment, depending on where they are coming from.
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.
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.
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.