[2bitencryption]

What's even more interesting than the mysteries properties of LK-99 is the kind of response it's brought out. You even see it right here in HN.

Have you ever seen a Youtube video about someone reviewing a Tesla or comparing it to another car? The comments are always full of hostile and vitriolic remarks by people who are personally offended if the video suggests the cup holders on a Model 3 are less than perfection. For some reason, Tesla is surrounded by a cult of personality where it's not just a car, it's a lifestyle.

And bizarrely, something similar is happening with this funny floating rocks. Here we are, on HN, and people in this very thread are calling Nature (Nature!) an "online sensational clickbait magazine" because they want to believe the hype that the rock has properties that they only learned about from Wikipedia a few days prior (and only understood 5% of it, at that)

Is there reason to be excited? Hell yeah. Are all the different replication attempts super fascinating? Hell yeah. Could it be the real deal? It could!

But this has become some weird spectator sport, where you're either a believer or a skeptic, and if you're on a different side than I am then screw you, even if you are Nature.

[Osmium]

> calling Nature (Nature!) an "online sensational clickbait magazine"

Not far from the truth, talking as someone who is in the field. Unlike Science, which is published by AAAS, a non-profit, Nature is a for-profit publication. They have an incentive not to miss out on something huge so that they can retain their status as the place to go for big results, but this also means they have an incentive towards selecting more sensational research for publication. That doesn't mean that research published in Nature is bad--often it is excellent--and I'm sure their editorial staff sincerely try their best, but they often make quite bizarre editorial decisions (personal opinion).

That said, Nature attracts far more scrutiny than other journals because of their ability to make and break careers, so many people feel resentment towards them as a result. Not all criticism of Nature is entirely fair.

No comment on this particular story :)

[dmarchand90]

The important thing to understand is that only the scientific publications in Nature matter. These articles are written by world-class scientists and are taken very seriously. In contrast, the journalism section is akin to any random newspaper. It is generally written by standard journalists and is intended for a mass audience.

[lyapunova]

I hate to say it, but I agree. Nature has outlived its "legit" branding by leaning too hard into the "product" realm. Most scientists don't want their fundamental work to be sold as a product unless it is a precursor to commercialization of their work. At that point, it becomes advertising rather than science.

When I see Nature pubs, I tend to enjoy the aesthetics of the articles, but discount them a bit to account for the mainstream-ness.

[LordDragonfang]

Yeah, I was going to say. I've seen so many (usually legitimate) criticisms aimed at Nature dot com in the past year alone that I saw the domain immediately disregarded the possibility that this should affect my opinions one way or the other.

[alpineidyll3]

... I once had someone in publishing try to offer me nature acceptance in exchange for ... things. The outsized role of these journals in the scientific community when reviews could be done in the open is pretty messed up.

[wolverine876]

>> calling Nature (Nature!) an "online sensational clickbait magazine"

> Not far from the truth

It's very far from the truth; nothing is perfect, but Nature isn't some SEO clickbait. This subthread shows that the reactionary takedowns of everything now even are taking down Nature, of course. They've already discredited much of science, and have a lot of blood on their hands (climate change and vaccines stand out).

[dclowd9901]

> but they often make quite bizarre editorial decisions (personal opinion).

Off-topic, but if this opinion you wrote wasn’t yours, then who else’s opinion were we to assume it would have been?

[s1artibartfast]

LK-99 sensationalism and especially online sensationalism is an excellent example of everything that's bad about rapid communication and the attention economy. A huge number of people suddenly feel a need to have a hot take opinion on cutting edge superconductor research, apparently including nature authors. There's a false sense of urgency around trying to understand a possible discovery that even if true, wouldn't impact anyone's life for many years, and will probably never be relevant to an actual decision they have to make.

Things will pan out or they won't. What's the rush to form an opinion and hop on a hype bandwagon. I'm probably just a curmudgeon, but the whole thing seems to be more about social signaling than anything else.

Maybe I find it so distasteful because I think the hype and jumping to conclusions is antithetical to real science and understanding.

[polishdude20]

So in regular one on one in person conversation, you can show your "presence" by uttering a simple "mmhmm" or "yeah" or "I understand" when someone is telling you something above your expertise. Humans like to be heard even if it's just an utterance. There's nothing like this online though. Imagine if we allowed posts on hackernews where you just say "cool" or "mmhmm". It adds no value to the conversation. So rather than being quiet and being silent or adding no perceived value to the convo, we come up with misguided opinions because "at least someone needs to hear me" is a thought that goes through our minds.

I mean heck, I could have not written this post.

[moolcool]

> Things will pan out or they won't. What's the rush to form an opinion and hop on a hype bandwagon

Because it's fun and exciting watching smart people from around the world collaborate/compete around an interesting and world-changing idea. It's cool and good that many people are invested and interested in science and technology.

[mpsprd]

Something exciting is happening, of course people want be informed as it evolves.

A similar example are election nights. People already voted, the result is in the box, we could simply wait and announce the result.

But seeing the numbers rise like an ongoing fight is going on makes for a more entertaining evening!

[nonethewiser]

There definitely is an attention economy… I would go further and say people are addicted to consuming news.

But this

> A huge number of people suddenly feel a need to have a hot take opinion on cutting edge superconductor research, apparently including nature authors.

I don’t understand. People are going to share their thoughts. Most wont be experts. So what? Is someone supposed to stop this? Are no one but experts supposed to care? Or try and make sense of it?

[ordu]

Recently Nature and Ars published articles about LK-99, and in both cases it seems to me that a) they couldn't allow themselves to keep silence about a hot topic; b) they successfully didn't answer a question is it a real room temperature superconductor or what. They did exactly what I expected them to do, they described the current state of affairs with all its uncertainty.

And based on this I do not think that they felt the urgency to choose an opinion. At least they didn't choose between "yes" and "no".

As for twitter and reddit I personally didn't bother to look what happens there. I see here on HN people who reduces the issue to a question is it a real thing, ignoring issues like the rules of science dictating what must be done before science can reach a conclusion. I believe it is much worse on reddit, where people generally have less insight into how science works as a social institution.

> Maybe I find it so distasteful because I think the hype and jumping to conclusions is antithetical to real science and understanding.

People have a lot of fun generating and watching videos of different levitating objects. They have a lot of fun arguing about these videos. It has nothing to do with science, though they can believe otherwise. I'm ok with that. It is better then when they choose an other topic to agrue. Something from social or political issues is much worser.

[j_maffe]

I don't know why but this comment sort of unveiled to me how much useless hype I had for this topic. Of course you're right, it's just so easy to indeed get this sense of urgency, even though it's not really a good use of time (even for entertainment).

[atoav]

This. My small brother tried to explain to me, an electrical engineer, why this will change the world.

I then had to give him a rundown of things that would need to happen before there ever could be a widespread adoption of the material in common household wiring. First it needs to replicate, then a lot of research has to happen on the properties, then manufacturing processes have to be explored and created, suitable insulator materials have to be found, the price point of the sold wire has to be low enough, ...

Hope for a better future is a good thing, but WHY does it always have to come in the form of technological silver bullets these days? Because then we don't have to change our way of living?

Don't get me wrong, a room temperature, ambient pressure superconductor would be revolutionary and (provided it can be manufactured and used without a ton of hassle) it would transform the world. But it would still probably take two decades and there are so many other fronts on which we as a humanity have failed.

[majani]

This is just people understandably getting excited about a huge discovery. What type of people would we be if such moments didn't get us going?

[macinjosh]

OK, well the rest of us still have opinions and emotions and like to share them with other people, never mind your distaste. But thanks for sharing!

[codebolt]

This guy captured the excitement pretty well:

https://twitter.com/gbrl_dick/status/1685811395273830401?t=z...

[Gibbon1]

> wouldn't impact anyone's life for many years

Might not impact it hardly at all.

[kmac_]

Sensationalism? No way, LK-99 will be part of the EmDrive! /s

[viscanti]

Well the whole argument feels kind of clickbait and premature. Arguing that replication efforts fall short, after less than a week of attempts, feels pretty weird. Why even weigh in on things right now if you're Nature? How many of their best papers have been replicated so quickly (it is approaching zero) or conclusively. It shouldn't be a surprise that the fastest pre-release papers that are attempting to replicate it, are mostly from labs looking for publicity or from people who are just excited. Research teams that need more time for a rigorous replication effort are still working and likely will be for awhile. This is a silly thing for Nature to talk about and it makes them look like they're going the clickbait route to take advantage of the hype around floating rocks.

[klohto]

I wanna smoke what the gatekeepers are smoking. “No, you don’t understand science! It can come only from fancy journals. You cannot test the properties yourself!”. Meanwhile Varda goes brrr.

[a_wild_dandan]

It’s also ironic that a publication so concerned with patience in science is so quick to dismiss experiments “falling short.” Like…it’s been a week. Chill. This is the most public scientific enthusiasm that I’ve seen in years. Let people have fun. Experience wonder and magic and mystery and awe and failure. That’s what science is about.

[jbreckmckye]

There's been a few "over-eager" findings these last few years. Skepticism is warranted; if LK-99 is a superconductor it will still be one after six months' peer review.

[tekla]

Yes, years of training, education, and experience is now "gatekeeping"

[nofunsir]

After the last three years, I think there's plenty of that around to smoke.

[yongjik]

The most bizarre is people who view this as a fight between underdog citizens and established big science, ignoring that the most useful commentaries and replication efforts are coming from universities and big science labs.

(And no, a photo on Twitter of some unspecified speck levitating over an unspecified magnet-looking device posted by an unknown individual does not prove anything. If the topic was anything else, HN would've been filled with "Gah stupid non-technical people, when will they understand that you can't believe everything on the internet?")

[jacquesm]

That's a tricky one. Yes, it doesn't prove anything. But if that same person would show you a battery and an electric light and the fact that the one can power the other you'd have no qualms about saying that that video is real and proof of the existence of electricity because you've already accepted that as a fact and any evidence that confirms it can safely be added to the huge pile that already exists.

But let's just for the moment go back 112 years when your average laboratory was less well equipped than today's lab of mid sized university and people were doing groundbreaking research all over the place. Including superconduction. So we are all less likely to believe the 'underdog citizens' because anything they can do the labs can do that much better. But the underdog citizens apparently excel at marketing themselves, rather than that they excel at science and replication is something they are sometimes quite good at (Nile Red for instance is in that category). So as long as they aren't doing original science I think we maybe should lump them into the 'preponderance of evidence' class and if enough of those unknown individuals all report consistent results then it may count for something, more so if you know one of them yourself and are allowed to inspect the results. But for a global audience it shouldn't hold as much weight as a replication by a well known university with a good reputation, especially if they supply samples for others to test. (Because I think with this substance testing it properly is a lot easier (while still challenging) than manufacturing it properly.)

[scaramanga]

That narrative explains perfectly why this engenders such immediate kneejerk emotional reactions. It's a fly-trap for reactionary crackpots, who are rife in technical circles such as ours.

It's as if it were custom designed for people who believe their technical/scientific genius is overlooked, who are crying out for some validation.

By and large, we are technically skilled people who work in a field where we're wage-slaves for stanford educated billionaire MBA types whose "big idea" that the media drools and fawns over is "a juice-maker, but, like, netflix... somehow" - no wonder we feel like engineers and scientists are this put-upon class with a massive victim complex.

[zamalek]

The issue is that this article shouting "failure" is just as prematurely as the loyalists crying "success." Anger drives clicks and Nature knows that it's angering the loyalists, especially with outright falsehoods in the article:

> graphene, frogs and pliers — can exhibit similar magnetic behaviour.

>

> Frustrated by the atmosphere of hype, some scientists have taken to mimicking the levitation videos with everyday materials suspended by string and other props

Why aren't the scientists levitating frogs above rare earth magnets to make fun of the videos? Because you need superconductor magnet, not a rare earth magnet, to do that. This is a blatant internal inconsistency, and shows that this article is garbage.

Don't trust the loyalists, don't trust the sensationalists, trust science.

[chriskanan]

The author of the article is a freelance science journalist not really an expert in this space, so I think it is reasonably appropriate to be dismissive of their perspective since they aren't a researcher in this space and probably cherry picked the evidence they wanted for their story.

I'm excited by the potential of LK-99 and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a red herring, but I'll wait for the scientific community to sort it out versus paying attention to a non-expert journalist who is weighing in so strongly on the matter this early in the game.

[rootusrootus]

> Tesla is surrounded by a cult of personality

At the risk of going off on a tangent, this is not at all unique to Tesla nor fans of the company. This happens to Apple fans, Google fans, etc. Someone likes something a lot, someone else comes along and is offended by the blind support and decides that they have to hate it in order to bring balance to the world. Ta-da! Now we have two vitriolic groups of people calling the other side a cult or bunch of haters.

Tesla stans are for sure annoying as hell. So are the haters, though. Equally bad, as far as I'm concerned, since neither side has any appreciation for nuance.

[wolverine876]

I think that begs the question. Tesla fans are far more intense and aggressive IME. The difference in degree is everything.

[Accujack]

This is how a lot of religions work, too.

[jrockway]

This is just how humans are. You pick something you like and then you support it fully. Rewind time to 10,000 years ago or whatever. You're out distance-running animals to exhaustion, and your friend trips and breaks their leg. You stop the hunt and carry them back to your village. You go out tomorrow and hunt without them, and give them some of the food you caught anyway. Someone says "man this guy is lazy, let him starve!" They are ruthlessly taunted for going against the group. The broken leg guy recovers and society moves on. It didn't have to be that way. You could have watched someone break their leg and say "that sucks bro, enjoy dying" or you could have gone along with the "this guy is lazy, let him starve!" cries. Both are rational actions that many other species would take, but for humans, evolution didn't favor that. (Probably because an adult human is a pretty big sunk resource cost. 9 months of gestation to have 1 kid!)

The end result is that we still have these instincts. We want to belong to a group to receive its protection if something goes wrong, and we want to support our group so the members know they're getting the protection they crave. The end result is that in a world without life or death consequences at every turn, we naturally apply this to shit that doesn't matter like rocks. Same brain, different problems.

I'll also add, this is what science is. People say stuff. Other people test it. Everyone shares their results. Is there a better system?

[wolverine876]

> This is just how humans are.

It's the choice you make; 'it's just how I am' is a weak defense. It's surprisingly trendy to say bad behavior is inevitable. Human's have been biologically the same for ~300,000 years, but our behavior has changed dramatically. Behavior in different places right now varies greatly.

Also, is there factual or expert basis for this theory?

[orbital-decay]

> people in this very thread are calling Nature (Nature!) an "online sensational clickbait magazine" because they want to believe the hype

This article is not in Nature the academic journal. This is an opinion published in the news section of nature.com the website. Two entirely unrelated things.

(I don't have a horse in this race)

[yorwba]

The article references two kinds of sources: arXiv posts, which get numbered footnotes; and posts on other websites, which get inline links. One of those links is allocated to some guy on Twitter making fun of unconfirmed levitation videos. There are no links to any of those videos.

Clearly, the author considers scientists publishing videos of their work less deserving of attention than making fun of those scientists. I think that reflects badly on their character, and badly on nature.com for hosting it.

(Also, an article published on 2023-08-04 should be able to refer to an arXiv post from 2023-08-03: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.01516 even if they don't like citing videos.)

[namuol]

There’s a real kernel of truth to what you’re saying but don’t you think calling something a “cult” is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy? You’re turning this into an “us vs them” thing when it never should have been one, by your own assessment. There’s no better way to politicize something than to group people based on some reductive binary belief and generalize about said group.

[username332211]

Your reasoning might as well be applied to the Church of Scientology or most Ponzi schemes. Calling those for what they are does make the members close ranks.

[dekhn]

Nature isn't clickbait, but it is not the best journal when it comes to accurately reporting the truth. As we used to joke in grad school, Nature was a great journal to publish the hottest incorrect results, or to write op-eds that influenced old scientists in England.

At the same time I find the incredible enthusiasm and desire to extrapolate the simplest reports into powerful narratives (as a subset of HN people discussing LK-99 do) very depressing. I guess everybody has to go through t heir own Pons and Fleischman or Jessie Gelsinger moments before they understand just how much hype there is in next-gen science.

[danem]

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, or maybe the users on HN have really changed, but having been an HN member for over 10 years now, I cannot recall a time when it was so regularly swamped by people with an almost religious fervor about the topic du jour. Just in the last few months it was third-party reddit apps, and now this. In my eyes, the quality of conversation has degraded markedly with many comments more appropriate for Twitter (how many variations of "We're so back!!" must be posted?).

Of course many people will disagree with me here, but I'd love to see mute functionality added to HN. If there's anything I've learned from Twitter, it's that when a forum gets big enough, proactively moderating your own experience is essential to enjoying it and cut down on the noise.

[jacquesm]

An ignore list would already be pretty good (and I'm sure plenty of people would ignore me :) ). Wasn't there a plug-in for that at one point?

[brucethemoose2]

This is a good problem.

Better to see LK-99 hype in TikTok/YouTube feeds than celebrity gossip or Musk's impulse tweets or whatever. The more science goes around, the better.

[firekvz]

despite all the bad things and random people using it for ego and stuff, its the best thing that can really happen to tech nowadays.

With all the AI/chatgpt news, a bunch of people got involved in what you call "spectator sport", leading to a whole new set of opportunities and growth, people who would never touch a pc or new software related tech, got involved, others invested, other simple became consumers and every single bit of it its good for the market.

Imagine you are a 15 y.o student right now browsing tiktok with no interest in chemistry whatsoever and suddenly you see a video about this superconductor and you get all hyped and next thing you know is that the student who had no interest on chemistry, now is passionate about it.

If all the LK-99 thing is a fiasco, at least we can say that it somehow helped getting the attention of people who would actually keep investigating and maybe do find the actual superconductor we need. And this can be said about every subject like this.

So yeah, I'm okay getting some random people having nonsense internet discussions.

[jbreckmckye]

It is very strange and there must be a deeper reason. I don't know if this is

- Retail shareholders doing grassroots PR

- Some kind of "magical technologism", belief that the rapid technical gains of the 20th century are the natural state of things; unwillingness to accept that future improvements in material science, computer science, chemical science will be more marginal

- Shallow press coverage and overenthusiastic fans who have a disproportionate impact on online discourse

Or maybe all three?

[llm_nerd]

It isn't strange or unique at all. We live in times where people feel they need to have a position on everything. A strongly held belief. A stand. And people feel they need to adopt it early and then make every piece of information fit that selection.

It is destructive. We see it on every topic now, even entirely banal things.

To go back a couple of decades, I remember a high school History teacher bizarre asking the class if they were for or against abortion of all things...it was a very strange class where he was riffing and we were talking about commonly held positions through time. He asked me and I answered that I didn't know enough about the topic, hadn't really thought about it enough, and don't really feel in a position where I should have a stance on it. He laughed and called me a fence-sitter and said I took the coward position. This was a profound experience for me, and it comes to mind in many situations like this.

The whole LK-99 thing looks super neat. I don't have the knowledge, time or inclination to have my ego wrapped in a position on it, and there's absolutely no value or utility in me picking a position, either. I read the updates and it'll turn out however it turns out.

[kortex]

I think it's in no small part because the news has been so dire for the past few years: pandemic, war in Ukraine, possibility of nuclear escalation, China licking lips at Taiwan, climate change, economy.

Then some news comes along also coincidentally with other weird fun news (UAPs) that's not bad in any ways, and may revolutionize society. Of course they are gonna run with it.

[stormfather]

Unwillingness to accept? What evidence do you have that the 20th century was the inflection point in intellectual progress? We have many more brains with much more free time now, not to mention pocket supercomputers, the internet and AI assistance. I expect the pace of discover to increase if anything. Maybe you're just suffering from your perspective of being alive right now, like all those kids on youtube who say past music was so good, because they see a highly filtered and compressed version of the past.

[DC-3]

Simply the desire to live in interesting times.

[FloorEgg]

Maybe there is some major strategic investment deal being negotiated to develop advanced chip fab and it's in someone's interest to confuse the strategy with a potential paradigm shift on the horizon.

[Eji1700]

LK-99 and the UFO hearings have just tanked my already low opinion of so many communities. I know that no matter the field or the training people are susceptible to being overly excited when they're ignorant on a subject, but god it bothers me how much trivial research (ESPECIALLY on the UFO issue) should at least temper expectations if not outright make people more skeptical.

I figured places like HN would be better for that, although not much. Sure seems about the same as the rest of the web. It's just gossip rags for techy people.

What kills me is that LK-99 might actually be a room temp superconductor, but that doesn't mean the straight out crazy beliefs and behaviors were.

[jacquesm]

> What kills me is that LK-99 might actually be a room temp superconductor, but that doesn't mean the straight out crazy beliefs and behaviors were.

I've been trying really hard to keep an even keel but your point is absolutely valid and I'm in equal parts annoyed by people that categorically reject it and by people that blindly accept it. Science just doesn't work that way, you need to be patient and do the work. But I do hope that it works out, and as a fall back position that it turns out that it works out as a superconductor but not one with practical use. Because that would still open the floodgates for the funding that would either create a RT(AP)S or rule out that one is possible to a very high degree of certainty.

[hackinthebochs]

Why on earth is excitement such a nuisance to a certain faction of nerds?

[pyrale]

> (Nature!)

I have no opinion on the topic of LK99, but the nature article posted is not from the world-famous peer-reviewed scientific review, it's from an affiliated science news article.

You are right that there is a lot of hype around that topic, which isn't necessarily warranted, but people would also be right to point out that an article that transform the lack of certainty barely 10 days after the initial article into a reason for doubt is a bit of a clickbait.

I'm all for scientists publishing early, but if the consequence is news organizations and the general public breathing down their necks, I can understand why they don't.

[tigershark]

If, and it’s still quite a big if (although it’s getting smaller and smaller everyday) LK-99 room temperature superconductivity is confirmed Nature reputation should be tarnished forever. They managed to accept not one, but TWO superconductivity papers with one of the authors that was already known for forging results AND they threw in the bin the LK-99 paper. Looking at the ongoing LK-99 story what is basically certain now is that they are not a fraud and something is really going on given the multiple confirmations of very important properties that are trickling down every day. Aside from that I’ve been fascinated with superconductors for decades and, while not a scientist, I think that I’ve a decent knowledge of the current theoretical framework around superconductivity. Given your pretty scathing post, do you understand 5% of the hypothesis around superconductivity or are you just going to side with Nature because of its authority?

[jacquesm]

> Here we are, on HN, and people in this very thread are calling Nature (Nature!) an "online sensational clickbait magazine" because they want to believe the hype that the rock has properties that they only learned about from Wikipedia a few days prior (and only understood 5% of it, at that)

I did not consider this article to be a particularly great sample for inclusion in a new standard of quality. Nature puts out fantastic stuff but this really isn't it, and if anything it surprises me that they would publish it. At the same time I agree with you about the spectator sport angle, that's highly annoying, both from the 'naysayers' and the 'fanatics'.

[screye]

> calling Nature (Nature!) an "online sensational clickbait magazine"

To be fair, Nature is considered a fairly 'sensational magazine' in the Computer Science world.

[gizmondo]

Heard a joke from a biologist: "if it's published in Nature, doesn't mean it's not true".

[cubefox]

That's an article by the News division of Nature, not a research article. The latter is what Nature is famous for, not the former.

[lyapunova]

Well...the way science is supposed to work is that everyone is an optimistic skeptic until something is known for certain. There is generally a correlation between higher PR effort and likelihood of falling short. This probably originates from incentive structures not aligning with being truthful and allowing work to speak for itself. So people have to drum up the excitement before it is warranted.

[aydyn]

> For some reason, Tesla is surrounded by a cult of personality where it's not just a car, it's a lifestyle.

You'd be remiss not to mention the much more virulent cult of anti-personality surrounding Tesla.

[porphyra]

> Have you ever seen a Youtube video about someone reviewing a Tesla or comparing it to another car? The comments are always full of hostile and vitriolic remarks by people who are personally offended if the video suggests the cup holders on a Model 3 are less than perfection. For some reason, Tesla is surrounded by a cult of personality where it's not just a car, it's a lifestyle.

Recently, though, it seems that the pendulum has swung and Tesla haters are far more vocal than the fans.

Anyway, whereas brand allegiance in buying a car is somewhat based in emotional tribalism (modern cars are mostly quite good regardless of brand), the same cannot be said about physical phenomena. With cars, there are decades of car advertisements that appeal to emotions but there have been no ads about superconductors.

[deepnotderp]

I mean the Nature article is basically just the opinions of a bunch of experts.

It’s not to say LK-99 is real, but the Nature article contributes 0 extra information

[jvanderbot]

I've noticed there always an "assembly" period where the inevitable two camps of psychos have yet to form and ideas and hope are floating around everywhere. Then the camps form and who knows what's real, because all available information is skewed by both to support their narrative.

This was especially fun in the early COVID days when it was just data and outbreak tracking. Then it.. well you know.

Science is basically just attempting to delay that calcification, but it happens regardless.

It's been fun learning about this. And I believe it is important and I'm happy people are sharing results mostly without serious bias. So far.

[mlindner]

> The comments are always full of hostile and vitriolic remarks by people who are personally offended if the video suggests the cup holders on a Model 3 are less than perfection. For some reason, Tesla is surrounded by a cult of personality where it's not just a car, it's a lifestyle.

You’re doing the same thing they’re doing. Talking about what a small vocal minority does and then declaring it as representative of a majority. For every person doing as you describe there’s a similar number of people who make it their life mission to attack anything related to Tesla.

[asah]

OTOH, "falls short" is comically absurd after ONE WEEK ! Imagine Nature saying the same thing about a cancer drug ?

The mainstream press is absolutely guilty of clickbaiting this one - instead of lazy "falls short" sorts of headlines, I expect them to talk about the "race to replicate" with infographics showing all the efforts, breaking down what partial-replication means, applications for LK99 depending on what properties its provien to have, and so on.

(i.e. there's plenty of great news to mine here)

[spaceman_2020]

I think part of the cult-like fascination people have with LK99 is the story behind it: two no-name scientists rejected by mainstream academia (one of them denied tenure) working away in the basement of some random building doggedly pursue an idea and pull off a miracle.

It ties into the anti-mainstream, anti-institution sentiment prevalent online - that stuffy, tenured scientists couldn’t accomplish what two randos pulled off with just grit and determination.

[fragmede]

With the third, having corporate backing, leaks the paper without the consent of the other two.

[karaterobot]

The truth is thought by some to be defined by the winning side of an argument. If you can just defeat your opponents and declare victory, you get to say what's true and what isn't. This works in some areas, but physics remains stubbornly materialistic, at least when it comes to experimentation.

[jacquesm]

The natural world doesn't care about eloquence or debating skills. Something is either true, or it isn't. I always very much liked that about physics and various other real world skills. You can't trick your way around nature at all. This is also what I always really liked about computer programming: you can't expect the computer to take the blame for your errors, it's always you when things don't work the way you intended. This can get pretty touch, but the machine is patient, it will point out the error of your ways until you fix it, you can't convince it, you can not reason with it, you can only persist in your search for what is wrong. I love that aspect of the digital world.

[mpsprd]

Any pessimistic/cautious take on a subject bringing excitement and hope for the future is going to be criticized because people want it to be true. This is just confirmation bias at play.

Considering the hype, I actually find HN comments relatively cautious and patient, this is a pseudonymous internet forum after all.

[valianteffort]

I think people are more annoyed than anything. No one really knows where this is going, signs are promising yet the number of obnoxious contrarians who are quick to dismiss the potential is high. They are far worse than people who really want to believe it's real.

[throwanem]

> But this has become some weird spectator sport, where you're either a believer or a skeptic, and if you're on a different side than I am then screw you, even if you are Nature.

Welcome to the Internet in 2023...

[ianai]

Actually it’s great. Sure it’s annoying when people take things too far. But society sorely lacks for interest in science and in general things that make us all better off. I say bring on the enthusiasm and just remind people of the importance of being polite and kind towards one another or at least not mean.

A huge win would be this signaling interest in things that make the world better. Basic research and such rely on public funding and we’d all be better off with more funding going to address such problems than the other places funds go.

[BaseballPhysics]

When it becomes a spectator sport, it's not longer interest in science, it's just wanting to be part of an in-group. Science includes rationality and that's sorely lacking in most of the discourse around LK-99. The average commentary has as much in common with science as the recent unfounded and unsupported hype around UAPs.

[atoav]

My initial comment on that issue which pointed to that fandom was downvoted. I am truly hoping this turns into something as well, but people need to learn to just stand back and wait.

As if physical reality was something that needs to be defended online and the replication won't turn out well if you didn't scold user asshonker3000 foe not believing enough.

And this happened even here on HN, I truly start to loose whatever little faith I had left for humanity.

[newZWhoDis]

> Have you ever seen a Youtube video about someone reviewing a Tesla or comparing it to another car? The comments are always full of hostile and vitriolic remarks by people who are personally offended if the video suggests the cup holders on a Model 3

Uh no? Usually it’s a comment like this at the top and the thread is full of irrational Tesla hate.

[SanderNL]

Except this is not a review. The “other side” is not reviewing, they are just pointing out it’s probably nothing and calling happy people naive, which is the easy and lazy way out.

This is a spectator sport. We aren’t specialists, are we? We are enthusiasts. This is like complaining we are excited about space travel of any kind.

[starfallg]

Nature is a mainstream science publication which aims for a wide audience, so relatively speaking, it is definitely more sensationalist when compared to the top journals in the respective fields.

Not to disagree with your point. Just that Nature is not a good example to illustrate it.

[munificent]

Maybe we just really wish science news would be about something positive after decades of climate doom and global pandemic horrors.

For most of my adult life, any newspaper article that quotes a PhD has reliably been about how we're all fucked.

[cjbgkagh]

Selection criteria bias. I guess I’m in the middle, but I see no reason to comment other than to respond to this to say I haven’t commented… A quick survey of my friends suggest they’re taking a similar wait and see approach.

[rvcdbn]

That’s a super interesting point. I feel like it’s getting at some deep personality trait around optimism/pessimism (or realism as the pessimists would say ;) so perhaps it’s not surprising that it’s so divisive.

[carabiner]

Exactly. It is obvious that the techbros are not cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality.

[downWidOutaFite]

That's way less interesting than a historical scientific discovery.

[pickingdinner]

Nah, LK99 is still more interesting.

There are always 3 sides. The 2 sides, plus the side making observations about the sides.

Social media / internet environment just makes it so for everything. Over it.

[acchow]

> and if you're on a different side than I am then screw you, even if you are Nature.

Identity politics has metastasized everywhere.

[cm2012]

You see this on HN often when advertising comes up. There's a large group of people ideologically against it.

[CyberDildonics]

A third of the links that make it to the front page are ads.

[jacquesm]

Rightly so! ;)

[wolverine876]

> Have you ever seen a Youtube video about someone reviewing a Tesla or comparing it to another car? The comments are always full of hostile and vitriolic remarks by people who are personally offended

So how do you think we can improve that? It's a very serious question - the anger and mis/disinformation on the Internet is doing great harm, has killed millions and may do far more (via vaccine and climate change disinformation, to start).

[djmips]

This comment is as full of emotion as the type of comments it derides

[amelius]

I think we have found the source of the Reality Distortion Field.

[spamizbad]

Sorry pal, but YNGSART[1]

[1] You’re Not Going to Superconduct At Room Temperature

[adamrezich]

not at all surprising—we just spent several years conditioning everyone to believe that any skepticism at all is evil and anti-science.

[EdSharkey]

Dopamine is a helluva drug. Get off social media!

[paulddraper]

Ah I see you've met the Apple community.

[foobar_______]

Thank you for articulating this well. It really is such an odd world we live in nowadays.

[jackmott42]

Welcome to the internet?

[Mistletoe]

Is there a /bestof for HN? Because this belongs there.

[stevenhuang]

it really doesn't

[mycologos]

I understand the sentiment, but I really want HN to stay as free as possible of this low-effort half-conscious meme way of speaking.