phoenixstrike

hace 3 añosdiscuss

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

hace 3 añosdiscuss

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

hace 3 añosdiscuss

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

hace 3 añosdiscuss

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

hace 3 añosdiscuss

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

hace 3 añosdiscuss

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

hace 3 añosdiscuss

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

hace 4 añosdiscuss

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

hace 6 añosdiscuss

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.

phoenixstrike

hace 7 añosdiscuss

It's true. What's the point you're having trouble with?

phoenixstrike

hace 7 añosdiscuss

Oh please. You think saying something like “i dont understand why they keep saying this, but if it were up to me (as a mathematician not a physicist), I would be doing it this way, not that way...” is innocent? Its pretty much textbook passive aggressive condescension.

phoenixstrike

hace 7 añosdiscuss

Because the r2 rule does hold, and it comes from something very fundamental about nature, the principle of least time. R2 comes directly out of the Lagrangian when you minimize the action. Its very fundamental to the universe and all observed phenomena. It has nothing to do with “introducing physical objects that we aren’t actually seeing.”

Why do people on HN so like to make arrogant, spectator judgments on physics like this? The HN crowd is generally contrarian and likes to speak authoritatively on all topics regardless of actual knowledge, but it really seems to take a step up in physics threads. Everyone except the physicists seems like they have thought something original and obvious that the physicists have missed.

The hubris, my god.

phoenixstrike

hace 8 añosdiscuss

How is gentrification negative?

phoenixstrike

hace 8 añosdiscuss

That is the whole point. You're sitting on a (claimed) solution to an unsolved problem in literature. That is antagonistic to science. Publication and collaboration is literally part of the definition of doing "research" or "science." It's not just about solving any unsolved problem out there. If you're not sharing your solution by publishing it and opening it up for examination and discussion in an established forum, it means nothing. Just think, if you had published that solution, maybe someone else would have read it and been inspired by it and thought of an even better solution, or made a connection to another unsolved problem. Or something like that.

It's also very telling that you say you only work on problems that are directly relevant to a software product, and that you chose not to publish because of the time commitment. It seems you only consider the personal gains and sacrifices involved; it's intellectual masturbation. The spirit of research is about something greater than yourself.

You're not a researcher, and you don't conduct research. You are a very good -- excellent -- software engineer.

phoenixstrike

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Fair enough, and for personal ideologies, you are right that it doesn't matter. But I don't think it's a futile conversation to talk about the how one mindset vs another has effects at the collective scale, e.g. when it comes to social development or politics, etc.

phoenixstrike

hace 9 añosdiscuss

I'm sorry, but your response is a perfect example of exactly what I'm talking about, it almost seems scripted.

"What does 'failure' even mean..." Really? Seriously? Failure means admitting and acknowledging that you were wrong, that you things didn't work out the way you expected them to, and taking responsibility for it, instead of treating it as just another tick in a line of never-ending experiences that you "learn" and "iterate" from. I'm not disparaging learning from mistakes, but a more subtle difference: that sometimes you just have to admit that you were totally off course and that the only thing you can learn the situation is that you should throw away everything you thought you knew and go back to square one. You say "pivot" better describes reality? That is the problem. In your worldview, it is acceptable to just change direction in the face of failure. No, sometimes you have to go backwards, and the inability of young people to admit this or understand this is the problem.

I don't even know where to begin with your second point. Suffice it to say that the world is not some cuddly place where everyone is a winner and everyone gets an award for participation. To think otherwise is to live in fantasy -- indeed, a fantasy world where you can always feel good about your life according to your standards.

phoenixstrike

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Read the article and tell me specifically which parts of it communicate something substantive and critical that is also correct. Substantive communication of ideas or dynamics doesn't mean a thing if they are not accurate.

Propagation of false or incomplete ideas is more harmful than no communication at all (IMO).

It's no use to talk of all "intermediate" papers in general, as they are all different. Some are wildly successful at what you describe. I'm only talking about this one.

phoenixstrike

hace 9 añosdiscuss

...including this article, which pivots from Cernovich to Silicon Valley to politics and Trump.

A far more interesting discussion would have been about the rampant neurosis of above-average (nationally speaking) educated young people in tech that rate themselves as being better than they actually are, leading to a deathly fear of failure and accountability (leading to "pivoting"), perhaps (IMO) coming from the psychological reluctance to take a good hard look in the mirror and admit that they are not as good/better than others as they think they are.

phoenixstrike

hace 9 añosdiscuss

I don't think we are in disagreement.

>Don't get me wrong, analogies and novel perspectives can be invaluable learning tools. But they can never be a substitute for the fundamentals, only supplement them.

phoenixstrike

hace 9 añosdiscuss

I agree with your general sentiment regarding making advanced topics accessible. But since you proof-read the article, I hope you are not suggesting that knowledge of Hadamard gates should be considered as "accessible."

In any case, the main reason why I think of this article as "popular science" is because it fails to even attempt to explain quantum fourier transforms in layman's terms. The author even admits that such an explanation is beyond the scope of the article and instead uses the analogy of audio signal processing to draw an analogy between audio signals and QFT, hand-waving at some connection between the two solely by virtue of the fact that both use Fourier transforms. I am sorry, but I have seen this cliche way too many times--that quantum physics and music/audio are somehow intertwined and can be used as analogies for each other, just because of the fact that both can be described as waves? In the end, the most essential part is left unexplained, and only a vague analogy with a more familiar system (audio) is drawn, leaving only an imprint of false understanding. Popular science.

Since QFT is a prerequisite for quantum factoring, in my opinion this article does not explain a thing. Sure, people may become more interested in QI after reading this article, but in that case, let's be honest about what this article is: an advertisement, not an explanation. Show me a macroscopic system that exhibits true wave-particle duality and can be used as an analogy for quantum systems, then I'll take it seriously.