HN user
What do you mean boring? MOFs are a fascinating area of chemistry. Outside of nature, they are most likely our best example of rationally designed nanoscale systems. In chemistry, rational design - that based on rules - is a rare thing. Molecules bump around and stick together in unpredictable ways, but MOFs allow us to create very well defined nanoscale frameworks. They’re famously tricky, though!
Ok so I am always interested in these papers as a chemist. Often, we find that the LLM are terrible at chemistry. This is because the lived experience of a chemist is fundamentally different from the education they receive. Often, a masters student takes 6 months to become productive at research in a new sub field. A PhD, around 3 months.
Most chemists will begin to develop an intuition. This is where the issues develop.
This intuition is a combination of the chemists mental model, and how the sensory environment stimulates that. As a polymer chemist in a certain system maybe brown means I see scattering hence particles. My system is supposed to be homogeneous so I bin the reaction.
It is often known that good grades don’t make good researchers. That’s because researchers aren’t doing rote recall.
So the issue is this: we ask the LLM how many proton environment in this nmr?
We should ask: I’m intercalating Li into a perovskite using BuLi. Why does the solution turn pink?
Loads of shit in the basement in the chemistry department, physics dept. etc. There's quite a few lead sarcophagus that we've labelled no go ha.
Now repeat this study for meditators. I used to vocalise and the total volume of internal vocalisation decreased with increasing practice. I have a high level of verbal intelligence, so I wonder how this has impacted?
You are completely right. I am a chemist and this isn’t a self indulgent rant but there are those who “get” chemistry and those who don’t. We can teach and train a chemist to work in a lab - but one who groks it? Difficult to create. Sadly, there are scant opportunities for glory in chemistry. Salaries are usually low, issues with mental health are rampant, and it’s generally a career of high suffering. (For a white collar role) Many of us regret our choice, because we all feel like Walter White, funnily enough. Talented, but little to show for it. Most of us don’t start cooking though
So basically half of this is in an indirect form to practice the skills of meditation?
I was taught by J. M. Barrie’s nephew. A wonderful person that had a great impact on my desire to become a scientist despite my earlier failings and shortcomings. He was so well regarded.
Or you could just drop their coffee mug…?
Maybe he conflates discovery with accident. Materials science searches chemical space and makes discoveries. There is no accident in that kind of discovery?
Had the same issue on Reddit recently. Toxibaccin was discovered in soils in 2018. Hell I know someone who developed one recently at a university. It’s AMAZING AI can do this, but it certainly doesn’t destroy prior approaches. Yet.
Disclaimer: spelling and name of antibiotic may be incorrect. It is not my field, and the spelling is phonetic from myself. If pressed, I will ask the scientist for the specific name.
Personally my favourite is a thread here:
https://x.com/uberstuber/status/1736489420466110843?s=46
It probably deserves a HN post of its own!
Author is leveraging mental inflexibility to generate an emotional response of denial. Sure, his points are correct but are constrained. Let’s remove 2 constraints and reevaluate:
1 - Babies learn much more with much less 2 - Video training data can be made in theory at incredible rates
The questions becomes: why is the author focusing on approaches in AI investigated in like 2012? Does the author think SOTA is text only? Are OpenAI or other market leaders only focusing on text? Probably not.
Ok so these are my personal experiences as an “intelligent” scattered ADHD type. Meditation works, exercise works, medication works, talk therapy works, organisational systems work. Organisational systems emerge as a result of effort applied and previously mentioned interventions. Read about your disability and understand it. Learn to understand your own limitations. Medication may be the spring board to form habits that do not cure your ADHD but manage its impact.
Some psychiatrists feel that ADHD is a manifestation of a deep discomfort with societal rules that were forced upon someone from birth, without consent. I feel some truth to this. This paragraph is not advice but speculation.
Hahahahaha. 99% of chemistry is done this way. The term used is 'serendipitous' - aka I accidentally grabbed the wrong bottle. Honestly.
I would say that this type of levitation where it sort of half levitates is quite common. I taught YBaCuO superconductor experiments for a few years. That Meisner effect would get full marks in my institution!
Ha. Old Prof. in my department - primary research on silica is a real stickler for the differentiation of these. Loves berating unsuspecting undergrads that talk of silicone.
Also, our scientific models work well for 90% of stuff - that doesn't mean they reflect the whole at all. Newton thought gravity was a force, Einstein a warping of spacetime. Newton was right - to a point. Was Einstein right - to a point? I'm not a physicist, but I am a scientist. If we accept there are 'aliens' - a lot can be learned in 100 000 years of civilisation. They could be a billion years ahead of us.
My first ever lecture was on magic acid in 2012! Ha. Introductory inorganic chemistry
Yeah I mean this is high-school level chemistry, right?
Hahahahah. Nature. Integrity. Fuck me.
Yeah I mean I guess I’ve just stopped drinking entirely. What’s the point? I used to drink because I was anxious in pubs. Then I stopped. Then I stopped enjoying drunk people. I don’t push my views - but I’m not interested in it any more. I’m in the UK and our drinking culture is vile. I’ve never met a person I liked more drunk. It’s the aggression that gets me.
Absolutely love this. This is actually something I have thought about myself many times. I imagine in future it will be that swarms of idea generating agents running through qualifying agents. Similar to how a human works. The dreams are filtered and tested and inspected by increasingly ‘regulated’ models. Regulation of course being browsing mode and backing up with data. As the funnel narrows the less crazy stuff is output. Are these ideas good ideas?
Read that book by Stutz. The Jonah Hill documentary is on Netflix. Recently I have struggled with burnout lack of motivation etc. there’s a load of metaphors for growth etc that do in a sense make sense
Sorry fellas I was baked. Yeah basically that's the cricket. If solutions they use are higher than those in the 'real world' it's actually a much bigger challenge than one would think at a first pass. Seeking a 1 ppm solution is a milligram in a litre, this is challenging. 200 ppb (this paper) is impressive, and on the cutting edge. Now, in the real world: 1-2 ppb and below that is where the real challenge lies. It's seeking a needle in a haystack, where your real world solution will contain a million other 'competing' species that will be preferentially bound or decomposed by your agent. The agent could be decomposition agent or a sorbent.
By the way this is ridiculously sensationalised. Would love to see the world rid of nonsense chem journalists. They’re operating about 200 ppb at lowest conc. usually we’re looking to remove from a 1 ppb. Low quality journal. The issue with PFAS and them bad bois is the accumulation in body. It’s already low in the environment and doesn’t degrade. So this guy will be all good if we’re sitting at 200 ppb in the environment. If we were at that level I reckon we’d be a lot more cancery. Most of top of my head, please check what I say. I’m not an encyclopaedia but I did research in adjacent areas
Just started using org mode recently. I keep getting pulled into things like obsidian and so on. But then I just cannot logically move from org mode to obsidian. Org mode is so feature complete. It doesn't take long on the learning curve to match the features of other software, and then overtake them. I get distracted by shiny quite easy. It irks me I'm using an IDE for notes only and then code in VS/Vim, but I just not sure I can match the functionality I have in org mode elsewhere. I'd love for someone else to chime in and let me know if I'm ignorant. I don't even mind paying if the solution is good!
Bullshit. Journals select for novelty, this is true. But this is novelty in a trifling fashion, like teaching a dog to roll over. The entire system, at least in the UK is set up to actively discourage risky research entirely. Doing something truly new is discouraged unless you are truly a senior or leader. By then, you've probably lost most of your imagination anyway.
Maybe a misunderstanding on your part but the thesis is usually constructed directly from research papers. In some places you may graduate simply by publication. No thesis required.
Most likely didn't work after 8.5 days
Just to weigh in as a chemist. A high level of skill and patience went into the creation of this. Fluorine is one of the nastiest things youll find in a lab. HF is no joke.