Hacker News: PlasmonOwl

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025"

PlasmonOwl — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 11:50:04 +0000

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!

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Chemical knowledge and reasoning of large language models vs. chemist expertise"

PlasmonOwl — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 11:40:37 +0000

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?

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "The legacy of Liverpool's forgotten synchrocyclotron"

PlasmonOwl — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 08:41:50 +0000

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.

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Inside The Quiet Mind: The Absence of Inner Speech"

PlasmonOwl — Mon, 13 May 2024 06:47:12 +0000

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?

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Chemists Invent Drugs and Drugs Save Lives"

PlasmonOwl — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 06:52:45 +0000

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

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "About tweaking the fundamental settings of your brain"

PlasmonOwl — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 08:49:58 +0000

So basically half of this is in an indirect form to practice the skills of meditation?

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Never-again Land: J. M. Barrie's My Lady Nicotine (1896)"

PlasmonOwl — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 10:12:43 +0000

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.

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius – Stoicism in Modern Language [video]"

PlasmonOwl — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 14:57:55 +0000

Or you could just drop their coffee mug…?

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Scientists discover new antibiotics using AI"

PlasmonOwl — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 21:44:36 +0000

Maybe he conflates discovery with accident. Materials science searches chemical space and makes discoveries. There is no accident in that kind of discovery?

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Scientists discover new antibiotics using AI"

PlasmonOwl — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 15:25:28 +0000

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.

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Ask HN: Should I medicate my ADHD?"

PlasmonOwl — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 14:11:21 +0000

Personally my favourite is a thread here:

https://x.com/uberstuber/status/1736489420466110843?s=46

It probably deserves a HN post of its own!

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Will scaling work?"

PlasmonOwl — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 14:04:38 +0000

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.

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Ask HN: Should I medicate my ADHD?"

PlasmonOwl — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 12:28:58 +0000

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.

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Alleged Superconductor LK-99 Might Need 'Doping' to Work"

PlasmonOwl — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 15:41:15 +0000

Hahahahaha. 99% of chemistry is done this way. The term used is 'serendipitous' - aka I accidentally grabbed the wrong bottle. Honestly.

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?"

PlasmonOwl — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 20:01:36 +0000

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!

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Silicon, Silica, Silicates and Silicone (1998) [pdf]"

PlasmonOwl — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 07:15:54 +0000

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.

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2023 [pdf]"

PlasmonOwl — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 10:16:19 +0000

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.

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Conjugate Acids and Bases"

PlasmonOwl — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 21:48:14 +0000

My first ever lecture was on magic acid in 2012! Ha. Introductory inorganic chemistry

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Conjugate Acids and Bases"

PlasmonOwl — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 13:41:22 +0000

Yeah I mean this is high-school level chemistry, right?

New comment by PlasmonOwl in "Why Nature will not allow the use of generative AI in images and video"

PlasmonOwl — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 19:07:12 +0000

Hahahahah. Nature. Integrity. Fuck me.