The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science • Hacker News Board

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#21

Post by yahelc » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 8:43 PM UTC

Top19 wrote: post #19

Want to briefly hijack this thread to quickly point out that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics. Literally a Swiss bank made it upon the 70’s and dubiously said their prize was to “honor Alfred Nobel”. They were very forceful and never backed down from the prize, ultimately winning the PR battle and forcing the real Nobel org to sort-of acknowledge them. They did this to originally award distinction…

You're close.

The bank isn't "a" bank, it's a Central Bank.

And it's Swedish, not Swiss.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#22

Post by jawbone3 » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 8:43 PM UTC

Top19 wrote: post #19

Want to briefly hijack this thread to quickly point out that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics. Literally a Swiss bank made it upon the 70’s and dubiously said their prize was to “honor Alfred Nobel”. They were very forceful and never backed down from the prize, ultimately winning the PR battle and forcing the real Nobel org to sort-of acknowledge them. They did this to originally award distinction…

Swiss bank! Top trolling there

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#23

Post by Koshkin » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 8:48 PM UTC

davesque wrote: post #13

Koshkin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uses I am not sure if the discovery of gravitation waves can be of any use to us (other than perhaps stimulate funding for further astrophysics research, that is).

I'm sure many of the early discoveries regarding the sub-molecular structure of matter seemed pretty abstract at first. Then came the atomic bomb.

Speaking of atoms, indeed, as far as the ancient philosophy was concerned, atomism was a rather abstract idea. But the discoveries that confirmed the existence of atoms had been directly stimulated by the chemical research, and further advances in chemistry as well as the industry and medicine critically depended on it. (The atomic bomb, on the other hand, required the discovery of the atomic nucleus - which is a completely different object of study, and nothing about it was "abstract", either.)

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#24

Post by nerfhammer » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

Top19 wrote: post #19

Want to briefly hijack this thread to quickly point out that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics. Literally a Swiss bank made it upon the 70’s and dubiously said their prize was to “honor Alfred Nobel”. They were very forceful and never backed down from the prize, ultimately winning the PR battle and forcing the real Nobel org to sort-of acknowledge them. They did this to originally award distinction…

It was the central bank of Sweden, not some random Swiss bank. It's always been administered by the same Nobel organization. The central bank of Sweden does not have an editorial say in who wins.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#25

Post by Top19 » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

yahelc wrote: post #21

Top19 wrote: post #19

Want to briefly hijack this thread to quickly point out that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics. Literally a Swiss bank made it upon the 70’s and dubiously said their prize was to “honor Alfred Nobel”. They were very forceful and never backed down from the prize, ultimately winning the PR battle and forcing the real Nobel org to sort-of acknowledge them. They did this to originally award distinction…

You're close. The bank isn't "a" bank, it's a Central Bank. And it's Swedish, not Swiss.

You know I briefly wondered as I was writing whether it was Swedish or Swiss but then I was like, “aren’t all the bad banks from Switzerland, aren’t they also just famous for their banks?”.

Thanks for the correction or else I would have been misstating this fact for years, probably in less friendly forums than HackerNews too.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#26

Post by gggdvnkhmbgjvbn » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 8:55 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #18

rhcom2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it can't be awarded posthumously I think it is impossible to divorce it from politics.

Because it's fundamentally about a political objective , I think it's nonsense to even talk about it being divorced from politics, even if it could be awarded posthumously.

It would be funny if the distinction between politics and history was explicitly whether the subjects' life was over. Id love to pedantically say to someone "osama bin laden is part of history now, not politics"

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#27

Post by throwa_way_ » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 8:56 PM UTC

Top19 wrote: post #19

Want to briefly hijack this thread to quickly point out that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics. Literally a Swiss bank made it upon the 70’s and dubiously said their prize was to “honor Alfred Nobel”. They were very forceful and never backed down from the prize, ultimately winning the PR battle and forcing the real Nobel org to sort-of acknowledge them. They did this to originally award distinction…

Nonsense conspiracy theory contradicted by your own wikipedia link.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#28

Post by icebraining » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 8:59 PM UTC

Top19 wrote: post #25

yahelc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're close. The bank isn't "a" bank, it's a Central Bank. And it's Swedish, not Swiss.

You know I briefly wondered as I was writing whether it was Swedish or Swiss but then I was like, “aren’t all the bad banks from Switzerland, aren’t they also just famous for their banks?”. Thanks for the correction or else I would have been misstating this fact for years, probably in less friendly forums than HackerNews too.

You could have read your own link, though.

Also, no, not all the bad banks are from Switzerland, that's just prejudice.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#29

Post by dekhn » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 9:01 PM UTC

xenophonf wrote: post #10

Koshkin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uses I am not sure if the discovery of gravitation waves can be of any use to us (other than perhaps stimulate funding for further astrophysics research, that is).

That's a rather narrow view. Can you imagine what went into building the gravitational wave observatories? Don't you think that's advanced the state of the art with respect to the different kinds of technology, manufacturing, and construction techniques involved? I support biomedical research. We're adopting scientific collaboration tools developed by the high energy physics community and specifically LIGO. These too…

any ancillary benefits that occur as side effects of funding a physics project, could almost certainly have been achieved, without the funding of the physics project. for example, direct investment into disease research is much more likely to have short-term impact.

that's not to say ancillary discoveries with impact outside the original domain don't occur- they're just not as cost effective.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#30

Post by openasocket » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 9:02 PM UTC

colemannugent wrote: post #8

Koshkin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uses I am not sure if the discovery of gravitation waves can be of any use to us (other than perhaps stimulate funding for further astrophysics research, that is).

As I understand it there are four fundamental forces in physics: strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and gravitational force. This discovery of gravitational waves is similar to the discovery of electromagnetic waves that has touched almost every aspect of our lives. I'm sure there will be ways to use this information. Maybe not now, but it certainly might help when humanity eventually looks to…

Not really, gravitational waves are distortions in space-time caused by gravity. They just confirmed something that was predicted by general relativity a century ago. That's a big deal, and I don't mean to sully that achievement, but saying it's as big a deal as the discovery of electromagnetism is really overselling it. Gravitational waves are profoundly difficult to detect and can only be created by monumental celestial events (colliding black holes), it's not going to spark an energy revolution like the study of electromagnetism did.