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The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#61

Post by eesmith »

I visited Sweden once, during the Nobel Prize award ceremony.

I loved how the ceremony was broadcast on TV, and the scientists, who are famous in their own field, walk the red carpet and are given the (literally) royal treatment for their visit.

I loved the clips where they show the award winners and family visiting places in Sweden - a bit like the background clips they show during the Olympics.

For this brief time, scientists eclipsed actors, athletes, and the other pop culture stars.

'Course that could have been just me. I do like a bit of absurdism.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#62

Post by Draco_Au »

adekok wrote: post #14

I was a collaborator on the SNO project. I worked with Art McDonald, who co-won the 2015 Nobel prize in physics for the project. There were hundreds of people involved. We couldn't have done it without the hundreds of people. While Art was a fantastic guy and a tireless worker, a good chunk of his contribution was management. i.e. A competent manager. He not only understood all of the physics involved, but a good chu…

Certainly not the case with Einstein or Dirac.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#63

Post by likelynew »

lutorm wrote: post #17

Alfred Nobel only wanted to reward people for making discoveries. There are many reasons one can argue that this is counterproductive (Like this article points out, science is not a single-person endeavor, but even more importantly is that it invokes a huge survivorship bias: You only get the prize for being correct , so someone else who did just as important work on another theory that showed that it was not correct…

Are you aware that the rules can be and have been changed many times by the committee?

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#64

Post by SubiculumCode »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #53
SubiculumCode wrote: post #52

Oh My! What a ghastly notion. Of course the prize won't go to THEM, darling. Give the slaves notions, Why! Who'd crunch my numbers? Make my tables done up all pretty; clean and polish my figures? Besides, [Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty Tenure...it is sanctioned by the Journal, from Nature Genetics to Nature Neuroscience...it has existed in all disciplines, has been found among the labs of the highest…

Really? Down votes for some crafted satire and an adaption of Confederate Jefferson Davis's famous quote on slavery?

I am shocked and curious at the number of downvotes for the above satire. I don't think it was horribly executed. I mean I hope they understood it is satire. Or perhaps they don't think that post-docs and graduate students are exploited?

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#65

Post by schoen »

thiagotomei wrote: post #56
schoen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidently ATLAS listed its members alphabetically and CMS listed them by some other criterion (maybe seniority?). However, I would guess that ATLAS got its member list first in the paper by being the alphabetically prior of the two collaborations (!). So, that suggests that you should not only change your name to Aaalweachter, but also be sure to work on the AARDVARK research collaboration. (Or found one if it doesn'…

Hi, member of CMS collaboration here. The author list is ordered: by country name (in English), by town name, by institute name, by author name, by author first name. So, as of this writing, the list starts with authors from Armenia.

It's amazing to have someone just drop by on HN with appropriate expertise to clarify this. Thanks!

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#66

Post by DanBC »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #64
SubiculumCode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Down votes for some crafted satire and an adaption of Confederate Jefferson Davis's famous quote on slavery?

I am shocked and curious at the number of downvotes for the above satire. I don't think it was horribly executed. I mean I hope they understood it is satire. Or perhaps they don't think that post-docs and graduate students are exploited?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289

> I agree with what people have already said, but I think there's one more point to add: people usually over-estimate how funny their own comments are. We have a tendency to think, "This idea of mine is hilarious! And different! Surely this witticism is the exception." And we are usually wrong. When you have N people all doing that, there's a lot of noise.

> I try to gently point this out to people who complain when their attempt at humor has been downvoted by the community. It's not that we don't like humor. We just don't like banal attempts at humor, which becomes noise. Or, put in a less charitable fashion, "You're not as funny as you think you are."

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#67

Post by mkl »

VHRanger wrote: post #60
pipio21 wrote: post #54

For me Nobel prices in Science are one of the things that work better the way they are that most alternatives. Nobel prices in peace are ridiculous. Not talking about (fake) Nobel prices of Economy that do not exist but have managed to buy themselves some recognition because the money printing of central bankers. For me this article is absurd. If you have a better way of giving to science, create your own price with…

> Not talking about (fake) Nobel prices of Economy that do not exist but have managed to buy themselves some recognition because the money printing of central bankers. Name one Nobel prize winner in economics with whom you disagree the awarding and explain your disagreement. Otherwise your comment can be dismissed as another vapid "I disagree with the economics Nobel because the economic science sometimes disagree wi…

There are technically no Nobel Prize winners in economics. I think that's what the comment was talking about. The economics prize is not a Nobel Prize as established by Alfred Nobel, it is the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences [1], established in 1968 by the Swedish National Bank. It is grouped with the others and awarded in the same ceremony, however.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#68

Post by spynxic »

lutorm wrote: post #17

Alfred Nobel only wanted to reward people for making discoveries. There are many reasons one can argue that this is counterproductive (Like this article points out, science is not a single-person endeavor, but even more importantly is that it invokes a huge survivorship bias: You only get the prize for being correct , so someone else who did just as important work on another theory that showed that it was not correct…

> It's not a reward by a government or any community or democratically elected organization where we really have standing to argue that it should be different, it's just a committee trying to follow the century-plus old will of a single person. If we don't like what it does, we don't have to pay attention.

It's apparent that mainstream society sees it fit to uphold the tradition started by Aflred Nobel; so it's worth questioning what exactly is being sought after.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#69

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #66
SubiculumCode wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am shocked and curious at the number of downvotes for the above satire. I don't think it was horribly executed. I mean I hope they understood it is satire. Or perhaps they don't think that post-docs and graduate students are exploited?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 > I agree with what people have already said, but I think there's one more point to add: people usually over-estimate how funny their own comments are. We have a tendency to think, "This idea of mine is hilarious! And different! Surely this witticism is the exception." And we are usually wrong. When you have N people all doing that, there's a lot of noise. > I try to gentl…

[deleted]

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#70

Post by orbifold »

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…

Those things are a question of energy scales. The energy scales at which human life is possible are far (many orders of magnitude) removed from the energy scales at which gravitational waves could be meaningfully used, this won't change in any conceivable future. You would need to be able manipulate black holes to get even the tiny measurable distortions they just found, just by conservation of energy that most likely will forever be out of reach for humans.

The same is pretty much guaranteed for high energy applications of the strong and weak nuclear force like they are being explored by the LHC, although there it is less certain (quark gluon plasmas for example might be useful for something, maybe). Electromagnetic waves on the other hand are very compatible with the energy scales of human life.

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