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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

#71

Post by emmelaich »

dragonwriter wrote: post #31
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…

> 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. 1. Swedish, not Swiss. Both start with “Sw”, but, still, completely different countries. 2. And not just some random Swedish Bank, but the Swedish central ban…

> The idea that you seem to be pushing, ...

Interesting, I read it the other way, because of the "sneaked" later.

@Top19 also misspelled Stiglitz.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#73

Post by VHRanger »

mkl wrote: post #67
VHRanger wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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_…

Sure, but he was trying to delegitimize the highest honor in a field of study. The economics Nobel is functionally equivalent to the Fields medal or Turing award, regardless of Alfred Nobel's original intent.

The point is the poster above was trying to diminish the field of study's legitimacy. Reading between the lines of his post he was doing so because of his political leanings, not because he disagreed with any particular contribution of a economics Nobelist's contribution to human knowledge.

We should aspire to be above of such toxic ideologism.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#74

Post by cooper12 »

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…

> On top of that, the Nobel committee is limited by the rules of their foundation

The article address this argument though and says that the Foundation has already stretched the rules.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#75

Post by KGIII »

eesmith wrote: post #61

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,…

When I was a young child, I used to daydream about winning a Nobel. I didn't daydream about winning an Emmy or a Grammy, but I did dream of winning a Nobel. (And Formula 1 championship races, but that's not important right now.)

Do kids today daydream of getting a Nobel? Science was a Pretty Big Deal when I was young. We were just getting started with space exploration and splitting the atom was pretty new. We kids talked about the breakthroughs we would make, when we weren't seriously considering our future career as baseball stars and how we'd enjoy our flying cars and robots.

My kids are all grown, so I can't really ask them what little kids daydream of. The kids my daughter interacts with are probably a bit too preoccupied to think about winning a Nobel.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#76

Post by KGIII »

sleavey wrote: post #55

I agree with parts of the article, that big breakthroughs are rarely these days individual efforts, and that praising only the ones at the top is misleading and potentially damaging; however, as a member of the LIGO collaboration, I think these three guys really do deserve credit for what they've driven over the past 50 (!) years, and all of the work we've been able to do over the years has only been enabled by their…

Well done. Your post embodies and expresses how I expected the majority of fellow scientists responded to this news. I don't want to say that's how they/you should respond, but that's how I hoped you'd respond.

To have even played a small part in LIGO must be an awesome feeling of accomplishment and enable a true appreciation for collaboration with genius.

Congratulations on your (tiny) part. The effort that went into the project is mind boggling.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#77

Post by KGIII »

VHRanger wrote: post #73
mkl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_…

Sure, but he was trying to delegitimize the highest honor in a field of study. The economics Nobel is functionally equivalent to the Fields medal or Turing award, regardless of Alfred Nobel's original intent. The point is the poster above was trying to diminish the field of study's legitimacy. Reading between the lines of his post he was doing so because of his political leanings, not because he disagreed with any pa…

shrugs

I think we should aspire to be above reading between the lines. When we do so, we tend to see that which we want to see, regardless of the author's intent.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#78

Post by altstar »

schoen wrote: post #65
thiagotomei wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

So I understand that you (aka Aaron Schoen Aaltweacher) are now working on AARDVARK in Alaverdi, Armenia.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#79

Post by aaron695 »

The Absurdity of the Academy Awards in the Arts.

Blah, blah, blah, I disagree with some perceived unfairness so it's all crap.

End of the day nothing is perfect, but encouraging people in awards like these push forwards the areas.

You want to push forward Science the Nobel Prize is amazing to encourage people.

You want your own new age everyone gets a prize award, create one.

Re: The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

#80

Post by KGIII »

openasocket wrote: post #30
colemannugent wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cele…

I do wonder if we will ever be able to refine the detection and use it to infer information about distant objects which we can't otherwise observe. If my understanding is correct, the waves should be subtly altered as they pass celestial objects.
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