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When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

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Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#81
post #3
post #2

“Couldn’t you have waited until the morning?” “No! The committee is using a poorly designed auction system to disburse the awards and if we don’t both accept the award in the next 70 minutes it will go to Piketty!”

Jokes aside, why is it so important that they reach him at 2:15 AM and can't wait until the next morning?

My guess is to get ahead and be prepared before the onslaught of reporters calling.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.

Oh yeah, try that and I'm dropping any business relationship with you that I have the next morning. Or if I don't, then I'll pay a visit to the local office of our Office of Competition and Customer Protection.

Ah - you're in Europe. In the US that's a very common spam call to receive. It may come from a different number every time and the FCC and FTC (the relevant authorities) can't or won't stop it. I've had it in the middle of the night a couple of times, though I think that's not as common. It's the reason my phone is always on Do Not Disturb now.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#83
post #58
post #45

Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a Nobel. They even have signs "Reserved for Nobel Laureate". As far as I know, Stanford does not. Doesn't Google had the leaders in auction theory now? Would someone please devise a way to run a stock market as a repeated clocked auction, so that prices change, say, once every 5 minutes and high frequency trading doesn't work.

> Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a Nobel. The rich get richer. I remember filling out school and early job applications. I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. It felt like getting a check and being able to cash it more than once.

> I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on.

Achievement and power are runaway positive feedback loops which means we need damping forces to have any reasonable level of fairness where "fair" means reward is proportional to the effort.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#85
post #10
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes aside, why is it so important that they reach him at 2:15 AM and can't wait until the next morning?

Because they have to make the announcement, and as soon as they do, the press start hounding the recipient.

> they have to make the announcement

But why?

Why not wait?

And what if they were planning to refuse it?

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, try that and I'm dropping any business relationship with you that I have the next morning. Or if I don't, then I'll pay a visit to the local office of our Office of Competition and Customer Protection.

Ah - you're in Europe. In the US that's a very common spam call to receive. It may come from a different number every time and the FCC and FTC (the relevant authorities) can't or won't stop it. I've had it in the middle of the night a couple of times, though I think that's not as common. It's the reason my phone is always on Do Not Disturb now.

I'm in the US and I get an incredible amount of spam calls, as well as (before) calls from coworkers about non-urgent things.

I since just have my phone block all calls except those pre-made appointments on my Google calendar, and the number by which people can reach me changes depending on the scheduled hour, all programmed via Twilio.

I have a couple of whitelisted incoming numbers for family/SO and that's it. Everyone else has to make an appointment, or send me an email or instant message which I will usually see within a few hours. I generally tell people that email is the fastest and most reliable way to reach me.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#87
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a Nobel. The rich get richer. I remember filling out school and early job applications. I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. It felt like getting a check and being able to cash it more than once.

> I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. Achievement and power are runaway positive feedback loops which means we need damping forces to have any reasonable level of fairness where "fair" means reward is proportional to the effort.

[deleted]

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#89
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a Nobel. The rich get richer. I remember filling out school and early job applications. I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. It felt like getting a check and being able to cash it more than once.

> I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. Achievement and power are runaway positive feedback loops which means we need damping forces to have any reasonable level of fairness where "fair" means reward is proportional to the effort.

On the other hand, we can afford to give a nice parking space each to Watson & Crick, even if they take it easy down the road. Celebrate the heroes of your field.
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