May be I should know better, but is there no Nobel category for computer science or mathematics? This isn't physics, this is absolutely embarrassing. May be all those bitter elder physicists who didn't get a prize can feel a little justified in their derision of the institution.
Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
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Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#42This is embarrassing. I would say Hopfield networks aren't even very revolutionary in neuroscience, but they're so old I can't tell. In terms of AI... they've been irrelevant for thirty years. I guess you could argue a transformer is a generalized Hopfield network, but of course that's a post-hoc understanding. None of this has anything to do with physics.
So what if an energy function lets you approximate the number of macro-states it can capture? Should every mathematics paper with Lagrange multipliers be put up for nomination? Every poll that uses the law of large numbers, and thus, entropy? Surely the computer scientists building the internet need to be included as well, since their work is based in information theory.
Or maybe, hear me out, we reserve the Nobel Prize in physics for advances in the physical sciences, understanding physical reality or how to bend it to our will.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#43I think this is the Royal Academy of Sciences way to admit that Physics as a research subject has ground to a halt. String theory suffocated theoretical high energy physics for nearly half a century with nothing to show for it, and a lot of other areas of fundamental physics are kind of done.
String theory and the foundations are not the only area of physics. It would be nice for theorists to remember that.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#44[flagged]
Could you elaborate, which wars did he start? (honest question)
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#45So uh, things are not looking so good for actual physics these days, I gather?
Interesting thought. I hear some voices saying theoretical physics is stuck with string theory, but am not really qualified to make a judgement.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#46Imagine how Schmidhuber's feeling right now.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#47I think this is the Royal Academy of Sciences way to admit that Physics as a research subject has ground to a halt. String theory suffocated theoretical high energy physics for nearly half a century with nothing to show for it, and a lot of other areas of fundamental physics are kind of done.
It really has not, though. There is more to physics than high-energy and cosmology, and there is no shortage of deserving contributions of smaller scope. It really is bizarre that deep learning would make it to the top of the list.
Could you give me some examples of areas of fundamental physics that are vital and have done some significant discoveries lately? I genuinely would like to know, because I really can't think of any.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#48So uh, things are not looking so good for actual physics these days, I gather?
Interesting thought. I hear some voices saying theoretical physics is stuck with string theory, but am not really qualified to make a judgement.
Physics is not stuck in string theory as physics is not just high energy theoretical particle physics. There's also more going on in high energy theoretical particle physics than just "string theory".
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#49Honestly, I am stunned by today's Nobel committee announcement. Hinton's Boltzmann machine is a clever construct that nobody, repeat nobody, in the AI and ML is using anymore in actual practice.
EDIT: add minor clarification.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The linked document connects their work to physics as follows: "The Hopfeld network utilises physics that describes a material’s characteristics due to its atomic spin – a property that makes each atom a tiny magnet. The network as a whole is described in a manner equivalent to the energy in the spin system found in physics, and is trained by fnding values for the connections between the nodes so that the saved image…
Then it should be awarded for the result. Given the line of reasoning this has now opened up Alan Turing should be awarded one posthumously in every field.
He unironically should