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Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

nobelprize.org

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Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#62
post #18

Next year, the creators of Excel will get the prize, because it is an implementation of the mathematical universe.

You know what, I can support this for its predecessor, Lotus123. If ANNs are worthy of the prize in physics, then so is this

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#66
As a physicist, my reaction to this is how bizarre is that. Maybe he deserves a nobel prize but in physics?

Also arguing that NN is used in physics so we can argue nobel prize is okay is like asking for Stephan Wolfram to be awarded Nobel prize for Mathematica which is much more used in physics as a tool. And he is a physicist and had contributions to the field of numerical relativity (The reason he created Mathematica in the first place).

The royal science academy fucked up so much with this choice.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#67
post #53
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate, which wars did he start? (honest question)

"He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan." https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-pol-obama-at-war/

nah no way. i thought obama kool

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zmIUm1E4OcI

so you can arguably add ukraine crisis to that list

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#68
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate, which wars did he start? (honest question)

Tangential to your question but not the premise of this subthread/post - he became president in Feb 2009 and got the award in October. I don't think he started any new wars, but he inherited some and continued. Anyway, the point here should be the absurdity of a lot of Nobel awards and that stands - especially in his case. I mean Trump was nominated for the award for fuck's sake! More than 2 or 3 times iirc. So anywa…

The Nobel peace prize is awarded by a different institution than the science ones. And there are hundreds of people that can nominate, doesn't mean that a nomination reflects anything upon the committee that awards the prize.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#69
In some sense it makes sense to award AI researchers on behalf of the physics community because I know many physics PhD’s who thank their job to AI; they work as data scientist now.

Jokes aside, physics is a bit stuck because it’s hard to do experiments at the boundaries of what we know, as far as I understand. So then it makes sense I guess to award people who made useful tools for physics.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#70

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.

Computer science has the Turing award and mathematics the Fields medal. Neither is exactly equivalent to the Nobel but they're similar levels of prestige.

The Nobel prize fields and criteria are a bit random, they're essentially just whatever Alfred Nobel wrote in his will.

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