"This year’s laureates used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning." Does this mean if I'd use a deep understanding of birds to design way more aerodynamic airplanes, I could get the Nobel prize in physiology/medicine? Don't get me wrong, their work is probably prize worthy, but shouldn't the Nobel prize in physics be awarded for discoveries in the…
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]
#72"This year’s laureates used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning." Does this mean if I'd use a deep understanding of birds to design way more aerodynamic airplanes, I could get the Nobel prize in physiology/medicine? Don't get me wrong, their work is probably prize worthy, but shouldn't the Nobel prize in physics be awarded for discoveries in the…
Hm, they have to fit them into Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, or Peace. I guess physics is the closest they can get without a gross missplacement? (Although you might be able to absue literature for LLMs?)
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#73I 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.
From what I've read (not a professional physicist) string theory is not testable unless we can either examine a black hole or create particle accelerators the size of the Moon's orbit (at least). Many other proposed theories are similar.
There is some speculation that the hypothetical planet nine -- a 1-5 Earth mass planet predicted in the far outer solar system on the basis of the orbits of comets and Kuiper Belt / TNO objects -- could be a primordial black hole captured by the solar system. A black hole of that mass would be about the size of a marble to a golf ball, but would have 1-5g gravity at the distance of Earth's radius.
If such an object did exist it would be within space probe range, which would mean we could examine a black hole. That might get us un-stuck.
If we can't do something like that, maybe we should instead focus on other areas of physics that we can access and that have immense practical applications: superconductivity, condensed matter physics, plasmas / fusion, etc.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#74Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#75I 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.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#76Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#77What bizarre choice. Hinton’s work has nothing to do with physics. Nobel prize jumping on the bandwagon, just like they did for mRNA after covid. At least that was related to medicine. The first 2 paragraphs of the linked pdf read like a joke. Like it’s a parody announcement.
But I agree, this feels like a stretch.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#78As 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 Mathemati…
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#79The Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model of spin glass is a Hopfield network with random initialization.
Boltzmann machine is Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model with external field.
This is price in physics given to novel use of stochastic spin-glass modelling. Unexpected, but saying this is not physics is not correct.