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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]

#141

Post by Animats »

drpossum wrote: post #48
sva_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Much of the experimental action in recent decades has been in low energy theoretical particle physics. Down near absolute zero, where quantum effects dominate and many of the stranger predictions of quantum mechanics can be observed directly. The Nobel Prizes in physics for 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, and 2003 were all based on experimental work down near absolute zero.

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

#142

Post by jampekka »

kenjackson wrote: post #127
programjames wrote: post #42

This 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…

Curious, would Peter Shor qualify? I struggle if his work is really just CS or enough physics to be in the discussion.

There were some predictions that Peter Shor could win this year for quantum computation. I'd say his work is a lot closer to physics than Hinton's or Hopfield's.

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

#143

Post by amai »

T-A wrote: post #84

For what it's worth, the "Advanced information" PDF does a somewhat better job of trying to explain the rationale than the linked press release: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2024/09/advanced-physicsp...

Interesting. LeCun, Bengio, Schmidhuber and Hochreiter are (amongst others) also mentioned in this article.

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

#144

Post by lr1970 »

drpossum wrote: post #121
lr1970 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this definition Claude Shannon (the father of Information Theory) clearly deserves a Nobel in Physics. The central concept in Information Theory is Entropy which is defined literally the same way as in Physics. And Shannon's Information Theory clearly revolutionized our life (tele-communications) much more than Hopfield network or Hinton's Boltzmann machine.

Fun historical fact: Claude Shannon did win the Noble prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Noble_Prize#Recipients

In 1939 Claude Shannon won the "wrong" Nobel prize -- The Alfred Noble Prize award presented by the American Society of Civil Engineers [0]. It causes a lot of confusion. Claude Shannon never won a "real Nobel".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Noble_Prize

EDIT: typos

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

#145

Post by mppm »

Ma8ee wrote: post #47
mppm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm probably not the right person to ask, but off the top of my head: superconductivity of high-pressure hydrides; various quantum stuff like quantum computing, quantum cryptography, quantum photonics, quantum thermodynamics; topological phases; rare decays (double beta, etc.); new discoveries in cosmic rays, etc.

My point was that physics is a big and active field, stagnation at the smallest and largest scales notwithstanding. Note also that the Nobel committee is not in any way limited to "newsworthy" stuff and has in many cases awarded prizes decades after the fact.

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

#147

Post by cosmic_quanta »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #100

There's a long backlog of major achievements in physics that haven't gotten a Nobel Prize in Physics . Giving the prize to something that has essentially nothing to do with physics is just a slap in the face to the physics community.

I can only think of major achievements in my (narrow) field of study.

What do you think could have reasonably been awarded?

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

#148

Post by acoupleofts »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #82
Urahandystar wrote: post #25

[flagged]

This is such a tired reply. The peace prize is not part of the same group as the other awards, and a significant difference in the peace award is that intent is awarded not results. The dude who invented the MAD doctrine did not get the award despite nuke deterrance doctrice being related to the least amount of wars in any century since WW2. But his platform of deescalation and his plans for american foregin diplomac…

> The least amount of wars in any century since WW2

:/

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