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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]
#252"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?)
It's definitely not how "they" work. It's not like a committee choosing an achievement across all the fields and then trying to put it into one of the 5 buckets.
We have Turning Award, Fields Award and the other thousands of awards for achievements that can't be categorized as Physics/Biology/Economics/Chemistry.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#253Well, the easiest way to enter the ML field is to pivot from theoretical physics.
Geoffrey Hinton wins the Nobel prize in physics for giving physics postdocs more reasonable job market options
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#254To be fair, Nobel Prize has a history of expanding the traditional bounds of respective fields when awarding the prizes: Bertrand Russel got the Nobel prize in literature Daniel Kahneman got Nobel in economics
Winston Churchill got a Nobel in literature, too.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#255So uh, things are not looking so good for actual physics these days, I gather?
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Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#256I've always sided with Feynman on this, and this proves him right: wtf do these people think they are appointing themselves fit to hand out trinkets and baubles on behalf of global scientific achievement? It brings the award into disrepute, or at least in a Feynman way, exposes the inherent disreputability of awards themselves: who are they to award such a prize on behalf of physics? Awards committees: self-serving s…
Altough of course you're right, let's play devil's advocate an imagine a world without Nobel prices. Laypeople needs a simple way to know who's who in advanced research fields, without Nobel prices (or any other commitee) we don't get to have that. If people gets to ignore (more) such topics, it's likely politicians, and universities react accordingly, and funnel funds to other enterprises. All these prices (I'd say…
>> Laypeople needs a simple way to know who's who in advanced research fields, without Nobel prices (or any other commitee) we don't get to have that.
I think first you're underestimating "laypeople" which seems to include many scientists who are not physicists, and second you are forgetting that many of the scientists the "lay" public knows as the greatest of all times never received a Nobel, or any other famous prize: Einstein, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, etc etc.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#257When the most significant advance since electrification needs to hop the fence to be recognized, perhaps it's time to add a new field. It can be done, the Economics prize was added in 1968.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#258When the most significant advance since electrification needs to hop the fence to be recognized, perhaps it's time to add a new field. It can be done, the Economics prize was added in 1968.
Nice idea. You could also have a Nobel prize in applied mathematics, perhaps? This would cover ML and physics.
That said, your idea would make physicists less outraged.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#259There'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.
> a slap in the face to the physics community The physics community could use a few more slaps in the face, according to many physicists.
The response of the physicists they say should get a slap is, in programming terms, basically shut up and show me the code. It's a fairly one sided debate that we're blessed with seeing in literally every thread anywhere about it
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#260Hinton was never going to win the Nobel Prize while working for Google, right?
> Hinton was never going to win the Nobel Prize while working for Google, right? This conspiracy theory makes no sense. Nobel prizes are awarded based on someone's life's work.
I think calling it a conspiracy theory is a bit of a stretch. I could be wrong. I agree that's how it should be. But I don't get the impression there are lot of fans of Google in the Prize Committee. Either way, it's not something that matters too much. Just a thought.