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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]

#491

Post by Maxatar »

Insanity wrote: post #411
Separo wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the development of deep neural networks took direct inspiration biological neuroscience with neurons and synapses. Neural is even in the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning

I’m actually not sure why this is being downvoted? Is it actually incorrect and if so, where did it take inspiration from?

The downvotes are very unusual to say the least. All the historical material on the subject unambiguously points to neural networks emerging from work done to formalize actual brain neurons. That formalism turns out not to be a great way to explain biological brains but the abstraction it provided proved highly effective for tasks like pattern recognition, classification, and decision making.

So much about computer science has been inspired from other fields such as biology. Polymorphism and object oriented programming, reification, neural networks and in particular convolutional neural networks, genetic algorithms...

If anything, it teaches the value in learning a topic and then applying it directly within computer science. The strength of computer science lies in its ability to adapt and incorporate ideas from other domains to push the boundaries of technology.

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

#492

Post by drpgq »

tombert wrote: post #451
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.

It still kind of baffles me that there isn't a Nobel Prize in Mathematics and/or computer science. The latter makes a bit more sense, computer science wasn't really a thing when Alfred Nobel was around, but mathematics certainly was! It seems like it would be perfectly reasonable to add a category for math, and I think Neural Nets would fit in there considerably better.

I'm surprised someone hasn't done it similar to the economics award that came later.

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

#493

Post by Ma8ee »

amai wrote: post #168
Ma8ee wrote: post #15

I 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.

> Physics as a research subject has ground to a halt Max Planck was told by his professor to not go into Physics because "almost everything is already discovered". Planck said he didn't want to discover anything, just learn the fundamentals.

First, I didn't say that I thought everything already was discovered, but that the fundamental physics community doesn’t discover new things. That is due to how physics research is practiced today and has nothing to do with how much that is left to discover.

Second, even if it obviously wasn't true when Planck was told that almost everything is discovered, it doesn't say anything about the state today.

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

#494

Post by Der_Einzige »

scarmig wrote: post #417
VHRanger wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geoffrey Hinton wins the Nobel prize in physics for giving physics postdocs more reasonable job market options

This prize is more of a settler colonialist land grab by physicists. ML is just a subfield of physics (like every other field), so let's make sure that everyone knows that it's in our domain. Speaking as a onetime physicist now in ML...

Math, Logic, Epistemology, et al are not "subfields of physics" - The other way around is more likely.

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

#495

Post by ecosystem »

Hopfield made substantial contributions (Nobel-contention work) in multiple fields, which is truly astonishing: Kinetic proofreading (biochemistry/biophysics), HopNets (ML), long distance electron transfer (physics), and much more.

Welcome news that he finally got there.

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

#496

Post by stainablesteel »

muratgozel wrote: post #375

Just watched the nobel prize live stream, surprised by the topic, looks very engineering to me rather than physics, do algorithms make physics subsidiary?

i reason it from the perspective that its because they've found a way to make a machine out of bits that no one's ever made before, they're physical objects

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

#497

Post by cwiz »

It seems physics is natural continuation for those who want understand what's behind the curtains after all. Thanks physicists for providing support for AI scientists. Next phase for joint research is quantum AI where one would need expertise in both physics and ML.

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

#498

Post by anonyfox »

dotnet00 wrote: post #469
hillsboroughman wrote: post #406

I wonder if they ever gave a Physics Nobel to a person who held a patent! People like Graham Bell never got recognized by the Nobel people. I get the impression that Physics Nobel prizes were more or less given only to University professors. They didnt seem to particularly care for people with grease on their hands

A post from yesterday, complaining about Musk not receiving a prize despite (according to the author of that post) deserving it, has had me thinking about that too. Folks like Bell, Musk, Bezos etc are in many ways similar to Alfred Nobel, highly successful and very controversial businessmen, where their contributions to the world have had great positives and great negatives. Putting aside the fact that it's also ent…

Currently I'd flat out refuse to give any sort of prize to musk, that could be a tipping point for his mental "stability" completely breaking down. The last few years really had a toll on him. Fallen from idol to conspiracy rightwing idiot crashing his companies more and more.

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

#499

Post by parodysbird »

viraj_shah wrote: post #473
muratgozel wrote: post #375

Just watched the nobel prize live stream, surprised by the topic, looks very engineering to me rather than physics, do algorithms make physics subsidiary?

I am really surprised. I would have guessed that a Nobel Prize would be awarded to advancements in the field itself. Not for inspirations from it or to tools that led to advancements. Although as I write this I'm sure there have been several prizes awarded to scientists / engineers who have developed tools to advance physics. Like radio astronomy? Still surprised though.

Some other recent cases of the prize being given to an engineering contribution:

- 2018 was for chirped pulse amplification, which is most commonly used in medicine (LASIK surgery for example)

- 2014 was for basically for LED lights

- 2010 was for a method for producing graphene

- 2009 was for both charge-coupled device, which is a component for digital imaging (including regular consumer digital cameras), and fibre-optic cables

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

#500

Post by Der_Einzige »

_zamorano_ wrote: post #131
mjburgess wrote: post #85

I'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…

Google scholar rankings of conferences or individuals by H-index or citations is a perfect way for both lay people and academics to measure each others achievements.
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