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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]

#581

Post by ajkjk »

DrillShopper wrote: post #536
an_cap wrote: post #452

An excellent career retrospective by John Hopfield - https://pni.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf321/files/docu... "As an Academy member I could publish such a paper without any review (this is no longer true, a sad commentary on aspects of science publishing and the promotion of originality)."

Yeah, fuck peer review!/s

Everyone's first thought when they read something is whatever the social norms say you're supposed to think (peer review = good, publishing without peer review = not science somehow?), but shouldn't you stop and wonder why the esteemed scientist wrote that line instead of just dismissing it? Otherwise you are only chiming in to enforce a norm that everyone already knows about, which is pointless.

One of the really refreshing things about reading older research is how there used to be all these papers which are just stray thoughts that this or that scientist had, sometimes just a few paragraphs of response to some other paper, or a random mathematical observation that might mean nothing. It feels very healthy. Of course there were far fewer scientists then; if this was allowed today it might be just too crowded to be useful; back then everyone mostly knew about everyone else and it was more based on reputation. But dang it must have been in a nice to have such an unrestricted flow of ideas.

Today the notion of a paper is that it is at least ostensibly "correct" and able to be used as a source of truth: cited in other papers, maybe referred to in policy or legal settings, etc. But it seems like this wasn't always the case, at least in physics and math which are the fields I've spent a lot of time on. From reading old papers you get the impression that they really used to be more about just sharing ideas, and that people wouldn't publish a bad paper because it would be embarrassing to do so, rather than because it was double- and triple-checked by reviewers.

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

#582

Post by FrustratedMonky »

blululu wrote: post #567
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #440

What if I were to tell you that Physics included more than Theoretical Particles? Are experimental Physicist just Engineers? Are String Theorists just Mathematicians? Is John von Neumann not a Physicist because he also worked with Computers? Awful lot of nit-picking in this thread.

Physics is pretty old and it has always been about understanding the fundamental structure of reality. If it doesn’t tell you how it all goes round then it is not physics: plain and simple.

Do physicists know the fundamental structure? They have some mathematical approximations that work for some measurements. They can make some predictions in some areas, but the same approximations break down in other areas. So the fundamentals aren't 'known'.

Some think measurements is engineering. So are the physicist that focus on building an apparatus to measure a theory, they are engineers? So only the theoretical people doing math are physicist? Even thought at that point they are only doing math?

Is Information Theory and Entropy a Computer Science subject or a Physics subject?

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

#583

Post by dawnofdusk »

twic wrote: post #238
nabla9 wrote: post #79

Most commenters here don't know that Boltzmann machines and associative memories existed in condensed matter physics long before they were used in cognitive science or AI. The 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…

So if they used a genetic algorithm, they could have got the prize for biology?

There is no nobel prize for biology

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

#584

Post by etiam »

amai wrote: post #106
noobermin wrote: post #41

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.

How about a "Nobel Memorial Prize in Computer Sciences" similar to the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econ...

Perhaps not a bad idea in that specific instance, but they're so embarrassed today about getting bought for the economics one that doing something similar again has become effectively out of the question (and on a balance I think that's for the best).

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

#585

Post by nabla9 »

dawnofdusk wrote: post #525
nabla9 wrote: post #79

Most commenters here don't know that Boltzmann machines and associative memories existed in condensed matter physics long before they were used in cognitive science or AI. The 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…

Agree completely, being in this field. However, it is weird for the committee to give a prize for theoretical physics without an experiment. It is doubly weird when they already made this "mistake" in 2021 with Parisi, who was the odd one out among the geophysicists, and are giving another prize in spin glass/stat phys... why?

In summary, it's definitely related to physics, but kind of weird choice.

Why David Sherrington and Scott Kirkpatrick did not share the price for the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model? Hopfield is referencing their work?

Multiple theoretical physicists working with black holes (Hawkin's and others) didn't get Nobel, because black holes were not confirmed or theory could not be tested.

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

#586

Post by eigenket »

volkadav wrote: post #91
eigenket wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He unironically should

100% agreed as I can't think of any one individual since(1) who has done as much for all of science and engineering as he ultimately did; alas, they are not awarded posthumously. (1) Newton would be a strong contender on a "for all time" basis, but even he would've probably needed to share it with Leibniz, which would have driven him absolutely ~b o n k e r s~, like wet hornet in a hot outhouse mad, LOL.

von Neumann probably

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

#587

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

DangitBobby wrote: post #550
choilive wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't think machine learning and neural networks have made massive positive contributions to humanity then you are naive.

"Massive" seems overstated. Also doubt that it's net positive.

You're probably only thinking about the modern chatbots when you say that.

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

#588

Post by T-A »

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

"Nakamura holds 208 US utility patents as of 5 May 2020" [1]

He's also a professor though, so maybe that doesn't meet your criteria.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura

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

#589

Post by frotaur »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #494
scarmig wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I also had this view, but thinking a bit more about it, what we consider 'reasonable axioms' in math, all come more or less from our logical intuition. Which was built from our evolution, which respects the laws of physics.

This has changed my point of view to where math is kinda derived from physics, as the axioms (but even the derivation rules, like modus ponens) are chosen because they respect what feels intuitively 'logical'. But this intuition cannot be disentangled from physics, as it was a product of physics.

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