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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]

#601

Post by kkylin »

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)."

National Academy members still get to pick the reviewers (if they choose to go that route rather than regular submisssion), and the review is not blind. The reviews themselves are not public, but the identities of the reviewers are made public once the paper is out. So members can't just say whatever sh*t they want (and you can imagine some do), but still a highly unusual process.

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

#603

Post by chubot »

I definitely think their work is deserving of awards, but I kinda agree with other commenters in that this says more about the Nobel committee than anything

i.e. Hinton has already won a Turing Award in 2018, and there is no Nobel for computer science

And this work was already recognized to have impact ~12 years ago, when he auctioned his company of 2 grad students to Google/Microsoft/Baidu/Facebook, for over $40M, ultimately going with Google [1]

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i.e. IMO it feels a little late / weird / irrelevant to be giving this award in physics to machine learning research – it doesn’t feel like that would have happened without the news cycle

At least IMO the scientific awards are more interesting when they're leading indicators, not trailing ones -- when they are given by peers, acknowledging impact that may happen in the future.

Because it often takes decades to have impact, and it may occur after the researcher has passed away

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[1] https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Makers-Mavericks-Brought-Faceb... - good book if you’re interested in how technology transfer happened in the last 10-15 years

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

#604

Post by T-A »

dotnet00 wrote: post #180
oefrha wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former high energy theorist here: things are not looking so good for high energy physics (both theoretical and experimental) which loosely speaking accounted for maybe 1/3-1/2 of Nobel Prizes in the 20th century. That’s part of the reason I got out. I’m inclined to say astrophysics and cosmology, another pillar of the fundamental understanding of the universe, isn’t doing that well either, probably in the okayish but…

I think saying they're not looking good might be a bit of an exaggeration. Technological developments in both high energy physics and astrophysics stuff are in-between generations of technology right now, which is why things are a bit slower than usual. With astrophysics, we're probably going to need the more sensitive gravitational wave detectors that are in development to become operational for new big breakthrough…

> With high energy physics, many particle colliders and synchrotron light sources seem to be undergoing major upgrades these days.

AFAIK synchrotron light sources are tools for materials science and other applied fields, not high energy physics. Did I miss something?

I am also puzzled by the "many particle colliders". There is currently only one capable of operating at the high energy frontier. It's getting a luminosity upgrade [1] which will increase the number of events, but those will still be the 14 TeV proton-proton collisions it's been producing for years. There is some hope that collecting more statistics will reveal something currently hidden in the background noise, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[1] https://home.cern/science/accelerators/high-luminosity-lhc

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

#605

Post by tzs »

jfengel wrote: post #468
NlightNFotis wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this written a lot, and I don’t get it. What matters for an award is that people recognise it as a prestigious accolade. The economics prize, while not “official”, is still recognised by everyone in economics as the highest honour in the field. Who cares if it’s “official” or not? Awards and prizes derive their value from their social recognition, which it has a solid amount of, at the very least.

Do they get to go to the ceremony with the other laureates, meet the king, etc? Of course that doesn't matter to anybody else, but I could see it mattering to the laureates themselves.

> Do they get to go to the ceremony with the other laureates, meet the king, etc?

Yes.

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

#607

Post by etiam »

NlightNFotis wrote: post #293
pantalaimon wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the economics prize is not 'official', it was established by the Swedish National Bank in honor to Alfred Nobel.

I see this written a lot, and I don’t get it. What matters for an award is that people recognise it as a prestigious accolade. The economics prize, while not “official”, is still recognised by everyone in economics as the highest honour in the field. Who cares if it’s “official” or not? Awards and prizes derive their value from their social recognition, which it has a solid amount of, at the very least.

The significance is that it's not a Nobel prize. Saying that is simply formally wrong. It's a prize lobbied in (with a hefty donation) almost 70 years after the establishment, trying to raise the status of Economics as a scientific discipline by basking in the reflected glory of the actual Nobel prizes.

You may not care about the distinction, and if so that's your prerogative, but this Memorial prize in Economics, despite sharing in the festivities, is not in the same category and that's what you keep running into seeing pointed out.

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

#608

Post by ars »

ajkjk wrote: post #581
DrillShopper wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

That still exists, they just call them pre-prints and put them on the arxiv.

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

#609

Post by vasco »

Apocryphon wrote: post #524
vasco wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, one of the reasons Obama got the award was his campaign promise of withdrawing from Iraq. Guess who actually did it?

You're mixing up wars.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-promised-withdr...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_...

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

#610

Post by FredPret »

Vecr wrote: post #599
FredPret wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsure of your point - I meant he doesn’t believe in provate property, so the prize money shouldn’t be a factor. If he truly believes what he says he believes.

Because you can use money to do things? Even if you don't want private property after AGI, you need it now.

Believing that you can do a better job of allocating your Nobel prize money than a central authority is free-market thinking.

If he’s a socialist, he should donate all his property to the government, including the entire prize money.

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