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

nobelprize.org

831–840 of 876 posts

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

#831
post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US had hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground in Iraq for over a decade. More than half a million Iraqis died. There was intense violence between different religious groups and political factions. But you come here and say that everything would have magically gotten better with more US involvement in Syria. A direct American intervention in Syria probably would have made things even worse. Droning Assad, a…

Notice how I specifically talked about Syria and Libya. I (along with a lot of other people) opposed Iraq war as well and it took you to pull it here for lack of consistent argument. Don't see the point arguing with you further. Some day both Putin and Assad are going to be dead and I hope they suffer in their last minutes. I will be cheering while you will be mourning your tyrants.

You argued that the US intervening more heavily in Syria would have prevented all of the human suffering. I'm pointing out to you that the US' other interventions in the Middle East show that the opposite is likely the case.

Just imagine the chaos in Syria if the Sunni extremist groups that the US supported had won. How would the various religious minorities, like the Shiites, Alawites and Christians, have fared? What's the chance that the Sunni extremists would have carried out genocide against religious minorities? It's one thing to say that Assad is a tyrant, but another to say that everything would be better if the US toppled him.

In Iraq, supporters of a US invasion made the exact same argument. "Saddam is a tyrant? Why don't you want to get rid of him?" The US toppled him, and half a million people died as a result.

Your analysis - everything will be better if the US topples tyrants (and realistically, empowers people who might be even worse) - is very simplistic, and has a terrible track record in the real world.

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

#832
post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be that there was some experimental result or other phenomena that required explanation which lead to a theoretical model that could be tested. That worked very well. Now there’s some theoretical considerations that leads to a theoretical model that can’t be tested. It didn’t work for Aristotle and it doesn’t work for string theorists (and similar).

Why doesn't this experimental result count as requiring explanation? We know (for example) silver atoms have mass, and that massive objects exert gravity (which we understand as warping of space-time according to GR). We know that we can put silver atoms in quantum superpositions of being in different positions (for example in a sequential Stern-Gerlach type experiment). We have (essentially) absolutely no theoretica…

Because it's not an experimental result. There are two disparate experimental results, one about superpositions and one about gravity. There's no experimental result about gravity being or not being in superpositions. What will happen to gravity (if there is any) in a double split experiment is pure theoretical speculations.

And I readily admit that it would be interesting to know what would happen. But many decades of more or less convoluted hypotheses has proved to be unfruitful. We need a new way to do fundamental physics, or if possible go back to the old way, because the current one clearly doesn't work.

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

#833
post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an appropriate application of this prize considering the adage that there are now three pillars to science, the third being simulation (after theory and experiment). Also, many of the underlying theories in machine learning display deep analogy with physical laws we are already familiar with, e.g., thermodynamics. Machine learning is much bigger than chatbots.

Finance, biology, CS, anything that uses vaguely statistical models and principles is fair game now? I don’t hate physics, but if you stretch terms like that they tend to lose meaning.

I am having trouble coming up with more examples of "methods which revolutionized the practice of statistics", can you think of any?

Is statistical mechanics not a physics discipline?

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

#834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, blue LEDs were a feat of physics and chemistry mastery.

I'm sure they are but they drive me nuts. If I ever become filthy rich and in doing so sell my soul and become a bad person, one of my priorities will doubtless be to have the blue led inventors hunted down remorselessly.[1] [1] Note to future law-enforcement: I am honestly kidding. I wouldn't hurt a fly, officer.

Veritasium has a great video on the difficult physics of the blue led. Highly recommend if you think it didn't deserve the prize.

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

#835

This is totally bizarre, no precedent for it really. The reality of the prize means that less and less are the winners names every physicist has heard of, but even today they're still big names in each subfield. For e.g. Kosterlitz, Thouless and Haldane weren't exactly household names but they really deserved the prize in 2016. In this case, there's a good argument that Hopfield had conducted strong work as a physici…

The citation has a large section on the impact of DNNs on physics research practice. They cite mega-projects that depend on this tech, for example. Hinton's inventions are a contribution to physics, not a contribution in physics. Hopfield of course was a bone fide physicist.

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

#836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most significant advance since electrification I just don't see how this can be claimed at this point.

Well, society would collapse without computers so I think the description is apt. At best you could argue that they're the same phenomenon, but then you might equally well argue electrification is just the consequence of steam engines.

This prize isn't for inventing computers. It's for some fundamental ANN ideas.

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

#837

This is totally bizarre, no precedent for it really. The reality of the prize means that less and less are the winners names every physicist has heard of, but even today they're still big names in each subfield. For e.g. Kosterlitz, Thouless and Haldane weren't exactly household names but they really deserved the prize in 2016. In this case, there's a good argument that Hopfield had conducted strong work as a physici…

The citation has a large section on the impact of DNNs on physics research practice. They cite mega-projects that depend on this tech, for example. Hinton's inventions are a contribution to physics, not a contribution in physics. Hopfield of course was a bone fide physicist.

I just find that justification really strange - you could have made the same argument about K&R or John Backus because C and Fortran have had enormous impacts on Physics research, much more so than AI has to date.

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

#838
post #581

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…

>shouldn't you stop and wonder why the esteemed scientist wrote that line instead of just dismissing it?

I go to forums like Hacker News and Reddit and regularly see software engineers who are outraged about having to have their code reviewed and even more outraged about actually having to implement feedback from their reviewers rather than receiving a rubber stamp.

I go to work and see the effects on product, team, and world of what would happen if those coders were allowed to bypass supervision.

So no, even someone who is intelligent and good at what they do should have peer review.

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

#839
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…

The methods may be inspired by physics, but they have made no contribution to understanding physical laws or phenomena. It's mathematical/CS work. The connection to actual physical laws or phenomena is even more tenuous than the prize for exoplanets a few years ago. The Nobel prize physics committee has made itself a joke, and probably destroyed the credibility of the prize.

> and probably destroyed the credibility of the prize.

From now on I'll always see it as just another nobel peace prize.

This is beyond ridiculous.

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

#840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's different local prize by the American society of civil engineers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Noble_Prize

Still more of a Nobel Prize than the one for Economics.
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