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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]

#851

Post by bmitc »

tonetegeatinst wrote: post #734
mishaevtikhiev wrote: post #219

My perspective as a PhD in theoretical physics, who's been doing deep learning in the last 4 years: 1. The prize itself makes zero sense as a prize in _physics_. Even the official announcement by the Nobel Prize Committee, taken at a face value, reads as a huge stretch in trying to link neural networks to physics. When one starts asking questions about the real impact on physics and whether the most important works o…

Wdym physicics is stalled? I was told we just need to build larger collider's.

By the same people who guaranteed they'd see certain things at the existing energy levels but now all of the sudden need higher energy levels after they didn't find what they were looking for.

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

#852

Post by [deleted] »

spullara wrote: post #697
whatshisface wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nobel in Physics only goes with experimental discoveries, Peter Higgs didn't get his (deserved since the 70s) until the LHC directly observed the particle. I agree that Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines are a surprisingly arbitrary choices. It is like they wanted to give a prize to someone for neural networks, but had to pick people from inside their own field to represent the development, which limited th…

I've never heard that it had to be tied to experimental discoveries. For example, Feynman got the prize for Feynman diagrams, path integrals and QED calculations. None of that directly tied to experimental work. It has definitely been awarded for both theoretical and experimental contributions throughout its history. Many theoretical physicists have received the prize for their conceptual breakthroughs, even without…

[deleted]

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

#853

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

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.

Upon reading the Hopfield paper back in 1982, I concluded that it's not worth it to pursue a physics career, and more efficient to put the effort into AI research, as at some point the AI will solve all the remaining science problems in a couple of milliseconds. I might have erred by a few decades, but overall seems like we are on track.

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

#854

Post by rramadass »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #574
rramadass wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No; The Nobel Committee has done a complete error in judgement with this. These are Mathematics/CS techniques and nothing whatever to do with core Theoretical/Experimental Physics notwithstanding that they may have been inspired from Physics. There are plenty of Physics Researchers toiling away at real hard problems of the Physical World and instead of recognizing them the Committee has gone with "market fads" which…

I think there has now been enough crossover between Information Theory and Quantum Mechanics, that we can stop splitting hairs between "it's an algorithm on a computer, that isn't physics".

It's not "splitting hairs" but a logical argument. When Pre-Scientific-Age "Natural Philosophy" was partitioned into "Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics" etc. there was an understanding of their boundaries (though technically there are none and everything could be argued to be just Physics) and the Nobel prizes were designed accordingly. Now of course we know better and it might be time to come up with something like "Nobel Prize for inter-disciplinary/cross-disciplinary achievements" with the disciplines listed out. So in this case it would mention Biology/Physics/Mathematics/CS.

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

#855

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

mishaevtikhiev wrote: post #219

My perspective as a PhD in theoretical physics, who's been doing deep learning in the last 4 years: 1. The prize itself makes zero sense as a prize in _physics_. Even the official announcement by the Nobel Prize Committee, taken at a face value, reads as a huge stretch in trying to link neural networks to physics. When one starts asking questions about the real impact on physics and whether the most important works o…

The Hopfield paper was published in a Biophysics section of Proc. NatL Acad. Sci., and was followed by a flood of spin-glass papers in Phys Review A and similar. So there is some connection to physics.

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

#857

Post by pas »

620gelato wrote: post #93
eigenket wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is (very) inaccurate. It feels more like them trying to jump on a "hot topic" bandwagon (machine learning/AI hype is huge). Physics as a discipline hasn't really stalled at all. Fundamental physics arguably has, because no one really has any idea how to get close to making experimental tests that would distinguish the competing ideas. But even in fundamental physics there are cool developments like the s…

> trying to jump on a "hot topic" bandwagon I don't know exactly what they hope to gain by jumping on that bandwagon though; neither the physicists nor the computer scientists are going to value this at all. And dare I say, the general populace associated with the two fields isn't going to either - case in point, this hn post. If there weren't any noble-worthy nominations for physics, maybe skip it? (Although that ha…

There's no need to skip it, there's probably a big backlog from previous shortlists :)

But yeah, they could have passed. That would have been cool.

Also, there's a ton of extremely amazing shit in astronomy, or even photolithography, or simulations of physics (though that's basically what the chemistry prize was this year).

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

#858

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

haunter wrote: post #112
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a tired reply. The peace prize is not part of the same group as the other awards, and a significant difference in the peace award is that intent is awarded not results. The dude who invented the MAD doctrine did not get the award despite nuke deterrance doctrice being related to the least amount of wars in any century since WW2. But his platform of deescalation and his plans for american foregin diplomac…

> This is such a tired reply. The peace prize is not part of the same group as the other awards It’s called a Nobel prize and it was established by the will of Alfred Nobel. So yes it’s the same

Well its the only one selected by Norway instead of Sweden, its also the only one selected on intent and not achievements. So its not the same in important ways

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

#859

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

vasco wrote: post #129
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a tired reply. The peace prize is not part of the same group as the other awards, and a significant difference in the peace award is that intent is awarded not results. The dude who invented the MAD doctrine did not get the award despite nuke deterrance doctrice being related to the least amount of wars in any century since WW2. But his platform of deescalation and his plans for american foregin diplomac…

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The award shouldn't have been given for intentions, before he even did anything. We should not reward promises, but action. Even a long term member of the committee expressed regret in them giving it to Obama.

> Even a long term member of the committee expressed regret in them giving it to Obama.

That is nothing compared to past controversies.

People left the assembly and resigned when it was awarded to Kissinger and Arafat in the past. regret is way milder than calling the receipient a terrorist in the floor of the award ceremony

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

#860

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

mardifoufs wrote: post #313
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a tired reply. The peace prize is not part of the same group as the other awards, and a significant difference in the peace award is that intent is awarded not results. The dude who invented the MAD doctrine did not get the award despite nuke deterrance doctrice being related to the least amount of wars in any century since WW2. But his platform of deescalation and his plans for american foregin diplomac…

He received it before any of that. And Libya does actually cancel every point you mention by the way. Because it's actually not hard to have presidents not start wars at all- both presidents since Obama did just that. And if the real Nobel prize doesn't want the confusion around its name to happen... it should do something about it?

> He received it before any of that.

which is why he got it based on his plans and not his actions

> and Libya does actually cancel every point you mention by the way.

it really doesnt. Lets begin with the main reasons, he was awarded the award for nuclear profileration agreements and a new american policy in the middle east. Lybia is not a nuclear power and its in north africa not the middle east.

secondly the military intervention of Lybia came at the behest of a UN security council resolution that put NATO in charge of securing the no fly zone to prevent Gadafi to bomb his own citizens after he had shot protestors during the arab spring. The NATO mission was led by France. The USA involvement ended the day the UN security council ended the mission despite the new Lybian goverment wanting them to remain. It is not Obama's fault that half the arab world exploded in protests in 2011, or that the UN voted to intervene, or that the French led mission was a bit of a clusterfuck. So no, Lybia does not affect any point I mentioned, or any of the reasons for the comittee to vote for him years earlier.

> it's actually not hard to have presidents not start wars at all- both presidents since Obama did just that.

Trump started a war, Iran just didnt follow through. Killing Soleimani is casus belli and Iran had every right to retaliate against america. The fact they didn't does not somehow exonarate Trump from his actions. That was way more belligerent than any action taken under Obama's 8 years.

Biden did not start any wars but 100% would have intervened if ISIS had begun under his presidency, the same way Obama did. Obama did not start any war against any country, he just had missions in countries america was already in, like Afghanistan, or contributed in international efforts like the Syrian civil war, or lybia intervention after Gadaffi's Un resolution.

His reputation as war mongering is artificial and designed by the same people who told Trump that if you dont test for Covid you get less cases. America started reporting less the drone strikes they carried, but carried them more often under Trump for example. Its the same sleight of hand that people use to say Sweden is worse off because they have more rape cases. They simply report them more often. Obama was more open than further admins on their interventions, that does not make it happen more or less often.

> it should do something about it?

They did not award it to Gandhi and gave it to Kissinger. The fact people still care about that award is bonkers

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