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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]

#641

Post by kragen »

meepmorp wrote: post #640
martopix wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the poster, but I don't understand the downvotes: this is exactly right. Higgs was awarded the Nobel after the mechanism he theorized was experimentally confirmed, and that is 100% the reason it took so long.

Right! Einstein didn't get the Nobel because the theory of relativity is awesome, he got it after Eddington observed gravitational lensing during an eclipse, confirming a key prediction. Brilliant theorizing can be both brilliant and wrong.

Einstein got the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum physics, not relativity.

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

#642

Post by slashdave »

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.

> Are String Theorists just Mathematicians?

Umm... well

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

#643

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

canjobear wrote: post #534
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.

I understand the frustration, but a lot of Geoff Hinton's foundational work was based on physics principles. For example https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/1993/file/9e3cfc48eccf8...

Information theory, which is foundational to computing, has some mathematical similarities to statistical mechanics. That doesn't make it physics.

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

#644

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #420
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three off the top of my head: The measurement of the Hubble constant using delay times between multiple images of lensed supernovae. The first transit spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere. The first directly imaged exoplanet. (They could hand out Nobel Prizes in the field of exoplanets like candy.)

Alfred Nobel's stated standard for a prize is: "conferred the greatest benefit to humankind" So while those things are cool and groundbreaking, I'd say they have yet to cross the threshold into "greatest benefit to humankind"

If you define "benefit to humankind" narrowly, and don't view gaining pure knowledge about the workings of the universe as beneficial to humanity, then most physics Nobel Prizes over the last few decades fail the test.

Detecting gravitational radiation from the merger of two black holes was an incredible step forward for our understanding of the universe. It will not practically change your life in any way.

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

#646

Post by [deleted] »

chubot wrote: post #603

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, u…

[deleted]

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

#647

Post by tzs »

pantalaimon wrote: post #277
worstspotgain wrote: post #257

When the most significant advance since electrification needs to hop the fence to be recognized, perhaps it's time to add a new field. It can be done, the Economics prize was added in 1968.

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

That makes it sound like it has no connection to the other prizes.

It's awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who also award the Physics and Chemistry prizes. Its winner is announced with the winners of the original prizes. The winner in included in the annual Nobel Prize Award ceremony in Stockholm, and receives a medal, diploma, and monetary grant award document from the King of Sweden at that ceremony. The Nobel Foundation counts it when they say their are 6 prize categories, and includes its winners on their lists of Nobel laureates.

It only differs from say the Chemistry prize in that it was established in memory of Nobel instead of by Nobel and the prize money doesn't come from Nobel's estate.

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

#648

Post by chx »

I posted https://hachyderm.io/@chx/113272153511607297

> So they gave the Nobel Physics prize to AI bros before honoring another woman. Five women were ever honored so and 221 men.

> This is your regular reminder Wikipedia refused an attempt to create a page for Donna Strickland with "This submission’s references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article" not half a year before she became a Nobel laureate. Katalin Kariko's page was not created until April 27, 2020.

#EverydaySexism #SystemicMisogyny

It got a decent amount of favs and retoots - and no angry responses. Now, when I posted this here, it got flagged.

That tells a hell lot about the people who visit the site. It's a great opportunity to check your own biases. That's why I am reposting it with this note.

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

#649

Post by hxnamer »

chriskanan wrote: post #386

Here is the reasoning: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2024/09/advanced-physicsp... I'm surprised Terry Sejnowski isn't included, considering it seems to be for Hopfield Nets and Boltzmann machines, where Terry played a large role in the latter.

Is this a widely accepted version of neural network history? I recognize Rosenblatt, Perceptron, etc., but I have never heard that Hopfield nets or Bolzmann machines were given any major weight in the history.

The descriptions I have read were all mathematical, focusing on the computational graph with the magical backpropagation (which frankly is just memoizing intermediate computations). The descriptions also went out of their way to discourage terms like "synapses" and rather use "units".

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

#650

Post by naasking »

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

Yes, but non-sarcastically.
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