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2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

nobelprize.org

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Re: 2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

#71

Post by SantalBlush »

yati wrote: post #41
blululu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name Computer Science itself is a marketing ploy to convince people that it is a real science (and not just another branch of engineering). Seems to be working for CS, and I can easily imagine people on this forum would be happy to defend the legitimacy of the Swedish Institute of Sciences Nobel Memorial Prize in Computational Science. I think the issue is not an objection to marketing but an objection to the inh…

Much of theoretical computer science is math, like much of modern theoretical physics is also math. “Computational science” brings up images of computational complexity theory, computability, information theory, distributed consensus, type theory etc. So maybe not a marketing ploy.

>Much of theoretical computer science is math

Does that make it a science? I think nobody in this thread is using the same definition of science.

Re: 2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

#76

Post by subtypefiddler »

ckastner wrote: post #12
morita2342 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Granted, the merit of some of the awards is questionable, but I think e.g.: Nash's work on game theory or Kahneman/Tvservky's on the pyschology of judgment definitely fall under the umbrella of "science".

Very interesting examples. For Nash, Von Neumann contributions to the field were orders of magnitude more important. For Kahneman and Tversky let's not forget that the foundations are quite shaky to quote [0]

[0] https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-pe...

Re: 2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

#77

Post by achrono »

igorkraw wrote: post #51
extraduder_ire wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think it's funny that the economics prize is the one that "bought" its way into this prestige. Little to no opinion on what it should be called, personally. The asterisk associated with the name is just what comes to mind first.

I used to do the "it's not a real nobel" take as well when I was young and edgy, and then I realized that Alfred Nobel was just another rich guy buying his way post-mortem prestige*, not even doing so during his life. Even if "most of the applications were civil", with the economic devastation it brought and the undeniable military uses, I'm not sure the "merchant of death" moniker was unearned. So by now, I think th…

The moral burden that Nobel's memory should bear is probably worth debating but we absolutely should take the opportunity to remind ourselves that the Nobel prize (whether the 'actual' one or this riksbanks thing) is one possible prize among many others much lesser known, and that there frequently is highly important research that never wins any notable prize at all. Examples: Freeman Dyson, Gilbert Lewis, Margaret Burbidge -- none of them won the Nobel but won other prizes for arguably equally important work. I'm not even suggesting going 'out there' and mentioning someone like Stephen Wolfram.

The way that the Nobel prize gets referred to in American media sometimes makes me feel like it is an almost religious invocation (except that they do not actually say the words "hallowed" or "blessed") -- if a Nobel laureate has said X is the case, who are you to say X is not the case, etc.

Re: 2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

#78

Post by derstander »

yati wrote: post #41
blululu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name Computer Science itself is a marketing ploy to convince people that it is a real science (and not just another branch of engineering). Seems to be working for CS, and I can easily imagine people on this forum would be happy to defend the legitimacy of the Swedish Institute of Sciences Nobel Memorial Prize in Computational Science. I think the issue is not an objection to marketing but an objection to the inh…

Much of theoretical computer science is math, like much of modern theoretical physics is also math. “Computational science” brings up images of computational complexity theory, computability, information theory, distributed consensus, type theory etc. So maybe not a marketing ploy.

> Much of theoretical computer science is math, like much of modern theoretical physics is also math.

Math is not science - regardless of whether it’s masquerading as computer science or certain branches of theoretical physics.

This makes me sound down on mathematics which I’m certainly not. It’s both useful and can be profoundly beautiful. And it can be an integral tool in science — or studied on its own merits. But it’s not science.

Re: 2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

#79

Post by mekoka »

throw0101c wrote: post #18
morita2342 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It’s a pathetic marketing scheme by a fake science. What makes a science "real" and what makes it "fake"?

Falsifiability, controllability. Most hard sciences study and explain phenomena in an isolated and controlled system. You have well defined input parameters, some starting context, and you observe the output over time. You change your input and/or the context and you note the change in the output. Because the system is controlled and isolated, the experiment, if repeated by a different observer, should in theory give them the same results. From those observations, you can begin to infer what the plausible relationships are between the actors in your experiment and devise your hypotheses. Physics and chemistry for example leave little room to ambiguity. Biology because of factors like aging and mutation has to account for some variance.

But the further away we move from an isolated system and include increasingly unpredictable or difficult to account for inputs or context, the less we can claim to have predictable output. Some nutrition advices for example are questionable, because they aim to give simplistic recommendations based on isolated observations of a phenomenon, that must eventually work as part of a sophisticated synergistic system. Many disciplines currently considered (or disputed) to be science allege to map inputs to output in similarly complex systems. Economy must account for human behaviour, culture, environment, leadership, just to name a few volatile factors (plus a crystal ball for things like COVID-19, remote work, Russia vs Ukraine).

Re: 2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin

#80

Post by derstander »

probably_wrong wrote: post #44
ghaff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically Computer Science was often more associated with mathematics in academia than it was with electrical engineering--depending upon the school. Today, most people would probably agree that it's mostly an engineering discipline, albeit perhaps lacking some of the formal methods and practices that other branches of engineering tend to have. But it was presumably less clear when the term was coined in the early…

> albeit perhaps lacking some of the formal methods and practices that other branches of engineering tend to have. I'd like to point out that this depends heavily on your institution. My CS program had a class literally called "Formal methods", and every student was required to learn formal proofs before their first programming-heavy class (namely, "Data Structures I").

> I'd like to point out that this depends heavily on your institution. My CS program had a class literally called "Formal methods", and every student was required to learn formal proofs before their first programming-heavy class (namely, "Data Structures I").

But compare usage of formal methods and practices in software engineers in a startup (or even well-established company) with engineers designing a bridge, for example.

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