4 ms·

I’ve often wondered: Should the number of Nobel prizes awarded scale with the population? There are far more scientists working today than 50 or 100 years ago,

by bagrow 8y ago

I’ve often wondered: Should the number of Nobel prizes awarded scale with the population? There are far more scientists working today than 50 or 100 years ago, and cappping the number of winners makes them more prestigious over time. Perhaps they will become TOO prestigious...

SiempreViernes 8y ago
The fact that they can’t be awarded to a collective rather detracts from the prestige, because for big experiments it is really the collaboratin as a whole that made the discovery and not some guy at the top.
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  That is true for any discovery after the stone hand ax. A "true" discovery that can be ascribed to one person 100% instead of to a network of people working jointly in space and time (the dead are involved too!) needs that person to work without using knowledge as well as any tools created by others (in space as well as in time). Humanity is more like a brain - the secret of our success is in the connections between us (again, in space as well as in time). My own conclusion, but I found this in support: https://youtu.be/jaoQh6BoH3c https://youtu.be/jaoQh6BoH3c ("Henrich is professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.") I also recommend this - and please ignore which concrete product was more or less randomly chosen, it does no matter: "What Coke Contains" - https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke-contains-221d449929ef https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke-contains-221d4499... > The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero. The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero. ... Invention and creation is something we are all in together. Modern tool chains are so long and complex that they bind us into one people and one planet. They are not only chains of tools, they are also chains of minds: local and foreign, ancient and modern, living and dead — the result of disparate invention and intelligence distributed over time and space. ---- Same in business. Each time you hear about an extremely well-paid executive or a "self-made(!!?) billionaire" remind yourself that those people's main "accomplishment" is to live today. How much of the network effects (of the human network in space and in time(!)) does one person "deserve"? I would tell those "self-made" people complaining about taxation that if they go into the deep forest and stop using the human network - which is everybody else (let's even give them access to the dead people's achievements in the form of vast knowledge) - they can keep 100% of the grass and mud huts they manage to create. Humanities wealth and more important its ability to create more of it is almost all network effects. If all the people alive would work a) in isolation and b) without anything they got from previous generations, what would we accomplish? Einstein was a genius, so was Newton. What would they have accomplished a) without the exchange with their peers (network in space), b) without building on prior knowledge (network in time)? So, who deserves that Nobel Prize? That billion dollar empire? I don't mind any of those existing - I'm not an "evil communist". I do mind when people get a bit too excited about "deserving" and "stealing from me" (taxes). Relax and remember that you are one lucky bastard, able to benefit from network effects that you did next to nothing to help create (because most of it was and is created by everybody else). My favorite 5s of Clint Eastwood where he summarizes it for me: https://youtu.be/OuvEJ-U1UDc https://youtu.be/OuvEJ-U1UDc
  - landwint_will 8y ago
    Hey, thanks for writing all that out. I shared your comment with my family and it really made a positive difference in a long-standing disagreement we’ve had. I hope you continue to post your thoughts here.
oldgradstudent 8y ago
Why? do discoveries scale with the number of researchers in the field? Compare the last decade to 1900-1909. How many Physicists were there compared to the many thousands we have now. Maybe they should stop awarding Nobel prizes yearly and award them to significant discoveries instead?
- eesmith 8y ago
  Derek Price's "law of exponential increase" from "Science Since Babylon" (1961) is an observation that there has been an exponential growth of science over a long period of time. The Nobel Prize hasn't had a corresponding growth. The population has also had an exponential growth, so there is a definite correlation. Should some day we reach zero population growth, we'll learn if Price's law breaks down.
  - oldgradstudent 8y ago
    Science as an institution has definitely grown exponentially by any metric: the number of journals, papers, citations, academic positions, administrative positions, PhDs awarded, PhD students. This does not necessarily correspond to growth in real rigorous knowledge about the world. The former is easy to measure, the latter is hard to measure, but is what we should care about.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      Isn't the error rate and the disagreement rate in the latter so high that any attempt to quantify it would end up in flame-wars and bicycle sheds? That is, do you have any point other than to express a sort of personal cynicism? To get back to the topic, do you believe there is less growth in "real rigorous knowledge about the world" being done now than 100 years ago when the Nobel Prize was established? Because I would disagree with that assessment.
      - oldgradstudent 8y ago
        > Isn't the error rate and the disagreement rate in the latter so high that any attempt to quantify it would end up in flame-wars and bicycle sheds? Yes. Still much better than counting papers/journals/conferences/citation/degrees/students/PhDs. > That is, do you have any point other than to express a sort of personal cynicism? I believe that measuring science quantitatively is damaging. It creates a situation where those who game the system do much better than those who do good science. > do you believe there is less growth in "real rigorous knowledge about the world" being done now than 100 years ago when the Nobel Prize was established? Because I would disagree with that assessment. As a lay observer, I'd say that theoretical and particle physics is not advancing very quickly compared to 100 years ago. Late 19th century and early 20th century were magical times - 1905 alone brought special relativity, the photoelectric effect, and E=mc^2 (and that's just Albert Einstein). Other fields, such as the more "mundane" areas of physics saw and still see a lot of progress, but Nobel prizes are rarely awarded there. Medicine had a great period in the first few decades after the war. Nutrition has gone backwards in recent decades. Math, computer science, software, a lot of electrical engineering also saw a lot of progress, but it's irrelevant to the discussion. There's no Nobel prize in those fields. BTW, Einstein never got a Nobel for special or general relativity.
JackFr 8y ago
Alternatively one could cap the number of scientists.

by bagrow 8y ago

SiempreViernes 8y ago

The fact that they can’t be awarded to a collective rather detracts from the prestige, because for big experiments it is really the collaboratin as a whole that made the discovery and not some guy at the top.

ItsMe000001 8y ago
That is true for any discovery after the stone hand ax. A "true" discovery that can be ascribed to one person 100% instead of to a network of people working jointly in space and time (the dead are involved too!) needs that person to work without using knowledge as well as any tools created by others (in space as well as in time). Humanity is more like a brain - the secret of our success is in the connections between us (again, in space as well as in time). My own conclusion, but I found this in support: https://youtu.be/jaoQh6BoH3c https://youtu.be/jaoQh6BoH3c ("Henrich is professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.") I also recommend this - and please ignore which concrete product was more or less randomly chosen, it does no matter: "What Coke Contains" - https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke-contains-221d449929ef https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke-contains-221d4499... > The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero. The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero. ... Invention and creation is something we are all in together. Modern tool chains are so long and complex that they bind us into one people and one planet. They are not only chains of tools, they are also chains of minds: local and foreign, ancient and modern, living and dead — the result of disparate invention and intelligence distributed over time and space. ---- Same in business. Each time you hear about an extremely well-paid executive or a "self-made(!!?) billionaire" remind yourself that those people's main "accomplishment" is to live today. How much of the network effects (of the human network in space and in time(!)) does one person "deserve"? I would tell those "self-made" people complaining about taxation that if they go into the deep forest and stop using the human network - which is everybody else (let's even give them access to the dead people's achievements in the form of vast knowledge) - they can keep 100% of the grass and mud huts they manage to create. Humanities wealth and more important its ability to create more of it is almost all network effects. If all the people alive would work a) in isolation and b) without anything they got from previous generations, what would we accomplish? Einstein was a genius, so was Newton. What would they have accomplished a) without the exchange with their peers (network in space), b) without building on prior knowledge (network in time)? So, who deserves that Nobel Prize? That billion dollar empire? I don't mind any of those existing - I'm not an "evil communist". I do mind when people get a bit too excited about "deserving" and "stealing from me" (taxes). Relax and remember that you are one lucky bastard, able to benefit from network effects that you did next to nothing to help create (because most of it was and is created by everybody else). My favorite 5s of Clint Eastwood where he summarizes it for me: https://youtu.be/OuvEJ-U1UDc https://youtu.be/OuvEJ-U1UDc
- landwint_will 8y ago
  Hey, thanks for writing all that out. I shared your comment with my family and it really made a positive difference in a long-standing disagreement we’ve had. I hope you continue to post your thoughts here.

oldgradstudent 8y ago

Why? do discoveries scale with the number of researchers in the field? Compare the last decade to 1900-1909. How many Physicists were there compared to the many thousands we have now. Maybe they should stop awarding Nobel prizes yearly and award them to significant discoveries instead?

eesmith 8y ago
Derek Price's "law of exponential increase" from "Science Since Babylon" (1961) is an observation that there has been an exponential growth of science over a long period of time. The Nobel Prize hasn't had a corresponding growth. The population has also had an exponential growth, so there is a definite correlation. Should some day we reach zero population growth, we'll learn if Price's law breaks down.
- oldgradstudent 8y ago
  Science as an institution has definitely grown exponentially by any metric: the number of journals, papers, citations, academic positions, administrative positions, PhDs awarded, PhD students. This does not necessarily correspond to growth in real rigorous knowledge about the world. The former is easy to measure, the latter is hard to measure, but is what we should care about.
  - eesmith 8y ago
    Isn't the error rate and the disagreement rate in the latter so high that any attempt to quantify it would end up in flame-wars and bicycle sheds? That is, do you have any point other than to express a sort of personal cynicism? To get back to the topic, do you believe there is less growth in "real rigorous knowledge about the world" being done now than 100 years ago when the Nobel Prize was established? Because I would disagree with that assessment.
    - oldgradstudent 8y ago
      > Isn't the error rate and the disagreement rate in the latter so high that any attempt to quantify it would end up in flame-wars and bicycle sheds? Yes. Still much better than counting papers/journals/conferences/citation/degrees/students/PhDs. > That is, do you have any point other than to express a sort of personal cynicism? I believe that measuring science quantitatively is damaging. It creates a situation where those who game the system do much better than those who do good science. > do you believe there is less growth in "real rigorous knowledge about the world" being done now than 100 years ago when the Nobel Prize was established? Because I would disagree with that assessment. As a lay observer, I'd say that theoretical and particle physics is not advancing very quickly compared to 100 years ago. Late 19th century and early 20th century were magical times - 1905 alone brought special relativity, the photoelectric effect, and E=mc^2 (and that's just Albert Einstein). Other fields, such as the more "mundane" areas of physics saw and still see a lot of progress, but Nobel prizes are rarely awarded there. Medicine had a great period in the first few decades after the war. Nutrition has gone backwards in recent decades. Math, computer science, software, a lot of electrical engineering also saw a lot of progress, but it's irrelevant to the discussion. There's no Nobel prize in those fields. BTW, Einstein never got a Nobel for special or general relativity.

JackFr 8y ago

Alternatively one could cap the number of scientists.