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"In no case may a prize amount be divided between more than three persons." [1] Sad state of affairs to expect a reward for brilliance and to have science bott
by ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
"In no case may a prize amount be divided between more than three persons." [1]
Sad state of affairs to expect a reward for brilliance and to have science bottlenecked by a merchant of death. Just the fact that the merchant of death gives "peace prizes" should have made the entire affair laughable a long time ago. Perhaps it's time to move on from this ancient and limited understanding of appraisal, awards.
I'm in no position to ever receive a Nobel prize, but I'm fairly certain I am moral enough to reject such a grandstanding award coming from such a troubled tradition. Yes, I just virtue-signalled calling immoral every recipient of the Nobel Prize, mostly out of sheer distaste for the ceremony, but also thinking of the terrible inefficiency which has plagued science and research in the last 122 years. How many discoveries were missed because following the course to unveil them was not "Nobel-worthy". How many scientists had their careers ruined for pursuing the Nobel award without being granted anything. Just the fact that only 1.8% of the Nobel Prize in Physics were awarded to women [2] shows the entire thing as the charade it is, no other context needed.
[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/frequently-asked-questions/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIn%20no%20case%20may%20a%20prize%20amount%20be%20divided%20between%20more%20than%20three%20persons.%E2%80%9D%E2%80%AF https://www.nobelprize.org/frequently-asked-questions/#:~:te...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_Nobel_laureates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_Nobel_laureates
- realjhol 3y ago[flagged]
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago[flagged]
- realjhol 3y ago[flagged]
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago[flagged]
- realjhol 3y agoWhat isn't true? Is both the average and the variance of IQ in men/women identically equal? Why would we even expect it to be? Is the likelihood of risk taking behaviour identically equal between men/women? Why would we even expect it to be? Is the likelihood that a man/women will be identically equally interested in a career in the hard sciences? Why would we even expect it to be?
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago[flagged]
- lulwatbroa 3y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 3y ago[flagged]
- seppel 3y ago> ~50% of the world population are women yet 95% of the prison inmates are male. There are obvious differences on the extreme ends of the spectrum between males and females and the nobel price only considers extremes to begin with.
- Daedren 3y agoYour [2] source only mentions statistics since 2012. It's disingenuous to think this could spread down to 1901 if you wish to use the 1.8% as a point to argue. Society was very different a hundred years ago. Women's access to education amongst other things has improved severely over time, and we do have seen an increase in female Nobel laureates compared to the earlier days. It's a matter of time.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y agoSure, it doesn't spread down to 1901, but the uptick started around 1970s [1]. Anyway, my main rant was about the inefficiency of giving awards to "lone geniuses", at most three, of expecting said "lone wolves" to exist in the first place, and then comes the discussion if the wolves are male or not. Unfortunately it got derailed into talking about pseudoscientific scalars such as IQ and sex binaries. [1] "large scale changes began around the 1970s", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields
- GuB-42 3y agoMost Nobel winners get their prizes during their 60s-70s. It means that people who graduated in the 1970s are just starting to get their Nobels. And the trend of aging winners continues as research become more complex and specialized and therefore requires more experience. The time between theory and the practical discovery (Nobel prizes are only for the latter) increase as experiments become more complex too. So much that it may become difficult for theorists to get a Nobel in their lifetime. That LK99 thing, if real, is more the exception than the rule.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y agoTrue. That's why we probably need another mechanism for incentivizing high-risk/high-reward/multi-decennial research. Perhaps, even if LK99 is not real, something interesting will mutate out of it: some kind of platform merging arXiv, Twitch, Patreon, making the researchers to be more transparent, more willing to share partial results, failures, and even be rewarded to fail. Some time ago had this "fail database" in mind, where one would upload all the data of the experiments that didn't work. I see there is a "FailCon" [1]. [1] http://thefailcon.com/about.html http://thefailcon.com/about.html
- astrange 3y agoThe other replies to this are making terrible arguments. The actual strongest case is that the Nobel prize is only given to extremely old people, which means it reflects the gender ratio of the field a few decades ago and not the current one. Of course, they did give Donna Strickland a prize for the first paper she published as a grad student.
- lulwatbroa 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoPlease don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've unfortunately been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of what they're battling for or against. I've banned this account accordingly. For past explanations on this point see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dang 3y agoWe detached this flamewar tangent from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953091. Can you please not do this? Your post broke several of the site guidelines, including "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y agoNot to worry. I will not comment anymore. Please delete my account.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]