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Google's work on Alphafold produced a Nobel prize.
by computerex 2y ago
Google's work on Alphafold produced a Nobel prize.
- soperj 2y ago[flagged]
- computerex 2y agoHow is that even remotely relevant? Besides, work on Alphafold produced a Nobel prize in Chemistry.
- Dylan16807 2y agoThe implication is that "producing a Nobel prize" is not reliably all that impressive.
- seizethecheese 2y agoA hard science Nobel is very different from the peace prize, obviously.
- Dylan16807 2y ago> obviously It's not obvious to me. Care to elaborate? The only one that strikes me as "obviously" different is the Nobel prize that isn't really a Nobel prize, the one for economics.
- margalabargala 2y agoSome people see it as obvious that hard science and politics have glaring differences that makes the meaningfulness of an award for being very good at one or the other very different.
- CSMastermind 2y agoIt is not obvious to me either. I will point out that Physics and Chemistry are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences while the Peace Prize is awarded by a separate Norwegian committee, so it is plausible that one would be more respectable than the other. Literature is a completely different institution as is Physiology/Medicine. The Peace prize and Literature prizes have far more questionable winners in my view than the Physics and Chemistry ones. Economics wasn't added until the 1970s, and has had some extremely suspect winners.
- trashtester 2y agoFor now, this is not so much about being "respectable", as about the prizes given in the Sciences are not so bound to ideology or politics. AlphaFold/AlphaProteo is genuinely a major breakthrough in biochemistry. Now if they start to hand out prices in Physics, say, based on it's importance in promoting some specific ideological agenda, then I would be wary. (For instance if they give the price in Physics for "making the the field of Physics more relatable to transwomen in the Middle East".
- toxik 2y agoThe peace prize isn’t awarded by the Nobel committee either.
- Dylan16807 2y agoHow so? The Nobel committee picks candidates for all the prizes, and the final decisions are split up over four different institutions. The only argument I could see along these lines would be favoring the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in particular, but that would mean that chemistry, physics, and economics count but medicine doesn't count. And that's just confusing.
- toxik 2y agoAh, it is the one in economy that is not actually an official Nobel prize, but a prize in his memory or something like that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econ...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]