Comment by conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works on The Nobel Prize in physics goes to Geoffrey Hinton for his work in computer science. What?

Out of curiosity, are they using any of his underlying ML techniques to analyze imaging/other data collection before using it in actual physics models?

Well, just about every data analysis technique ever invented has been applied in physics somewhere. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on applying a genetic algorithm to electron-atom scattering in particle detectors, a topic which I recall someone had already tried neural networks on.

That’s what I’m wondering. It’s not wild to give him a prize in physics if his techniques led to advancement in physics.

“CS is applied math, not applied physics” like physics isn’t just applied math to model real world data is kind of weird, especially if his particular math actually got used in physics. That’s pretty much what calculus was.

I don’t think that Donald Knuth deserves a physics prize for inventing TeX, even though TeX was a massive contribution to how we communicate physics.

Knuth should have a special Nobel Prize for Being Donald Motherfuckin’ Knuth.

He did, it’s the Turing Award.

which Hinton had already fucking won

I’m not sure how that’s the same thing.

Typesetting papers isn’t the same as developing mathematical methods that directly enable new solutions.

Providing the medium through which, to a rough approximation, all physics is discussed is, proportionally, a vastly greater contribution than any technique that only applies to a fraction of problems.

But the more salient point is that the Nobel Prize is an institution that we should, as a culture, care less about. And all the more so now, since they are getting in on the hype about an industry that is fundamentally anti-scientific.

From the linked article:

Restricting the Nobel Prize in physics to only three winners in a given year is only one of its problems, though, and Barry Barish is indicative of another. Barish gave a public talk in which he opened the presentation with a slide featuring both racist and sexist imagery.

This was a presentation about LIGO. How? Just fucking how does your INTRO to a project on GRAVITATIONAL WAVES get to be sexist and racist? Did he just casually throw in a slide saying “btw I just hate insert groups here”??

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here’s the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

The Nobel Prize in physics goes to Geoffrey Hinton for his work in computer science. What?(pivot-to-ai.com)

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