[HN Gopher] When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home
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When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home
Author : compsciphd
Score : 176 points
Date : 2020-10-12 21:08 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| cpach wrote:
| I wonder if any previous Nobel prize recipients also were
| neighbors?
| gumby wrote:
| This is not uncommon -- these stories appear every year. I think
| the three prize committees do it to generate press.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| The thread says:
|
| The #NobelPrize committee couldn't reach Paul Milgrom to share
| the news that he won, so his fellow winner and neighbor Robert
| Wilson knocked on his door in the middle of the night. When
| Robert Wilson rang Paul Milgrom's doorbell at 2:15 this morning,
| Milgrom's wife, who's in Stockholm, received a security-camera
| notification on her phone. She got to watch live as Wilson told
| Milgrom he'd won the #NobelPrize.
|
| The most funny comment on it, in my opinion is:
|
| - Knock, knock
|
| - Who's there?
|
| - Nobel
|
| - Nobel who?
|
| - No bell - that's why I knocked.
| compsciphd wrote:
| also my second favorite comment was along the lines of:
| "apparently, the nobel now has a prize patrol".
| teh_klev wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted, but I found this
| funny, just like the submission. There's sometimes an awful lot
| of po-faced folks on HN, even when the post is funny and
| heartwarming.
| compsciphd wrote:
| agreed, I pondered including that as a comment after my post,
| but figured that be tacky :)
| egh wrote:
| when you win "Not a Nobel Prize" ...
|
| https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/economic-sciences/
| [deleted]
| nabla9 wrote:
| Somebody always comes up with this thinking that nobody else
| knows it.
|
| The Nobel price in economics has much more prestige than two of
| the 'real' prices (Peace price and Literature price). Unlike
| committees for those prices, Riksbank pretty much always
| selects someone deserving the price.
| niij wrote:
| Prize
| tzs wrote:
| It's awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, not by
| Riksbank. Riksbank just created the endowment that funds it.
|
| It is the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the physics,
| chemistry, and economics prizes, the Nobel Assembly at
| Karolinska Institutet for the medicine prize, the Swedish
| Academy for the literature prize, and a committee elected by
| the Norwegian Parliament for the peace prize.
| chki wrote:
| >The Nobel price in economics has much more prestige than two
| of the 'real' prices (Peace price and Literature price)
|
| Prestige is of course somewhat subjective (as is definitely
| the very last part of your comment) but I would strongly
| disagree. Those two prizes are highly regarded and their
| announcements are widely reported. I can for example tell you
| both laureates of those prizes for this year from the top of
| my head but I can't name any other prize holder from the
| other categories. I guess you are projecting your own biases
| here and there is no real pecking order.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Really? In my mind the Peace Prize gets the top billing.
|
| If I knew someone had a Nobel prize in economics, I would
| think they were really smart, and really deep into economics.
| If I knew someone had a Nobel Peace prize, it's almost
| certain that they did something of extreme first hand
| importance to the lives of many.
| rexpop wrote:
| Old boys' clubs patting one another on the back. The Nobel Prize
| is an embarrassment to our species.
| onychomys wrote:
| Well, not just for boys, the two winners in Chemistry this year
| were female.
| recursive wrote:
| Did you just assume my species?
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Awarding a prize for a great scientific achievement is an
| embarrassment to the species? I'm keen on hearing what you
| would prefer.
| melenaboija wrote:
| I am happy to see some humor at the top of hn, the bar is high
| though.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's how we like it in here. If you want to joke on HN, you
| have to put in some work :).
| Uehreka wrote:
| "Couldn't you have waited until the morning?"
|
| "No! The committee is using a poorly designed auction system to
| disburse the awards and if we don't both accept the award in the
| next 70 minutes it will go to Piketty!"
| eindiran wrote:
| Jokes aside, why is it so important that they reach him at 2:15
| AM and can't wait until the next morning?
| lazyant wrote:
| My guess is to get ahead and be prepared before the onslaught
| of reporters calling.
| [deleted]
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's not really "important" in any sense except everyone is
| extremely excited to share the news and his friends and
| family want to celebrate the ultimate capstone to his career
| as soon as possible.
| [deleted]
| timr wrote:
| Because they have to make the announcement, and as soon as
| they do, the press start hounding the recipient.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > they have to make the announcement
|
| But why?
|
| Why not wait?
| dekhn wrote:
| Basically, the announcement is a secret until it happens. It
| happens at a specific time, in Sweden, and they attempt to
| contact the winners at that time with a personal call
| (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/the-nobel-call/).
|
| My cynical side suggests it's done mostly to generate PR. See
| also: https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/receiving-the-
| call-... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/04/scien
| ce/where...
|
| Most scientists joke they wouldn't mind receiving a 2:30AM
| call informing them they won the prize because then at least
| they could go to work in the morning, have some champagne and
| relax because getting grants was going to get a lot easier...
| McKayDavis wrote:
| > Basically, the announcement is a secret until it happens.
|
| I too had thought that this was the case, but it appears
| the press does get at least some advance notice. Last
| Wednesday Jennifer Doudna found that she had won the 2020
| Nobel Prize in Chemistry in a phone call from a reporter.
| Ref: paragraph 7 of [1]:
|
| > At a press briefing today, Doudna noted she was asleep
| and missed the initial calls from Sweden, only waking up to
| answer the phone finally when a Nature reporter called.
| "She wanted to know if I could comment on the Nobel and I
| said, Well, who won it? And she was shocked that she was
| the person to tell me."
|
| [1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/crispr-
| revolutionary...
| dekhn wrote:
| Sounds like Doudna had her phone muted during the night.
| Apparently some phones do that.
| ghaff wrote:
| My phone is set to Do Not Disturb from 10-7 or something
| like that. Although I think repeated calls (or calls from
| my contacts) go through. Otherwise, during normal times,
| I'd get woken up in the middle of the night with junk
| calls when traveling.
| vilhelm_s wrote:
| The announcement is given at a press conference, so the
| reporters learn it at that time. The link above says that
| they try to call the winners a few minutes before it is
| announced at the press conference, but like your quote
| says, Doudna missed that call because she was sleeping.
| kingbirdy wrote:
| That doesn't contract it being a secret beforehand,
| though, or indicate journalists are given advance
| knowledge. It sounds like the timeline was:
|
| 1. They fail to contact Doudna to inform her she's a
| winner
|
| 2. They publicly announce she's a winner
|
| 3. Journalist calls to ask her about it
| dheera wrote:
| I put my phone in airplane mode at night. Don't a lot of
| people do that? What are they thinking?
| dekhn wrote:
| A lot of phone behavior has changed since this tradition
| got started. When it did, people typically had a landline
| in their bedroom, which seldom rang at night.
| philistine wrote:
| Are you expecting to win a Nobel soon? Perhaps it is not
| a problem for you, but a high-profile scientist has to
| think about those things. That's part if the minutiae of
| their existence.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cxr wrote:
| I don't. That sounds like an anti-solution, i.e.,
| something that seems to solve a problem, doesn't, but
| does create new ones. Is there a real problem that it
| does solve? Is there a geographic/cultural aspect to it?
| dheera wrote:
| Interrupted sleep, and sleeping next to an EM radiation
| source. I don't care what they say, cell phones haven't
| been around long enough for us to know whether or not
| there are long term effects.
|
| Also I tend to charge my phone during the daytime so at
| night I just put it in airplane mode to conserve
| batteries and make sure it can pull itself through the
| night to be able to sound the alarm in the morning. The
| charging port on my phone is busted and the cable needs
| to be jiggled every now and then, so it's not feasible to
| charge it reliably at night. Thanks, USB-C, for your
| horrible, non-rugged design that can't get through 3
| years of use.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| I have absolutely gotten very late night calls in Europe
| when I've been traveling, mostly SPAM, some wrong
| numbers, but also idiot people at my company which could
| have been dealt with using a text or email. (Haven't
| actually gotten the latter for a while; people don't
| randomly call someone outside of specific circumstances
| at this point.)
|
| My contacts go through, there's the call twice
| workaround, and honestly I'm from a period when you just
| couldn't always reach someone immediately and I'm fine
| with that.
| cxr wrote:
| > I'm from a period when you just couldn't always reach
| someone immediately
|
| Sure, me too, but that's exactly where I'm coming from
| when I ask. It's the same set of sensibilities that says
| that if there's going to be a call in the middle of the
| night, it's probably for a good reason. I would think
| we'd have to fast forward from there to reach the place
| that views regularly taking the phone off the hook as the
| natural solution, due to e.g. jadedness/cynicism/etc.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I don't. I considered it, but I decided that the remote
| risk of there being a real emergency outweighs the even
| more remote risk that I'll get an unimportant call in the
| middle of the night.
|
| (If I ever _did_ get an unimportant call in the middle of
| the night, the person on the other end would get an
| earful.)
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended
| warranty.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Oh yeah, try that and I'm dropping any business
| relationship with you that I have the next morning. Or if
| I don't, then I'll pay a visit to the local office of our
| Office of Competition and Customer Protection.
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| Ah - you're in Europe. In the US that's a very common
| spam call to receive. It may come from a different number
| every time and the FCC and FTC (the relevant authorities)
| can't or won't stop it. I've had it in the middle of the
| night a couple of times, though I think that's not as
| common. It's the reason my phone is always on Do Not
| Disturb now.
| dheera wrote:
| I'm in the US and I get an incredible amount of spam
| calls, as well as (before) calls from coworkers about
| non-urgent things.
|
| I since just have my phone block all calls except those
| pre-made appointments on my Google calendar, and the
| number by which people can reach me (among about 10
| numbers I own on Twilio) changes depending on the
| scheduled hour.
|
| I have a couple of whitelisted numbers for family/SO and
| that's it.
| ipqk wrote:
| The iPhone has an option to let phone calls ring if
| called twice in a row. I've told everyone that might
| possibly be calling me in an emergency to do so if they
| really need to get through. You can alternatively create
| an emergency list of numbers and let them ring through on
| the 1st attempt. I assume Android has something similar.
| ghaff wrote:
| You can choose to let contacts through. The potential
| fail is calls coming from an emergency service like the
| police or a hospital who don't try a second time. I
| choose to use Do Not Disturb anyway but reasonable people
| can disagree on the most appropriate thing to do. (And it
| may depend on individual circumstances.)
|
| The GP or so was talking about airplane mode though. I
| assume nothing gets through in that case. Personally I'd
| use DND rather than airplane mode.
| celticninja wrote:
| I have a friend who calls me at 3am (or something equally
| ridiculous). I always answer in case he is in trouble,
| when he's just pissed I'm grateful it isn't anything
| serious and chat away with him.
| moioci wrote:
| "Pissed" meaning inebriated and not angry.
| arcticbull wrote:
| They're thinking its a pretty cool phone call to get
| haha.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Don't iPhones put themselves into do not disturb mode at
| night? I hope the Nobel folks call twice in 3 minutes!
| irrational wrote:
| I think that only works for Favorites. Do you have the
| Nobel committee in your favorites? ;-)
| dylan604 wrote:
| you say this as if you don't
| Jtsummers wrote:
| You can have favorites go through on the first call, and
| repeat calls go through on the second call.
| jopsen wrote:
| I'm sure people like Sheldon Cooper has a calendar event
| and stays awake by phone when the awards are announced,
| hehe :)
| lstamour wrote:
| Also https://www.rd.com/article/what-its-like-notify-nobel-
| prize-...
| eindiran wrote:
| This is a very interesting article and I think it points
| to the main reason its so important to reach the winners:
|
| > If, like Saul Perlmutter (Physics, 2011), you live in
| California and the call comes, unanswered, in the middle
| of the night, then it could be the television news vans
| outside your house that alert you of your prize.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > If you don't pick up the phone, the ceremony continues
| without you. The public announcement comes at noon.
|
| Why don't the Nobel people just wait until you've been
| successfully informed before telling anyone else? Where
| does this self-imposed deadline come from?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think they want to announce it to the press in Stockholm
| with as little risk of leaks as possible.
|
| If you're a potential winner, you know to be reachable that
| night :)
| TuringNYC wrote:
| If I wont the prize, I'd want to be awoken at 2:15am. Heck,
| they could drop a bucket of ice water on me and wake me up to
| tell me the good news.
| [deleted]
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Neighbors? I wonder if they both live in the subsidized Stanford
| campus estate. (Star professors get a housing deal as part of
| their recruitment package.)
| surround wrote:
| Huh. Hacker News normally shows only the domain of the submission
| in parentheses. For Twitter it looks like it now shows
| (twitter.com/user).
| asadlionpk wrote:
| Maybe a custom format for twitter (and even github:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com)
| eindiran wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like this is a feature that was added for a
| few domains this week including Medium, GitHub and Twitter.
| echelon wrote:
| dang, is this new? I've never seen this before either.
|
| Pretty useful.
| sq_ wrote:
| Great for GitHub and Twitter for sure. Much nicer to be
| able to see the username the repo/tweet is from rather than
| just "github.com" or "twitter.com".
| _Microft wrote:
| I think this changed a few days ago. That's at least when I
| noticed it for the first time.
| walrus01 wrote:
| this kind of reads like an astroturfed advertisement for "ring" /
| "nest" type doorbells and security cameras.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I'm sure that's unintentional - don't blame the university, but
| I'm sure Nest and Ring anticipated their network of cameras
| worldwide to generate enough notable videos of unusual or funny
| antics that would be shared, so they shove their logo on their
| videos.
|
| Some people claim you can have the watermarked logo removed but
| you have to contact Google/Nest directly. I'm going to do that
| right now (I have 5 cameras... which I bought a week before
| Google announced they were locking-down the Nest ecosystem and
| web-service, so I now refuse to buy any more Nest products and
| I recommend Ubiqiti gear instead now - Ubiqiti have everything
| Nest does except a thermostat and smoke detector (but they do
| have a temperature sensor product ("mFI-THS") - and an adapter
| to bridge any RS-232 connected device ("mPort"), so you could
| attach an RS-232 controllable thermostat that way - it just
| wouldn't be as sexy as Nest's giant metal knob).
| walrus01 wrote:
| this reminds me somewhat of the camera software on low-end
| android phones sold in the developing world which watermarks
| every photo with "shot on... (blah blah trademark name)",
| because they trust that 90% of users won't know to look in
| the settings to toggle off the option. Or don't care. But
| hey, free advertising right?
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=android+phone+shot+on+redmi+.
| ..
| londons_explore wrote:
| You call it a low end phone, but to some of the users it is
| very much a high end phone compared to their peers.
|
| They want the watermark on in the same way people had "Sent
| from my iPhone" as an email footer for far too many years
| after the iPhone came out...
| person_of_color wrote:
| Wouldn't surprise me
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Yes, it would surprise me if Stanford and the Nobel committee
| were being paid by Nest to perform low-key brand advertising.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| This really makes me wonder - what if you win a Nobel prize and
| they actually can't reach you? What if you're on a secret mission
| to save the world and didn't bring your cellphone?
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| High class problem to have ...
| Animats wrote:
| Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a
| Nobel. They even have signs "Reserved for Nobel Laureate". As far
| as I know, Stanford does not.
|
| Doesn't Google had the leaders in auction theory now?
|
| Would someone please devise a way to run a stock market as a
| repeated clocked auction, so that prices change, say, once every
| 5 minutes and high frequency trading doesn't work.
| sedatk wrote:
| Berkeley has a denser campus therefore parking spots are
| probably more valuable there.
| cxr wrote:
| > Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win
| a Nobel.
|
| The rich get richer. I remember filling out school and early
| job applications. I was struck by how my list of awards and
| recognitions was kind of a sham--most of them were each a
| consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. It felt
| like getting a check and being able to cash it more than once.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was
| kind of a sham--most of them were each a consequence of some
| earlier achievement, and so on. _
|
| Achievement and power are runaway positive feedback loops
| which means we need damping forces to have any reasonable
| level of fairness where "fair" means reward is proportional
| to the effort.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _They even have signs "Reserved for Nobel Laureate"._
|
| Assuming they work in the same building, now is Stanford's
| chance. The bigger flex is to have two or more adjacent parking
| spaces with signage that says "Reserved for Nobel Laureates"
| (plural).
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2020-10-12 23:00 UTC)