Nobel in Economics Given to Angus Deaton for Studies of Consumption | Hacker News Reader

Nobel in Economics Given to Angus Deaton for Studies of Consumption

nytimes.com

22 pointssonabinu11 comments

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10376175 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10373768.

there is no Nobel prize in economics.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/there-no-nobel-prize-economi...

The Nobel committee would disagree: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/

Things change. For all intents and purposes, this is a nobel prize in economics, given that the winners are referred to as Nobel laureates by the Nobel committee.

If anything, I think we put a bit too much weight in these awards in general which leads to silly articles like this one.

This shouldn't necessarily be taken as support for the economic research selected for prizes as much as a response to attacking the prize on the basis of it being in economics.

It would make more sense to have a Nobel prize in mathematics than in economic science.

While you're right in the sense that it wasn't established by Alfred Nobel, most of the criticism in your article is nonsense.

The 'Economics isn't science' defence doesn't hold when you've got 'literature' and 'peace' prizes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Memorial_Prize_l...

It was not established by Mr. Nobel, the name was taken. The family does not acknowledge it. To me this is disrespectful to the man who set up the prize in his name.

Nobel left his fortune to a foundation to maintain the prizes and the entire point was to award people that helped mankind. Furthermore the award is called "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" not "The Nobel prize for economics". It was started by Sveriges Riksbank with a donation to the Nobel foundation. Everyone calls it the Nobel prize for economics because it's administered by the same foundation, its mission is the same and it's easier to say and for others to understand.

In my opinion pedantry for its own sake is a hallmark of reddit and it kind of chaps my ass that it seems to be cropping up more here.

It was not intended to be pedantry, though you are within your rights to see it as such. If you don't perceive a central bank with an interest in legitimizing a field of human endeavor for it's own interests as wrong. As other articles have noted, there are many other fields that may be more deserving of a prize. Given the economic damage that the recipients of the prize have caused, can we really say that it advances human knowledge in any other way than identifying what is wrong?

That is a very different impact than the majority of the other awards.

(edited typos)

If you had lead with this instead of taking issue with the name I wouldn't have accused you of pedantry. That said, I am sorry for being so negative. I'd seen several instances of that sort of behavior in the prior days and I was more annoyed than I should have been.

No worse than giving the Nobel peace prize to someone like Barack Obama, who has not advanced the cause of peace and fraternity, but has done much to destabilize the world and create conflict...

there is no Nobel prize in economics

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-04-02

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