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Listening to older bigshot academics talking among themselves, I find they talk surprisingly often about the Nobel prize – who deserves it, who is being considered, who is lobbying how to win, who should have won but didn’t, and so on. Their lust is obvious; the influence of the Nobel prize on elite academic incentives is far out of proportion to the money involved.
It is surprising to see academia so influenced by one rich man from a century ago, rather than by rich men today. Prizes once mattered much more than they do today, and I expect a comeback: sometime in the next few decades I expect someone to pay a billion or two in an attempt to displace the Nobel prize. Compared to the usual academic money-influence ratio, this would be quite a bargain. To succeed, this new Post-Nobel prize should:
offer a prize amount ten or one hundred times the Nobel prize,
create a correlation between who wins and who elite academics think should win that is not much worse than with the Nobel prize, and
do this consistently for a decade or two, and appear able to continue indefinitely.
This task is not trivial, but quite feasible. I hope, however, that this patron sets himself a higher goal: to increase the correlation between winners and their long-term intellectual contribution. I suggest making heavy use of posterity review:
create a perpetual process wherein historians evaluate the influence of academics from a century before,
create long term betting markets that estimate today the influence evaluations of those future historians, and
each year give N new prizes to the N living people who have not yet won, for whom the betting markets show the highest positive influence estimates.
Under this system people would stop lobbying the prize committee, and start to lobby market speculators and future historians.
Eclipsing Nobel
Robin, I agree with your post. I think the Nobel Prize is fairly easily displaceable, and prizes of 100x greater in value for the same disciplines, that don't do a more controverial job at picking winners than the Nobel Prize currently does, and with an equal pomp and circumstance ceremony, will displace it.
Noble price is not for money. I agree. Tennis Wimbledon practice of many years and get a trophy of a shining cup is not worth the effort you put into where by you could have earned more as a tennis coach. But then what is it? Sir. It is the as you state THE NOBLE PRICE. It stands out that you have done something decent for the humans disproving Darwin or Malthusians.I mean this as the hypothesis. But why Rashdi got the noble price is a surprise that I cannot understand. All Muslims are upset. Is this noble price?Here are the reasons why the noble prices are given.You have contributed something to the human in medicine, money, decent living, helping poor, having the watch full eyes for the global warming and doing something about this( No one has got this), or making human lives better like Grammen Bank or the Good Author or Carter for peace pact.But you state right. At times the wrong decision is made. Here is the example of one. Lady Diana did lots for the poor and gave smile. Did she get the noble price? No. All the notorious publications came in fact to upset her lives of the younger ones. John F. Kennedy stopped the Cuba embargo. Did he get the noble price? No sir. A bullet planted by the politicians killed him and we still are looking for the bullet from 1963 I guess we ought to give the CIA and FBI the noble price for putting in the effort to hunt for the hunted.When you call the Noble price I honestly laugh at time. What exactly are you looking for to give the person a noble price?May be when we become wise we shall know. To give a vague idea we had seven wonders now these have been renamed, Pluto is kicked out and Earth has lost weight.I think I will stick to Tom and Jerry show sir. They at least relieve my aches some how!!!
Firozali A.Mulla MBA PhDP.O.Box 6044Dar-Es-SalaamTanzaniaEast Africa.