Is the Economics Prize a real Nobel Prize?

[Arariel]

The award commonly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics apparently has an official name of the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize", or a full name of "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". Furthermore, Alfred Nobel never provided for a Nobel Prize in Economics in his will. So is it factually incorrect to refer to it as a Nobel Prize, winners as Nobel laureates, etc.? I know UChicago claims 85 Nobel Prizes, even though 25 of them were in economics.

[curtis95112]

Is there any practical difference if it isn't?
I think you're just arguing semantics here. It's not like the econ prize is any less prestigious than the other prizes.

[CorruptUser]

It's not a true Nobel prize, but it doesn't really matter. Still the most prestigious prize in its field.

It's less prestigious than the Physics, Physiology/Medicine, and Chem prizes, but more so than Peace or Literature. Seriously, the Lit prize is more known for the people that don't get the prize, while the Peace prize has been a joke for decades now. You could start a terrorist organization and then do nothing for decades and get the prize, or inadvertently cause genocide and get the prize, or get the prize for things people expect you to do, you could spend half a life-time undermining attempts at combating a horrible disease and receive the prize, make up a story and get the prize, etc.

[mmmcannibalism]

It's not a true Nobel prize, but it doesn't really matter. Still the most prestigious prize in its field.

It's less prestigious than the Physics, Physiology/Medicine, and Chem prizes, but more so than Peace or Literature. Seriously, the Lit prize is more known for the people that don't get the prize, while the Peace prize has been a joke for decades now. You could start a terrorist organization and then do nothing for decades and get the prize, or inadvertently cause genocide and get the prize, or get the prize for things people expect you to do, you could spend half a life-time undermining attempts at combating a horrible disease and receive the prize, make up a story and get the prize, etc.

You forgot "be inspiring".

[CorruptUser]

Also, if playwrights can get the Nobel prize for Literature, why can't screenwriters or directors? Cinema is theater, of a sort, so couldn't the prize be given to Kubrik or Aronofsky? Maybe Ridley Scott

Spoiler:

who, btw, is currently working on a film version of "The Forever War". Yay! Vietnam/Iraq IN SPACE.

[Vaniver]

In common usage, it is referred to as a Nobel prize. It was not established by the will of Alfred Nobel.

[Cheezwhiz Jenkins]

So, I don't have a very good sense for this - the Nobel Prize for literature is...not prestigious? I mean, if I (as the hypothetical writer) get one, nobody actually would think anything of it? That's not something you'd list on a resume or put on your desk, or people would think didn't mean much or it's lesser because it's not in chemistry of physics?
I guess this could be, but it just doesn't feel very right...is it simply that they're controversial and people who should have gotten it haven't?

Or is it "they're good, but not as good as one in science" and this is yet another case of elevating the sciences over the humanities?

[The Mighty Thesaurus]

I believe it is an example of science people believing their awards are more important.

[Dark567]

I believe it is an example of science people believing their awards are more important.

It's definitely biased toward a particularly style.

one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction

Has been interpreted to only include literature in the idealistic vain, and ignores non-idealistic literature(Although there are exceptions, ie. Steinbeck). It also seems overly biased to Europe and Sweden.

[Vaniver]

There are a couple of reasons. One is that the physics/physiology/chemistry prizes tend not to be politically motivated, whereas the peace and literature prizes do (check out the descriptions of the works of the last ten winners in literature).

One could also discuss the rates of shared prizes- the Lit prize has never been split between multiple winners, but five of the last eleven Physics prizes have been split between two teams (that is, not that both Koshiba and Davis both got a prize for neutrino detection, but that Giacconi also got a prize that year for cosmic rays). 3 of the last eleven Chem prizes were split, and only one of the last eleven Medicine prizes. Shared prizes could be interpreted either way, but I would suggest the pro-science interpretation- that there's more than one Nobel-worthy team a year- has more support, and thus getting the prize represents beating a more crowded field.

One could also look at the difference between the time the prize was earned and rewarded (for example, Smoot and Mather finished their experiment in 1992 and won the prize in 2006). In the scientific fields, the prize is primarily a prize for longevity and secondarily a prize for brilliance, as Rosalind Franklin learned; if the same is true in Literature that suggests similar prestige.

[Whimsical Eloquence]

I think it's more of a case of the awarding of the Prize being somewhat more dubious in the case of the Literature and, particularly, the Peace ones. Usually its awarding for the Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine, and, to a lesser degree, Economics ones will be uncontroversial amongst the peer group for the respective field, and the merit of the recipient unquestioned and broadly praised. This is certainly different for the other two - particularly the Peace Prize which is awarded by a political group and can thus be slanted accordingly, Obama's receipt being case in point.

As for Literature, the original will of Alfred Nobel specified the requirement for an ideology or rather "idealism" to be present in the author's work. This was interpreted quite strictly at first with people like Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other such novelists being excluded. The whole history has a level of snubbing and counter-snubbing to it. Furthermore, there was always a level of national and idealogical pride/prejudice that played up like Sweden historically avoiding honouring Russia (Tolstoy, Chekhov) due their mutual antipathy or in the aftermath of Wars avoiding awarding to formerly combatant countries. There's been a bizarre tendency to disqualify some from consideration on the basis of translation or technical errors while at the other end of the spectrum there's been a persistent level of idealogical bias in deciding who gets the award. Both Historically and to the present day, the Nobel Prize for Literature tends to be about who isn't there rather then who is.

I mean, on only has to look at things like this to understand the justification for the reputation it has:

"The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

"You can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world, not the United States,"

[Jahoclave]

I mean, on only has to look at things like this to understand the justification for the reputation it has:

"The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

"You can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world, not the United States,"

Which is quite amusing when you consider that the U.S. practically invented genre fiction and the short story. Though, if I remember correctly, a lot of the recent winners weren't even that heard of in Europe either.

[CorruptUser]

Don't forget Science Fiction, especially the Philosophy and Ethics parts of it. For example, what is the true definition of human? What are the ethical ramifications of synthetic life? What will post-scarcity really look like? How will technology impact our future lives? Are clones separate entities or extension of yourself? Much of Science Fiction is about being able to distance ourselves from our own points of view to look at reality somewhat more objectively.

A lot of these types of questions are incredibly uncomfortable, but they will need to be answered eventually.

Give Orson Scott Card the Nobel already (even though I personally don't like his more recent work, and am annoyed that he never tied up the Descolada origin story). I would say Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov (oh how important Asimov was) deserve it more, but you know, dead people can't get the prize.

[Dark567]

Give Orson Scott Card the Nobel already

Dude there is no fucking way OSC deserves the Nobel Prize. Maybe David Foster Wallace*. Maybe. Actually probably not, but he's closer. There is a difference between literary fiction and genre literature. There isn't a hard line, but OSC definitely falls into the latter.


*Well, he's dead now that I think about it....

[CorruptUser]

Well there is "no fucking way" half the people in the past 50 years that received the Literary Nobel deserved it. Hell, Rowling deserves it more than most of those simply for doing more for child literacy than the entire US Department of Education.

[Cheezwhiz Jenkins]

Hell, Rowling deserves it more than most of those simply for doing more for child literacy than the entire US Department of Education.

That's redefining the purpose of the prize by a few thousand light-years. (And, [citation needed])

[Telchar]

Also "deserve" will always be subjective so the fact that you disagree with a panel of literary critics on who is deserving isn't surprising.

[Dark567]

Hell, Rowling deserves it more than most of those simply for doing more for child literacy than the entire US Department of Education.

That's redefining the purpose of the prize by a few thousand light-years. (And, [citation needed])

Yeah, spreading literacy is probably more worthy of the Peace Prize than the Literature Prize.

[Kewangji]

The Hugo Awards are the most prestigious awards in literature, what are you people talking about?

Personally I don't count the Economics Prize as a Nobel prize, but that just, like, my opinion man. The economics prize is Nobel-ish though.

[curtis95112]

Another reason is that literature is written in a single language and translating the work (usually) reduces its quality. So the prize cannot help but be biased towards the languages the members of the committee speak, reinforcing the enormous cultural bias already present. This has resulted in the lit prize being a competition between writers of just a few select countries. No such loss of quality occurs in science, so it's more of a worldwide competition. (Problems with good work in obscure journals aside...)

[CorruptUser]

I'm not so certain the language barrier is all that great. Maybe for poetry, sure, but works like The Alchemist seem to do pretty well no matter what the language. And of course, Henrik Ibsen, who created modern theatre; would be a better example if he wasn't Norwegian.

[cazadoremi]

The Alchemist might be deep, but the storytelling structure is very simple, like a fable (it's technically a retelling of one of the 1001 nights tales). Fables also have a lot of universal appeal.
I'd say the reason countries like Japan and China are underrepresented is in part political, but also because the idioms and structure can lose their power when translated.