Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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By tainting the Nobel Peace Prize the others get devalued as well, it is one institution.

So, I really did mean the Nobel Prize as such and I'm really sorry they did that.

From the wikipedia article on the Nobel Prize:

"The interval between the accomplishment of the achievement being recognized and the awarding of the Nobel Prize for it varies from discipline to discipline. The prizes in Literature are typically awarded to recognize a cumulative lifetime body of work rather than a single achievement. In this case the notion of "lag" does not directly apply. The prizes in Peace, on the other hand, are often awarded within a few years of the events they recognize. For instance, Kofi Annan was awarded the 2001 Peace Prize just four years after becoming the Secretary-General of the United Nations."

So, maybe this is a case of prescience or something ?

I really think this was dreadfully misguided and that it devalues the whole of the Nobel Prize, of course there is absolutely no way they could ever do anything about it now but the Nobel Prize is now synonymous with 'has the potential to do great things, some day. We hope.'

"By tainting the Nobel Peace Prize the others get devalued as well, it is one institution."

That's just a part/whole fallacy. The badness of what some priests did to boys doesn't devalue what Mother Theresa did by virtue of them both being Catholic.

Actually I think it does. When chatting with my new barber he mentioned that his brother is a priest - and then quickly had to add the disclaimer that "but he is ok."

It is a shame that being a priest in the Boston area is now linked with being a pedophile

That other people also think shoddily / fallaciously doesn't make it any more valid. Plus, that's not responsive to my point. If 50% of cops are corrupt, when meeting any given cop, there may be a 50% chance that they're corrupt. But if it turns out upon meeting this cop you find out she saved thousands of lives and is the model of virtue, the badness of other cops in no way diminishes her accomplishments. If anything, it highlights them because of their rarity for that population. Similarly, the Pope could be the Antichrist or whatever: it still doesn't diminish the achievements of one particular nun.

Einstein's Nobel has no tarnish on it because the Committee gave Obama one.

Oh, it has. But Einstein has not.

But it does devalue the institution of the Catholic Church as a whole. Just as this prize may devalue the Nobel Prize idea, but doesn't touch one bit what other individuals who received the prize did.

Sure, the institution may be devalued, but that's not the claim being made. The claim is, "the others get devalued as well." Feynman's work in QED is no less amazing today than it was the day before yesterday, and the Nobel no more or less an appropriate prize.

The Catholic Church doesn't control the actions of its priests and nuns. However, it does protect its priests and as an institution it devalues it. As Teresa was neither protected by the Church, nor acting under direct supervision of the church, it doesn't devalue her actions.

However the Nobel committee has complete oversight and control over where these prizes go, the prizes aren't capable of deciding where they go, so a devaluing of the committee devalues the prize.

If the Nobel committee brought out an award for mathematics everybody would think it's about damn time. However if they brought one out for creationist research, not a single scientist on the planet would ever want a Nobel Prize again.

Pet peeve of mine: Teresa was not necessarily the greatest person to walk the earth. From her Wikipedia entry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa ):

She has been praised by many individuals, governments and organizations; however, she has also faced a diverse range of criticism. These include objections by various individuals and groups, including Christopher Hitchens, Michael Parenti, Aroup Chatterjee, Vishva Hindu Parishad, against the proselytizing focus of her work including a strong stance against abortion, a belief in the spiritual goodness of poverty and alleged baptisms of the dying. Medical journals also criticised the standard of medical care in her hospices and concerns were raised about the opaque nature in which donated money was spent.

Nobody's perfect, and of people well-known in the West, she's at the top of the list. Those flaws certainly don't outweigh the good, and the flaws certainly aren't on the level of child molestation. So absent an alternative that avoids having to take ten minutes to explain who I'm talking about, I'll continue to use that ol' nun.

What good did she do?

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