
Shards of Truth - lermontov
https://www.eurozine.com/shards-of-truth/
======
IfOnlyYouKnew
> I’m constantly being dragged back into my former life!

> It must be the price to be paid for the Nobel.

That reminds me of a study a decade ago or so, showing Nobel laureates to
enjoy a ridiculously higher life expectancy, in comparison to people who were
merely nominated for the prize. It was something like 5 extra years, IIRC, and
there was no other profession or status symbol even close.

Other nominees are unlikely to have significantly less access to healthcare,
or be otherwise depraved.

So what's so unique about a Nobel? The hypothesis was that the Nobel is the
only absolut "Game Over: You Win" scenario in existence, allowing its bearer
to escape the rat race and its deleterious effects. Start-up or banking
billionaires clearly aren't satiated by their money, so they continue on to
space, or ocean racing, or becoming really bad politicians. Nobel laureate are
done.

~~~
sparky_z
Is it not just survivorship bias? Nobel Prizes are often awarded decades after
the fact, and (except in a couple edge cases) are never awarded posthumously.
Being long lived makes you more likely to receive the prize in your lifetime,
not necessarily the other way around.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
They are _never_ awarded posthumously. But my completely unreliable gut
instinct is to believe that most honourees are in their 50s and 60s, and that
too few people die before that age for it having a significant impact here.

Plus, of course, nominees tend to be very similar in most regards _including
age_ to the eventual winners.

~~~
sparky_z
On the contrary, consider Ralph Steinem [0], who was awarded the Medicine
prize in 2011, three days after his death. The news had not yet reached the
prize committee. There are a couple others[1,2] from decades past that were
_nominated_ before their death, and the committee selected them after their
death, but that loophole was closed in 1974.

As I said, edge cases.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_M._Steinman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_M._Steinman)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Axel_Karlfeldt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Axel_Karlfeldt)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskjold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskjold)

