That’s not how it works. The prizes are not motivational but for achievement . Otherwise we should give the physics prize to some school kid in the hope of them discovering quantum gravity

Maybe. But then why restrict it to only living people?

I dunno. Do you? Does the Nobel prize have a history of shaping the future? Did winning the Nobel prize make Obama a different president? Was it supposed to?

To me, it seemed oddly aspirational, but maybe that's more often the case with the peace prize, too.

Also worth noting that the language in the press release [1] and facts page [2] makes it all sound like it was for things already achieved (although maybe that's at odds with "Inspires Hope for a Better Future"), and I'm skeptical of looking at year 1 achievements the job with arguably the most destructive power in the world.

It's not a hill I'd fight, let alone die, on, though. :)

1- https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2009/press-release/ 2- https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2009/obama/facts/

If you wanted to avoid "misnominations", you'd be forced to wait until the career of the nominee is over (meaning in many cases: award it posthumously).

But the Nobel price explicitly tries to avoid that; hindsight is always gonna be better.

Yeah. I'm just okay special casing "against" heads of state.