How did a computer scientist such as Geoffrey Hinton manage to win a Nobel Prize in physics when computer science already has its own Nobel Prize equivalent in the Turing Awards?

"Naah, Linnainmaa is a Finn. Can't give it to a bloody Finnish mathematician. Let's go for drinks. Brännvin anyone?"

In awarding prizes, the Nobel Committees often seem only marginally more competent than MTG is at explaining meteorology. And if they can give a literature prize for lyrics like:

"Didn't he do something with Boltzmann in it? That sounds physics-y. RBMs and stuff, eh?"

Harvard gastroenterologist ranks popular trends: Is eating cold rice, doing intermittent fasting good for gut health? | Health - Hindustan Times - Hindustan Times

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

(Mumbles of assent)

"Good point, I'm sure we can swing it. And let's tack on Hopfield while we're about it."

Do you think a lot of sociopaths' parents kill themselves for having brought such disgusting evil into the world? How much shame and disgust must they carry?

There you go.^†

"Good idea, but how can we wangle something that says 'Physics'?"

They then move on to selectively provide their own version of history. But hey, it’s OK. They wanted controversy, didn’t they? Whatever.

Why do so many men wait until they are retired or close to it to start having sex with Men? Most of them say they have always wanted to suck dick or be fucked. Why did you wait?

^* Fibiger got the 1926 Medicine prize for the discovery of Spiroptera carcinoma (Don’t ask).

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

Why are conservatives banning liberal books? Why are conservatives so offended by the teaching of racism and other topics?

In December 1973, when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, comedian Tom Lehrer dropped his mic and stamped on it—satire had just died.

"Where can we shoehorn it in? Chemistry is easy 'cos AlphaFold; but what about physics? A bit more challenging, right?"

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

What thing happened to you as a child that you haven’t let go of to this day?

… then anything is possible. There’s no rule that a Nobel Prize has to make sense.^*

Fortunately, we are privy to the discussion that led up to this:

Whatever.

How can one justify in Sweden that total subsidies for public green energy initiatives being approximately 8.2 billion SEK per year? Electric cars at market price typically cost an average of 500,000 SEK which is above household budgets.

[Older voice] "Mmm. What about Hinton, he's widely regarded? Nobody got fired for buying IBM"

When he's standing, in front of you

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

How do the youth in Taiwan perceive their national identity in relation to China?

[The basic structure of artificial neural networks] has close similarities with spin models in statistical physics applied to magnetism or alloy theory. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes research exploiting this connection to make breakthrough methodological advances in the field of ANN.

[Younger voice] "But wait a minute, Ising-Lenz goes back to the 1920's. And didn't Hinton plagiarise rather a lot? He also didn't invent modern backprop, did he, that's Linnainmaa? And Amari preceded Hopfield, too. That's not a good look."

A fly on the wall at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

What kind of book did you write after turning 55?

"Hey guys, AI is pretty big so let's centre our prizes on it this year. We can get some attention, and it's all about advertising, at the end of the day, isn't it?"

Whatever.

You can have your cake and eat it too

Why does he text me first but when I never text first he gets mad?