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?

When he's standing, in front of you

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.

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

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Whatever.

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

Whatever.

I’m 17 and looking for a girl. What do I do?

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

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

(Mumbles of assent)

How did you become popular in school?

You can have your cake and eat it too

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

[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.

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(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

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

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

Why do programmers choose to write their own code instead of using code that is already available online?

… 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:

There you go.^†

How do I know if I am a bitch? I try to be a nice person but people often jokingly call me a bitch. My family calls me a bitch sometimes too.

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

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

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:

Are INFJs essentially the most introverted type?

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

"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?"

[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."

What are some disadvantages of living in rural areas? What are the advantages?

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

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

I see lots of pictures of women who have huge clits are they real or what?