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?

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

You can have your cake and eat it too

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

When I buy a house, do I automatically own all items the previous owner failed to remove from the property?

When he's standing, in front of you

[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."

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.

When was the first time you felt discriminated against because you were female?

[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.

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

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

If you cloned 12 Michael Jordan's and 12 LeBron James' and had Team Jordan vs. James, which team would win the most games?

Whatever.

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

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

Should we consider deporting democrats to Canada?

There you go.^†

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

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

What is the most craziest dream you ever had?

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

(Mumbles of assent)

"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?"

Fallout meets BioShock in fascinating new adventure game - GAMINGbible

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

Whatever.

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

What happens if a parent refuses to let their child be transgender? What happens if the parent tries their hardest not to allow their child to be trans, like flushing every bottle of their trans child's HRT down the toilet?

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

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

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

Can you provide a list of cities named after animals and the animals they were named after?

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:

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

I was awaken between 2-3am by a voice that said “Hey”. Literally right next to my ear. Sounded like a males voice, but it wasn’t stern or deep. What could this mean?