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?

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

You can have your cake and eat it too

There you go.^†

Starbucks CEO admits the struggling chain made a major mistake - TheStreet

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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

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

Why is pornography still alive and not illegal? Why doesn’t the government do about tricking women into them?

[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."

When he's standing, in front of you

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

What is an easy way to get your driver's license?

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

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

Whatever.

Can humans drink battery water?

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

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:

(Mumbles of assent)

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

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

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

How do I remove the music from a movie or animation? I want to keep the audio from the dialogue and sound effects, but remove the music so that I can add my own.

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

"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?"

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.

Is it common for people to fall in love with someone else while still married? If so, why do they choose to stay in their marriage?

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

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

[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.

Why are men obsessed with breasts and their size? I don't quite see women being obsessed with the penis - Why is this so?

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

Whatever.

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

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