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

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

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

Why did my ex replace me so fast?

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

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

"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?"

What does it mean when your husband comments and likes other women on social media? He has private IG and TikTok accounts that I have no access to. He has saved videos and pictures of women on his phone.

There you go.^†

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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

Are British people in awe when someone from the United States visits their country?

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

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

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

What would be the likely consequences if the Canadian Premier Doug Ford makes good on his threats to "cut off energy and critical mineral exports" to the US to retaliate against potential tariffs?

Whatever.

Whatever.

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

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

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

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

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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.

You can have your cake and eat it too

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:

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(Mumbles of assent)

[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.

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

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

[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."

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

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