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?

There you go.^†

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

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

Holiday Mathis horoscopes for June 14, 2025 - MLive.com

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.

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

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

If a person stops thinking one or two words in a second or half second means he had stopped thinking for half second?

[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 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:

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

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Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

When he's standing, in front of you

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

Why do almost all vertebrates have tails, but not apes and frogs?

[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.

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 should I do to stop being angered easily?

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

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

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

Why do people hate fat people so much, even people who aren't exactly supermodels themselves? It seems like such a deep, passionate hatred, like they're offended by fat people just existing. Fat people didn't do anything to them, so why hate them?

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

Whatever.

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

Was Jesus Christ Jewish?

"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?"

(Mumbles of assent)

You can have your cake and eat it too

Did your siblings abuse you growing up? Not your parents, specifically your siblings, or other children in the household you were raised with.

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

Whatever.

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

How did Nickelback gain a large fan base despite criticism of their music?