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?

Whatever.

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

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

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

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

You can have your cake and eat it too

If the Red Pill is supposed to be so bad, why are so many young men buying into it? What about Red Pill makes it appealing to them?

There you go.^†

Whatever.

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

How did you get to be a leftist?

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

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

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

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

(Mumbles of assent)

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

What product failed in the market but was successful when used for something else?

[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?

[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.

Do you have any attributes quirks sensitivities abilities etc that you've come to learn most people don't experience? E.g. dream with subtext or experience de ja vu regularly or know you experience life very differently from those around you etc?

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.

"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?"

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

How do the police verify the authenticity of an online profile? What methods do they use to determine if a profile is real or fake?

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

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

When he's standing, in front of you

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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:

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

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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