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.

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 he's standing, in front of you

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Why wait any longer for the one you love?

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

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

How does an experienced gay/bi guy handle a bi-courius guy on his first time?

You can have your cake and eat it too

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

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

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[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."

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

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

What are the reasons for people being banned from social media sites like Twitter and Instagram? Why is it considered a big deal?

(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.

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

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

There you go.^†

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:

Have you ever met someone and something seemed so unusual about them but you couldn't put your finger on what it was?

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

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

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

What is the science behind red light therapy?

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

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

Whatever.

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

"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?"

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

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