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.

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

[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."

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

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.

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

Where's the Civil War everyone on the left said would happen?

When he's standing, in front of you

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

There you go.^†

What are your political and economic beliefs? How did you form them, especially in comparison to those who hold opposing views?

Whatever.

You can have your cake and eat it too

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

Is there an MBTI personality that is more or less likely to handle stress?

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

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

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

Why do heterosexual men like anal sex with women? I think it's because they secretly want to have anal sex with a man? What do you think?

"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.^*

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

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

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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

Why is it common for guys to sleep with 10-20 women then marry a good girl?

(Mumbles of assent)

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

[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.

What smell will you never forget?

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:

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

What's the most incredible coincidence that ever happened to you?