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?

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:

[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."

"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?"

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"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).

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

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[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.

When he's standing, in front of you

Whatever.

Why do people think Mirko is boring in My Hero Academia?

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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

You can have your cake and eat it too

(Mumbles of assent)

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

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

There you go.^†

Do you agree with a toy company CEO that 'tariffs are almost like speeding towards a brick wall but the driver of the car doesn’t see it yet and by the time he does, it’ll be too late to hit the brakes.'?

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

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

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

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Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

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

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

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

Whatever.

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

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