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?

You can have your cake and eat it too

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

Whatever.

When a black man and a white woman have a child, does the child become white? If a white man and a black woman have a child, does the child become black?

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

"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.

When did Elon Musk fall from grace?

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

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

(Mumbles of assent)

Why do older men like to get anal sex?

There you go.^†

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

When he's standing, in front of you

Is Daenerys Targaryen really the most beautiful woman, or is everyone saying that just to flatter her?

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

"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?"

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.

Could humans be selectively bred, like dogs, to create 2 subspecies that can no longer have offspring? Do I not understand selective breeding properly? Im not worried about the moral implications, just the science please.

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

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

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

Why does a straight man like anal penetration?

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

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

Whatever.

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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.

[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."

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

How did your marriage end?

[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?

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:

What will help me to get a bigger butt naturally?