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?

[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

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

How do you think the leaked reports on Israel's operation in Lebanon will influence global perceptions of the Middle East conflict?

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

Whatever.

(Mumbles of assent)

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Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

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.

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

What is the best comeback you used on someone?

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

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

"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?"

What is your language's pangram?

[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.

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

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

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

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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

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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:

When he's standing, in front of you

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

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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?"

There you go.^†

You can have your cake and eat it too

Do women lack the mental strength to succeed at STEM? There seems to be few women at STEM and more women leave STEM after a time of working at it. How can it be just sexism if women aren't banned from entering?

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

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

Whatever.

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