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?

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

(Mumbles of assent)

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

Is it wise to SECRETLY expose a narcissist by telling others that he/she is a covert narcissist?

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

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.

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

Why do you have to be 18+ to go live on TikTok?

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

[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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When he's standing, in front of you

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

"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?"

If Russia needs the resources to fund the war in Ukraine, why doesn’t it throw open its doors to visa free western tourism? Enough people would be interested, & it would start to get some hard currency as €, CHF, £, SEK, $, JPY in the tills at shops.

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

Whatever.

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

My wife has a bunch of really attractive friends, and she expects me to never say anything to her about how beautiful they are. Does this seem fair? I love my wife, and just commenting shouldn’t hurt anything, right?

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

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

There you go.^†

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

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

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

What do you think of Vance using a clip of an embarrassed teenager from almost 20 years ago in an attempt to bully Kamala Harris?

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

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:

[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.

Can you write a poem or short story based on the first image that shows up on Pinterest?

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).

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