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?

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?"

[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."

I have permed hair in need of some deep moisturizing. If I use a product like Pro K pac as a leave-in conditioner and don’t rinse it out for 24 hours, will my hair be damaged?

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

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

You can have your cake and eat it too

Is it very wrong to want to spend some time with husband after continuous work for 5 days in a weekend because my husband thinks if we go out every weekend what night my parents and other family members think?

There you go.^†

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

Are there legal obligations to report the known whereabouts of a missing person that doesn’t want to be found?

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

(Mumbles of assent)

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

What did Chandrashekhar Azad say about Hinduism during a podcast?

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

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).

Astronomers baffled by mystery object flashing signals at Earth every 44 minutes: 'Like nothing we've ever seen' - New York Post

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."

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.

China's electric cars are cheaper, but is there a deeper cost? - BBC

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?"

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

How might an Indian girl respond to someone saying "I love you"?

Whatever.

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.

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

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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