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?
15.06.2025 02:20
You can have your cake and eat it too
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.
Whatever.
What makes someone feel "rich enough" in different societies?
^† They rationalise their decision thusly:
Fortunately, we are privy to the discussion that led up to this:
^* Fibiger got the 1926 Medicine prize for the discovery of Spiroptera carcinoma (Don’t ask).
"Good point, I'm sure we can swing it. And let's tack on Hopfield while we're about it."
[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."
There you go.^†
Bicycling tied to reduced dementia risk and greater hippocampal volume retention - Medical Xpress
… then anything is possible. There’s no rule that a Nobel Prize has to make sense.^*
Why wait any longer for the one you love?
"Didn't he do something with Boltzmann in it? That sounds physics-y. RBMs and stuff, eh?"
What thing happened to you as a child that you haven’t let go of to this day?
A fly on the wall at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
They then move on to selectively provide their own version of history. But hey, it’s OK. They wanted controversy, didn’t they? Whatever.
"Where can we shoehorn it in? Chemistry is easy 'cos AlphaFold; but what about physics? A bit more challenging, right?"
Do leftists understand why young men are becoming more right-wing?
"Good idea, but how can we wangle something that says 'Physics'?"
(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)
My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.
(Mumbles of assent)
When he's standing, in front of you
"Naah, Linnainmaa is a Finn. Can't give it to a bloody Finnish mathematician. Let's go for drinks. Brännvin anyone?"
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:
"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?"
Whatever.
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"
[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.
What trains transport cars and passengers near Pompano Beach, Florida that goes to New York?