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?

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

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

Whatever.

Can relationship issues cause depression?

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

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

[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."

Atheists who said that reading the Bible made them an atheist, how? Literally there are millions of people who read the Bible daily and still believe in God. So why say that? I mean unless you want to sound smart & edgy

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

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

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

What should I do to get over a relationship?

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

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

There you go.^†

When do you start "growing old"?

(Mumbles of assent)

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:

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

Should we consider deporting democrats to Canada?

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.

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

If books could kill: The poison legacy lurking in libraries - BBC

[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.

You can have your cake and eat it too

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

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?

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

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

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

Inside Ukraine’s audacious drone attack on Russian air bases - CNN

"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?"

When he's standing, in front of you

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

Who are the IT boys of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation in K-pop?