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

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

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

Is it sinful for Christians to look at beautiful women?

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

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?"

Which branch of engineering is better: ECE or Civil?

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

You can have your cake and eat it too

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

My parents force me (15yo atheist) to go to church, and there’s this thing called Small Sundays where we discuss the Bible in groups, there are questions asked about the Bible. What am I supposed to do when they ask?

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

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

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.

What are the ten cars that make me no longer feel inferior?

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

(Mumbles of assent)

[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 makes cars from companies like Dacia or BYD appealing compared to Tesla, especially in Europe?

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

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

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

Why can't NASA just bite the bullet and launch a plainly simple mission, audited by flat earther peers start to finish that definitively proves to even the smallest minds that the earth is an oblong spheroid, and not flat?

[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."

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

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

Have you ever been humiliated in front of a group of girls and enjoyed it?

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

There you go.^†

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

Have you ever forcibly sucked someone’s dick?

Whatever.

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

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 have feminists not demanded that females be required to register with the selective service? Are female lives more precious than male lives?