Slashdot Mirror
Marking 50 Years Since Alan Turing's Death
erroneous writes "Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Alan Turing: mathematician, code breaker, and computer pioneer. He was today commemorated in his home city of Manchester, UK." Here are stories at the BBC and at The Register.
However, I find it tragic and apalling that his life had to end the way it did. With the rampant homophobia in the UK at the time (and, some would say, such feeling still exists, albeit now driven underground), he had no choice but to end his life, else he would face a lifetime of torment and living in the shadows. It's really too bad that otherwise great nations do such stupid things and end up killing their greatest minds. Here's to you, Alan. *clink*
Turing test anyone?
404
I think what they ment was without him, Hitler would be drinking tea at No.10, but he did have a pretty big impact.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Maybe a bit off-topic, but Turing wrote the first chess machine on paper and played a well known player of his age. He always aimed to be a good player, but never quite got the hang of it. Guess we all have our own skills!
I must wander down there some time... that it's of him holding the apple that killed him is rather thought provoking.
However I can find an Alan Turing Road in Guildford but nothing in Manchester as the article implies.
Is it any coincidence that Apple Computers has a logo of an apple with only one bite in it?
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
I don't know how it is in more diverse places, but it often seems like I'm the only gay man majoring in Computer Science, and I remember years ago it was such a relief to find that arguably the most recognized name in the field was gay.
Although the nature of his persecution and suicide are unfortunate, I'm somewhat glad of the fact that it's often talked about--things like this and worse are still happening in many parts of the world.
That said, I prefer not to dwell on it. I am merely grateful that I and others have such a man to look up to in a field that so often seems at present to have so little diversity.
Here's to Alan Turing, a Great Man.
SELECT quote.text AS sig FROM quote NATURAL JOIN attribute WHERE attribute.description = 'witty';
0 rows returned
Science does not progress equally on all fronts. It goes in fits and spurts. It has been true in the past (perhaps moreso in the past) where the whimsy or intellect of a single person advanced a given field greatly, whereas if they personally were not involved the field might only advance a quarter of what it could, or be completely abandoned in favor of some more "fashionable" discovery. We are constantly finding diaries and notes of inventors and scientists who come accross an astounding discovery but since it isn't related directly to their research they disregard it to be rediscovered maybe 50 or 100 years later. I think it is entirely possible for things like this to happen.
That being said, one of the major drivers FOR information technology was the sheer computation requires to advance in many OTHER fields, so computer science would probably have marched onwards.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
And for anyone keen to go looking for Alan's lost cash stash... Chances are it will now be buried under one of Milton Keynes small number of round-a-bout's (join the dots!!!) or being guarded by the bizarre Milton Keynes concrete cows. No wonder Alan couldn't find it again !!
As brilliant as he was, I don't get why Turing thought that mimicking the human brain would be a step toward intelligence. Sometimes I think the best way for a computer to prove intelligence would to not act like humans....
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
I think you understate his importance. He was far more than a code breaker.
It is possible that he is the most important computer scientist of all time. He is of course against some strong competition, but in my opinion the only one in his league is Von Neumann. There is hardly a concept in computer science that was not at least considered in basic form by Turing.
As for the war, the phrase "some decent contributions" doesn't do him justice. An argument can be made that he was the most important individual in WW2. That may be overstating it, but I would consider him to be one of the key persons. I think it is entirely possible that if you removed Turing from history, the Nazis could have ended up winning the war in Europe.
There are 2 things to consider here I think most people are missing. I'm not saying what happened made it right, but people seem to be lacking context. Frequently, we look back at things and say horrific, but we wouldn't be where we are today if those events in the past hadn't taken place. (I personally find it ridiculous to piss on Thomas Jefferson because he had slaves, Lincoln because he didn't believe blacks could ever be equal to whites, or Columbus for causing genocide simply because he "discovered" the Americas.)
First, in historical context, I believe homosexuality was still considered a mental illness then. Nearly anyone in this time period with a mental disease was treated like trash.
Second, medical practice back then was not as, say, scientific as our approach is today. Treatment and cure experimentation were the focus of the day, not understanding the underlying basis of disease (as noted, homosexuality as considered a mental illness back then).
That said, his so-called treatment fell between medical science as well as societal/legal ramifications.
This is also one of the reasons why it was a huge step to get homosexuality unlisted as a mental disease, something that that vast vast majority in the medical community, conservative or progressive, overwhelmingly agree with. (And also why the scientific and political community has always adjoined and butted heads nearly simultaneously.)
"If there's a darwinian reason for homosexuality, I've never heard it"
/change sex/ to accomodate the environment. Some male frogs do this IIRC, changing from male to female when the male/female ratio is too high.
From my limited biological knowledge: Some species (e.g. some frogs) can actually
Granted primates are way more complicated, and the reason might be entirely different. There are tons of weird, "useless" crap that natural selection has left us with. Hell, most human behavior was designed to hunt animals, live in a cave, and die at age 30. Almost nothing about us is "natural" or "useful" any more. Remember natural selection may "select" towards fitness, but it doesn't necessarily deselect things that are not useful but not particularly harmful either. From what I hear about DNA, there is massive amounts of "junk" we carry around, and that we have to support by caloric intake. However that "junk" can really be thought of as a self-decompressing self-decrypting program that comes into affect essentially at birth and at various other times. If you think about it computationally, there is a "limit" to the amount of "stuff" you can describe with DNA. The fascinating thing is how it bootstraps, self-decompresses, self-decrypts, and self-modifies. It's all amazing that it even works at all. It would be like typing random characters into a computer and one day just popping out the Linux kernel.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
>If there's a darwinian reason for homosexuality, I've never heard it
there are a few good hypotheses
Keep in mind that you don't have to reproduce yourself to have reproductive success. The best way is through supporting family members, but benefiting the community can also be a good stratagy, and anything that benefits the species will do. In some cultures it is common for homosexuals to become priests, and I'm not just talking about Catholics here.
If we were to evaluate Mr. Turing's reproductive success, we would probably consider it very high; certainly he helped save the lives of many of his countrymen, with whom he had much genetic commonality.
All of that is related, and ends with saying that they are worthy of death for desiring someone of the same sex or accepting others who do. That's in the New Testament. You'd expect that from the old, since it's generally vile, but the New Testament is rather sneaky with its pervasive evil.
Off your post, to say that Christians have nothing to do with Turing's death is illogical. It's one of many things that I believe Christianity has done to hurt modern society.
And on gay marriage, the law either needs to be changed so that you have to have a kid to get married or you allow everyone to. That simple. Your logic is flawed on that fact, since the Christian church does not allow children out of wedlock.
That's scary.