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No Pardon For Turing
mikejuk writes "A petition signed by over 21,000 people asked the UK Government to grant a pardon to Alan Turing. That request has now been declined. A statement in the House of Lords explained the reasoning: 'A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence. He would have known that his offence was against the law and that he would be prosecuted. It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd-particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort. However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.'"
ensure instead that we never again return to those times
Then perhaps pardoning him would be a step in the right direction?
Summation 2
Alan Turing was outright persecuted for failing to conform to society's norm. The government owes Turing's family and the rest of the country, even the rest of the world an enormous apology.
But granting a posthumous pardon does not change the past. We were still robbed of one of history's brightest and greatest minds because of homophobia. I agree with their reasoning, granting the pardon ignores and whitewashes the past. We should remember and tremble at what intolerance and hatred produces, not pat ourselves on the back for being more forward-thinking than our predecessors since as a society I don't think we've actually changed. Sure, it's no longer as popular to hate on homosexual people as it was in the past, but we have all new forms of hatred and intolerance which our modern society deems acceptable, and which will be just as subject to the next generation's ridicule and derision.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
They are actually spot on with this. What entitles Alan Turing to a pardon above all others that endured the same fate? The statement is clear and regrettable, and effectively a pardon to all rather than a select few - it's just not a formal pardon. If they had to do it with every past law that was deemed unfair by modern standards they would waste a lot of time, especially in the United Kingdom.
rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times
This train of thought is not so stupid at all. "Pardoning" Turing would help no one, and would not increase his glory. The glory he has, he has in our minds.
QFD
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
More likely is the issue that they would then have to deal with requests by other people in similar circumstances and they don't want to spend the resources to handle those cases. Camel noses and tents and all that.
Yes, because a posthumous pardon would sort out his soul.
It is a sensible and consistent approach in the UK justice system that pardons are not issued if the person in question was fairly convicted by the laws of the time. Pardoning him would not undo what was done, he's long dead and unlikely to get better, the government has already apologised for the way he was treated and all this would really do is help to assuage our guilt.
However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.
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How is it in any way inconsistent?
It has nothing to do with the integrity of the law, as they say in their statement "which now seems both cruel and absurd" and everything to do with acting in line with established procedure for dealing with posthumous pardons where the person(s) in question were fairly convicted under the laws of the time.
If you were to attempt to restrospectively pardon every person who was convicted under a law that has since been repealed or replaced, you would be doing it as a full time job.
Instead of retroactively correcting the injustices of the past, how about we look at who is suffering injustice today? What are we doing today that future generations will be appalled at? We still persecute people for making harmless personal choices. Let's stop.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They are going to use Turing to represent how bad it is to pass judgment on someone based on an unjust law? How... Turing complete.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
to judge people from a different age. Values change over time. Would it be just to posthumously find Thomas Jefferson guilty of slavery when it was legal in his time? There's probably something each of us is doing today that in 100 years will be looked back on as a hideous crime (keeping pets? Scolding our kids?) and there are things we consider crimes now that in 100 years they won't believe anyone was ever so primitive as to believe it's a crime (drug use? Assisted suicide?).
I have no idea if this ever came to bear or not, but I remember recently, I was reading up about "Bills of Attainder", and one of the things about British Law, apparently, was that if someone was "attainted" because of a criminal prosecution, they could in some cases be forced to forfeit all property/wealth, and so their family would be effectively "dis-inherited".
I don't know if anyone ever had forfeiture because of those particular laws, but I should think that *if* anyone was subject to that, that it would be appropriate *today* to posthumously pardon those people and give reparations to the families (it might not be possible to give lands back, as they presumably long since been given/sold to someone else, but they could at least compensate those people for the seized assets).
Still, it seems reasonable for the government to acknowledge the law was unreasonable, and that it was their mistake, not his.
Which is exactly what this statement does. What more do you want ? A law ? For a single person ? De minimis non curat lex
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
In retrospect the semantic hairsplitting and tying of legal precedent in knots that enabled the Nuremberg Military Tribunals to sentence high-ranking Nazis to death and imprisonment for doing things that weren't illegal when and where they were done seems indefensible. To retroactively pardon Turing because the case seems crazy in hindsight is to open the door for pardoning those Nazi fuckers because we can now look back and see that the deck was stacked against them in court.
Perhaps equally importantly, the background was one of gay-bashing in the US Establishment, who regarded homosexuals as a security risk (because, in typical backwards thinking, the Russians might blackmail them...which could not happen if their behaviour was regarded as unexceptional.) The US was already very worried about UK agents with Russian links spying on them, and was demanding a purge of unreliable elements from the British security services. Turing was high enough profile to show that we were "doing something", but low enough status to be thrown to the wolves,
This is the real background: class solidarity and stinking hypocrisy. Not much has really changed in the upper echelons of British society; it still comes as a shock to them when the British public turns out to be years ahead in their attitudes. And the actual workers in the security services are still treated like shit - Peter Wright wrote his book, Spycatcher, because as a mere surveillance expert he didn't qualify for a pension, unlike the higher-ups with their Eton and Oxford backgrounds.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Of course it would. Didn't you know that God answers to the Queen?
The term "pardon" means forgiveness of a crime, so the fact that Turing was properly convicted under the law back then isn't an obstacle to a pardon it is a requirement; if he hadn't been convicted, he couldn't be pardoned now.
Furthermore, you pardon someone when you find that his positive contributions have outweighed the harm he has caused. For Turing, that is true not only because of his immense positive contributions, but because what he was punished for then is now not even considered worthy of punishment.
If anybody ever was deserving of a pardon, it is Alan Turing. And you really have to wonder about the motivation of the UK government for denying it.
Was this decision made by humans, or by machines applying a rule-based database?
Think about all of the things that Turing accomplished in his life. Father of computer science. Father of artificial intelligence. Incredible at code breaking. Brilliant mind with exceptional talent. A genius. Patriot during a time of war. Marathon runner. A leading and formidable intellect he had.
But all of that didn't matter because he was gay.
A pardon is a joke and whitewashes history and puts a false Disney happy ending on a horrific story. "Oh yeah he was persecuted for being gay but at least after he died he was pardoned so we get to feel good about ourselves". This isn't a fairytale. This is history and it wasn't nice.
He was one of the smartest people alive and majorly contributed to the war effort and none of it mattered against him being gay. And after being humiliated and stripped of his security clearance he killed himself. End of story.
And how did he kill himself? Just like Snow White was poisoned in his favorite fairytale. He poisoned an apple with cyanide and then took a big chunk out of it and waited to die. That's his fairytale ending. A pardon is an empty gesture in my opinion.
The difference between atheism and other religions is that atheists dont force others to follow their beliefs in terms of laws,etc
They wont kill people in the name of religion, or stop people from eating beef, or censor online content,etc
The right thing to do is to pardon anyone and everyone who is convicted of a victimless crime.
I'll be testifying on a bill on Thursday that would allow this as a defense in a trial.
If you care about this kind of stuff, c'mon over to New Hampshire where we're actually making some progress. A thousand activists have moved so far (to join those of us already here) and 19,000 more are waiting for the mass move.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The important difference you are missing is that Atheists are right. If you don't agree with use then you are stupid and ignorant.
Maybe a simpler explanation has more to do with the fact that there are still 26 bishops sitting the the House?
Ref: http://www.churchofengland.org/our-views/the-church-in-parliament/bishops-in-the-house-of-lords.aspx/
I don't think we'll see much in the way of progressive/human thinking here...
Rubbish. How many times have you seen someone write, "We ought to outlaw religion." or something to that effect. "Atheists" aren't and haven't been in a position of power to do such things, but if you think that there aren't *some* atheists who wouldn't try to impose their views on everyone if they had the opportunity, just like some religious folk do, you are sorely mistaken.
There's at least five distinct variants of atheism, although many atheists aren't interested in philosophy of religion so they haven't studied it, and thus can't really discuss it intelligently.
The kind of atheism that is orthogonal to agnosticism is not a religion.
However, the type of atheism that is entirely based on a fanatical devotion to unprovable postulates is, indeed, a religion.
To put it another way: People who say "there's probably no God" (like Dawkins) or "you can't prove the existence of your particular beardy sky-man" are not practicing a religion. But people who froth at the mouth on Internet forums, and have an unshakeable, unprovable belief in the non-existence of any sort of God (like Hitchens) have abandoned science and reason, and are proselytizing their faith. You cannot rigorously disprove the noodly appendage with logic, reason or math; therefore any belief or disbelief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster is faith-based. Agnosticism avoids this trap.
Atheism isn't a religion by any definition of "religion" that is in use today. Try it:
Wikipedia: "Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values."
Atheism: no. There is no spiritual or moral component of atheism.
Wikipedia: "Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe."
Atheism: no. There are no symbols, no narratives, no creation myths, no attempt to explain the universe.
I could go on, but I think we've established that atheism does not match the (presumably generally accepted) Wikipedia definition.
Let's try another: "The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods." Nope.
Dictionary.com gives several definitions. Some don't apply because of the lack of gods etc. The rest don't apply because of the lack of practice - there are no religious practices associated with atheism. Some other definitions include a requirement of "faith" which could qualify, but when we define "faith" in a religious context the definition is something like "Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof." Kind of a circular definition.
So, here's the thing: what is the definition of "religion" that would include atheism, and is this definition widely accepted? Would it make sense for somebody to say "Yes, I am very religious - I'm an atheist", or would people find that odd? Because if they would find it odd, then it probably isn't a valid definition. And if your definition is too broad, and just includes practicies, beliefs etc. and negates the need to believe in a personal god, then you are going to end up defining sports fans as being a religion (belief - "my team is the best", communal acts/practices - "watching the game" etc.) Apple fans ("Apple is the best", communal acts "queing for new iphone", group spirituality - "mourning of Jobs" etc.).
This topic is an obvious cheerleading piece for political correctness.
We all know what we're "supposed" to say.
As a result, it is not only boring, but works as a form of oppression to exclude any opinion which does not agree with the "correct" one.
This is in contrast to science, where we explore experimental results, make tentative conclusions, and explore those through a heuristic process.
For more than a few people, most likely. Britain alone has a reasonably complete record of courts, laws and trials going back some thousand years or so, and for huge swathes of that crimes which we would now consider absurd were regularly prosecuted. Witchcraft, homosexuality, minor debts, "treasonous" activities that basically amount to free speech issues: just a small partial list of activities that could have gotten a person imprisoned or even executed at various time in British history... just the cases that are on record probably number in the hundreds of thousands.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Pardon's have been granted to soldiers shot for cowardice during WWI. Why is that an acceptable correction of an injustice, but this not? Cowardice was just as illegal as 'gross indecency' at the time, yet that was overlooked in favour of righting a grievous wrong.
What a bloody disgrace.
...And while there are some raging tools in the put here any religiously discussed world view community, I think most of us are pretty content to live and let live
You replace atheist with anything else or leave it there and it is true (or not in case of nut case splinter group). The reason is that bigotry seems to be a general faculty of man. Something humans love to hate religion or atheism makes no difference good thing is that it gives a good reason to blame others for anything or just for a sheer fun of hating others. Atheists or otherwise - they activists of each genre are bigots and love to hate. The reason is important only on the surface.
+1 if i had it
They are no different.
Last year there was an article i think where the scientist described himself as a Possibilian, because no scientific evidence existed either way.
this should be the approach of any true scientific mind.
a hardline Atheist is no different from any other hardline religious zealot. given the chance they condemn those that don't see as they do.
The current policy is wrong headed and contributes to current and continuing injury.
This policy must be changed such that convictions based on any crime that is now considered "cruel and absurd" must be overturned.
His family are/were convinced that he didn't actually commit suicide, just that he was really careless with toxic chemicals.
Apparently his lab was such a mess and he was so sloppy that it would've been more in character to have been a tragic accident than suicide. These were the people who knew him best too.
For those who are interested, the BBC did a really good documentary on Bletchly park. Went into great detail about the code breaking process and, unlike most programs, actually showed in detail how the codes worked and how you could break them.
The problem there is that the majority of religions demand that the faithful either convert or destroy the non-believers. (Yes, even Christianity, they just focus more on the convert part, and try hard to pretend the destroy part never happened in modern times, even though it's still happening in third world countries like Somalia and parts of the southern USA.)
Atheism, as a doctrine, demands absolutely nothing of anyone.
A pardon means "we forgive you for your offense".
It would be better for us to say "This law was wrong and the conviction was illegitimate." The only people who should be asking for a pardon are those who voted for and upheld that law.
I don't think very many seriously intends to outlaw religion any more than you would outlaw superstition. The frustration usually comes when someone wants to make laws based on what the Bible, Quran or whatever says, because it defies any rational discussion. You can't argue if death by stoning is right if the logic goes "Stoning is in Sharia law, Sharia law is part of the Quran, the Quran is the exact words of Allah, Allah is perfect so his words can't be wrong. QED." I actually get annoyed the other way too, when you need to use religion to promote virtues. So Jesus was compassionate, does that mean it wasn't a good thing before Jesus? Without Jesus? Do you seriously need heaven and hell as carrot and stick? Can't you give me good enough reasons without invoking the invisible man in the sky? I'm more than happy to discuss ethics, society, law and almost everything else when it comes to how human beings should act towards each other. But when I hear of religious fundamentalists that want to replace evolution with God snapping his fingers 6000 years ago in the school curriculum, then yeah I'm almost ready to outlaw such stupidity.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Make public domain all his works. And I don't mean his manuscripts which are poorly catalogued and barely readable (and unpractical to read, as they are scanned as bitmaps). What I mean is, make public domain his published papers - all of them. It's a damn shame that in 2012 we still can't access his last paper "Solvable and unsolvable problems", published in Penguin Science News 31, in 1954!
And for those who don't know, "Solvable and unsolvable problems" may be Turing's most important work, one that casts a dark cloud over our misplaced certainties.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
By letting his good name remain sullied, they are somehow making sure they don't make unjust laws in the future?
I say the opposite. By leaving that as a crime on his record, they are saying that they could return to having that as a crime at any time. They have not legally acknowledged the wrongness, despite their public apology.
Grant a blanket pardon to everyone they convicted of this 'crime' that was not a crime and they WILL send the message that justice is their goal.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
In law, respect for the process is paramount, even when the process produces results that are obviously absurd or unjust. There was no procedural problem with Turing's abuse by the system, so there is nothing to change.
In science, respect for results is paramount. If there is a reproducible result that shows the textbooks to be wrong, they will eventually be changed.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
So what if it were a choice?
/really/ think gay people are harming you in some way? Do you /really/ think that you or your children could "catch" gayness from someone? There is ridiculous amounts of evidence that this is impossible. Teens are absolutely /not/ recruited into a gay lifestyle, but quite clearly the opposite. Every gay person tries not to be gay, and only acts long after they have acknowledged their feelings, and cultivated the gall to accept that some people will hate them and harass them and treat them like inferior shit.
/ever/ shown a reliable way to cure gayness, despite a century of pig-headed research. All we can do is push people around, and try to convince them their life will be better if they accept our choices.
What if it were? lol!
Well, firstly, homosexuality really isn't a choice, although this isn't a purely black and white matter.
Secondly, although there is a vast preponderance of evidence for the biological basis of homosexuality (and sexuality in general), this fact does nothing to affirm the place of gays within society.
Thirdly, even if it were a choice, what is it to you? Do you
And finally, if it were a choice, then it could be "cured", but nobody has
Are you really that person?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You can't change the past: the decision is important for how it affects the future.
Pardoning Turing puts a nice "The End" on the story, and allows people to put it in their little mental box of "things we used to do but don't anymore", like slavery and religious persecution, and forget about it. Leaving him unpardoned reminds us that his story belongs in the present, not the past, and that none of the things in that box have truly disappeared.
If the statement did anything but totally reject the bigotry that led to Turing's conviction, I'd feel differently.
Doesn't Turing represent a flaw in your logic?
Being homosexual, he is still responsible for some of the greatest advances in recent human history. Thus he, by default, has done more and benefited humanity more despite his "notable handicap" than most of the straightest of men. This is in contrast to, say, (oh Godwin strike me where I stand) Hitler, a heterosexual enough man who has managed to actually thin the human herd quite a bit through systematic execution and warmongering.
Or, if we need an example of a person who HAD children, why not Joseph Stalin or Kim Jong Il? Or Mary, Queen of Scots? Baby Doc? People who were trusted in positions of extreme political power and preferred the company of the opposite sex have still managed to do spectacular damage.
I'm not saying that homosexuals are beyond such cruelty, but perhaps child-rearing is not as effective a primary motivator for human compassion as you would believe. Your absolutist philosophy on the subject has a lot of gaping, horrible flaws in it... maybe it would actually be a net benefit for the world if you too did not have children.
Openly gay, which led to one of the greatest logicians of all time being chemically castrated when England was done using him to keep Germany from having a London garrison.
Check your premises.
I think I can say with little exageration that Alan Turing won the Second World War, invented the computer and was killed by the British Government for being gay. When he died, his work was considered so important that it was kept secret for decades after. Is this how we reward our heroes? Every allied soldier and sailor had Alan Turing behind him supplying enemy locations and intentions. If you don't know what a Turing Machine is, you are illiterate. If anyone deserves the highest honors Britain has to offer, it is Alan Turing.
My point was that there's no evidence for the second claim in GP's message, and yet his message was modded "insightful".
Actually, evidence is very simple.
When presented with evidence of the falseness of their particular flavor of religious teachings, religious people either simply reject the evidence or try to readjust the definitions of their religious teachings so that it is all still "true" in face of the evidence to the contrary.
Basically, they try to maintain the "truth" by lying to themselves.
But that is just practical evidence.
True reason for the debilitation factors of faith and religion is that every single one tries to explain EVERYTHING there is, there ever was and that there ever will be with its dogma.
Dogma, which every proponent of that particular faith/religion must accept as true, undeniable and unchangeable as it contains both the principles of their faith as well as the explanation of the Universe.
Those explanations being ultimately limited by their own definition as absolute truths, undeniable and unchangeable facts are BOUND to clash with actual data sooner or later.
At that moment, the religious person can either accept the new data throwing away his/her entire life and the view of the world, reject the clearly visible new data and stick to their dogma OR try to jury rig the new data onto the old dogma.
And so we get people claiming that there were dinosaurs in the garden of Eden and all the way up to the Biblical flood.
Basically, the victim of religion can choose between acceptance of selective reasoning and self-immolation of their "self" by rejecting the single most important thing in their lives, on which they've built not only their view of the world but also every single relation to the world around them - social, economical, philosophical... etc.
Either way, the person is scarred for life from that point on.
By a mere act of being exposed to new information, be it an idea or simply data.
And anything that can damage person's most important ability, to reason, by making them basically highly allergic to the truth and knowledge is not only debilitating but essentially evil as well.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Religion telling people "You are accountable for your good and your bad actions, even those that people aren't around to see" makes an incalculably valuable contribution to society. Altruism will eventually be rewarded! Deceit and manipulation will be punished, even in the most convincing of cases! Yet, when someone has the ability to convince himself that no such accountability exists, saying things like "Huhhrrr 6000 year old earth, invisible sky man, Duhhrrr" then he's free to do anything he wants, as long as it does not come back to bite him, personally, in the end.
You know, you're not the first that has made that argument. It's why in some of the persecutions, inquisitions and witchhunts of heretics, kafirs, unbelievers and so on atheists have been high on their extermination lists. People that follow a false god, that is bad but people that don't follow any god that's worse, devoid of all ethical and moral compass. Trouble is, it doesn't reflect reality. The least religious countries on earth, Scandinavia, Japan, Western Europe are some of the most peaceful low-crime places there are, while most of the fucked up collapsed states and civil war areas are choking full of religion. Of course there's damn many countries that are religious and peaceful too, but the argument that taking away religion would lead to any kind of degenerate anarchy and chaos is laughable.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings