Alan Turing Receives a (Late) Obituary From the NYT (nytimes.com) 86
"In recent years, The New York Times has been publishing obituaries of people long dead but who nevertheless would have been deserving of one when they died," writes Slashdot reader necro81. "They call it their 'Overlooked' series. Today, their overlooked figure is British mathematician and prototype computer scientist Alan Turing." Here's an excerpt from the obituary: His genius embraced the first visions of modern computing and produced seminal insights into what became known as "artificial intelligence." As one of the most influential code breakers of World War II, his cryptology yielded intelligence believed to have hastened the Allied victory. But, at his death several years later, much of his secretive wartime accomplishments remained classified, far from public view in a nation seized by the security concerns of the Cold War. Instead, by the narrow standards of his day, his reputation was sullied.
On June 7, 1954, Alan Turing, a British mathematician who has since been acknowledged as one the most innovative and powerful thinkers of the 20th century -- sometimes called the progenitor of modern computing -- died as a criminal, having been convicted under Victorian laws as a homosexual and forced to endure chemical castration. Britain didn't take its first steps toward decriminalizing homosexuality until 1967. Only in 2009 did the government apologize for his treatment. [...] A coroner determined that he had died of cyanide poisoning and that he had taken his own life "while the balance of his mind was disturbed."
On June 7, 1954, Alan Turing, a British mathematician who has since been acknowledged as one the most innovative and powerful thinkers of the 20th century -- sometimes called the progenitor of modern computing -- died as a criminal, having been convicted under Victorian laws as a homosexual and forced to endure chemical castration. Britain didn't take its first steps toward decriminalizing homosexuality until 1967. Only in 2009 did the government apologize for his treatment. [...] A coroner determined that he had died of cyanide poisoning and that he had taken his own life "while the balance of his mind was disturbed."
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The DSM is a political document, so the fact that homosexuality was listed as a disease in one version and removed in a later version only means that the politics surrounding homosexuality have changed over the years.
Your argument has a false premise. The DSM is not political. It is an attempt by psychological diagnosticians to define disorders based on current information. As information improves, the definitions change. All science has, from time to time, made false conclusions that were corrected later. That's not politics.
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"All science has, from time to time, made false conclusions that were corrected later. That's not politics."
Yes, that is true of science which psychology is not.
"It is an attempt by psychological diagnosticians to define disorders based on current information."
Including socially and politically biased notions of appropriate behavior and what constitutes "healthy" mental perspectives. The attempt to frame it in a way that gives a connection to science and hide the subjectively originated criteria that are no
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"Incidentally, there *are* drugs that are highly effective against major depression, by the way, but they are all schedule 2--or schedule 1--and none of them are actually approved for depression."
Can you elaborate?
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I'm not the parent you replied to but it isn't hard to find a medication which is effective for treating depression. Just look under negative side effects for "Euphoria" or "a false sense of well being"
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Try zanaflex (brand) aka Tizanidine. Not all Psychiatry is bullshit but a great deal is extremely immature and heavy handed and its bedmate and cousin psychology which is a dangerous pseudoscience. Insomnia is one thing but many of the "diseases" that are being "cured" or treated by these fields aren't objectively illnesses at all but assumed to be illnesses as a consequence of social and/or political norms and values.
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Never forget this guy the next time you hear a psychologist pretending he knows how humanity works.
Humans like to have power, and that includes hoarding information. The Soviets had infiltrated Bletchley Park, and knew everything about the code breaking. So once Germany had been defeated, and the Cold War began, keeping it secret was completely pointless.
Alan Turing should have been publicly recognized, and knighted, in 1946.
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keeping it secret was completely pointless.
Not really. It eliminated one competitor to the nascent US computing business.
'You Brits better destroy that equipment. Because it's a security risk. Don't mind us while we try to commercialize our version of your R&D.'
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This is absolutely true. Psychiatry/Psychology are often positioned as sciences but they are not sciences, they are pseudoscience. That isn't to say there is zero effectiveness, merely that they are falsely associated with actual sciences to create a false impression they have similar consistency, reliability, and credibility and reinforce that false impression by incorporating some results of science into their practice.
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"Well if you want to go that way, most surgery isn't "science" either. They just do it."
That is true, most medicine is not properly science (though much of it is underpinned by science). But most surgery is to fix something which is objectively broken such as an arm or a failing organ. These problems were identified by a doctor using a method of diagnosis and treatment that is while not the scientific method mirrors many of its key concepts.
Your antisocial behavior, proclivities with regard to sex, obsessio
So sad... (Score:5, Interesting)
I currently live in Manchester, UK and it's very weird to live in this very LGBTQ friendly city and be able to sit next to Turing's statue (it's on a bench in the park), while knowing this WWII national hero and founder of modern CS was chemically castrated and led to suicide because he liked men.
Note that he lay next to a half eaten apple, so it is speculated that being a fan of Snow White he committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple.
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Indeed. Alan Turing deserves great credit for his contributions to humanity but Britain deserves no credit for Alan Turing, only for murdering him. The TFS should be amended to remove noting he is British as it creates a positive impression for Britain when Britains should only feel shame at mention of Turing's name.
Overlooked again (Score:2, Flamebait)
His real contribution was the Turing machine, defining for the first time what it means to make a computation and recognizing that some things are NOT computable, even in principle. The Church-Turing thesis is the giant's shoulders we all here stand on.
"Seminal insights into what became known as 'artificial intelligence'", no, no, not so much. The Turing Test is a kind of half-baked idea, more suited
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I'm not saying this to slight Konrad Zuse, who I admire quite a bit, but Alan Turing invented the computer.
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and largely forgotten engineers at IBM et al actually planned and built on it.
Nah, that honor should go to Von Neuman.
High Time (Score:2)
Re:High Time (Score:4, Informative)
people like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and Denis Ritchie die with little notice by the public.
Alan Turing is the subject of a major motion picture. The "Nobel Prize of CS" is named after him. He was pardoned by the Queen.
John von Neumann is widely recognized for his work in game theory, stored program computer architecture, and of course, the Manhattan Project. He is far from obscure.
I once attended Usenix when Dennis Ritchie approached the podium. An auditorium of 4000 people gave him a standing ovation. When he died, his obituary was published in The Economist, which has a circulation of 1.1 million.
If you want to name people who are unrecognized for their accomplishments, you picked three poor examples.
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"Alan Turing is the subject of a major motion picture. The "Nobel Prize of CS" is named after him. He was pardoned by the Queen."
None of which changes his level of recognition when he died or during his life. Those are reasons his memory was latter resurrected and given honor, tuxidriver wouldn't have been able to list him if someone hadn't gone back and discovered him eventually. Tesla would also appropriately be added to this list.
"Dennis Ritchie. An auditorium of 4000 people gave him a standing ovation.
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The USA is celebrity focused because pseudo celebrities pay for it to be that way, so they can sell themselves and of course schill for every crappy product on the planet. Celebrity is just bullshit marketing, either what you have done if of value as you yourself define it and on balance did more to promote life than consume it or it was not. Celebrity is marketing bullshit and make no mistake, promoting the most shallow, the most greedy and the most egoistic and those often who should be celebrated the lea
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Given the court records explicitly state that he was prosecuted for acts of gross indecency with Arnold Murray, a 'male person' that was aged 19 at the time, you're going to have to back up this wild claim with some evidence.
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Citation needed and a credible one doesn't exist.
Move on and shame on you.
Poles broke Enigma before Turing (Score:1)
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If it helps any, British descriptions of Bletchley and Enigma are very good at acknowledging the role and contribution of the Poles.
Similarly the Battle of Britain is recognised as having a substantial contribution from Polish pilots.
Alan Turing and Sophie Wilson: British Geniuses (Score:1)
Alan Turing was the greatest computer scientist.
Sophie Wilson is the greatest computer engineer.
On a shoestring budget, Wilson and two other colleagues designed and tested the first ARM processor. The Web site [computerhistory.org] of the Computer History Museum states, "The number of ARM processor cores ... shipped [by 2012] exceeds 30 billion, or more than four ARM microprocessors for every person on earth."
An interesting question for geneticists is, "Do uncommon sexual orientations result in an enhanced intellectual ability
Ya think? (Score:2)