6 ms·

Alan Turing's biggest fan remains the real enigma

83 points by Hooke 5y ago

teraflop 5y ago
> Alan Turing remained relatively obscure until 2012, when the British government declassified key documents that revealed the extent to which his code-breaking skills helped to undermine the Germans’ enigma machine in World War Two, changing the course of the war and giving the Allies a significant advantage over their Nazi adversaries. That's a rather odd claim to make. The ACM's Turing Award has been given out since 1966; Turing's crucial role in the breaking of Enigma was revealed in the 70's. In 1999, he was one listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th century. As far as I can determine, the only new information that was declassified in 2012 was a couple of technical papers from Turing's work at Bletchley Park. Any relationship to public awareness of his life seems entirely coincidental.
- nextstep 5y ago
  They might just mean to a general, American audience.
  - teraflop 5y ago
    Oh, it's definitely true that general public knowledge of Turing's life and work has increased over the years. I just don't think it has anything to do with those "key documents" that were released in 2012, as opposed to, you know, the movie about his life and the public apology/pardon he received around the same time.
    - rudyfink 5y ago
      Alan Turing's Google NGram certainly supports your impression that "general public knowledge of Turing's life and work has increased over the years." https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Alan+Turing&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Alan+Turing&ye...
    - stavros 5y ago
      Wasn't jgrahamc largely responsible for the apology?
      - jgrahamc 5y ago
        Yes
        stavros 5y ago
        That was an excellent campaign.
    - nwallin 5y ago
      He was born in 1912. There was a lot of celebration in 2012 relating to the 100th anniversary of his birth. Not just the 2014 movie.
  - buildbot 5y ago
    Neal Stephensons Cryptonomicon came out in 1999, which while fictional, features Turing and his work very heavily and was a popular book in America, so that doesn't seem totally correct either.
- dotcommand 5y ago
  It's not odd. The journalist who wrote this piece mostly likely regurgitated misinformation/propaganda he read it elsewhere. Since you clarified the tech misinformation, I'll tackle the historical misinformation. > changing the course of the war and giving the Allies a significant advantage over their Nazi adversaries. Turing, Bletchley Park, Engima machine had no material impact on the war. 90% of the german military were destroyed by the Soviets in the eastern front in a simple battle of attrition. It would have served the soviets better if britain had shut down bletchley park and used those resources to send bullets/trucks/etc to the Soviets. Turing, Bletchley Park, etc provide no advantage over the germans as the germans were already heavily disadvantaged - by population, economy, technology, military, etc. The soviets by themselves vastly outnumbered the germans and had a far greater military industrial complex. The soviets produced more tanks, planes, guns, etc than the germans. Now toss in the british empire and the US and the germans stood no chance. It's amazing how misleading the media, news, etc are when it comes to ww2. One look at the actual data/facts/stats is rather sobering. Germany had no chance of winning. You have a better shot at beating 3 heavy weight MMA fighters at the same time than Germany had of beating the US/Soviet Union/British Empire. Go look at the data of Japan vs the US/China/British Empire/etc. Japan had even longer odds. The propaganda that has been built around Turing, Enigma machine and WW2 in recent years is rather impressive. I guess being one of the founders of Computer Science isn't good enough? We have to exaggerate/lie about him winning ww2?
  - krastanov 5y ago
    You are right or close-to-right about this (and your comment is what prompted me to look up some stats about which I did have wrong assumptions, so thank you), but the combative tone (and hyperbole and dissing of journalists) you are using is a disservice to the facts you want to share with us.
    - publicola1990 5y ago
      Why do you think the journalist don't deserve the dissing, if they do a sloppy job of it. Years ago when Guardian had comments open for most of its articles, the commentary was full of people calling out every single sloppy thing the journalist did in the article, until the present editor effectively banned the criticism of journalists. Journalists could use direct and immediate feedback.
- stevula 5y ago
  I remember reading about the Turing test at least as far back as 2005 long before I developed any interest in computer science.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    > relatively obscure I think they meant to the wider public.
    - kadoban 5y ago
      Even then it sounds bizarre, was the public really alerted to his existence as a result of the release of a few obscure documents?
      - me_me_me 5y ago
        I thinks so, it was a story of a national hero who was hunted by his government for being different. The great injustice is type of a story that spreads really well (and sells). Movies came out, so I think people had higher chance to learn about him.
        kadoban 5y ago
        Wasn't all of that already known though, or is my sense of time quite badly distorted? The movie certainly helped, I would put that as the biggest reason the general public heard of him more.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  By 2012, Bletchley Park was already a popular tourist attraction. I wonder what dubious source Westword were relying on? I wonder what other flaky factoids the report incorporates?
bitwize 5y ago
I never knew Turing had his own Blue Tulip Rose Read.
zabzonk 5y ago
Slightly OT, but today the UK 50.00 GBP note, featuring Turing, comes into circulation: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jun/23/new-50-note-alan-turing-uk-security-features https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jun/23/new-50-note-al...
- arduinomancer 5y ago
  Really cool design. For anyone curious the table on the bill is the “normal form” m-configurations of a Turing machine (think table of state machine transition definitions). You can read each entry like: for current state qi, if the machine head currently reads symbol Si, print symbol Sk and move (left|right|no move), then jump to state qm. There are three normal forms N1, N2, N3, one for each direction to move after printing a symbol: left, right, no movement. Any Turing machine can be encoded with those three forms.
- joshxyz 5y ago
  Holy fucking shit this is cool.
Hdveq 5y ago
Once upon a time there was a plan to build a Museum of Crazy Americans. Just to inspire more randomness in the world I suppose. Unfortunately it ran into obstacles with the PC brigades of the day and the plan was abandoned. Always felt it was a very interesting idea to be able to view the entire spectrum of behavior in one place.
- drzaiusapelord 5y ago
  Not mocking people with mental health issues isn't "PC nonsense" but common decency. I imagine people like you during Turing's time would have built museums to "crazy homosexuals" to mock them. Thankfully, saner minds prevail.
  - mastazi 5y ago
    I think that the parent might be referring to the person whose story is narrated in the article, not Alan Turing.
    - jarofgreen 5y ago
      I think the person replying gets that and they are right, she shouldn't be in such a museum. She clearly had a terrible childhood and I would hope people here would have enough naunce to disapprove of the theft whilst also sympathising with her. A museum of human behaviour might be interesting actually, but framing really matters here. If it in any way encourages people to just laugh at them rather than empathising it's doing more harm than good. If it was literally going to be called "museum of crazy" that's a bad first step.
      - mastazi 5y ago
        I think it's a matter of angle, in western popular culture "crazy" often has a positive connotation, for example I remember seeing an ad with the line "For the crazy ones". In other instances, it's the opposite, in my wife's home country for example, "crazy" is used as an insult and it's highly offensive. Edit: the ad was this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg
nanna 5y ago
Wow this is quite a story.
- twiseau 5y ago
  What a story Mark, haha!

83 points by Hooke 5y ago

> Alan Turing remained relatively obscure until 2012, when the British government declassified key documents that revealed the extent to which his code-breaking skills helped to undermine the Germans’ enigma machine in World War Two, changing the course of the war and giving the Allies a significant advantage over their Nazi adversaries. That's a rather odd claim to make. The ACM's Turing Award has been given out since 1966; Turing's crucial role in the breaking of Enigma was revealed in the 70's. In 1999, he was one listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th century. As far as I can determine, the only new information that was declassified in 2012 was a couple of technical papers from Turing's work at Bletchley Park. Any relationship to public awareness of his life seems entirely coincidental.

nextstep 5y ago
They might just mean to a general, American audience.
- teraflop 5y ago
  Oh, it's definitely true that general public knowledge of Turing's life and work has increased over the years. I just don't think it has anything to do with those "key documents" that were released in 2012, as opposed to, you know, the movie about his life and the public apology/pardon he received around the same time.
  - rudyfink 5y ago
    Alan Turing's Google NGram certainly supports your impression that "general public knowledge of Turing's life and work has increased over the years." https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Alan+Turing&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Alan+Turing&ye...
  - stavros 5y ago
    Wasn't jgrahamc largely responsible for the apology?
    - jgrahamc 5y ago
      Yes
      - stavros 5y ago
        That was an excellent campaign.
  - nwallin 5y ago
    He was born in 1912. There was a lot of celebration in 2012 relating to the 100th anniversary of his birth. Not just the 2014 movie.
- buildbot 5y ago
  Neal Stephensons Cryptonomicon came out in 1999, which while fictional, features Turing and his work very heavily and was a popular book in America, so that doesn't seem totally correct either.
dotcommand 5y ago
It's not odd. The journalist who wrote this piece mostly likely regurgitated misinformation/propaganda he read it elsewhere. Since you clarified the tech misinformation, I'll tackle the historical misinformation. > changing the course of the war and giving the Allies a significant advantage over their Nazi adversaries. Turing, Bletchley Park, Engima machine had no material impact on the war. 90% of the german military were destroyed by the Soviets in the eastern front in a simple battle of attrition. It would have served the soviets better if britain had shut down bletchley park and used those resources to send bullets/trucks/etc to the Soviets. Turing, Bletchley Park, etc provide no advantage over the germans as the germans were already heavily disadvantaged - by population, economy, technology, military, etc. The soviets by themselves vastly outnumbered the germans and had a far greater military industrial complex. The soviets produced more tanks, planes, guns, etc than the germans. Now toss in the british empire and the US and the germans stood no chance. It's amazing how misleading the media, news, etc are when it comes to ww2. One look at the actual data/facts/stats is rather sobering. Germany had no chance of winning. You have a better shot at beating 3 heavy weight MMA fighters at the same time than Germany had of beating the US/Soviet Union/British Empire. Go look at the data of Japan vs the US/China/British Empire/etc. Japan had even longer odds. The propaganda that has been built around Turing, Enigma machine and WW2 in recent years is rather impressive. I guess being one of the founders of Computer Science isn't good enough? We have to exaggerate/lie about him winning ww2?
- krastanov 5y ago
  You are right or close-to-right about this (and your comment is what prompted me to look up some stats about which I did have wrong assumptions, so thank you), but the combative tone (and hyperbole and dissing of journalists) you are using is a disservice to the facts you want to share with us.
  - publicola1990 5y ago
    Why do you think the journalist don't deserve the dissing, if they do a sloppy job of it. Years ago when Guardian had comments open for most of its articles, the commentary was full of people calling out every single sloppy thing the journalist did in the article, until the present editor effectively banned the criticism of journalists. Journalists could use direct and immediate feedback.
stevula 5y ago
I remember reading about the Turing test at least as far back as 2005 long before I developed any interest in computer science.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  > relatively obscure I think they meant to the wider public.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    Even then it sounds bizarre, was the public really alerted to his existence as a result of the release of a few obscure documents?
    - me_me_me 5y ago
      I thinks so, it was a story of a national hero who was hunted by his government for being different. The great injustice is type of a story that spreads really well (and sells). Movies came out, so I think people had higher chance to learn about him.
      - kadoban 5y ago
        Wasn't all of that already known though, or is my sense of time quite badly distorted? The movie certainly helped, I would put that as the biggest reason the general public heard of him more.
denton-scratch 5y ago
By 2012, Bletchley Park was already a popular tourist attraction. I wonder what dubious source Westword were relying on? I wonder what other flaky factoids the report incorporates?

bitwize 5y ago

I never knew Turing had his own Blue Tulip Rose Read.

zabzonk 5y ago

Slightly OT, but today the UK 50.00 GBP note, featuring Turing, comes into circulation: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jun/23/new-50-note-alan-turing-uk-security-features https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jun/23/new-50-note-al...

arduinomancer 5y ago
Really cool design. For anyone curious the table on the bill is the “normal form” m-configurations of a Turing machine (think table of state machine transition definitions). You can read each entry like: for current state qi, if the machine head currently reads symbol Si, print symbol Sk and move (left|right|no move), then jump to state qm. There are three normal forms N1, N2, N3, one for each direction to move after printing a symbol: left, right, no movement. Any Turing machine can be encoded with those three forms.
joshxyz 5y ago
Holy fucking shit this is cool.

Hdveq 5y ago

Once upon a time there was a plan to build a Museum of Crazy Americans. Just to inspire more randomness in the world I suppose. Unfortunately it ran into obstacles with the PC brigades of the day and the plan was abandoned. Always felt it was a very interesting idea to be able to view the entire spectrum of behavior in one place.

drzaiusapelord 5y ago
Not mocking people with mental health issues isn't "PC nonsense" but common decency. I imagine people like you during Turing's time would have built museums to "crazy homosexuals" to mock them. Thankfully, saner minds prevail.
- mastazi 5y ago
  I think that the parent might be referring to the person whose story is narrated in the article, not Alan Turing.
  - jarofgreen 5y ago
    I think the person replying gets that and they are right, she shouldn't be in such a museum. She clearly had a terrible childhood and I would hope people here would have enough naunce to disapprove of the theft whilst also sympathising with her. A museum of human behaviour might be interesting actually, but framing really matters here. If it in any way encourages people to just laugh at them rather than empathising it's doing more harm than good. If it was literally going to be called "museum of crazy" that's a bad first step.
    - mastazi 5y ago
      I think it's a matter of angle, in western popular culture "crazy" often has a positive connotation, for example I remember seeing an ad with the line "For the crazy ones". In other instances, it's the opposite, in my wife's home country for example, "crazy" is used as an insult and it's highly offensive. Edit: the ad was this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg

nanna 5y ago

Wow this is quite a story.

twiseau 5y ago
What a story Mark, haha!