Gordon Brown apologizes to Alan Turing - 57 years later
September 11, 2009 - 12:55pm
I never thought this would happen.
Gordon Brown: I'm proud to say sorry to a real war hero
Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could have been very different. [...]
In 1952, he was convicted of "gross indecency" – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.
If you don't know the story of Alan Turing (who was also a great pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence - the "Turing machine"), please take a moment to look him up and honour his memory and contributions.
Thank you for this unionist, I did not know.
What a hypocritical shit he is. Thousands of men were persecuted for being gay, and he apologizes to one of them. Why? because Turing was a "war hero"!
And the occasion? 65 years since the Normandy invasion and 70 years since Britain's declaration of war. This is all about war, nothing else.
Wow. As a computer geek, Turing is one of my heroes. I just finished Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" which makes lots of references to Turing machines. I even watched the great production with Derek Jacobi playing Turing.
Good news indeed.
What a hypocritical shit he is. Thousands of men were persecuted for being gay, and he apologizes to one of them. Why? because Turing was a "war hero"!
This story isn't about Gordon Brown, who is indeed a hypocritical shit. It is about Alan Turing, and the tens of thousands of people who campaigned to have this savage act of the British society recognized and revoked.
Joe's take on this:
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/search/label/Alan%20Turing
I love this man's blog.
Touring was more than just a war hero. He is considered the father of the computing theory and modern cryptoanalysis, the Einstien of computer science. And the annual "Touring Award" by ACM is the equivalent of Nobel prize for the computing field.
More on him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_turing
Words are cheap. Last I checked there was a whole legislative agenda that could be implmented at little cost that would ensure equality for the LGBT communities in the UK. Marriage, adoption, expungement of criminal records for those still living who may have been convicted under gross indencency or sodomy laws. It's not like we are demanding reparations or anything....
[ETA] Not to mention laws and regulations governing refugee status and immigration for the purposes of uniting partners one of whom may not be a UK citizen. If he has seen the light, he should act on his realization.
Wiki says about Turing state machines:
I had no idea. You can learn something new every day.
HA!
That picture is interesting in more ways than one.
Alan Turing's "Turing Test" was devised as a test of the ability of a computer to demonstrate artificial intelligence. It proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are placed in isolated locations and communicate by text messaging. If the human judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.
In a similar vein, it can be challenging to create a parody of religious fundamentalism that can't possibly be mistaken for the real thing. This is known as Poe's Law, which says as follows: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article."
In other words, "no matter how bizarre, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar REAL ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists."
The above picture is of such a parody: it is totally bizarre and outrageous, but nevertheless there will be some who cannot tell it is a parody, because genuine religious fundamentalism inherently has no limits on how bizarre and outrageous it can be.
As a corollary of Poe's Law, there can be no "Poe test" analogous to the "Turing test", because no human judge can reliably tell the genuine article from the parody!
I assume that's why the woman who was holding the sign was also holding a small rainbow flag.
Government rejects a pardon for computer genius Alan TuringSignatures are gathering on an e-petition for a pardon but the justice minister Lord McNally used the precedent argument to discourage the notion in the House of Lords.
Asked by the Liberal Democrat Lord Sharkey whether a pardon would be considered, to mark this year's centenary of Turing's birth which is the subject of international scientific celebrations, he told peers:
As a result of the previous campaign, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal posthumous apology to Mr Turing on behalf of the Government, describing his treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". Mr Brown said the country owed him a huge debt. This apology was also shown at the end of the Channel 4 documentary celebrating Mr Turing's life and achievements which was broadcast on 21 November 2011.
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.
I'm with bagkitty on this one: talk is cheap.
It's worse than cheap. The proper word escapes me just now. I was going to thank you for this update, CF, but now I'm not sure.
Indeed. I can only imagine what those prosecuted under that law who are still alive must think reading such monstrous rationalization.
I find it ironic that Turing was killed by the exact same medicine which probably saved my life. His was a death by chemically induced gender dysphoria.
Actually Turing died of cyanide poisoning, ruled at the time as a suicide.
Yes, his death was a tribute to his favourite movie, "Snow White." He coated an apple with cyanide.
Unionist, if you haven't by this point grasped that gender dysphoria's most fatal complication is self-harm (Though the stress does have cardiovascular and oncological knock-on effects) I don't know quite what to say other than that he likely would not have taken the cyanide if he hadn't been forcibly given the medroxyprogesterone.
I wasn't aware of that, RTTG. I was under the impression though that suicide among queer people was (and maybe still is) not an uncommon response to harassment, humiliation, bullying, etc. - and it must have been especially so in Turing's time when to be queer was to be a criminal. I don't know of any stats, though.
It was high doses of estrogen, not MPA, that were given to Alan Turing. And giving estrogen can itself cause depression (in addition to the criminal prosecution and humiliation).
Unionist, trans people who have yet to transition face an incidence of suicide about 25 times higher than the general population. Most of that goes away after treatment, though ostracism does cause a significant increase in the numbers over the general population.