Gordon Brown apologizes to Alan Turing - 57 years later

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.

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

Wiki says about Turing state machines:

Quote:

A Turing machine that is able to simulate any other Turing machine is called a Universal Turing machine

 I had no idea. You can learn something new every day.

That picture is interesting in more ways than one.

Alan Turing's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test]"Turing Test"[/url] 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 [url=http://www.christianforums.com/t1962980-6/#post17606580]Poe's Law[/url], 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 [i]someone[/i] won't mistake for the genuine article."

[url=http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Poe%27s%20Law]In other words,[/url] "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!

Government rejects a pardon for computer genius Alan Turing

Quote:

The government has given an initial rebuff to the campaign for a pardon for Alan Turing, the brilliant British 'father of the computer' whose career ended in tragedy after a gross indecency conviction at a time when gay sex was against the law.

Signatures 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:

Quote:

The question of granting a posthumous pardon to Mr Turing was considered by the previous Government in 2009.

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.

Indeed. I can only imagine what those prosecuted under that law who are still alive must think reading such monstrous rationalization.

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.

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).

What Happens When We Turn the World's Most Famous Robot Test on Ourselves?

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This weekend marks the centenary of Alan Turing's birth. Turing was one of the greatest computer scientist of all time. In a 1950 paper that outlined what has come to be known as the Turing Test he offered a way out of endless philosophical speculation about whether computers could ever be classed as 'intelligent.' He said that if human judges ask interview questions of a hidden computer and a hidden person and cannot tell the difference after five minutes, the computer should be considered intelligent. Nowadays, programmers compete yearly for the Loebner Prize, which is won by the computer that is most often mistaken for a human. 

 

But the Turing Test's application is no longer limited to questions of artificial intelligence: Social scientists too are getting in on the action and using the test in a completely new way -- to compare different human subjects and their ability to pass as members of groups to which they do not belong, such as religious and ethnic minorities or particular professional classes. With the Turing Test, sociologists can compare the extent to which subjects can understand people who are different from them in some way.

In the words of sociologists, what they're now studying is called "interactional expertise." The easiest way to understand what interactional expertise entails is to contrast it with a more common idea, contributory expertise. Contributory experts are the typical array of professionals (physicists, chemists, lawyers, economists, musicians etc.) who develop specialized knowledge and skill through formal education and long experience.

Interactional experts, by contrast, are not primary practitioners. They learn about a field primarily bytalking with the people who have acquired contributory expertise. The new claim is that linguistic socialization enables interactional experts to acquire enough tacit knowledge to see the world from a contributory expert's perspective. Their existence defies the cliché that understanding a person necessitates walking a mile in his or her shoes. Interactional experts can do more than talk the talk -- they can 'walk the talk' or, really, 'talk the walk' by offering authoritative technical judgments, making inside jokes, and raising devil's advocate questions that revolve around ideas normally known only to specialists.

Relatives of Alan Turing deliver petition demanding pardons for the 49,000+ men convicted under the same laws used against Turing.

GuardianArticle wrote:

Ms Barnes said: “I consider it to be fair and just that everybody who was convicted under the Gross Indecency law is given a pardon. It is illogical that my great uncle has been the only one to be pardoned when so many were convicted of the same crime. I feel sure that Alan Turing would have also wanted justice for everybody.”

[...]

“Men convicted of gross indecency were often considered to have brought huge shame on their families and many took their own lives. We still live with the legacy of this period today and it’s about time the country addressed this appalling part of our history.”

The petition garnered almost a half million signatures.