We are victims in the technical sense, and I do feel aggrieved. What actually happened to Turing is his personal tragedy, the crime was the law of the day, and affects even us since we could just as easily be living in 60s Britain as 00s wherever. While there are strategies he could have adopted for a safer and more comfortable life, there's nothing Turing could have done to avoid being victimised, and all the changed minds and apologies in the world aren't going to help him.

When Henry VIII officially criminalised buggery in 15-urmmurmurmurmur, and his law was supported by subsequent generations, they weren't just thinking of their people in their own time, they applied it to everyone - you, me, Alan Turing and a child born a billion years from now in Alpha Centauri. This is the problem with taking the long view; the future may be bright, but it can't shine back on us, while the shadow of the past stretches forward forever.

Meh. I'm still closer to childhood than middle-age, and enamoured of idealism.

As for our limited intelligence - you do the best you can with what you have, and I'd suggest we're doing a hell of a lot better than some.

In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
Yeah, the 'personhood' model and the cognitive machine model are each useful levels of detail for the same thing... the best one to use probably depends on what your application is.

I don't blame people, though, for holding views that I think have big costs for society... I think we're all in the same trap of limited human intelligence - them more so than us - and people will change their minds in the end.

Also, the libertarian in me says that society's lack of intelligence only has a cost on us if we let it (to some degree). Turing, for example, as much as I personally admire him for his genius, chose to take certain risks, and he lost the bet.

...

>> ^dag:
I'm glad these kinds of retroactive apologies are made. For us in Australia, an equivalent would be saying sorry for the sub-human treatment of Aborigines. And when I say sub-human, I mean it. Until 1967 Aboriginal people weren't counted as people, they came under the Flora and Fauna Act.
It all seems so obviously misguided, evil and wrong now - but must have seemed logical and normal at the time.
What grave injustices are we inflicting today in society that now seem perfectly normal and respectable but will be looked back on with shock and horror? You know they are out there- we just can't see them because of our historical context.


The prison systems.

Yeah, the 'personhood' model and the cognitive machine model are each useful levels of detail for the same thing... the best one to use probably depends on what your application is.

I don't blame people, though, for holding views that I think have big costs for society... I think we're all in the same trap of limited human intelligence - them more so than us - and people will change their minds in the end.

Also, the libertarian in me says that society's lack of intelligence only has a cost on us if we let it (to some degree). Turing, for example, as much as I personally admire him for his genius, chose to take certain risks, and he lost the bet.

In January 1952 Turing picked up 19-year-old Arnold Murray outside a cinema in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation which Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed to accompany Turing to the latter's house. A few weeks later Murray visited Turing's house again, and apparently spent the night there.[32]

After Murray helped an accomplice to break into his house, Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time,[6] and so both were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier.[33] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_gross_indecency

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Death-of-Alan-Turing-1

The Turing Test is still used today to determine if artificial intelligence is gay.

Gorillaman, we're young enough that we have a decent chance of living to see the fulfillment of SENS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey).

Doesn't that make you want to do something with your life that's ingenious and constructive, helping out the common good, instead of just pursuing vendettas?

In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
Fucking apology from the fucking prime minister. Unbelievable.

It was only in '67 homosexuality was somewhat decriminalised in the UK. Not actually that long ago. You know what that means? It's not too late for justice. Many of the advocates and enforcers of the corrupt law, corrupt government, corrupt society of the period are still breathing; yet to evade their deserved punishment by dying of natural causes.

Drag them out of their retirement homes, torture them to death and parade their corpses through the streets. I am not kidding.

Alan Turing was a gay mathematician? I thought all mathematicians masturbated to the thought of being the multivariable equation inside of a double integral...

...now there's a threesome for the books.

im going to use your posts in a Turing test of a linguistic AI... if it can decipher what you say, it passes... cause right now, even some real people can't tell... and i find your wit, logic, and observational commentary to be high caliber... thanks for all the source data. im srsly.

http://www.logicaldiscourseproject.org

>> ^siaiaiaaaaaa:
>> Blahblahblahblah

I can tell the subtle diference between you and a random nonsense generator.

Wait, no I can't. Damn you, Alan Turing!

>> ^dgandhi:
Come on guys, he is so cute, with his little logical fallacies, and faith based arguments. Sure he's not as funny as QM, but he at least passes the turing test.


Oh man, I ache so much for the ability to promote comments right now!

Come on guys, he is so cute, with his little logical fallacies, and faith based arguments. Sure he's not as funny as QM, but he at least passes the turing test.

>> ^quantumushroom:
For all you libs that still think "waterboarding is torture", Attorney General Eric "Peanut-head" Holder tried his best to make that equation work and failed.
"As a matter of law, CIA waterboarding — like the same waterboarding actions featured in Navy SEALs training — cannot be torture because there is no intention to inflict severe mental or physical pain; the exercise is done for a different purpose. When Rep. (Louie) Gohmert’s questioning made it crystal clear that Holder’s simplistic "waterboarding is torture" pronouncement was wrong, the attorney general — rather than admitting error — tried to change the legal definition of torture in a manner that contradicted a position the Justice Department had just urged on the federal courts. It seems that, for this attorney general, there is one torture standard for Bush administration officials, and another one for everybody else."

Navy SEALS are waterboarded as part of their training, not to inflict harm and suffering. Waterboarding Sheikh Kalid was not done to inflict harm and suffering, but to extract information.
Remember libs, out of 500 Gitmo jumpsuit vacationers, only 3 were waterboarded for the sole purpose of gaining intel.
Some of you said it yourselves: Mancow (and now Olbyloon) embraced waterboarding as a rating stunt. The inevitable suffering--but no permanent harm--from being waterboarded was not the point, the media circus and ratings were.


Umm so its not torture if the intent is not to cause suffering?

Like I really need to say this again, but you're an idiot.

Torture
Main Entry:
1tor·ture
Pronunciation:
\ˈtȯr-chər\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle French, from Old French, from Late Latin tortura, from Latin tortus, past participle of torquēre to twist; probably akin to Old High German drāhsil turner, Greek atraktos spindle
Date:
1540
1 a: anguish of body or mind : agony b: something that causes agony or pain
2: the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure
3: distortion or overrefinement of a meaning or an argument : straining

From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/torture

Waterboarding is torture, by its very definition. Waterboarding is an act that causes agony to acquire information.

I can only hope that if the US does not prosecute the former administration for war crimes, that another country does.

>> ^gwiz665:
"There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear."
- Daniel Dennett.

Nietzsche wrote something similar in "Die fröhliche Wissenschaft" (Gay Science):

"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments."


And since most of the comments before me were written on a computer, I feel obliged to add a quote of Alan Turing:

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."

Seriously guise.. Babbage and Turing? If only my computer was an electromechanical device the size of a house. Have you ever heard of a semiconductor? And the internet is clearly came out of mostly US military, US Universities and US silicon valley. Also, nothing Comedy Central does is funny, it's a joke and more like ironic humor that they are called Comedy Central (it's dark humour).

Long John Silvers > newspaper wrapped cod

Also, how about sugar, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, cocoa, hot peppers, turkey, beans (except the blackeyed pea), pineapples

Enjoy your non-American cuisine jerkops.

And Turing deserves most of the credit for modern computing...