Is seems in 1996 the BBC aired a movie based off the same book that Imitation Game is based on. *related=http://videosift.com/video/Breaking-the-Code-Biography-of-Alan-Turing

Breaking the Code: Biography of Alan Turing has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Brady, Haran, James, Grime, WWII, Nazi, code, codebreaker, codebreaking' to 'Brady Haran, James Grime, WWII, Nazi, code, enigma, encryption, alan turing' - edited by xxovercastxx

@A10anis

Agnosticism is an epistemological position of the uncertainty of knowledge of things. In other words, the nature of knowledge about God, or knowledge in general really, as many above have pointed out (I'm taking it you did read the nice chart above!). Theism or Atheism is a position, either knowingly or unknowing rejecting or accepting the idea of God; one can be explicitly or implicitly atheist (like all children not exposed to the idea are implicitly atheist). Agnostic Atheist is the most common position, but few people have complete understanding of all the concepts involved, or have their own private understandings of what they mean; making any unilateral criticism troublesome. As to the foundations of science and Mathematics, Kurt Gödel had had a great role to play in the destruction of what most peoples concept of certain systems are. And the o so smart Karl Popper ideas on falsifiability has thrown the antique notion of certain truth from science against the wall, in which modern Philosophers of Science, like Hilary Putnam have found intractable to solve, except to say that very little separates, currently, the foundations of science form the foundations of any other dabble of the imagination. Einstein talked about this as well, that wonderment is really the pursuit of all great scientists...not certainty.

As to my original claim, that science has truths it can not rectify, I leave it to better minds to explain the problems of induction. David Hume, Nelson Goodman, and Kurt Gödel drastically changed any view of certain knowledge from science and maths that I had. The untenable nature of the empirical evaluation of reality is just as uncertain as Abrahamic codifications being real.

I close with this, some of the greatest minds in the history of science and philosophy had no problem, nay, drew power from the deep richness they gathered from their faith. It drove them to the limits of the thoughts of their day, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing (who kept some vestibules of faith even after what happened to him), Georg Cantor, and countless others all had some "irrational" faith was more than just a ideal system of commands by some dead people, it drove them to greatness, and in many cases to rejection and madness of their "rational" peers. Georg Cantor, the father of the REAL infinite, died in a mental institution only to have his ideas lite a fire in the minds of the next generation of mathematicians.

It is my believe that we all want to have issue with x number of people, and make peace with y number. We elevate the slightest difference, or conversely, ignore a great flaw to peg this mark just right for us. Perhaps my y is just bigger than your x, or most peoples x as I find this debate I have is a common one; for tolerance, peace, and consideration. If you still think what I am saying is non-sense, then I guess we have nothing more to say to one another. I hope I cleared up my thoughts a bit more, I am not very good at communicating things that are more than just the average amount of esoteric.

Personally I find it hard to reconcile what I know about physics with the existence of consciousness to begin with. Perhaps a better thought question would be something along the lines of Chalmers' zombie world arguments. That is, could a person appear outwardly to perceive and act in the world normally and not be conscious? That is, could they just be some sort of robot, or cascade of known biochemical processes? Alan Turing, in his own way, was interested in the same question.

Therein lies the problem. If there is no satisfactory physical test for consciousness, how can we be so sure about how consciousness is anchored to matter? Frankly, I see little hope of unifying an understanding of consciousness with an understanding of physics without invoking quantum mechanics. Even that just feels like punting to the physics equivalent of magic.

Personally I'm on the lunatic fringe with consciousness. I can't derive consciousness, but I'm overwhelmingly convinced of its existence. So, instead of dealing with all the paradoxes I just assume consciousness is present in all matter. There are varying experiences, or "degrees" of consciousness however. The nice entropy reducing capabilities of our nervous system make our particular conscious experience substantially richer than that of, for example, a rock. So I guess my thought is that the experience sort of fades towards the experience the matter would have without the metabolic energy necessary to support neuronal conduction. Honestly, I don't think it would be possible to obtain data on it, but I imagine it to be somewhat like fading to gray. I suppose it would be equally likely to be like fading into chaos.

A little background for those who are interested.

During the beginnings of WW2 the Polish saw that the Germans were amassing armies of some magnitude and were certain that they couldn't hope to fight them. So they worked on cracking the codes that the Germans were using for communication. This was a fantastic piece of mathematics and was eventually put into practice via a machine called the Bomba.

The poles handed a copy of their findings to the British intelligence through a man called Knox, who would eventually become Turing's superior at Bletchley Park. It was later found out that Knox was also a homosexual, despite being married.

The enigma machine was altered after the Bomba was made, Turing analysed the code and mathematics and created a machine known as the Bombe. This was capable of cracking the enigma code by looking for contradictions.

This machine was later re-invented as The Colossus machines by a gifted engineer, Tommy Flowers. These machines were capable of cracking an enigma message in roughly 10 minutes. By the end of the war, the British were cracking the broadcasted Enigma coded messages before the Germans could themselves as they decoded messages manually using the enigma machine.

In 1945, Turing was awarded the OBE for his wartime services. He committed suicide in 1954, although this is disputed, especially by his mother.

In 2009 as the result of a petition, a government apology was issued by Gordon Brown for the way Turing had been treated.

"Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him ... So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

I've had the chance to learn a lot about Bletchley park in my studies of computing history, and what a remarkable man Turing was.

A personal hero of mine too. *promote

That's a great idea! A similar thing happened in my elementary school for a mentally retarded kid. Their parents made a short documentary about what everyday life is like for him, how he perceives the world, and his helper dog and everything. All the kids in school watched it, and the teachers talked about it with the kids with a sincere attitude. People seemed to react in a considerate fashion instead of with hostility, and the kid made it through school just fine.

>> ^bareboards2:

Seems like there are two types of comments here -- ones that look at the moment on the video, and those that step back and put the video into a larger context and pontificate on the larger context.
And then there are arguments about who is right, when it isn't the same topic.
Bullying has always been a problem. No one has ever addressed it. How could we address it?
I read about a program in a UK school that tackled gay bullying, and it was pretty successful. The solution? Mandatory education on the contributions of gays to society. For example, they taught the kids about Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who was crucial to the Allied forces breaking the Nazi Enigma coding machine. Who was subsequently harassed and whose life was destroyed because he was gay.
That great post by the teacher shows change can happen if someone takes steps to make changes.
Humans have human responses. Casey did what Casey did.
What do we do now?

Seems like there are two types of comments here -- ones that look at the moment on the video, and those that step back and put the video into a larger context and pontificate on the larger context.

And then there are arguments about who is right, when it isn't the same topic.

Bullying has always been a problem. No one has ever addressed it. How could we address it?

I read about a program in a UK school that tackled gay bullying, and it was pretty successful. The solution? Mandatory education on the contributions of gays to society. For example, they taught the kids about Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who was crucial to the Allied forces breaking the Nazi Enigma coding machine. Who was subsequently harassed and whose life was destroyed because he was gay.

That great post by the teacher shows change can happen if someone takes steps to make changes.

Humans have human responses. Casey did what Casey did.

What do we do now?

You know why the lawyer is crying; because the judge doesn't give a shit. The whole tone of that court is bullshit.

Now I'm going to use ad homimen against the quoted person below. Do you dislike the constitution; your comment would seem to put you in that category. This case is clear cut, the Judicial Branch in Nevada does not have the power to call that law what it is; bullshit. The balance of powers is not working, and it is clear in the judge’s tone of voice; "I wash my hands of this."

Read the 8th amendment.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Somehow I get the feeling that you would think the ultimatum imposed on Alan Turing was correct and immaculately moral. Read the following excerpt from Wikipedia. Turing’s ultimatum was chemical castration or imprisonment. Bear it in mind that this is the same era where Oppenheimer was persecuted for, what some would say, the same carelessness as Turing.

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.[38]

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.[39]

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment and probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via oestrogen hormone injections.[40] A side effect of the treatment caused him to grow breasts.

Turing's conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for GCHQ. At the time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents,[41] because of the recent exposure of the first two members of the Cambridge Five, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but, as with all who had worked at Bletchley Park, was prevented from discussing his war work.[42]

Your way of thinking is outdated, outmaneuvered and better suited for the middle ages; also misogyny doesn't suit you.

>> ^fjules:

She got sentenced for life because she refused to have her name on the sex offenders list. Basically, it's her own fault.
"wtf with the crying lawyer?"
Good reason why women can't be lawyers.

this is not that far for even the 'western world'
it wasn't that long ago when gay people were forcibly castrated
alan turing was only officially apologised for this year - and that's for one of the most important people of the allied war effort
england overturned 'sodomy laws' in 1967, while some US states still had them in full effect until 2003

>> ^shole:
damn.. you should have told alan turing.. he got his suicide symbolism all wrong now


In Soviet Russia, cyanide apple eats YOU?

damn.. you should have told alan turing.. he got his suicide symbolism all wrong now

Fair enough

In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
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.

...

IMHO, it's reasonable to say a rationalist in his position wouldn't have been so careless with sexuality. I think we're often more empowered and capable of proactive behavior than we think we are, and viewing ourselves as victims is generally not necessary.

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.

...

IMHO, it's reasonable to say a rationalist in his position wouldn't have been so careless with sexuality. I think we're often more empowered and capable of proactive behavior than we think we are, and viewing ourselves as victims is generally not necessary.

>> ^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.