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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

What would justice have looked like for Alan Turing for his war contributions? I'm tempted to say that we should have showered him with our highest honors, that Britain should have made him a duke and a billionaire out of gratitude, and he should have had drawers full of keys to the great cities of the world. But none of that could have meaured up against just leaving the poor guy alone to pursue his own thoughts and loves. And who knows what gifts to the whole world he could have returned from that.

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What reward then for Bill Tutte who actually cold cracked a harder cipher than the one Turing supposedly cracked (He built upon earlier work by the Polish group who also made the first Bombes).

What reward for Tommy Flowers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._T._Tutte

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers

I like Turing, I like his work, but he was by no means the only genius at Bletchley.

Celebrating the less well known code breakers, an incomplete list includes

Arne Beurling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_Beurling, a Swede who cracked the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_and_Halske_T52

Hugh Foss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Foss who first cracked the early commercial variants of Enigma back in 1927

Gordon Welchman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Welchman ... argh where to start? :D

Not as widely remembered, but it sounds like those two did a bit better than Turing. They both died of old age after successful careers in their respective fields.

That makes it sound like a game. I don't think they would have viewed it that way?

I think you and the person I was replying to missed the second part of the other comment, which I believe to be the main point: "But none of that could have meaured up against just leaving the poor guy alone to pursue his own thoughts and loves. And who knows what gifts to the whole world he could have returned from that."

The reward they received is to live long lives without criminal prosecution and barbaric treatment at the hands of the law, I suppose. They also lived long enough to have their wartime work declassified and publicly recognized, which Turing never did.

Tommy Flowers was very badly treated: he was forced to destroy his work while others built on it.

If you want to activate even more dormant neurons: what about Konrad Zuse? Every CS course's history segment mentions Turing and (sometimes) Church while this man's only crime is having been on the wrong side of history and his reward being relegated to the margins of said history.

Agree with your main final point, but not the billionaire bit...

Why not give the billion to British immigrant Marian Rejewski and his Polish intelligence service peers and leaders who actually cracked Enigma, fled Poland, and gave their findings to the British (and French) as their home country was being taken over?

https://daily.jstor.org/polish-codebreakers/ https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/polish-mathematici...

Exactly. There are few good reasons to call Alan Turing a genius, but breaking Enigma definitely isn't one of them.

There is no single “Enigma”. There were several variations of the Enigma with increasing amounts of complexity, and changing key management practices. Trying to hand credit for “the break” to one group is like trying to credit one chef for devising all gourmet cuisine.

Well, trying to credit Turing alone is what frustrates me the most.

To add some context:

1. In Rejewski's own words, all variations of the Enigma were "quantitive, not qualitive" - adding more rotors, changing them more frequently made the decryption more labor-intensive, but they did not change the main principle on which it worked, and Rejewski's team was able to figure those out pretty quickly, even before the war.

2. Rejewski, Zygalski, Rozycki they did not just disappear in September 1939, they continued their work, first in France, and then in Britain. Turing actually went to France in early 1940 to consult with them.

3. The main advantage that British "bomb" had over earlier Polish design came from improvement suggested not by Turing, but by Gordon Welchman.

1) “Quantity is its own quality” when it comes to ciphers. We can break many reduced-round ciphers easily but have no practical attack on the full version. This is not always true but it is close enough (even today) that nobody should mistake the impact of additional rotors as being “merely quantitative.”

2) Consider the fact that you felt the names Rejewski, Zygalski and Rozycki could be placed in an HN post without further explanation. Do people know who they are and what they did? Yes, they do. They’re not unknown or uncredited (though many others certainly are, as is the case with every other massive technical effort.)

3) I don’t think anyone has ever seriously suggested that Turing broke Enigma alone. And I don’t take Hollywood seriously: this is a medium that requires “the Enterprise bridge crew” of seven people to effectively solve every problem that comes up. But Turing’s contributions were very significant. And he never had a chance to brag about them: he maintained secrecy while many of his colleagues lived to see the work declassified.

The novel "Machines Like Me" by Ian McEwan explores a Britain where Turing survived.

I greatly enjoyed that book (although I enjoy Ian McEwan's writing in general and YMMV).

You assume Alan Turing actually cares about what a bunch of British politicians think of him and the award they choose to give him.

You believe he cares about external validation and things like awards.

You believe he cares about being a billionaire.

You are more or less projecting your beliefs and ideas on what a successful life is on him.

Alan pursued truth throughout his life. Not external validations. He was a scientist not a politician or celebrity or a wannabe make world better startup founder.

Only truth could have set him free. And I hope he found his truth.

it’s okay to idealize people, but don’t take away their humanity. Turing might not have been exactly like you, but he was human and not a robot. He wanted the same sort of things that you do.

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