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Comment by zbuc | Hacker News Reader

> 4. The article also likes to try to downplay everything negative. For example, "It is often repeated that the chemicals caused him to grow breasts, though Turing is only known to have mentioned this once." The second clause seems to be the most important.

Well, thank goodness, maybe he didn't actually grow breasts. Must not have actually have been that bad being forced to take hormones for no good reason.

There's also a very, uhm, disheartening tone that a lot of commenters on that blog post are taking -- what sort of people is ESR attracting? People are suggesting that Turing's castigation was a preventable result of his homosexuality he should have predicted and avoided. "Just stay in the closet and shut your mouth."

Gross. Really, really gross. ESR should be ashamed.

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> ESR should be ashamed.

For saying that Turing should be remembered for his accomplishments rather than for the circumstances of his death?

For the company he keeps. Comment on that blog enough and pretty soon a regular will threaten to come to your house and beat you up. This has happened to me twice and I've seen it happen to others; multiple perps, regulars and seemingly friends of ESR.

Basically, the crowd he attracts is smart in some ways but uncivilized. It's a waste and a disappointment.

Isn't that police complaint worthy?

If I thought they meant it. But I actually think it's just an aggressive thrashing about on having their sacred beliefs threatened. The closed epistemic system of that crowd shows defense signs similar to those of Christianity.

It sounds like someone who hasn't matured since middle school.

But maybe I'm just stuck in the statist mindset, where the government has a monopoly on the use of force. Perhaps they're merely advancing the anarcho-capitalist idea that private entities ought to be contracted to the various roles that have been usurped by the state. So, like private police, presumably there's a market for private jackbooted thugs to oppress dissenting ideas. There's no doubt some heavy ratiocinations I'm missing which make this morally acceptable, rather than the doing of violence to another that it seems on the surface.

Long live the market!*

*sorry

That Anne Frank was a great writer wasn't she? What ever happened to her?

Yes.

Isn't it even more disheartening to know that such a thing could happen in an "enlightened" society to someone who had such great accomplishments? It was a complete lack of respect of basic human dignity, and people shouldn't forget that, especially presently when the issue(of gay rights) is finally entering the mass public eye. People should be aware of the results of oppression, it makes them more compassionate.

The problem is that the assertion that Turing killed himself because of oppression is not founded on facts. We'll never know why he killed himself--we may not even be sure he did kill himself. I believe gay rights are an important issue, and certainly evil things were done to Turing. No truths need to be bent to support this cause--and no cause benefits from illusory bolstering by half-truths and semi-lies.

People should be aware of oppression, it does make them more compassionate, but usually when people find out they've been lied to, manipulated to support a cause, they react by rejecting the cause, sometimes violently. That's a lot worse for your cause than whatever benefit you might wring out of having Turing for a spokesman.

> The problem is that the assertion that Turing killed himself because of oppression is not founded on facts. We'll never know why he killed himself--we may not even be sure he did kill himself. I believe gay rights are an important issue, and certainly evil things were done to Turing. No truths need to be bent to support this cause--and no cause benefits from illusory bolstering by half-truths and semi-lies.

You admitted that terrible things were done to him -- which is enough. It doesn't really matter whether he killed himself over the oppression or not, the argument isn't predicated on that, but whether or not awful things were done to him, which they were, and which are undeniably documented.

But, yeah, I agree that if it's not known whether or not he killed himself specifically over that it shouldn't be brought up -- but there is plenty of substance in what we do know happened to bring up.

Frankly, this article scores low on the list of things ESR should be ashamed of writing.

> Turing's castigation was a preventable result of his homosexuality he should have predicted and avoided. "Just stay in the closet and shut your mouth."

Given the results of coming out, what should Turing have done?

Turing did exactly what he should have done in a fair and just society. He told the police the truth of the situation. It was the governments actions, not his, that should be condemned.

OK, that doesn't seem like the most pragmatic answer from an individual perspective, though.

To be clear: Morally, I agree with you fully. Pragmatically, fighting the war only works if you go into it knowing you're going to fight and prepared for the fight. Gandhi was more-or-less nutty in many ways, but he was prepared for the fight. Turing apparently just wanted to continue to live his life, the way most people in the world do.

So, pragmatically, being right is usually secondary to being able to continue living a reasonable life. Unless you think devoting your life to a war is reasonable, as Gandhi did.

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