Beware the Alan Turing fetish | Hacker News Reader

Beware the Alan Turing fetish

blog.jgc.org

117 pointsKC8ZKF63 comments

Turing was extraordinary, but was he better than Einstein and von Neumann and Claude Shannon and Richard Feynman combined? Because at roughly the same era Turing would have been hatching England's Silicon Valley, Einstein, von Neumann, Shannon, Feynman and others like them were in New Jersey, along all the other smart guys at Princeton, combined with the booming US economy, all the defense spending, with AT&T, joined by Bell Labs, lasers, the transistor...

...And still Silicon Valley ended up in the orchards of California, not the New York suburbs of New Jersey.

Then there's that smelly hippy Steve Jobs, nobody's idea of a brilliant information theorist, who revolutionizes industry after industry. Without Wozniak, he would have done what? Founded Jamba Juice? Had an art gallery in Carmel? Who knows?

Sure, maybe a butterfly in Brazil can produce a hurricane in Florida, but speculating that a specific butterfly, even an unusually large one, might have produced a hurricane eventually is absurd.

> Then there's that smelly hippy Steve Jobs

... who was a marketing genius, especially when he had Wozniak's brilliant design to sell. Jobs was great at something, but it wasn't computer technology. It was marketing. NeXT is a prime example: Coolest computers on the block (according to a lot of people), but they went nowhere without the Apple team backing Jobs up.

And, once Jobs went back to Apple and got the Apple engineers behind him, NeXT became OS X and started to succeed.

Jobs gift was to be able to think like a consumer clearer than the consumer and at the same time techinicaly minded enough to get the best from the techs who are so obvistacted from the end user mind-set wise that they need that grounding that Jobs gave them.

Not saying all Apple products are stoner friendly, but they wont give you a bad vibe on a acid trip with there sharp edges. Food for thought but nomatter how you think of him, he stood above the crowd at a level he defined.

What word is "obvistacted" standing in for? A Google (EN_US) search returns two results, both of which are this post.

It's a bit weird to argue that Next failed because its technology didn't live up to its marketing. On the contrary, its technology was excellent but there was no product-market fit. In other words, Next's failure was in marketing, not in engineering.

I think of NeXT as Jobs' "second system effect", he tried to get everything right.

BTW: the www was developed on a NeXT box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT#Software_applications

> This brilliant, charming, odd, driven workaholic could have turned the old industrial heartlands of Lancashire into a British Silicon Valley and perhaps America’s brightest and best would have flooded east across the Atlantic.

This just another example of the British yearning for bygone days in which their country was the center of the world.

Is there anything particularly British about that, though? Harking back to a "better time" in the past seems like it's almost a global trait.

Nostalgia is universal, but Britain is in the somewhat unique position of having once been a hyperpower and today being substantially less relevant on the world stage.

Not that unique actually. Many (perhaps most) countries in Europe have some period in the past when they were much more powerful than they are now.

Plenty of countries in Asia too.

Russia happens to be in both, and it definitely suffers from this nostalgia.

There's a reason why a huge portion of the population in the western hemisphere speaks Spanish.

And why quite a bit of Africa speaks French...

Seems to me if anywhere Mogolia would probably suffer the most from this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mongol_Empire_map.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire

Except it ended 700 years ago, not less than 100.

Perhaps not truly unique, but two things about the British Empire perhaps make it sting a little more:

1) It ended more recently than other European empires.

2) "The sun never sets on the British Empire". It was huge.

2 was also true of Spain at some point.

Unique? Portions of Italy have seen power come and go multiple times, if you count the Roman Empire. The Republic of Venice was still a going concern when the United States was in its infancy, and had been so for hundreds of years.

It's fallen empire syndrome. Britain had the largest empire in world history, and lost it within living memory, so they would suffer from it the most.

That feeling is not unique to the British, only they are louder about it for two reasons: they were the winning side in two huge and most recent conflicts, and they speak English so we discuss them here.

Germans have seen their country recover twice, buy its poor half, and become a financial and manufacturing core amongst their neighbours. They don't even need to talk about it.

French are told about La Francophonie, probably since school.

Spaniards, well, even George Bush speaks some Spanish.

Italians, Culture? Greeks, foundations of knowledge? Turks, the Ottoman Empire? Arab countries, al Andalus? They present themselves according to their own view and emphasis of history, it's just that we don't get to read their own views in English.

Often in the minds of people who are not involved in an area, that area become epitomized by a person. For science it is Albert Einstein. In the US Civil Rights movement it is Martin Luther King. In computers it is becoming Turing.

Turing is pretty good, I think.

I'm okay with Turing occupying that position.

And I'm not OK with ONLY Turing occupying this position.

Von Neumann, Curry, Kholmogorov, McCartey, Armstrong, Norvig, many others (yes, I'm mixing alive and dead) - are they really not standing near Turing?

You want to make the same list for civil rights?

If you want to evangelize computer science to the masses, then by all means. I applaud that. But I'm not going to do it, and I can't ask someone else to. Turing is not bad enough to be disqualified, so if there's only one and the chips have fallen such that it's him, I'm okay with that.

But Einstein is sufficient to represent science? He's not even sufficient to represent physics.

BTW, who is McCartey? Did you mean John McCarthy?

You think anyone not involved in computing knows who Alan Turing was? Maybe in the UK he's more of a household name than the US... (?)

Generally speaking, the layperson's understanding of computers is that Bill Gates made Windows and Office, Steve Jobs made the iPhone, and artificial intelligence tries to pass the Turing Test.

I'm not saying that's a good thing, though; but using these as paths to entry, there are a wealth of rewards for the curious who begin their learning through searching Wikipedia for this Turing guy.

Most people who are aware of WW2 history know who turing is. In the UK anyway.

As a 30 year-old American with a mild interest in WWII history, I had never heard of Alan Turing until I became interested in computer science. While I hadn't heard of him, I did learn about the Enigma machine in high school.

Also, I have only run into one or two people who recognized his name that weren't into computers.

Sadly, there are lots of great men and women who don't get the recognition they deserve. For example, Thomas Paine, a man who played a significant part in America's decision to declare independence. When he published "The Age of Reason" after the war, America responded by pretending he never existed for a couple hundred years.

Yes.

I suspect that in XXII computer industry will be epitomized by Jobbs. "Jobbs did computer industry".

Laughable, but surely possible

Turing is amazing, but I've often felt the Turing Test had no real scientific or mathematical basis, and if proposed by a far less famous and influential person, would be largely (and rightly) ignored.

I'm not sure why you were down voted for that. It's obviously just an opinion, but you acknowledged that. It certainly wasn't unrelated, disrespectful or inappropriate.

My only argument against that would be to point out that a great many things have no basis in science or mathematics but are still considered to have value. For example philosophy or art.

While the test might have no logical basis, it does form a base line, in the same way that the a unit of measurement (the kilogram for example) may have no other logical basis, it is something which can can be agreed on and thus compared against.

Indeed, the Turing Test is far from perfect. The value I see in it is taht as far as a tool to assist ethical decisions, I have yet to hear of a better alternative. (The necessity of such a tool is, at this point, hypothetical. However I think it is important to have one in the event that it ever becomes necessary in reality).

I think the issue is how damienkatz's comment implied that Turing only had the Turing Test to his credit. If anything the Turing Test is a game, or thought experiment, and only the tip of Turing's accomplishments.

Agreed, that is why I downvoted him. It is one of Turings greatest known ideas (commonly known of to some degree among the general population) likely because it involves provocative claims and conclusions (particularly so for its time).

But to claim that Turing isn't great because you have an issue with the Turing Test is like claiming Einstein wasn't great because you think his anti-nuclear activism was misplaced. Rather missing the point of why we consider the man important.

He never said or implied that Turing isn't great, but he did say "Turing IS Amazing." He just happens to think the Turing Test is overrated.

In my experience, when somebody starts a monologue with the pattern "[assertion], but", what follows is a more honest presentation of their opinions than the initial assertion.

The reason the Turing Test is interesting is not because Turing was famous or influential.

It would have been interesting regardless of who proposed it because - right or wrong - it caused us to think about mind and computation as possibly equivalent and forced us to think of criteria that would allow us to establish what we are dealing with. It's more along the lines of philosophy than math or physics, but since those are (other) branches of philosophy to begin with I don't see a problem with that.

I know of Alan Turing after reading the book by Hodges and a theoretical computation course at college. Definitely a brilliant man but I agree with what is said in this article.

Many, many people contributed to the computing world we have today whether it is theoretical or practical and we will never know what might have happened with Turing alive. Why not talk about von Neumann as the father of the modern computer? Simply because even though one man might have had a big influence on a specific field, many more after him would have had a big impact and nobody can predict the different outcomes. Standing on the shoulders of giants and so on..

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3260639

^ previous submission, ~ 1 year ago, plenty of comments.

please include a description or something next time, instead of a bare link. Otherwise it's hard to assess the relevancy without clicking: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/000/681/wha...

This was my first thought when seeing the current submission too. I have no problem with reposts, but one thing I would question is when one provides the date in the title. 2011 is too recent to do so? I don't know, for me that seems borderline. It is not in the guidelines. What do we think? Ought we to have a "[Repost]" tag? Is someone posting a link to the previous submission in the comments sufficient? I think I lean towards the latter, but agree with my sibling that an explanation of the link is preferred.

Notice that neither JGC nor any of the responders here have mentioned Alonzo Church, the inventor of Lambda Calculus, and a man whose contributions to computer science were arguably every bit as fundamental as Turing's.

My prediction is that if Turing ever gains the sort of widespread recognition that JGC wants and that Turing probably deserves, Church will become the Monsieur Curie of their intellectual marriage who for reasons of political correctness will best be left unacknowledged.

While we prise Alan Turing, we should not forget the efforts of Rejewski http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski Różycki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Różycki and Zygalski http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Zygalski

A large contributing factor to the current trend of Turing fetishism is the fact that so many people in a range of fields read "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" in University as an introduction to the problem of artificial intelligence. It was the first paper assigned in at least 3 of my classes.

For many people, this is the first time that they consider such issues and so Turing is solidified in their mind as: 'old mathematician guy who invented computers and the idea of artificial intelligence'.

Given the authoritative atmosphere of university and an absence of any of the surrounding history, it's easy to imagine that people would get attached to a singular figure. And indeed they have.

Hugely interesting, I knew very little about him but after reading this, I am going on a learning spree! Having lived in Britain, I must admit they do yearn for the days when they were the centre of the word and the tone of the article does resemble this.

Nice postscript about ARM, a British company.

[2011]...

If I was considering computer science in the UK during the 50's, I would have immediately left after Turing's death.

That man could have lead a revolution, could have started one of the most influential and powerful corporations on this planet. He had that potential. To say otherwise is disingenuous.

I think it's disingenuous to make assumptions about what anyone may have done in an imagined future.

Or to make assumptions about what you may have done in an imagined past.

Your comment is a fantastic summing up of the hyperbole coming from turing fetishists.

Though I disagree, I fail to see why it's being downvoted. (Added my grain of salt to fix it.) The thing is I'm sure there are some exceptions (Wolfram?), but it's quite rare to find a person who's both an outstanding scholar and an outstanding entrepreneur.

>(Wolfram?)

Wolfram is largely considered a crackpot by actual scientists and mathematicians, and for very good reason. See: http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/

Attention conservation notice: Once, I was one of the authors of a paper on cellular automata. Lawyers for Wolfram Research Inc. threatened to sue me, my co-authors and our employer, because one of our citations referred to a certain mathematical proof, and they claimed the existence of this proof was a trade secret of Wolfram Research. I am sorry to say that our employer knuckled under, and so did we, and we replaced that version of the paper with another, without the offending citation. I think my judgments on Wolfram and his works are accurate, but they're not disinterested.

I'm curious what proof Wolfram Research was so protective of that they would interfere with academic research to keep it a secret.

They knuckled under much too soon then. If you came by your conclusions independently then they just lost their trade secret. Trade secrets only protection is that they're secret, and you have no innate right to that secrecy.

> If I was considering computer science in the UK during the 50's, I would have immediately left after Turing's death.

For where? Similar persecution would've been present everywhere.

And the reason Steve Jobs DID start one of the most influential and powerful corporations on this planet was because he was such a brilliant computer science theorist. Or are we getting our logic all backwards and sideways here?

Would Apple still exist without Wozniak? Nobody knows, which is why such arguments are always about sour grapes and nothing more.

I do have high expectations from engineers who should be knowledgeable enough to know that revolutions and hurricanes happen not because of a single reason, but because of a sequence of events and fortunes that happen at the same time, and if you analyze this, trying to get to the root of what led to the rise of an industry, you'll end-up like Mandelbrot, discovering fractals, which is otherwise in the curriculum of universities these days.

Would Apple still exist without Wozniak? Nobody knows

Luckily we can test your theory. Woz left Apple in the late 1980s. What happened to Apple. Did it die? No. From the history of Apple, its obvious that Jobs with Woz is able to make a massive influence on Apple.

The question is less "Can a company like Apple function without a Woz" and more "Can a company like Apple form without a Woz".

To 'test' this theory it would be better to find an Apple-like company that formed without an obviously Woz-like figure. I think there are several examples of varying quality.

Well look at Apple's return to power in the last ~ 10 years. That happened when Jobs, not Woz, came back.

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