Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

blog.stephenwolfram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 95 posts

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#61

Post by lacker »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #59

"My own guess is that it was not suicide, but that’s a different story." What was this about, I wonder?

Turing was gay and knew a lot of government secrets at a time when gay people were considered security risks and likely Communist sympathizers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare

I’m not an expert on the topic at all, but the story always seemed fishy to me. Who kills themself by injecting an apple with poison and eating an apple?

(The JFK story also seems fishy to me because I don’t get why in the world Jack Ruby killed Oswald)

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#62

Post by DonaldFisk »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #59

"My own guess is that it was not suicide, but that’s a different story." What was this about, I wonder?

There's some doubt. He did electroplating as a hobby for which he used potassium cyanide. He could have inhaled hydrogen cyanide fumes, or not washed his hands well enough before eating the apple. So it might have been accidental death.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#63

Post by elcritch »

michaelmrose wrote: post #41
BucketSort wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write a lot. I can tell from my own experience that what I'm feeling when I write translates into my handwriting in subtle ways. You may object to some particular method that I'm unaware of, but I don't think "handwriting analysis" in general is absurd. It's data and so there are models of it and inferences.

Personal feelings are not how we evaluate a scientific discipline. It's phrenology level nonsense. A coworker once told me that his chiropractor told him he could help him with hemroids. This not only made me dubious about her ability to cure hemroids. It made me dubious that she could do anything about back pain. Capable people don't spew nonsense within the scope of their capabilities. The second his analyst regist…

It’s not outside the realm of plausibility that certain chiropractic procedures could help with digestive issues linked to other issues. There’s been a decent amount of research recently into stimulating the vagus nerve for example and how it affects not only digestion but also mood and immune function. If a pinched spinal nerve is causing digestive issues perhaps it could lead to other issues. Curing every case? Likely not, but perhaps it could help some individuals. Now the chiropractic field is also full of half baked practitioners as well, imho.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#64

Post by jakear »

OJFord wrote: post #54
jakear wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP may be referring to the actual definition of “conspiracy theory”, in that there are many theories of state conspiracy against Turing.

Your P is objecting to ' other conspiracy theories' (thus implying the forementioned is one).

It is one. It is a theory of a conspiracy.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#65

Post by NeedMoreTea »

baddox wrote: post #45
galonk wrote: post #35

I know SW is famous for his arrogance/egotism, but it still kills me how he always discusses everything in terms of Mathematica's programming language, instead of mathematical notation or pseudo-code. It's like giving a linguistics lecture using the made-up language you invented with your twin.

I don't think your criticism is very accurate here. Wolfram Language code doesn't show up until the second half of the (very long) article, in the sections where he is explaining how to represent the mathematical concepts in the Wolfram Language. In fact, in several cases he mentions the traditional mathematical notation and follows it with the Wolfram Language notation. What's strange or arrogant or egotistical abou…

Every single piece Wolfram writes, without exception, is arrogant content marketing blogspam. Even his books. Sometimes very clever, sometimes interesting (though I'd find him 1,000x more interesting if say 1 article in 10 made no mention of how clever he and Mathematica are); always arrogant and self-promotional. This piece is no exception - because it's Turing I made exception to my usual personal hard-ban on reading Wolfram. It's no exception to the above. It is, however, interesting despite being arrogant and self-promotional.

If you asked Stephen Wolfram what time it was, he would be arrogant and self-promotional, and mention Mathematica at least as much as the time.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#66

Post by NeedMoreTea »

neves wrote: post #56
groundlogic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://bletchleypark.org.uk/ An on-site museum of the WW2 Enigma code breaking activities, where they happened. This is where Alan Turing worked. Live demonstrations of the 1940s eras computer "bombes". But, perhaps, most of all: A chance to visit a historic site.. the activities there could very well have decided the outcome of WW2. There's also a neat live retrocomputing display of early home computers. And it als…

Well, you can see an original Enigma machine at Churchill's war room, with a nice quiz about the facts that the allies pretended they didn't know about. The Science Museum also has nice displays about Alan Turing work. Some time ago they hosted the exposition Code Breaker: https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/codebreaker

The Science museum is a sad picture of extreme neglect and bad ideas these days. Just about every museum I've been to in the UK does it better, whether regional ones or national, even the smaller ones. Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, Bletcheley, Royal Arms Leeds, etc.

Bletcheley has a far, far better discussion about Turing and his influence, and far better displays of the Code Breaking work, along with the associated machines.

I last went to the Science Museum about 5 years ago and all the precision models were gone - some of which were so clever and detailed they should have been exhibits in their own right. Just a couple of hints that they once had extreme skill in model making are left. A good chunk of the multimedia and electronic displays and "experiences" were dysfunctional in some way, and a lot of the classic topics had exhibits that appeared simply worn out. The basement "scientific art exhibition" was about 5 token exhibits in a space the size of a football field, and a few dozen people finding somewhere quiet to sit and eat their sandwiches. The top floor (I think) was the for children interactive, sponsored experience. More was broken than not. The cafe with eye-watering prices seemed the most recent and best maintained exhibit.

I was so disappointed - so were the people we took, for whose benefit we made the trip at all. Manchester MSI is far better at being a science museum nowadays. Have to start to wonder if my extreme love of the place in the 60s-90s stems as much from nostalgia and rose-tinted specs. It's deeply sad, and should be criminal, that it's been allowed to decline that far - it was once a world renowned national asset.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#67

Post by creepypeepy »

Some folks here enjoy reading it but Wolfman is often out of line when putting his comments and twists in. It also displays a creepy nature of wolfman to want to know very personal things.

Example, recording private phone calls and releasing them to the public or releasing those to lawyers when he feels they might serve his purpose.

Creepy and borderline dangerous. But for the average Joe all this seems to be enjoyable.

Re: A book from Alan Turing and a mysterious piece of paper

#69

Post by emmelaich »

sg0 wrote: post #50

SW has a tendency to describe features of a person which I find utterly fascinating (for eg: 'Turing used to giggle a lot', now compare that with the somber depiction of Turing in 'The Imitation Game'). In the write up on Ramanujam, SW mentions that he was stocky, apart from many personal tidbits.

You should read Andrew Hodges work "Alan Turing: The Enigma" on which "The Imitation Game" is allegedly partly based.

The contrasts are striking.

Post reply on HN