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Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

bankofengland.co.uk

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Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#121

Post by human20190310 »

soneca wrote: post #103
iamnotacrook wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got back from a trip to the States and I have to say that US money is very boring by comparison to UK money. How on earth do blind/old people deal with the fact that all denominations are practically the same size, design, colour etc?

I recently moved to the US and I hate its coins. To the point that I consider all of them unusable. When I get home, I leave all the coins that I received as change on a plate by the door, hoping someday I will bring all of them at once somewhere to change for bills (I believe there are machines that do this). My complaints: i) They do not have numbers on them!! You have to read words to know the value ii) To make po…

Americans develop a "feel" for this, to the point where one can drop a handful of coins on the ground and know the total value just by the sound it makes.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#122

Post by beatgammit »

michaelmrose wrote: post #105
tim333 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi Nakamoto? I think Turing was recognised as a great mathematician in his day but still persecuted.

Bitcoin has mainly thus far mostly allowed for some geeks to get rich and some criminals to move around money. It's actual impact on society is best described as it wasted a bunch of electricity.

Maybe, but crypto currency in some form could see widespread use at some point. Perhaps it won't be Bitcoin, but the underlying technology. Turing's machines weren't directly used, but the principles he came up with impact us today.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#124

Post by Stunting »

Throw_Away_5382 wrote: post #94
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think either of those deserve to be mentioned in the same way as Alan Turing, and no amount of time passing will change that. Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was , not for what he did . I also don't think there will be an ACM award named for either.

> Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was, not for what he did . No, he was prosecuted for having sex with other men. That is something he did. Being homosexual was never illegal.

Hot take from a person too scared to comment from their their main internet handle.

People who so badly want to strike a win for their values over human empathy, equality, and compassion have to steer common sense arguments into the arena of pedantic details. They have so routinely gotten their butt kicked in the arenas of empathy, equality, and compassion so often they’re ashamed to say what they feel out loud, even with a made up internet handle.

They should embrace the shame, it might be the only thing left that tethers them to humanity.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#125

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

michaelmrose wrote: post #97
tempguy9999 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is. He's having a very hard time these days, poor guy.

Is this an attempt to increase the value of money by inspiring people to burn a lot of it?

It's an attempt to increase the value of the comment by inspiring people to upvote it by playing to the gallery.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#126

Post by WalterBright »

ben_w wrote: post #108
WalterBright wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His work shortened the WW2 by at least 2 years. If the Reich had lasted longer, they would have gotten the nuke rather than Japan.

Would they have? I don’t pretend to be an expert on plausible alternative history, but as the USSR reached Berlin before the UK/USA/French forces, I can easily imagine that without Turing’s work the Iron Curtain would’ve been either through the English Channel or along the Rhine, while the Pacific war would’ve gone the same way.

> Would they have?

It was built with the intention of dropping it on Germany. Germany surrendered before it was ready.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#127

Post by InTheArena »

ben_w wrote: post #108
WalterBright wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His work shortened the WW2 by at least 2 years. If the Reich had lasted longer, they would have gotten the nuke rather than Japan.

Would they have? I don’t pretend to be an expert on plausible alternative history, but as the USSR reached Berlin before the UK/USA/French forces, I can easily imagine that without Turing’s work the Iron Curtain would’ve been either through the English Channel or along the Rhine, while the Pacific war would’ve gone the same way.

The primary difference that Enigma made was shipping to Russia and the UK. It’s likely it would have hurt both, but once the escort carriers started showing up in the Atlantic, the ability to operate subs would have gone away anyways.

In the pacific, not a chance. The soviets rolled the Kwantung army at the end of the war, but that’s because it was stripped of all it’s assets well before the soviets showed up, as the Japanese desperately tried to re-enforce islands that the Americans later isolated and island hopped and starved into submission by virtue of the “Big Blue Fleet”. The atomic bombs may not have ended the war, but ending the war with a invasion or a starvation blockade required a massive naval armada, and the Soviets had nothing. The Brits barely were able to operate in theater.

Engima’s impact on the battlefield was much more muted then the submarine war especially compared to Purple / Hypo / Market Garden and The battle of the Bulge where both lulled into disaster by the lack of enigma intelligence. It did play a positive role in Africa and on D-day (where it was most useful in revealing fortifications on the beaches), but it was not decisive there.

Engima never made it’s way to the pacific. In the pacific, Corel Sea, Midway and the assassination of Yamamoto where all predicated on decrypted secrets, but this was a completely separate effort from Bletchley Park.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#128

Post by geotus »

jjeaff wrote: post #113
michaelmrose wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? His accomplishments aren't extremely notable.

Getting elected as the first black president in a country founded on the enslavement of black people is a pretty impressive accomplishment in and of itself.

Shouldn’t we be celebrating the voters instead?

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#129

Post by keiferski »

soneca wrote: post #103
iamnotacrook wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got back from a trip to the States and I have to say that US money is very boring by comparison to UK money. How on earth do blind/old people deal with the fact that all denominations are practically the same size, design, colour etc?

I recently moved to the US and I hate its coins. To the point that I consider all of them unusable. When I get home, I leave all the coins that I received as change on a plate by the door, hoping someday I will bring all of them at once somewhere to change for bills (I believe there are machines that do this). My complaints: i) They do not have numbers on them!! You have to read words to know the value ii) To make po…

The vast majority of Americans have never read a coin to determine its value. They are all easily distinguishable by size and touch and your average American could identify them 100% of the time while blindfolded.

Unfortunately the paper money isn’t similarly touch-friendly.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#130

Post by manfredo »

jjeaff wrote: post #113
michaelmrose wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? His accomplishments aren't extremely notable.

Getting elected as the first black president in a country founded on the enslavement of black people is a pretty impressive accomplishment in and of itself.

"Founded on the enslavement of black people" is at best a misrepresentation of reality, and at worst a counterfactual statement. The bulk of the Northern states abolished slavery by 1810. The founding principles were at odds with slavery, to the point that many southerners objected to the Declaration of Independence's claim that all men are created equal. Some parts of the US did tolerate the contradiction between its founding principles and slavery for close to a century, and this contradiction between slavery and America's founding principles culminated in a Civil War. There is little merit to the claim that the US was "founded on the enslavement of black people."

Several US states were the first governments to abolish slavery in the entire New World. Even if we're explicitly talking about national level abolitionism, the United States was average in terms of the time it took to abolish slavery in the Americas. Slavery continued until 1873, 1886, and 1888 in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Brazil respectively. Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela abolished slavery in the 1810s and 1820s but only prohibited the enslavement of newly born children while allowing the continued enslavement of existing slaves.

Hyperbole about slavery in America's founding aside, being the first President of direct African heritage is an achievement that would be worthy of being put on a banknote.

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