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ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

esr.ibiblio.org

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Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#61

Post by pjscott »

ChristianMarks wrote: post #36

ESR's libertarian take is unimpressive as always. ESR has his own political reasons for minimizing the likely connection between Turing's suicide and his hormone treatment--as if hormone treatment weren't gruesome enough, and were completely free of psychological side effects. A logician would invoke Beth's theorem on unions of theories and ignore a math professor's tawdry speculation on the circumstances of Turing's…

How is this article at all related to libertarianism? Its theses are -- and here I'm summarizing rather than stating my own views --

1. That (according to the article he links) Alan Turing's persecution and death were heavily mythologized.

2. This is not surprising, considering the nature of the myth: a great person becomes a martyr of a persecuted minority group.

3. This is a shame, since it distracts from Turing's actual achievements, which were pretty amazing, and perpetuates the association between heroism and downtrodden martyrdom.

(As an aside, if #1 is true, then I can get behind #2. It seems to be a common enough pattern of folk-hero-making to raises suspicion. Not sure about #3.)

I don't see any libertarian ideology in here. Could you point it out for me?

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#62

Post by derleth »

zbuc wrote: post #4
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

"The centennial of Alan Turing’s birth brings us the news that Alan Turing probably did not commit suicide by eating a poisoned apple, was not depressed at the time of his death, and that the hormone treatments intended to suppress his homosexual urges had been discontinued a year before he died." Raymond is referring to this BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092 It was (distastefully IM…

> 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 a…

> 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?

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#63

Post by mhartl »

mhartl wrote: post #23

It's evident from some of the comments that many HN readers have misunderstood ESR's points about Alan Turing. What ESR is saying is that "a homosexual who committed suicide because of anti-gay oppression" has become a key part of the Turing narrative, not because of the facts of the matter, but because it serves the political agenda of those who propagate the myth. This dynamic manifests itself both in the co-opting…

Dammit, I thought I copyedited this comment pretty thoroughly, but a stupid typo still slipped through:

    s/Not that/Note that/

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#64

Post by pjscott »

nicolasmiller wrote: post #14

"A figure of little consequence in [his] own time..." I thought of Raymond himself. Who decided that this guy deserved to be one of the lucky few with canonical hacker initials?

The main reason people know his initials is because he was one of the more influential people behind the "Open Source" concept and branding, as a distinct thing from the Free Software movement. He also wrote some fairly well-known books. His fame has declined since then, but his membership in the Three Initials Club has remained intact.

Here endeth the history lesson. Incidentally, you could have googled this if you were interested in hearing an answer rather than signaling indignation and/or contempt.

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#65

Post by drzaiusapelord »

sowhatquestion wrote: post #20
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

"The centennial of Alan Turing’s birth brings us the news that Alan Turing probably did not commit suicide by eating a poisoned apple, was not depressed at the time of his death, and that the hormone treatments intended to suppress his homosexual urges had been discontinued a year before he died." Raymond is referring to this BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092 It was (distastefully IM…

I'm pretty sure where he gets it. For comparison: Rush Limbaugh, a social conservative, is threatened by any narrative of history that attributes great misdeeds, e.g. the genocide of Native Americans, to the dominant social group (Christian white males of European descent). Any evidence for the narrative that Limbaugh disfavors must be due to a conspiracy of minorities--hence we end up hearing him claim that Native A…

Sadly, its all too common to see tech visionaries buy into this dog-eat-dog libertarianism. Heck, slashdot is unreadable and reddit is often a Ron Paul lovefest. Its ugly, but some people, especially those who have impressive achievements, seem to need to believe that everthing is fair in life and if you're not doing well its because you suck.

This is also why I don't read ESR or RMS or any ideologue. Last I heard, it took the product of a northern European leftist-socialist* society to produce a college kid with a "fuck it, lets write a kernel and dismiss the Ayn Rand politics" attitude to do anything with their philosophies.

*by American standands

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#66

Post by tzs »

mhartl wrote: post #39
scott_s wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read through some of the comments. Raymond is clearly arguing that Turing was not the victim of oppression. The mental gymnastics he contorts through to arrive at this conclusion are baffling.

English law punished homosexuality with chemical castration, but (according to ESR) Turing could easily have avoided this fate. Was Turing thus a "victim" of "oppression"? We're quibbling about words. Your notions of "victim" and "oppression" are simply different from ESR's. (Note: I'm confident that ESR isn't in favor of chemical castration for homosexuals.)

> English law punished homosexuality with chemical castration, but (according to ESR) Turing could easily have avoided this fate.

Yes, Turing could have chosen to go to prison instead. Would that have been better somehow? How were homesexuals treated in English prisons then?

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#67

Post by mtraven »

Here's a somewhat parallel effort by esr, where he attacks anti-torture activists because they don't adhere to some arbitry rules that he pulled out of his ass. The real evildoers, by the time he is done, are not the torture advocates and implementors in the Bush administration, but the people who opposed them.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1742

Now with Turing, rather than condemn the people who hounded him to death, he is going after those who don't treat his life-story in exactly the manner that esr, lord of propriety, has decreed.

I can't believe anybody buys this crap, and I can't believe I am spending time on it, but esr is often taken to be a spokesman for the entire hacker community, so occasionally stopping to point out his nonsense seems to be a necessary thing to do.

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#68

Post by archgoon »

derleth wrote: post #62
zbuc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

> 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.

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#69

Post by mikeash »

mhartl wrote: post #51
scott_s wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently. I feel that if someone suffers due to a bigoted policy, then that person is the victim of oppression. He seems to think that it is not "oppression" if the person who suffers had an out. The mental gymnastics bit come in when he tries to gel that with what demonstrators suffered during the civil rights movement, which he does classify as oppression.

Was Einstein the victim of oppression? How about Feynman? If "No", how does that jibe with your definition? If "Yes", is being a victim of oppression necessarily that big a deal? (Both Einstein and Feynman seemed to do OK for themselves.) (Note that nothing here excuses or condones the antisemitism that affected both Einstein and Feynman.)

Einstein fled Nazi Germany due to their anti-semitism. Are you actually trying to claim that Nazi Germany's oppression of Jews was not necessarily a big deal?

Re: ESR: Abusing Alan Turing

#70

Post by portlander12345 »

Peaker wrote: post #58
portlander12345 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.
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