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Turing Oversold?

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Re: Turing Oversold?

#21

Post by anta40 »

bjornsing wrote: post #18

Having an educational background in physics I find the Turing Machine a much more intuitive model of computation than say lambda calculus. To me this is Turing’s main contribution: linking the abstract world of computation to the physical world, and proving that a very simple physical machine can perform any computation (Turing completeness). That’s no small contribution.

Back to undergraduate days > a decade ago, I think I learnt both lambda calculus and Turing machine at the same class: Formal Language and Automata Theory.

Of course Turing machine is more easy to understand because... it's a theoritical machine, after all. On the other side, lambda calculus was weirder, I didn't get it until learning Haskell :D

Re: Turing Oversold?

#22

Post by hoseja »

pantulis wrote: post #4

There are a lot of true facts thrown in the article, but it does not explore the reason why this is. I feel the era of great thinkers who single handledly performed disruptive breakthroughs in their field, the Galileos and Newtons, was over with the Einstein-era (and even Einstein also stood in the shoulders of giants). No one works in isolation any more, and that is not a bad thing. You can subject any relevant figu…

Because those others mostly aren't anglos helping the war effort.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#23

Post by donkeybeer »

pantulis wrote: post #4

There are a lot of true facts thrown in the article, but it does not explore the reason why this is. I feel the era of great thinkers who single handledly performed disruptive breakthroughs in their field, the Galileos and Newtons, was over with the Einstein-era (and even Einstein also stood in the shoulders of giants). No one works in isolation any more, and that is not a bad thing. You can subject any relevant figu…

Everything builds on past work. Educated people, at least in europe, were quite well connected and aware of each others works in those times too.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#24

Post by yann2 »

pantulis wrote: post #4

There are a lot of true facts thrown in the article, but it does not explore the reason why this is. I feel the era of great thinkers who single handledly performed disruptive breakthroughs in their field, the Galileos and Newtons, was over with the Einstein-era (and even Einstein also stood in the shoulders of giants). No one works in isolation any more, and that is not a bad thing. You can subject any relevant figu…

No one worked in isolation in the past either.

Move Newton, Faraday, Maxwell and Einstein 10kms away from where they were born, surround them by a different set of chimps and the story doesnt end the same way.

A good book from Niall Ferguson - the Sqaure and the Tower - makes the case tradionally Historians have studied individuals instead of groups because its easier to collect data on one chimp versus the entire troupe.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#25

Post by bjornsing »

skissane wrote: post #20
bjornsing wrote: post #18

Having an educational background in physics I find the Turing Machine a much more intuitive model of computation than say lambda calculus. To me this is Turing’s main contribution: linking the abstract world of computation to the physical world, and proving that a very simple physical machine can perform any computation (Turing completeness). That’s no small contribution.

> I find the Turing Machine a much more intuitive model of computation than say lambda calculus I think register machines are more intuitive than Turing machines - they are much closer to how real world computers work.

Yes, on the abstract computation side of the link register machines are much more intuitive.

But on the physical side of the link they are much less intuitive IMHO: it’s much less clear that “this is just a machine that I could build in my garage”.

Re: Turing Oversold?

#26

Post by kryptiskt »

Eh, he worked on important problems and made significant contributions. It's a rare case that scientists are actually oversold, and that's mostly a case of the public mistaking excellent popularizers of science for top scientists. It might seem that some gets too much attention, but that is because scientists in general aren't known at all and undeservedly obscure. Pulling down an icon wouldn't help them get any more public recognition, it would just leave the field without any publicly known names, like most areas of science (like, what are the big heroes of solar physics?).

Re: Turing Oversold?

#27

Post by nightcracker »

bjornsing wrote: post #18

Having an educational background in physics I find the Turing Machine a much more intuitive model of computation than say lambda calculus. To me this is Turing’s main contribution: linking the abstract world of computation to the physical world, and proving that a very simple physical machine can perform any computation (Turing completeness). That’s no small contribution.

> and proving that a very simple physical machine can perform any computation (Turing completeness)

Not proving, conjecturing. It's not proven until this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis

Re: Turing Oversold?

#28

Post by mhh__ »

r_c_a_d wrote: post #14
fmajid wrote: post #12

His cryptographic achievements during WW2 were also vastly oversold. Most of the theoretical breakthroughs needed to crack Enigma were made by Polish mathematicians, but it was more palatable for the British government to put a Brit forward, just as they did for penicillin.

The brits didn't put anyone forward at all, they kept it secret for as long as they could and long after Turing's death. There is now a memorial at Bletchley Park to the Polish mathematicians who worked on Enigma.

Indeed, we basically shoved Colossus in a warehouse (scientifically at least - I assume they were used for more cold war stuff)

Re: Turing Oversold?

#30

Post by mhh__ »

Relative to the 0 times I have ever heard his name mentioned vs. the countless times I have read about him on manic midnight wikipedia binges, I think Zuse seems very unsung.
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