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• Never forget (Score:1)

  by Shane_Optima ( 4414539 ) writes:

  Never forget this guy the next time you hear a psychologist pretending he knows how humanity works. Or should work.

  (Also worth noting: Prozac was for a long time the most prescribed drug of all time… except that meta-analyses have shown that it doesn’t actually work for its main indication, depression. The FDA never yanked its approval, though, because it would be opening the door to admitting that most modern psychiatry is a lie. And of the other drugs that do work, they generally work for only 20-3

  • Re: (Score:3)

    by Shane_Optima ( 4414539 ) writes:

    Ah yes, mod -1 uncomfortable truth for big pharma [wikipedia.org] And yeah, the men who designed Turing’s treatment considered themselves to be medical/psychological medical experts. Homosexuality was once considered a disease–it was listed in the earlier editions of the DSM for crying out loud–and despite some progress psychiatry/psychology is still infested with a *lot* of pseudoscience not backed up by data.

    (Incidentally, there *are* drugs that are highly effective against major depression, by the way, but they ar
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) writes:

    Never forget this guy the next time you hear a psychologist pretending he knows how humanity works.
     

    Humans like to have power, and that includes hoarding information. The Soviets had infiltrated Bletchley Park, and knew everything about the code breaking. So once Germany had been defeated, and the Cold War began, keeping it secret was completely pointless.

    Alan Turing should have been publicly recognized, and knighted, in 1946.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 ) writes:

      keeping it secret was completely pointless.

      Not really. It eliminated one competitor to the nascent US computing business.

      ‘You Brits better destroy that equipment. Because it’s a security risk. Don’t mind us while we try to commercialize our version of your R&D.’
• So sad… (Score:5, Interesting)

  by Ecuador ( 740021 ) writes: on Thursday June 06, 2019 @07:34PM (#58722444) Homepage

  I currently live in Manchester, UK and it’s very weird to live in this very LGBTQ friendly city and be able to sit next to Turing’s statue (it’s on a bench in the park), while knowing this WWII national hero and founder of modern CS was chemically castrated and led to suicide because he liked men.
  Note that he lay next to a half eaten apple, so it is speculated that being a fan of Snow White he committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple.

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• Overlooked again (Score:2)

  by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) writes:

  Yeah, yeah. Bletchley Park, Enigma. Sure. That’s math, and they already HAD an Enigma Machine in hand.

  His real contribution was the Turing machine, defining for the first time what it means to make a computation and recognizing that some things are NOT computable, even in principle. The Church-Turing thesis is the giant’s shoulders we all here stand on.

  “Seminal insights into what became known as ‘artificial intelligence'”, no, no, not so much. The Turing Test is a kind of half-baked idea, more suited

  • Re: (Score:2)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) writes:

    Indeed. If any one person must be called the inventor of the computer, it’s Alan Turing. He invented it.

    • • Re: (Score:2)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 ) writes:

        The Z3 wasn’t intended to be a ‘universal computer’ the way a Turing machine is. It doesn’t have branches, so it requires a miserable hack to even make it theoretically Turing complete.

        I’m not saying this to slight Konrad Zuse, who I admire quite a bit, but Alan Turing invented the computer.
• High Time (Score:2)

  by tuxidriver ( 1472049 ) writes:

  I have always been frustrated that our society honors people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as technology leaders while the true innovators in science and technology, people like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and Denis Ritchie die with little notice by the public.

  • Re: (Score:3)

    by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) writes:

    people like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and Denis Ritchie die with little notice by the public.

    Alan Turing is the subject of a major motion picture. The “Nobel Prize of CS” is named after him. He was pardoned by the Queen.

    John von Neumann is widely recognized for his work in game theory, stored program computer architecture, and of course, the Manhattan Project. He is far from obscure.

    I once attended Usenix when Dennis Ritchie approached the podium. An auditorium of 4000 people gave him a standing ovation. When he died, his obituary was published in The Economist, which has a circulation of 1.1
• Well that’s nice of NY Times (Score:2)

  by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) writes:

  Better late than never I suppose.

  Now how about correcting all of their earlier communist support and hushing up of communist atrocities committed in the USSR? Or is the NYT still staunchly pro-communist?

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