
What was Alan Turing really like? - Turukawa
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27701207
======
ColinWright
One of my lecturers for my first degree was Gordon Preston. He worked with
Turing at Bletchley, and apparently used to play Go with him quite regularly.
He will have known Turing quite well, both professionally and, insofar as was
possible at the time, socially.

I knew Preston quite well - he mentored me in the scholar program - but I
never knew of his connection with Turing. When I did find out I started to
make enquiries about re-establishing contact, but Preston now has advanced
dementia and doesn't recognize even close family.

Such a lost opportunity, primarily because I was young, self-absorbed,
ignorant, but believing I was clever and knowledgeable. And now the chance is
gone forever. This is why I now try to take every opportunity to connect with
people who have stories to tell, and encourage them to talk.

~~~
nikatwork
_> young, self-absorbed, ignorant, but believing I was clever and
knowledgeable._

Well, don't beat yourself up too much. It is existentially wrenching to think
about the missed opportunity but such is the folly of youth. Equally Preston
could have shared more. Like tears in rain and all that.

Though I look at that statue of Turing and I really want to shake his hand and
thank him. Sometimes life is terribly unfair.

~~~
ColinWright

      > Equally Preston could have shared more.
    

Now that I am actively seeking out people and deliberately spending time with
them, the one thing I consistently find is that they are very reluctant to
initiate conversations about these things. I've now spent time with Charlie
Duke, Alan Bean, and TK Mattingly, and without exception it takes time to get
them to open up and talk about these things.

I used to wonder why, but I had an in-depth conversation with someone a while
ago who was similarly reluctant. She said:

    
    
        People ask, but usually they don't really care.
        And if they do care, they usually won't make
            the effort to understand.
        And if they do make the effort to understand,
            they usually don't have the background or
            experience to understand.
        And if they do understand, I don't need to have
            explained.
    

Taking the time, making the effort, explicitly acknowledging that you'll never
fully understand and yet being willing to make the effort to appreciate their
experience, then you can get people to tell their stories.

Otherwise they won't, and you'll miss out.

~~~
nikatwork
I understand why, and I know how most of us are. But it does make me sad that
these harrowing experiences get smothered by polite conversation. FWIW my
grandparents escaped the Soviet gulags and were likewise reluctant to discuss
it. So the stories and lessons are lost.

~~~
ColinWright
I remember sitting chatting for a day with Ivan Moscovich. his story[0] is
compelling and horrifying in equal measure. I am privileged to count him as a
friend, and to have had him open up and talk quietly about some of his
experiences.

[0]
[http://yoz.com/wired/2.09/features/moscovich.html](http://yoz.com/wired/2.09/features/moscovich.html)

------
rudimental
At least in mathematics, I've heard he was something of a machine.

Here's another article with some biographical information but more about his
work (for those that don't know the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy it's a
good, free, online resource for philosophy related subjects).

[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/)

------
facepalm
Love the letter on solving solitaire. Encouragement to talk to kids about
maths.

Are there any good scientific books for kids/toddlers anyway? For things to
answer to the "why" questions if you are an atheist. I'd like to explain
evolution for example.

~~~
pling
I started my kids on this:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Space-Childs-Mother-
Goose/dp/19309...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Space-Childs-Mother-
Goose/dp/1930900465)

It makes them ask questions to which you can explain the answers.

Few excerpts:

[http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/134/poems/space-childs-
mother-g...](http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/134/poems/space-childs-mother-
goose.txt)

~~~
davidw
Those look like they are entertaining for adults, not children.

I too have kids, 6 and almost 3, and recommendations for good science oriented
kids books are always welcome.

~~~
facepalm
I already have "The Magic Of Reality" by Richard Dawkins:
[http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/1451675046/fractality-...](http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/1451675046/fractality-20)
.

I think the content would be what I am looking for, but unfortunately the
artwork and layout is too overblown, making it hard to read. My kid is 3 -
obviously the text would be too complicated anyway, but it would be nice to at
least have some nice, clear pictures to talk about.

It has some good ideas, though - for example it shows a stack of photographs
of our ancestors, one photograph for every ancestor, and talks about the
height of that stack. Nice idea, but horrible graphics imo (artistically good
graphics, but not so well suited as illustration).

------
willvarfar
So can we see the whole letter on solitaire please?

------
tritium
From the article:

    
    
      Turing even went with the Greenbaum family on 
      a day trip to the seaside resort of St Annes. 
      But Barbara recalls it ended badly.
    
      "Alan turned up at our house in a very strange 
       outfit, which looked like his school cricket 
       whites. White trousers which came half-way up 
       his ankles and a white shirt which was very 
       creased and crumpled. But it was a lovely sunny 
       day and Alan was in a cheerful mood and off 
       we went.
    
      "Then he thought it would be a good idea to go 
       to the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool. We found a 
       fortune-teller's tent and Alan said he'd like 
       to go in so we waited around for him to come 
       back.
    
      "And this sunny, cheerful visage had shrunk into 
       a pale, shaking, horror-stricken face. 
       Something had happened. We don't know what the 
       fortune-teller said but he obviously was deeply 
       unhappy. I think that was probably the last time 
       we saw him before we heard of his suicide."
    

Gee, _that 's_ strange...

    
    
      The inquest decided that Turing had killed himself 
      using cyanide. A partially eaten apple was by his 
      side in bed but as it was never tested it's 
      impossible to say if it was laced with poison as 
      has been suggested.
    

Oh really?

    
    
      An alternative interpretation is that he inhaled 
      or ingested cyanide by accident during a chemistry 
      experiment.
    

So your telling me... That someone with an analytical mind like Turing's...
just _decided_ to go waste some money on a fortune teller (because it's not
like they're bullshit artists or anything)... while on a sudden, random trip
to the sea shore...

And then, he emerges with his mood so visibly shattered, that a young girl
never forgets the drastic, unexpected shift in personality, not even decades
later does she forget this transient event. A short time later, he's dead. And
it's a suspicious suicide.

Someone involved in developing machines to attack german Nazi military
ciphers, with years of experience conducting efforts under secrecy with high-
level government security clearance, while cities across the channel are being
annihilated with firebombing, and futuristic ballistic missiles are falling
from the sky.

This man tells a little girl he's going to indulge in a superstitious visit
with a " _fortune teller_ ", and the liason blanches him white with fear.

That was no fortune teller. He was meeting with some shadowy figure involved
in who-knows-what, and was either directly threatened by that person (because
of some old-fashioned indignant opinions about his personal life and the
respectable nature of his choices, and how they reflect upon his peers) and
told that he had crossed an unforgivable line with his indiscretions...

...or he was told some truly disturbing news, maybe along the lines that a
leak or a mole was discovered, and that his identity and level of
participation in the war effort was now known by dangerous enemies, and his
personal safety was very seriously compromised.

In my opinion, the involvement of cyanide seems to favor a professional
murder, not a suicide, not mental illness, not bipolar mood swings induced by
horomones, not a hobbyist's science experiment gone awry.

I feel that it's entirely possible, given the realm of secrecy and paranoia
that Turing operated within earlier in life, that everyone relaxed just a
little too much after the war ended, and some bitter post-war animosity had
not fully evaporated, and someone knew him or found out about him, blamed him
for their wartime misfortunes, and went after him.

~~~
coldtea
> _So your telling me... That someone with an analytical mind like Turing
> 's... just decided to go waste some money on a fortune teller (because it's
> not like they're bullshit artists or anything)... while on a sudden, random
> trip to the sea shore..._

While your explanation might also be plausible, you'd be surprised.

If you know people well, you'll find out that a perfect "analytical mind" is
not at all incombatible with believing a fortune teller or even more bizarre
things.

People can open and shut such "analytical" capacities at will and sort of
compartmentalize their lives.

Heck, I know several of extremely analytical people, in hard sciences even,
that in their personal lives border on hysteria or take note of such things as
omens (sometimes laughingly, but you can see it still disturbs them).

And to get to the other side, people like Randi or Sagan are not totally
sceptic because of their analytical minds. It's rather because of their life-
long tendency to be sceptic, a tendency that's based on a subconscious
decision (e.g it's not really a "rational" choice itself). That's why they are
not just sceptic, but passionate about it.

~~~
tritium
I'm not ruling out that, as a sociable human being, he might like to have a
little fun, and try out a carnival side show, and be open to patronizing
superstition, while out and about on a sunny weekend afternoon.

I _do_ take issue with the idea that such a triviality could so easily take a
visibly obvious, and lasting emotional toll on him, and ruin his day.

