
ESR: Abusing Alan Turing - spindritf
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4422
======
jgrahamc
"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 IMHO) published on the day of the centenary and makes a
number of schoolboy errors about Turing and suicide:

1\. It omits to mention that a significant amount of cyanide was found in his
stomach in liquid form. But does mention the fact that the 'apple was not
tested for cyanide'. If you omit the former and mention the latter it sounds
suspicious. And why would you test the apple for cyanide?

2\. The article makes great play of Turing's happiness shortly before his
death. This misses the fact that many suicides are outwardly 'happy' before
taking their own lives and is so basic that I'm amazed the BBC allowed it.

3\. The article plays up Turing's mess in the house and mentions: "The
electrolysis experiment was wired into the ceiling light socket.". This was a
common practice in those days and I remember adapters wiring things into light
sockets as a child in the UK.

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.

5\. The article is rather ugly in that it engages in a bunch of speculation
and then ends with the 'expert' saying it's best not to speculate.

But the worst part of the article is that it contains nothing new. The doubt
about Turing's suicide is well known and documented by his mother, Hodges and
Leavitt. There was nothing newsworthy in the story.

"More: behind much of today’s hagiography there seems to lurk a sort of
perverse insistence that if Turing hadn’t been gay and a suicide he would be
less apt for veneration, as a founder of computer science or anything else."

I'm not sure where Raymond gets this.

~~~
zbuc
> 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 also a very, uhm, disheartening tone that a lot of commenters on that
blog post are taking -- what sort of people is ESR attracting? People are
suggesting that 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."

Gross. Really, really gross. ESR should be ashamed.

~~~
fusiongyro
> ESR should be ashamed.

For saying that Turing should be remembered for his accomplishments rather
than for the circumstances of his death?

~~~
portlander12345
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.

~~~
Peaker
Isn't that police complaint worthy?

~~~
portlander12345
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.

~~~
meepmorp
It sounds like someone who hasn't matured since middle school.

But maybe I'm just stuck in the statist mindset, where the government has a
monopoly on the use of force. Perhaps they're merely advancing the anarcho-
capitalist idea that private entities ought to be contracted to the various
roles that have been usurped by the state. So, like private police, presumably
there's a market for private jackbooted thugs to oppress dissenting ideas.
There's no doubt some heavy ratiocinations I'm missing which make this morally
acceptable, rather than the doing of violence to another that it seems on the
surface.

Long live the market!*

*sorry

------
mhartl
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 of genuine giants (Turing, Noether) and
in the creation of false greats (Lovelace, Carver).

Not that ESR is _not_ contradicting any of the following:

    
    
      * Alan Turing lived in a society generally intolerant of homosexuals
      * Anti-gay oppression is bad
      * Triumph over adversity is laudable
    

To see where ESR is coming from, imagine that people knew Einstein as "a
physicist whose persevered in the face of antisemitism". ESR might say, "Yes,
yes, antisemitism, etc., but the man _helped lay the foundations of quantum
mechanics_ and _discovered both special and general relativity_. His triumph
over antisemitism is at most a footnote to his story." To which the HN
commentariat might reply, "OMG, I can't believe that guy hates Jews!"

To ESR (and to many other non-progressives), this sort of politically
motivated myth-making diminishes the object of the myth. When he writes "Yes,
yes...", what he's saying is _and it's just so damn tiresome_.

~~~
scott_s
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.

~~~
mhartl
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.)

~~~
mikeash
He could have easily avoided this fate? How? As far as I know, Turing's
choices were either 1) chemical castration 2) prison 3) stop having sex with
people he was attracted to. Which of those alternatives qualifies as "not
oppression"?

~~~
mhartl
You're arguing with ESR, not with me. ESR implies that there was another
alternative. My role in this is to explain ESR's position and to defend its
correctness _assuming his premises are true_. My role is _not_ to defend his
premises, which in fact I am unqualified to do.

~~~
mikeash
Not sure I understand the point of that. Is ESR somehow less wrong for saying
Turing wasn't a victim of oppression if he says this because he's mistaken
about what Turing was faced with?

------
jameshart
ESR is wrong.

On his birthday, Letters of note published this letter from him on the eve of
his trial: [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/yours-in-distress-
alan....](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/yours-in-distress-alan.html).
Turing's own words:

"I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future.

Turing believes machines think Turing lies with men Therefore machines do not
think

Yours in distress,

Alan"

This suggests Turing was greatly concerned with how society's attitude to his
sexuality affected how he might be perceived by history, and how that might
undermine even the impact of his ideas. That society has moved past those
prejudices and is able to look back at his work with admiration, and shame for
his treatment, is a gratifying refutation of his fears, not a convenient
retelling of his story to fit modern agendas.

------
mtraven
> "Yes, yes, repression, anti-gay prejudice, I know all right-thinking people
> are supposed to be horrified by such things"

You know, the academic jargon about "white male privilege" is kind of cliched,
but this quote could serve as the poster child for what they are talking
about. "yes, yes, repression, how tedious, how gauche to bring it up" when
talking of homosexuals -- but try enacting some gun control legislation and
then see if "repression" is something to be handwaved away.

Honestly, to see this guy as a spokesman for hacker culture makes me ashamed
to be identified with it.

~~~
mhartl
My comment at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158468> addresses some of
your concerns.

------
zacharyvoase
Yes, it matters that Turing was gay. Yes, it matters that he committed suicide
after being forced to undergo hormone treatment. Children and adults still get
bullied every day for being gay, and people still feel uncomfortable coming
out of the closet. Countless governments around the world, including the
United States, still don't recognise the civil rights of gay humans, which
broadcasts an unequivocal message to me and others like me that we are
unwelcome, abnormal, and should be ashamed of ourselves. Turing was a genius,
doubtless, but the tragedy of his suffering because of an oppressive
government is a harrowing case study in how absolutely screwed up things can
get, no matter how smart or important you are. The brilliance of Turing, and
the shocking circumstances of his death, do not detract from one another. I
strongly disagree with the portrayal of this as some kind of zero-sum match
between the two aspects of his life.

The LGBT community has been actively fighting oppression for nearly a century.
80 years ago, the Nazi party started ostracising and killing homosexuals. 43
years ago the Stonewall riots occurred, during which LGBT Americans staged an
act of civil disobedience that is still remembered in Pride and Christopher
Street events around the world (and yet it was only in 2003 that ‘sodomy’ laws
were ruled unconstitutional). We're looking back on decades of an AIDS crisis
where gay men in first-world countries have had to _fight_ [1] for access to
life-saving experimental drugs, and looking forward to a future (which may
still be a long way off) where the United States, and other governments,
recognise that gay people are people too.

So you know what? I think we're allowed one measly fucking ‘hero’ figure. And
if you don't want our gay voices ruining your programming idols, here's a very
simple solution: stop persecuting the gay ones.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Coalition_to_Unleash_Power...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Coalition_to_Unleash_Power#FDA)

------
mwd_
I try to ignore this stuff. It doesn't really matter if he committed suicide
or not, and the folk mythology is just silly.

If you want to learn more about Turing and the Entscheidungsproblem I
recommend Charles Petzold's "The Annotated Turing". It has some great
supplemental explanations to go along with Turing's paper plus interesting
historical details. Petzold strikes a good balance between presenting the
actual work and talking about Turing's personal life.

------
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.

------
nicolasmiller
"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?

~~~
pjscott
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.

~~~
nicolasmiller
I'm well aware of the history. I was ironically posing the question in a
probably slightly mean-spirited attempt to poke fun at him for not having
written any notable software. I suppose he deserves credit for the
philosophical contributions. The whole initials thing is ultimately pretty
stupid. Maybe I was trying to get at why it's even become a convention. Why
there is so much ego in the field in general.

------
ChristianMarks
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 death.

~~~
pjscott
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?

------
seanmcq
Can we just delete this entire meme before it gets started? This is pathetic.

Edit: To clarify, I mean everything said by ESR here. Yes Turings
accomplishments are great. However, it's because of those great
accomplishments that what the British government did is even more atrocious.
Turing made key and irreplaceable contributions to the Allied war effort, and
this was repaid by bigotry.

Also, when ESR blamed turing for his castration was just... bigoted.

------
mithaler
I must be missing something. Is there anyone who actually thinks Turing
wouldn't be worth remembering if he hadn't been mistreated for being gay?

~~~
lmm
Church (arguably) contributed as much or more to computer science, but is not
idolised in the same way as Turing.

~~~
othermaciej
I'd say that Turing's accomplishments as a whole were somewhat more notable,
though of course Church is also a giant of the field.

------
SimHacker
One theory is that he staged it to look like an accident to spare his mother
the grief of his suicide. I may have read that in Hodge's book, but I can't
remember.

------
papsosouid
Yes of course Eric, it's all just liberal propaganda. We should all hate gays
just like you since a bullshit article claims Turing was pretty happy.
Certainly people who advocate for basic human rights are just "partisans".

~~~
mhartl
Who would you have decide which rights are "basic human rights"? I'm guessing
it's people like you, i.e., progressives. If that's not partisan, I don't know
what is.

I also fear you've misunderstood ESR. See
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158468> for a clarification.

~~~
mediacrisis
Its "partisan" to think things like forced hormone therapy (and in some
countries, not excluding our own: corrective rape and systematic abuse) is a
bad thing, and dare we say, a violation of basic human rights? I'm sorry, I
don't care who you are or what your politics are, thats messed up.

Giving other people rights doesn't take them away from the people who already
have them.

~~~
mhartl
Nothing you have written contradicts what I wrote. "Partisan" doesn't mean
"wrong". It simply means that those who insist on certain "basic human rights"
mostly fall into the same party (metaphorically, if not literally—"tribe"
might be more accurate). Replace "forced hormone therapy" with "abortion on
demand" to make the party lines crystal clear. (For what it's worth, my own
views mostly coincide with progressive orthodoxy on the subjects of
homosexuality and abortion. But there are many other aspects of the orthodoxy
I reject, so the party lines are easy to see.)

