
Learning from Turing’s silver hoard (2016) - EndXA
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-markets-saft/saft-on-wealth-learning-from-turings-silver-hoard-idUSKCN0UY2OC
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jackfoxy
I worked on a farm in the former West Germany (BRD), before the re-
unification, not far over the border from East Germany (DDR). The proprietor's
family was leasing the historic farmstead. His family's original farm had been
just over the border in the DDR, and of course appropriated by the government.
At the point they learned the American occupiers were withdrawing and they
would be in the Russian occupation zone, they high-tailed it into the American
occupation zone.

They visited me in America a couple years after The Wall fell, and he told me
the rest of the story. Apparently his father's initial plan was to stick it
out and see how things unfolded, but first they buried the family silver in
the forest. He was in his early teens and supplied the teenage labor.

When they could return after the wall fell, he remembered roughly where the
hoard should be. It took him a couple days with a metal detector, but they
found it. He was very lucky because it was very near where the DDR had done
trenching for the boarder hazards employed all along the east/west border.
Some of the pieces were in very bad shape after 45 years underground, but most
of it could be restored.

~~~
throwawaycuriou
how has that silver been spent?

~~~
jackfoxy
family silver, as in definition n. 4

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/silver](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/silver)

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sambe
This is a terrible analysis. Neither of the investing mistakes he supposedly
made are applicable to his case. Nor was his method "intended to wring the
last cent of profit out of a good trade over capitalizing more safely on his
market prediction". He feared seizure! Losing a large proportion or all of
your capital is not "the last cent".

~~~
oska
I agree. Interesting anecdote followed by simply moronic commentary tacked on
to the end. And no, diversification is not a 'free lunch'.

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artek
I highly recommend Turing's biography “Alan Turing: The Enigma” from which
this story is taken. It's a great book. Very detailed and well researched.
Author dives into many topics related to Turing's work like math, ai,
cryptography.

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ganzuul
My relatives did this when fleeing from the bolsheviks. When they returned a
hotel had been built where they buried their treasure.

So much for the family fortune. They owned gemstone mines.

~~~
hinkley
Is it safe to say that the construction crew who excavated the foundation had
a very good Christmas that year?

~~~
mark-r
If they used heavy equipment to do the digging, it's unlikely they even saw
the cache.

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user2994cb
This would have made a nice scene in that awful Imitation Game film, unlike
the rubbish they actually put in (as well as other tales of the real Turing -
the gas mask worn during hay fever season, for example).

~~~
ftcHn
It was used in the semi-historical Cryptonomicon

[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Lw-00wTgBy8C&pg=PA173&l...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Lw-00wTgBy8C&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=cryptonomicon+turing+silver&source=bl&ots=Cz2TIKD5U2&sig=ACfU3U0qwgwOd3GH9WPnXwtZyeVqHHkmBw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi73ezVm9znAhXBW3wKHTp3CecQ6AEwBXoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=cryptonomicon%20turing%20silver&f=false)

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miked85
> like so many very successful and brilliant people Turing was wildly over-
> confident in his own analysis

This is so common, yet most individuals that fall into this trap will never
recognize it.

~~~
jannotti
I thought that was a strange takeaway for the article to take. His analysis
was _correct_. He was undone by a factor he didn't even contemplate. His
confidence in his "analysis" was spot on.

There's definitely a lesson here, but I would not call it over-confidence. If
the bank had gone under, would that have been called over-confidence on the
part of his friend? At some point, every mistake of any kind whatsoever is
called "over-confidence".

~~~
DonHopkins
Over-competence at the hiding game. ;(

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jofer
Number one lesson: Don't bury stuff and expect to find it later.

Seriously, folks. I grew up around a bunch of preppers and general outside-
the-law folks. Burying things in ammo cans was kind of a pastime of a lot of
people I knew.

It's _really_ hard to find something like that a year or two later, even if
you think you know exactly where it is.

I've been the person wielding the shovel to dig up a box of important stuff
before. (Thankfully, not mine, I was just the teenage labor.) We dug a lot and
never found it. Also, tree roots grow over/through things and people _love_ to
bury things at the base of a tree. Kinda hard to dig through roots.

Don't bury things you want to find later.

~~~
Cpoll
The story asserts the landmarks changed, but can't you pick landmarks that
won't change? Better yet, use GPS and grab the Lat/Long.

~~~
jofer
That's not as accurate as you think unless you've got a full geodetic antenna.
(i.e. $200k worth of equipment + a lot of permits to be allowed to have/use
it) Getting to within +/\- 30m doesn't help a ton when you're digging a hole
to find a small box.

With geocaching, you've got something to look for. You get close-ish and then
do an easter egg hunt. When it's beneath the ground, it's really hard to
"look". Finding easter eggs with a shovel ain't my cup of tea.

~~~
saalweachter
Doesn't modern GPS claim +/\- 3 meters, with a clear enough signal? (Which is
still a heckuva lot of dirt to shift.)

~~~
jofer
Given nearby local ground-based correction stations (e.g. WAAS) it can use and
flat terrain, yeah, you can certainly get that kind of accuracy.

In practice, though, I've spent a fair bit of time trying to re-occupy sites
taken with handheld GPS receivers. (I'm a geologist -- it comes up a lot) 30m
is a better representation of typical repeatability for a consumer-grade
handheld unit or a phone.

You're often on the side of a hill, so you can't see the full constellation.
If you don't have line-of-sight to more than a few satellites, you risk an
inaccurate location. You're often in highly remote areas, so WAAS doesn't
always help (it's based on proximity to a ground station). If you don't have
WAAS, you're at the risk of atmospheric effects significantly affecting your
accuracy.

There's also the user error side: You might have the handheld set to display
in NAD27 one time and WGS84 another, which can easily offset the same lat/long
by several hundred meters.

+/\- 3m with consumer GPS is definitely possible, but that's for ideal
conditions. You're rarely working with ideal conditions in the field.

~~~
grawprog
The best i've ever personally got with a handheld GPS under actual work
conditions was +/\- 15m. I've gotten +/\- 5m in large open areas lacking
trees, mountains or large rock formations but areas without any of those
things are rare.

Weather conditions can make a big difference. In stormy or rainy weather I was
lucky if I could get +/-20m

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djaque
I don't know what it is, but the thought of Turing running around Bletchley
park burying silver ingots is hilarious to me.

Also, I wonder if anyone has found them since. Anyone with a metal detector up
for a bit of a project?

~~~
saalweachter
It's possible the ingots are still there, but I think the more interesting bet
would be "Do you think they were found before or after Turing went looking?"

It's not entirely beyond the realm of the possible that a security guard saw
Turing bury something, checked what it was 10 minutes after Turing left, and
then quietly pocketed the ingot when it turned out to be money and not a
security threat.

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Taniwha
Don't leave your money by a fence post in the snow either

~~~
hinkley
What the heck do ya mean?

~~~
smcl
Think it's a reference to Fargo - a Coen brothers film and TV series

~~~
gowld
Both were:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW9vmiop2YU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW9vmiop2YU)

~~~
smcl
Oops

