
Alan Turing in America - jorgenveisdal
https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/alan-turing-in-america-db0104c965dc
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dntbnmpls
Interesting that he had to travel 5 days by ship to cross the atlantic and
then had to wait hours in quarantine/immigration only to be swindled by a taxi
driver in new york. Reminds one how relatively recent air travel really is and
how NY taxi drivers have always been crooks.

> Turing’s approach to the problem would be the solution that has endured,
> likely due to Church’s solution’s reliance on his so-called λ-calculus

So-called λ-calculus? Isn't that rather dismissive of λ-calculus. λ-calculus
contributed not only to mathematics/computer science, but also, logic,
linguistics, etc. Not to mention its practical contributions in many
programming languages. And as long as the Church-Turing theorem endures,
church's so-called λ-calculus will endure as well.

Interesting article nonetheless. I wonder if Turing's correspondences are
available to the public online?

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chrisseaton
> So-called λ-calculus? Isn't that rather dismissive of λ-calculus.

There's an article somewhere about how EU bureaucrats mis-understood what 'co-
called' means idiomatically and started to put it in lots of documents just
meaning innocently 'that is called' and how they caused offence.

That's probably what's happening here - the author doesn't know idiomatic
English.

~~~
tpush
A quick Google search brings up this hilarious document:
[https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG...](https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION.pdf)

The section on the misuse of 'so-called' is on page 54.

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lordleft
I don't know why but I'm always fascinated by quotidian details of the lives
of people I admire; the excerpt about his being swindled by a taxi driver was
marvelous.

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davidw
Don't forget his camping trips and bike rides with Lawrence Waterhouse, as
documented in Cryptonomicon!

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jankotek
> By the end of the war, it appears that Turing’s view of America and
> Americans had sufficiently soured to where he refused to return ever again

I read somewhere opposite, I do not remember source.

At that time he was forced to take strong medication and had his security
clearance removed. He could only continue his work at US, but he was not
allowed to immigrate due to criminal charges.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd have thought he'd be unable to _e_migrate as he'd shown himself to be a
massive security liability; his apparent predilection for teenagers/young men
would leave him open to a [further?] honeypot.

