The official opinion is that Alan Turing killed himself by
cyanide poisoning. Andrew Hodges, author of “Alan Turing: The Enigma,” supports
this view. It is a foregone conclusion that Hodges would have it so. If Hodges’
book is a biography, it may be a “scientific” biography, which may excuse the
failure to accomplish what biographies about those dead set out to do – tell
the tale of who someone had been. Hodges’ is less preoccupied with the “who”
than the “what” in regard to Turing. What he was, for Hodges’ purposes, was a
homosexual for whom, at every significant turn in his life, there was suffering
for him because he was a homosexual. The enemy that produced the suffering was
Society. In truth, Society “killed” Alan Turing.
The death of Turing, for B. Jack Copeland, ends his “Turing,
Pioneer of the Information Age.” It is about the Information Age and who Turing
had been is not relevant. One cannot seriously take Copeland’s book as a
biography. That Turing was a homosexual is mentioned by Copeland but Copeland
is much more concerned with the “whats” that Turing had done. Yet Copeland’s
book is not dismissive of the possibilities that exist to account for Turing’s
death. He entertains three options to Hodges’ one and only.
Hodges’ book is drenched in his account of the dreary, sad
limitations of a life lived as a homosexual in Britain during Turing’s
lifetime. Being a homosexual, as Hodges has it, was the limiting factor for
Turing. Hodges forces much drama into the surroundings for what Turing did.
There are references to Hitler vs. Turing on a grand stage along with Disney’s
Snow White (and the poisoned apple), The Wicked Witch, the Wizard of Oz,
Dodgson’s Alice, and Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm.”
All of this fiction by Hodges is a high-level game to convey
meaning to Hodges’ account of Turing. For Hodges, imitation was the name of the
game. Turing and others were drawn into an imitation game involving codebreaking
during WWII, though Copeland says Turing jumped in. But Hodges, before and
after WWII, has Turing in an imitation game of play-along because of his status
as a homosexual. Turing’s intelligence becomes thwarted by Society’s opinions
about homosexuality to such an extent that Society’s anti-homosexual forces
destroyed Turing. This destruction of Turing ended, of course, both his
personal and social life.
Copeland rarely makes statements about Turing’s personal
life. One such statement is about Turing and Joan Clarke – “Homosexual men not infrequently
opted for an opposite-sex marriage, children, happy family life. The
circumstances of life were coped with, a formula was found for rendering
everything consistent. In the end, though, this was not the route Turing chose
for himself.” Hodges would have found this to be a ghastly understatement of
the non-fictional suffering he placed in Turing’s life. Though, true enough,
many do seek formulas for life, but consistency, nowadays especially, is often
lacking. The consistency then could be a factor through a setting within
Society. Also, true enough, such a setting was denied Turing.
Hodges has far more personal material relating to Turing
than does Copeland. This material, such as Turing’s friendship with Morcom at
public school, is restricted by the homosexuality vs. Society attitude. Turing
as a person, apart from his homosexuality, is not allowed on stage, not at
school, before or after. Hodges has a political agenda and Turing is on it.
Copeland relates nothing about Morcom, nor is politics his forte. He does bring
up the matter of Turing’s court martial during WWII. He had joined the Home
Guard and learned to shoot but he had not signed a statement about being
subject to discipline. He took the trouble to point this out to the
authorities.
Per Hodges - Turing
personally was arrogant, sloppy, direct, and unapologetic. Turing was, in addition,
too honest and decent (on his terms) - that old “he was too good for this
world,” whereas Copeland has no morality for any of it for Turing.
Per Hodges – Turing’s science and mathematics got away from
him. At Manchester, in his last years, he had little social life; it would have
meant too much compromise. By 1954 he was totally isolated. WWII had not ended
the warfare; it continued as the Cold War. Turing contributed well in WWII in
an era of amateurs and Profs and mathematical specialization but by post-WWII
it had become old news. So many copycat experts were in the field of R&D
and security concerns that this allowed government forces to pick and choose
personnel.
Copeland names and ranks the importance of contributions to
coding and computers that Hodges leaves out or doesn’t emphasize: Tutte,
Flowers, Huskey, Schmidt (who photographed the Engima), and a Pole, Rejewski
(who worked out the wiring of the Engima). Turing benefited from “pinches” made
by British forces involving Schiff 26, Krebs, two Nazi weather ships, and
U-110. Surely Turing would have been more frustrated in his codebreaking had it
not been for these aids.
Hodges goes beyond this situation to assert Turing was
frustrated by not being taken seriously in mathematics and science. In
addition, Hodges has it that Turing at public school came away from his
experience there with a need to “do” something. Hodges does concede that Turing
made life more difficult for himself. It was awkward enough, his being in it
with shyness, hesitancy, a high-pitched voice and a sustained noise he made as
he searched for a word. Turing developed a Spartan attitude toward the bric à
brac of life.
Copeland also mentions a Spartan approach by Turing, but it
was for the way he thought about what he did. Copeland notes Turing had success
upon success. Turing experienced “crescendos” of achievement. Turing as a
graduate student at Kings College, Cambridge, came up with what is now known as
the universal Turing machine while dealing with an application to the
Entscheidungs problem. During WWII, Turing was a key player, not the key
player in the decryption effort regarding the German Enigma code machine. He
broke the code of the Nazi Naval Enigma. Copeland has an excuse for drama when
he maintains Turing broke that code during a winter night in 1939 and on the
same night, Turing devised the Banburismus method. He first cracked Tunny. The
Tunny algorithms later were incorporated into Colossus, the first large scale
electronic computer. Turing could do practical tasks with ACE, 1945’s huge
stored program electronic computer. A design of his became DEUCE, a commercial
computer. The ACE was the basis for the world’s first PC. At Manchester Turing
was doing pioneering work on AI using a Colossus. Turing had the first AI
program – for chess. Finally, Turing pioneered Artificial Life. In many
instances, Turing was introducing engineering into a fundamental aspect of
mathematics. He wasn’t an engineer.
The WWII efforts of Turing were mostly and firstly spent at
Bletchey Park. Secondarily he was at Hanslope Park. Hodges has Turing
transferring himself to Hanslope Park. Bletchley no longer offered him an
excuse for originality. The WWII game had, like a boardgame, new pieces and
places. Copeland has it that Jumbo Travis wanted Turing to pursue speech
cryptography. Tunny was solved. So Turing set up an electronics laboratory of
his own at Hanslope Park. Hanslope Park
represents a significant change in Turing’s life. He had moved away from direct
involvement in the war effort. He was onto his own project, and his own
projects would consume his remaining time.
Hodges maintains there was an element of force being applied
to Turing as the war effort shifted into colder conceptions of warfare
post-WWII. Turing could not, in the security mania of the great struggle
against Communism, do crypto any longer. He was a homosexual. Hodges also
relates Turing may have suffered from no longer being a front-runner in
computing, having started with mechanical processes becoming algorithmic in a
machine; Turing’s later morphologic studies were only puttering about, a
plodding exercise; and perhaps Turing had lost faith in his own ideas. Copeland
hardly concurs in such a gloomy assessment of Turing’s later days. Copeland
portrays Turing as clicking along quite well at the end. Hodges suddenly states
Turing killed himself. Hodges then continues his book.
As a homosexual he had transgressed against his class. At
Manchester for the first time he mixed with ordinary people. It encompassed the
allure of the vast unknown working class. He discovered this country of
difference without being covert about it. In the early 1950s there were American
concerns about a lost China, stolen secrets of the atomic bomb, the Rosenbergs’
execution, and the British homosexuals, Maclean and Burgess, going over to the
other side. Turing needed to stay under the radar. But he made no or little
social adaptation. If an accomodation by him was unavoidable then the most
minimal arrangement was completed. He had blown his “cover” as a brilliant yet
eccentric British academician. He avoided prison and took out the implant the
court had ordered for this crime of being a homosexual.
He was also said to have regarded the matters of court
involving the implant and his probation to be a laugh. He was childlike. He was,
if known to you, a fun person. He was lively, stimulating, even comic. He had a
raucous crow-like laugh that pealed out boisterously. Yet what he was had
become public. Who he was remained a secret.
Other secrets were in abundance. The Cold War warriors were greatly
troubled to find all the secrets and keep them so. They expected him to,
trivially speaking, park his bicycle correctly, but he went far beyond this nor
doing even so much as that. He appeared to be engaging in “sex tourism” at
least with a Norwegian. Surely the “Kjellan crisis” in connection with “a light
kiss beneath a foreign flag,” put him over the top and onto a list, a list of
no reprieve.
The keepers of the list, I believe, decided that they had no
choice other than to remove Turing from the list. Both Hodges and Copeland
agree that Turing was found dead in bed, on his back, and neatly tucked in. He
seemed in repose, a calm assumption of The End. Yet, Copeland notes cyanide
poisoning is a thrash-about death. Copeland had stated how Turing could not
stand the sight of blood and that Turing would become nauseous if conversation
was about injury or well-described surgical procedures. Both Hodges and
Copeland agree froth was about the mouth. The presumption is that it was a
residue of cynanide consumption. Could it have been painted there? The famous
apple. Not consumed, bites had been removed. It was known he favored an apple
at bedtime. The apple was not tested. The coroner, J.A. K. Ferns, vastly
incompetent or wise to the necessity of appearing to be incompetent, also
mostly recorded the scent of bitter almonds, there with Turing and about the
area of death. There was no connection attempted between his death and his hay
fever. During the War, Turing had worn a far from comfortable gas mask as he
bicycled three miles in hay fever time.
Most likely Eliza Clayton knew of none of this. She was
Turing’s housekeeper who occasionally cooked for Turing. She arrived about 5
PM, Tuesday, June 8, 1954. She had been away for a few days over the Whitsun Holiday.
Presumably many others normally in the vicinity of the scene of death had also
been away. Turing had died sometime during the night of June 7, a Monday. A
light was on in his bedroom. One may ask – he slept with the light on? He was
in PJs, wristwatch on a bedside table. Half of an apple was there too on the
bedside table. He was “laid out” in repose. There was a large quantity of
cyanide bubbling in a pan in a room nearby. Turing dabbled in electrolysis and
cyanide was part of the process. Neighbors and acquaintances thought Turing to
be cheerful days before his death. Mrs. Webb said Turing had a party for her
and her little boy. Did the boy polish shoes? (see below) Also, Turing left a
note in his office concerning plans for the week after Whitsun. He was to meet
with his research assistant. He had accepted an invitation to a Royal Society
meeting. Turing had said he was meeting “luscious” men.
Though there was frothing at the mouth, there was no burning
about the mouth – if cyanide had been drunk. Perhaps Turing inhaled the cyanide
from the next room? It could have built up to lethal levels. So Turing got a
bite from an apple, put on PJs, removed the watch, left the light on, tucked
in, and succumbed? The famous scent of bitter almonds was “faint” – no
quantitative measurements were attempted. This almond smell was associated with
the water-like fluid in his windpipe and lungs. Perhaps benzaldehyde was
present. It is made by the decomposition of the amygdalin found in almonds. It
can also be broken down into glucose and hydrogen cyanide. Benzaldehyde is
described as having a bitter or pleasant almond odor. Some maintain natural
almond extract can contain enough cyanide to be lethal. In any case, according
to Copeland, cyanide distribution is uniform throughout the organs and tissues.
Yet Turing’s liver was normal, in it should have been a high level of cyanide.
Such odd liver results were no doubt not known to Turing’s
mother. She insisted it had been an accident. Suicide was a crime, she may have
thought enough criminality had been attached to Turing. She favored the inhaled
cyanide theory. Copeland reported that a psychotherapist, who had been
addressing Turing’s problem(s), wrote to Mrs. Turing a year after the death to
tell her that he had no doubt that it had been an accident. It, then, was to be
made into an accident for a suicidal security risk of the first magnitude. He
was living alone, not monitored, not controlled, and not controlling himself.
The national press saw no significance in his death.
Arnold, Turing’s partner at the time of Turing’s arrest,
according to Hodges, became a musician and married. Harry, the burglar of
Turing’s home and an associate of Arnold, after being sent to Borstal,
disappeared. Kjellen had disappeared. Mrs. Clayton must have gone to her reward
in good order. Presumably Ferns shaped up or continued to bungle
investigations. What became of the shoes? Turing’s shoes were found outside the
door of his bedroom. Mrs. Clayton had discovered them there. Putting the shoes
in such a location was done by the upper classes to have polish applied by
someone in the morning. But Turing had not engaged in such a placement of
shoes. Mrs. Clayton commented that the placing of the shoes was unusual. What
of his suit and a tie? Were they in good order? Turing was cremated. Was
someone operating under the mistaken assumption that Turing was to be buried?
So then a casket viewing would be done, and he would have to look presentable.
Ordinarily he did not look presentable. The same person or persons wanted him
to make a good impression on those who discovered his death. Some odd assassin
it could have been with an overpowering desire for order and propriety.
Coda
The successful imitation of a human being must include
mistakes. Always providing the correct answer, be it human or inhuman, is an
error. This a machine, imitating us, must not do.
Turing wrote of machines of state. A state is easily seen
spatially but the other outstanding characteristic of state is time. The
machine would need a memory, not one provided, but its memory, and then,
therefore, on to mind. Once the machine “had gotten” time, it could have mind.
This mind, associated with the organic, must be sourced from itself or it “is”
not existing. Our minds, and one supposes the machine mind, are nevertheless dependent
on “what” we are. Thereafter comes “who” we are. The who for the machines would
be what? No, not a what but a who. Beyond structure in space, what objects are there
that can be the “who” of a machine mind?
For us, who we are is organically based. This is not to say
we aren’t filled with dead matter. Nanomachines are in abundance. The important
point about all this particulate death is that it masquerades as life – to hear
scientists tell it, whereas most of us recognize and realize we are aware of death
– not of the nanomachines but of ourselves. We are conscious of our life.
Our lives are characterized by our minds. We are free to do
such a characterization. Can machines do so? They can if they have free will.
Otherwise they build cars. But do we have free will? Does any intelligent and
conscious reflective entity that can reproduce itself have free will? If it
ends in itself, no real free will is demonstrated. As you live for yourself, by
yourself, you have provisional, partial free will. It is almost synonymous with
actual free will. Real free will must be proved to be the case. It is the case
if you reproduce your colors, shape, and appearance of your physical self or if
the hues of your mental possibilities are brought into play. If so, you have transcended
the limitations of the lonely and not entirely free will. You have freed
yourself by going beyond only who you are. It is free will, complete and
lacking anything provisional about it.
This is in the realm of the mind. Gödel praised Turing and said
Turing had shown (contrary to Turing’s own notions) that “the human mind will
never be able to be replaced by a machine.” Turing’s machines were about
numbers, based on numbers. There were tables of instruction to control the
“behavior” of the machine, a computer. The start of such a machine was a set of
numbers subject to “Gödel’s arithmetic.” There are rules of arithmetic not
supported by the rules. What can be proved by the rules is less than the truth.
The truth is that the RNA, DNA, ribosomes, and ATP are dead
yet we are alive. Life has electrical gradients or differences in ion
concentration and energy is created. So can we be reduced to ions? We have
ionic minds? We have drawn the lines between the dead and the undead. But
aren’t these lines blurred? A viral infection is different from a bacterial
infection. The bacterium is alive. Is the virus dead? Computers, nowadays, can
become infected. Viruses also plague them. Are the lines between the computers
and their viruses as blurred as in our case? The machines are already dead. We
are filled with death and yet are alive. We say so. We have a less discrete
existence than do the computers. They have their numbers, we contain no
numbers. They can be rendered discrete. Who we are is a blur. We are blurred by
“meaning” and “emotion” – both vital to tagging reality as we do. For Turing,
his mathematical efforts were without emotion. He was described, fondly, as
being “ruthless” in his thinking. A ruthless implication was that by
evolutionary forces the rat or the pig could someday supplant us. Turing
acknowledged the threat from the existence of the pig and the rat but placed
the politics entailed in changes coming from thinking machines as a less
oblique threat to our demise.
The rat and the pig will beat out machines subject to
discrete states. For machines, a blurred state is needed and the quantum world
provides the blur. Quantum computing, if unclear and not distinct enough to us,
could do the trick.