This one only really works because almost everyone is in agreement: World War II was one of the “good wars”. I mean, if you have to go to war, let it be against a particularly despicable monster like Adolph Hitler. It just doesn’t quite work when imagining the enigma machine in the hands of, say, Ho Chi Minh or Saddam Hussein.
Or is that just me.
Alan Turing. He was the man who deconstructed the Enigma Machine. And in so doing made a remarkable contribution to the deconstruction of Hitler’s Nazi regime itself.
On the other hand, Alan Turing was also a homosexual. Back then. And back then is not now. Back then [war hero or not] he was arrested and charged with the crime of being a homosexual. He was sentenced to chemical castration. A year into his “treatment” he committed suicide.
He was also a genius. And he was also…different. And so he was bullied for it.
On the other hand, he wasn’t a woman. And “back then” that was yet another demographic in which blind prejudice was rife.
And then there is the part about thinking machines. All of the philosophical issues for example. And sooner or later when we go down that path the question of “determinism” will inevitably pop up. Though not so much here.
Here the focus was often more on the nature of intelligence itself. “Artificial” intelligence? On the other hand, from the point of view of nature, what does that really mean?
Anyway, Alan Turing was a man who made a difference. A big difference. It has been estimated that breaking the Enigma code attenuated the war by at least two years. And saved an estimated 14,000,000 lives. Not many folks can lay claim to an achievement like that.
IMDb
[b]Winston Churchill stated that Turing made the single greatest contribution in Britain’s war effort.
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Benedict Cumberbatch confessed that in one of the final scenes of the film he couldn’t stop crying and had a breakdown. It was, as he said, “being an actor or a person that had grown incredibly fond of the character and thinking what he had suffered and how that had affected him.”
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On 27 November 2014, ahead of the film’s US release, The New York Times reprinted the original 1942 crossword puzzle from The Daily Telegraph used in recruiting code breakers at Bletchley Park during World War II. Entrants who solve the puzzle can mail in their results for a chance to win a trip for two to London and a tour of the famous Bletchley Park facilities.
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In an interview with USA Today, Benedict Cumberbatch said of Turing’s Royal Pardon, “The only person who should be pardoning anybody is him (Turing). Hopefully, the film will bring to the fore what an extraordinary human being he was and how appalling (his treatment by the government was). It’s a really shameful, disgraceful part of our history.”
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At the interrogatory scene, Turing describes the famous “Turing Test”.
In the original illustrative example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result is not dependent on the machine’s ability to render words into audio. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how closely each answer resembles the answer a human would give.
The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” which he asks “Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?” This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered.
More than 50 years later, no computer could pass the test.
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“If any young person’s ever felt like they aren’t quite sure who they are, or aren’t allowed to express themselves the way they’d like to express themselves, if they’ve ever felt bullied by what they feel is the normal majority or any kind of thing that makes them feel an outsider, then this is definitely a film for them because it’s about a hero for them,” Cumberbatch stated at the European Premiere of the film at the London Film Festival, October 2014 [/b]
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game
trailer: youtu.be/S5CjKEFb-sM
THE IMITATION GAME [2014]
Directed by Morten Tyldum
[b]Alan [voiceover]: Are you paying attention? Good. If you are not listening carefully, you will miss things. Important things. I will not pause, I will not repeat myself, and you will not interrupt me. You think that because you’re sitting where you are, and I am sitting where I am, that you are in control of what is about to happen. You’re mistaken. I am in control, because I know things that you do not know.
[pause]
Alan: What I will need from you now is a commitment. You will listen closely, and you will not judge me until I am finished. If you cannot commit to this, then please leave the room. But if you choose to stay, remember you chose to be here. What happens from this moment forward is not my responsibility. It’s yours. Pay attention.
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Commander Denniston: Why do you wish to work for His Majesty’s government?
Alan: Oh, I don’t, really.
Commander Denniston: Are you a bleeding pacifist?
Alan: I’m… agnostic about violence.
Commander Denniston: Well, you do realize that 600 miles away from London here’s this nasty little chap called Hitler who wants to engulf Europe in tyranny?
Alan: Politics isn’t really my area of expertise.
…
Alan: I like solving problems, Commander. And Enigma is the most difficult problem in the world.
Commander Denniston: Enigma isn’t difficult, it’s impossible. The Americans, the Russians, the French, the Germans, everyone thinks Enigma is unbreakable.
Alan: Good. Let me try and we’ll know for sure, won’t we?
…
Commander Denniston: To decode a message, you need to know the machine’s settings. Now, the Germans switch settings every day promptly at midnight. We usually intercept our first message around 6:00 a.m., which gives you exactlyto crack the code before it changes, and you start again.
Alan: Five rotors. Ten plugboard cables. That’s…one million…
Peter: A thousand million…No, no, it’s, uh, I’ve got it. It’s a million, million. It’s in the millions, obviously.
Alan: It’s over 150 million million million possible settings.
Commander Denniston: Very good.
Hugh: If you want to be exact about it. 1-5-9 with 18 zeroes behind it. Possibilities. Every single day.
…
Alan [voiceover]: The game was quite a simple one. Every single German message, every surprise attack, every bombing run, every imminent U-boat assault…They were all floating through the air. Radio signals that… well, any schoolboy with an AM kit could intercept. The trick was that they were encrypted. There were 159 million million million possible Enigma settings. All we had to do was try each one. But if we had ten men checking one setting a minute for 24 ho urs every day and seven days every week, how many days do you think it would take to, uh, to check each of the settings? Well, it’s not days, it’s years. It’s 20 million years. To stop a coming attack, we would have to check 20 million years worth of settings in 20 minutes.
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Alan [to Commander Denniston]: Enigma is an extremely well-designed machine. Our problem is that we’re only using men to try to beat it. No, what if only a machine can defeat another machine?
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Stewart: My warmest welcome to His Majesty’s service. If you speak a word of what I’m about to show you, you will be executed for high treason. You will lie to your friends, your family and everyone you meet about what it is you really do.
Joan: And what is it that we’re really doing?
Alan: We’re going to break an unbreakable Nazi code and win the war.
Joan: Oh.
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Alan [as a boy]: What’s that you’re reading?
Christopher: It’s about cryptography.
Alan: Like secret messages?
Christopher: Not secret. That’s the brilliant part. Messages that anyone can see, but no one knows what they mean unless you have the key.
Alan: How’s that different from talking?
Christopher: Talking?
Alan: When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean. They say something else, and you’re expected to just know what they mean. Only I never do. So, how’s that different?
Christopher: Alan, I have a funny feeling you’re going to be very good at this.
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Hugh [to Alan]: You know to pull off this irascible genius routine, one has to actually be a genius.
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Alan [to Joan]: Sometimes it is the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
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Alan [voiceover]: Some people thought we were at war with the Germans-- incorrect. We were at war with the clock. Britain was literally starving to death. The Americans sent over 100,000 tons of food every week and every week the Germans would send
our desperately needed bread to the bottom of the ocean. Our daily failure was announced at the chimes of midnight. And the sound would haunt our unwelcome dreams.
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Joan: So you-you theorized a machine that could solve any problem. It didn’t just do one thing, it did everything. It wasn’t just programmable, it was reprogrammable. Is that your idea behind Christopher?
Alan: Well, human brains can compute large sums very quickly but I want my machine to be smarter. To make a calculation and then, uh, to determine what to do next. Like a person does. Think of it. An electrical brain. A digital computer.
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Hugh: If you run the wires across the plugboard matrix diagonally, you’ll eliminate rotor positions 500 times faster.
Alan: This is actually not an entirely terrible idea.
Joan: I think that was Alan for “thank you.”
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Detective: That’s what Turing’s hiding. He’s a poof, not a spy.
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Alan: What if… what if I don’t fancy being with Joan in that way?
John: Because you’re a homosexual? I suspected.
Alan: Sh- should I tell her that I’ve had affairs with men?
John: You know, in my admittedly limited experience, women tend to be a bit touchy about accidentally marrying homosexuals. Perhaps not spreading this information about might be in your best interest.
Alan: I care for her, I truly do, but… I-I just don’t know if I can pretend…
John: You can’t tell anyone, Alan. It’s illegal. And Denniston is looking for any excuse he can to put you away.
Alan: I know.
John: This has to stay a secret.
…
Detective Nock: I’m here to help you.
Alan: Oh, clearly!
Detective Nock: Can machines think?
Alan: Oh, so you’ve read some of my published works?
Detective Nock: What makes you say that?
Alan: Oh, because I’m sitting in a police station, accused of entreating a young man to touch my penis, and you’ve just asked me if machines can think.
Detective Nock: Well, can they? Could machines ever think as human beings do?
Alan: Most people say not.
Detective Nock: You’re not most people.
…
Alan [to Detective Nock]: Of course machines can’t think as people do. A machine is different from a person. Hence, they think differently. The interesting question is, just because something, uh, thinks differently from you, does that mean it’s not thinking? Well, we allow for humans to have such divergences from one another. You like strawberries, I hate ice-skating, you cry at sad films, I am allergic to pollen. What is the point of different tastes, different preferences, if not, to say that our brains work differently, that we think differently? And if we can say that about one another, then why can’t we say the same thing for brains built of copper and wire, steel?
Detective Nock: And that’s this big paper you wrote? What’s it called?
Alan: “The Imitation Game.”
Detective Nock: Right, that’s… that’s what it’s about?
Alan: Would you like to play?
Detective Nock: Play?
Alan: It’s a game. A test of sorts. For determining whether something is a… a machine or a human being.
Detective Nock: How do I play?
Alan: Well, there’s a judge and a subject, and… the judge asks questions and, depending on the subject’s answers, determines who he is talking with… what he is talking with, and, um, all you have to do is ask me a question.
Detective Nock: What did you do during the war?
Alan: I worked in a radio factory.
Detective Nock: What did you really do during the war?
Alan (laughing softly): Are you paying attention?
…
Alan [having a eureka! moment]: Helen! Wh-Why do you think your German counterpart has a girlfriend?
Helen: It’s just a stupid joke; don’t worry.
Alan: No, no, no, no. Tell me.
Helen: Well, each of his messages begins with the same five letters: C-I-L-L-Y. So I suspect that Cilly must be the name of his amore.
Alan [morevto himself]: But that’s impossible. The Germans are instructed to use five random letters at the start of every message.
Helen: Well, this bloke doesn’t.
Hugh: Love will make a man do strange things, I suppose.
Alan: In this case, love just lost Germany the whole bloody war.
…
Alan: Heil Hitler. Turns out that’s the only German you need to know to, uh, break Enigma.
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Hugh: My God, you did it. You just defeated Nazism with a crossword puzzle.
Peter: There are five people in the world who know the position of everyship in the Atlantic. And they’re all in this room.[/b]
Then this…
[b]Alan: Sometimes we can’t do what feels good. We have to do what is logical.
Hugh: What’s logical?
Alan: The hardest time to lie to somebody is when they’re expecting to be lied to.
Joan: Oh, God.
Hugh: What?
Alan: If someone’s waiting for a lie, you can’t just, uh, give them one.
Joan: Damn it, Alan’s right.
Hugh: What?
Alan: What wouldthe Germans think if we destroy their U-boats?
Peter: Nothing. They’ll be dead.
Alan: No. So our convoy suddenly veers off course…a squadron of our air bombers miraculously descends on the coordinates of the U-boats…what will the Germans think?
Joan: The Germans will know that we have broken Enigma. They’ll stop all radio communications by midday, and they’ll have changed the design of Enigma by the weekend.
Alan: Yes. Two years’ work. Everything that we’ve done here will all be for nothing.
Frank: There are 500 civilians in that convoy. Women…children. We’re about to let them die.
Alan: Our job is not to save one passenger convoy, it is to win the war.
…
Stewart: Why are you telling me this ?
Alan: We need your help, to keep this a secret from Admiralty, Army, RAF. Ah… as no one can know, that we’ve broken enigma, not even Commander Dennison.
Stewart: Who is in the process of having you fired?
Joan: You can take care of that.
Alan: While we develop a system to help you determine how much intelligence to act on. Which ahh attacks to stop, which to let through. Statistical analysis, the minimum number of actions it will take, for us to win the war – but the maximum number we can take, before the Germans get suspicious.
Stewart: And you’re going to trust of this all to statistics? To maths?
Alan: Correct.
Joan: And then MI6 can come up with the lies we will tell everyone else.
Alan: You’ll need a believable alternative source for all the pieces of information that you use.
Joan: A false story, so that we can explain how we got our information, that has nothing to do with Enigma, and then you can leak those stories to the Germans.
Alan: And then to our own military.
Stewart: Maintain a conspiracy of lies at the highest levels of government? Sounds right up my alley.
…
Alan [voiceover]: They code-named it “Ultra.” It became the largest store of military intelligence in the history of the world. It was like having a tap on Himmler’s intercom.
…
Alan [after finding out Cairncross is a Soviet spy]: I-I have to tell Denniston.
Cairncross: No, you don’t. Because if you tell him my secret I’ll tell him yours. Do you know what they do to homosexuals? You’ll never be able to work again, never be able to teach. Your precious machine…I doubt you’ll ever see it again.
…
Alan [voiceover]: Advice about keeping secrets: it’s a lot easier if you don’t know them in the first place…Were they steaming my letters, tapping my telephone? Trailing my nervous walks? You know, I…I never did find out.
…
Joan: Alan, what’s happened?
Alan [after a pause]: We can’t be engaged anymore. Your parents need to take you back. Find you a husband elsewhere.
Joan: What’s wrong with you?
Alan: I have something to tell you. I’m… I’m a homosexual.
Joan: Alright.
Alan: No, no, men, Joan. Not women.
Joan: So what?
Alan: I just told you…
Joan: So what? I had my suspicions. I always did. But we’re not like other people. We love each other in our own way, and we can have the life together that we want. You won’t be the perfect husband? I can promise you I harboured no intention of being the perfect wife. I’ll not be fixing your lamb all day, while you come home from the office, will I? I’ll work. You’ll work. And we’ll have each other’s company. We’ll have each other’s minds. Sounds like a better marriage than most. Because I care for you. And you care for me. And we understand one another more than anyone else ever has.
Alan: I don’t.
Joan: What?
Alan: Care for you. I never did. I just needed you to break Enigma. I’ve done that now, so you can go.
Joan [slaps him]:I am not going anywhere. I have spent entirely too much of my life worried about what you think of me, or what my parents think of me, or what the boys in Hut 8 or the girls in Hut 3 think, and you know I am done. This work is the most important thing I will ever do. And no one will stop me. Least of all you.
[pause]
Joan: You know what? They were right. Peter. Hugh. John. You really are a monster.
…
Alan [voiceover]: The war dragged on for two more solitary years…and every day we performed our blood-soaked calculus. Every day we decided who lived and who died. Every day we… helped the Allies to victories, and nobody knew. Stalingrad. The Ardenne. The invasion of Normandy. All victories that would not have been possible without the intelligence that we supplied. And people… talk about the war as this epic battle between civilizations… freedom versus tyranny, democracy versus Nazism, armies of millions bleeding into the ground, fleets of ships weighing down the oceans, planes dropping bombs from the sky until they obliterated the sun itself. The war wasn’t like that for us. For us, it was just half a dozen crossword enthusiasts in a tiny village in the South of England.
…
Alan [after telling the story of Enigma]: Now, detective, you get to judge. So tell me, what am I? Am I a machine, am I a person, am I a war hero, or am I a criminal?
Detective Nock: I can’t judge you.
Alan: Well then, you’re no help to me at all.
…
Joan: I would have come. I would have testified.
Alan: And what would you have said, that I, uh…I wasn’t a homosexual.
Joan: Alan… this is serious. They could sendyou to jail.
[she notices hi8s shaking hands]
Joan: Your hands. You’re twitching.
Alan: No-no, I’m not. It’s the medication.
Joan: The medication?
Alan: Uh, well, the judge gave me, um, a choice…uh, ei-either two years in prison or… ho-hormonal therapy.
Joan: Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Alan: Yes, yes, that’s right. Chemical castration.
…
Joan [to Alan]: Do you know, this morning I was on a train that went through a city that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you. I bought a ticket from a man who would likely be dead if it wasn’t for you. I read up, on my work, a whole field of scientific inquiry that only exists because of you. Now, if you wish you could have been normal…I can promise you I do not. The world is an infinitely better place precisely because you weren’t.
Alan: Do you do you really think that?
Joan: I think that sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
…
Title card: After a year of government mandated hormonal therapy, Alan Turing committed suicide on June 7th, 1954. He was 41 years old. Between 1885 and 1967, approximately 49,000 homosexual men were convicted of gross indecency under British law.
…
Title card: Turing’s work inspired generations of research into what scientists called “Turing machines”. Today we call them computers.[/b]