[ExI] temporary open season on turing

[Anders Sandberg]

Turing likely transformed the 20th century far more deeply than most 
people understand.

First, he created computer science by bridging mathematics, logic and 
automated calculation. Computer science has led to the world-view we are 
now living in where information is seen as fundamental rather than 
matter. His theorems meant that Gödel's theorem crept into the world of 
practical engineering, a subtle and still not fully understood effect. 
Read anything by Chaitin to see how profound and unsettling this is.

Second, he created the field of AI for real by his Mind paper, forcing 
philosophy and computation together. Sure, others coined the term and 
worked on it, but what he did there was to get philosophers interested 
in automating thought. That would prove profoundly influential: AI 
researchers picked up powerful tools from the philosophers, who were 
discovering deep problems thanks to the AI project. It also triggered 
some extremely key minds like von Neumann (computers, game theory etc.), 
Shannon (information theory, cryptography) and Herbert Simon (AI, 
economics, cognitive biases) - the AI project has influenced our 
intellectual environment in some very crucial domains.

Third, his work on biological pattern formation prefigured computational 
biology by decades. The Turing mechanism explains a lot, and has been 
validated experimentally and theoretically. The fact that he could do it 
using the computers of the 50s was amazing.

I think one can see Turing as similar to Aleister Crowley in terms of 
wide ranging influences: you can nearly always find odd strands of 
inspiration that lead back to him, even in apparently unrelated fields. 
Having a broad and incisive mind that starts new domains by fusing 
previous disciplines tend to do that.

Here is me taking advice:
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/2291440659/

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University