Mayday Plays - Heroes You Should Know: Alan Turing

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

Allegra is joined by Reginald West for a discussion of English mathematician Alan Turing.

Hi friends welcome back to here as you should know the double nerd show where I talk about a historical figure that we don't talk about enough and then I turn them into a D&D character because why wouldn't I and this week I'm very excited to have my friend Reginald West joining me we've worked on a project together this year and I begged him to come hang out with me again so here he is I'm here I'm here thank you for having me I appreciate it so great to have you on um is there any kind of thing that we need to talk about before probably not not really actually that you know you you know what we do here it's nerdy

shit and this week we're gonna be talking about Alan Turing yes I realize Alan Turing is probably one of our better known heroes that we're gonna be talking about that's fine I make the rules so oh well so and I think I think the reason he's more well known is because of the movie The Imitation Game which is very pretty but we're not gonna talk about it that much because like with many films based on history it's rife with errors and missteps to make it more dramatic so we're not gonna talk about it that much except the music which is very pretty we're not gonna talk about the music either but I'm just

gonna say that the music is really pretty and I listened to all I was doing these notes um but we're gonna focus on the real story here um so he was a literal genius so smart so so fucking smart from such an early age they were like oh no this guy seems like he probably would have been you know called a prodigy in his time for sure would have been close so that being said I who am not a genius do not understand a lot of his theories because I did these notes in just a few days if I had like a month I could probably maybe scratch the surface of understanding them but I didn't so if you're super interested in like math

science crypto analysis stuff I urge you to go look more deeply into this because as usual this is kind of just a basic overview there's so much information about him and all the cool shit he figured out please go look into it he's cool as hell yeah and then one last thing I'm gonna do like a blanket trigger warning kind of over this whole thing for homophobia mentions of suicide and mentions of chemical castration just because it's a reality in history we do we will talk on it so yeah if that's gonna be an issue for you please step away and that's super chill yeah so are we ready ready when you are all right

so Alan Turing was born to June 23rd 1912 in London England his parents were civil servants and as ready pointed out he showed signs of genius from a very early age he went to public school and the public schools were like he's unless he's trying to be an educator this is this is not where he's supposed to be so he goes to private school one of which was about 60 miles away and in 1926 there was a general strike and he's 14 and he really wants to get to a school so he bikes unaccompanied those 60 miles so he can go to school and I think it's I think it's like a school that you stay at so it wasn't like he

was biking 60 miles every day but like still biking 60 miles to get to school is hey when you're when you're dedicated you know you got to do it's like any of those conversations with grandparents or anything like that you know I went school in the in the snow up hill down the other side you know upside down you walking on my hands everything everything so yeah that's it's it takes a very dedicated person to number one do that and then to thrive you know when he was there so he was yeah he was yeah he was obviously very dedicated to his education but in school he was kind of seen as a very average student because

the structure of the like the structure of the classroom and the way that they like set things up held zero interest for him he did not care about anything he was way more interested in following his own pursuits I think there was like somewhere I read they talked about like a math class where he could like he could do the like the formulas and everything that they were showing but he was just more interested in figuring out a different way to do it or figuring out different ways to try and do things or whatever else he was it's I think that's so interesting that a lot of geniuses are talked about like they go to school

and they're average students when you think they would excel because they're like I don't care about this shit there's like four things that I want to think about and that's it and that's what I'm gonna focus on it's true I mean you can find that with a lot of modern people today you know I think it takes a whole bunch of different types of skills for people to you know to live in the world that we do right now and you know not everybody's gonna have the same type of want for the education when the syllabus comes out where you have to take you know math science language arts you know extracurricular some people may not

click with one right and then they actually just gravitate to something that is really interesting to them and we should celebrate that a lot more than I think we do I agree and at this time science and math were kind of looked down on in favor of like the classics and literature and like English and stuff and history and stuff like that so the fact that he liked them was like kind of embarrassing and annoying to his teachers so I don't think that helped his cause either he read Einstein's theory of relativity as like a 15 or 16 year old grasped it real grasped it really quickly and then had like a notebook full

of his own musings on what it meant which is insane to me like how do you take someone who's as highly regarded as Albert Einstein and then just be like you know what maybe there's something else maybe there's something else to be added to this when someone's just like okay here's here's the basically the new the new standard for what we're thinking about in the science and Turing's like okay but what if there's more always like push the envelope which I love and that's so and that's so interesting that someone can have that type of not even like foresight but just like the like the

gumption to just question everything to be like there's gotta be there's gotta cool this is great like what's over there yeah solar sailor says educational diversity should be more openly talked about I agree you are very correct that is definitely a thing that we are lacking and I hope I hope it hope it turns around sometime hopefully so while he's at shareborn which is the school the private school he befriends Christopher Morkham who is described as his first love they're both incredibly brilliant they trade ideas and theories he's kind of the only person or one of the first people that Alan is is able to like talk

to and will bounce ideas with him and he was super Christopher super interesting like astrology or astronomy whichever one isn't about star signs I can't ever remember I think it's astronomy ronami is it astronomy astronomy sounds more mystical I think astrology more has to deal with like the signs I think astronomy well you know what we have the internet so astronomy he's super interested in astronomy but unfortunately thank you Aaron Aaron says he will be bringing this up again I don't doubt it you little punk and so they're so the closest can be there was never really any like

indication if it was like romantic love or just like platonic I I kind of read it as romantic but who knows and then unfortunately Christopher passes away of bovine tuberculosis in February of 1930 and it just wrecks Alan yeah it's it's a huge loss that's that probably has something to do or it's probably a contributing factor toward his his atheism and his materialism and materialism isn't what it sounds like materialism in a philosophical sense is that the mind and the conscious are byproducts of a material process like brain chemistry the nervous system all of that so like the consciousness is comes from the physical

rather than the other way around that's interesting yeah so Alan was very close with Christopher's mother and they often wrote each other and they maintained a relationship for several years usually writing about Christopher and this is an a point where he he's asking about like okay where does the body spirit like where does body and spirit separate where do we go after we die all of these very like philosophical questions that he his mother and Christopher or Christopher and Alan or Chris Jesus Christ Christopher's mother Alan would like right back and forth about and I think that's like a really lovely way of

keeping him alive for themselves yeah that's that's incredibly important to try to build up those those relationships are not at the very least to to sever them on something like this happens so yeah like you can't like fully lose that person if you keep them alive with someone who loves them true um so he's you know he's he's dealing with that and then he goes to the University of Cambridge for mathematics in 1931 where he graduates in 34 and then he gets elected to a fellowship at King's College for his research on the probability theory this one I'm very shaky on but as I understand it it's a

branch of mathematics that studies the idea of random phenomena where the outcomes of random events can't be determined before they occur but there are several possibilities that can occur but the actual outcome is determined by chance so it's like a dice roll yeah yeah it's like cards or dice which is very topical for us haha we've arrived you've made it meta boom quick first page it's done so yes so he's he's like he's talked about probability theory and people are pretty much taking notice of his staggering intellect so cheers later he makes a paper on computable numbers with an application to the oh and

Scheidun's problem it's a German word yeah so it's called it's it's also known as the decision problem problem so basically it's a problem formulated by David Hilbert from 1928 and it's is there an algorithm that will take a formal language and a logistical statement in that language and that the out that will output a true or false depending on the truth value of the statement so the algorithm doesn't tell how to get to the answer or how to prove it as long as the answer is always correct right I don't fully understand that yeah that's kind of harder because like I'm thinking about it in a coding language where if it

was you know if it was like a Boolean type statement then you know you would either have the true or the false but I think this is now predicated on the fact that the truth exists yeah so it's so obviously it's more nuanced than just the than just a true true or false yeah but if the predication is there and it's based on the fact that whatever you're trying to figure out is true it kind of narrows down a lot of different things that you would do because you would need to know that it's true because you can't prove it on itself yeah yeah it falls on it so it's kind of thinking about it now it's

it's a little ineffective especially if you can't prove that it's true to begin with yeah it's a whole it's like a weird cycle it's yeah yeah so so Alan publishes his paper and shows that there is no answer to the problem it's impossible for an algorithm to decide whether statements are true or false so it's and he makes this whole thing called the Turing machine to prove that you can't prove the decision problem and so this earlier that same year that he published this this paper on the decision problem another mathematician came to the same conclusion but in a different way and and he kind of

recommend he's the one that finds Alan's paper and recommends it for publication and it's like hey I did the same thing but he did it in a different way how cool is this I remember doing having experiences where you would get to the same answer just doing it a completely different way especially in math yeah I feel like I feel like if there is one common language it's definitely in numbers and in music but which is that one I also also sequenced correctly for looking at it you know a break lead is technically numeric so anyway so he so church is like hey this is cool he did it a different way than

me but we came to the same conclusion how fucking cool and so Alan goes to Princeton for his PhD in math mathematical logic and graduates years later in 1938 but while he's there he works on the decision problem with church and they create the universal Turing machine which was a hypothetical computing device created to infallibly recognize undecidable propositions so it's basically him proving that you can't prove a thing and it's it's just it's big smart computing things that go back to our girl Ada Lovelace who then goes back to like the ancient mathematicians in Greece and Egypt and

Mesopotamia and Central America and it's I think one of my favorite things about this this specific person that we researched is that it made me kind of focus on the fact that like without the past we aren't anything and like obviously you have to learn from the past you're gonna whatever but like the building blocks that we came from are so integral I just I don't know I got emotional about thinking about like all the people that led to this and what this led to further it's it's true it's it's I feel like it's a moment in time a moment in time that like everything had to line up correctly you know even you

know predicated but Ada Lovelace before and then for Alan Turing to meet up or for church to see Turing's paper like by happenstance what if he just went and did something else and that never happened and then Turing wouldn't have just been like oh well let's collaborate let's try and let's try and figure some of these things out and it's just so interesting because you're you're totally right it's just these people who do magnificent world-changing things just have these small little moments in time that just mean absolutely everything and just give us so much yeah that I'm sure we're gonna get into a

little bit later about even the way that you know right now we deal with computers and how they think and it's just it's absolutely incredible about just how everything happens like that it's just the ripple is insane yeah so they're working together and Alan has to claim has the claim that everything humanely computable can also be computed by the universal Turing machine which was an important distinction because it marks out the limits of human computation and kind of implies that potentially there is a computation that a human may be incapable of finding and so church finds a superior to his own

theories that draw the same conclusion because it has the advantage of making the identification with effected effectiveness with effected my god why is this word so hard for me to say it has the advantage of making the identification with effectiveness immediately so it was like here's this nebulous idea that Alan was just like okay here's where we stop what's past us I don't know but this is the point at which we stop computing and like there's something beyond that that is so dialed in that it's hard to even comprehend thinking about thinking that deeply yeah about about a process you know I mean

like because this thing had to be just to have that the advantage of making the identification with effect like I just love these people's brains like I just want to just continue going down the rabbit hole I'm so excited about where we're gonna go I know I wish I wish like I wish I could go back in time and just be like okay I'm a dummy please sit down and explain to me all your thoughts because I desperately want to understand them but I am both lean capable of yeah yeah it was like can you break it down there was some I think there's a site with a bunch of his papers where they're just all compiled out and just

even trying to read and to code some of the things that he's thinking about in those ones it's just like man he was just on another level and it was it's absolutely awesome I think you need those people's to push those to push those boundaries to to really ultimately get us where we need to be or at the very least stoke the next person's thought and just be like yeah more is there more than this now who can I springboard in the future yeah exactly exactly no I found that site and I was trying to read some of the papers I was like I will just cry no I like to think I'm kind of smart I'm not this kind of yeah that's fair

everybody's smart in some ways and and you know what this was this was Turks thing this is this is his level of expertise this is where he shot so it's in 1938 now he returns to his fellowship at Kings College and he joins the government code and cipher school and the school so the school is established in 1919 after World War two ended as a way to have the army and the navy on similar wavelengths in terms of like signal intelligence codes and you know stuff like that and so it's meant to be like a peacetime organization but then a year after Alan joins them in September of 1939 Britain enters World War two and the

World War headquarters is moved to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire and Alan goes with it so before this he was kind of part of the anti-war movement he wasn't like a Marxist or a pacifist or anything like that but he was he was you know anti-war he wasn't super into it and some historians have called him a hippie before his time he said to have like dressed dressed really shabbily for the time which I think means like he didn't wear a tie or like wore a loose tie or whatever yeah he's in his nails they often like mistook him for an undergrad when he was you know like he had a PhD and he was working as a code

breaker and they were like what's this like 20 year old doing on campus what the hell that just cracks me up because I can because it's always like romanticized like in these like in these movies like I know we're not mentioning the imitation game but just for a frame of reference like the way he was he was dressed in there because yeah he really didn't have a tie you know he just had just a little probably just a little vest but that was even unbuttoned and just a shirt and pants and then just went to work I was like it's that shabby because that's business casual today so like it's not that big a deal like he

wears suspenders around his side rather than up what he's brilliant let him do what he wants in any kind of sense kind of way but later he's doing his job dress however they want yes so the thing he is probably the most known for is decoding the enigma machine so for the uninitiated the enigma machine is the machine that the Nazis were using in World War two to communicate through codes so it looked like a huge typewriter that spit out a string of letters that were seemingly random and when the messages were typed into the enigma's keyboard three rotors inside the machine would change each letter of the

message to a different one which would light up on a display above the keyboard of the corresponding enigma machine each letter had to be written down and the whole message was taken it was sent through Morris code to an operator the other machine that operator has to enter the mixed-up message into their machine and the reflector inside the enigma would reverse the rotor process and light up the original letters that had been entered in the first machine and then there's like a plugboard that's attached to the front for like more complicated which like complicates things later down the road by changing the

letter typed into the machine before it's altered by the rotors it was super complicated and like fuck the Nazis obviously punch Nazis here right but the idea of being able to think of this is fascinating to me yes like for me this was brilliant I wish they hadn't used their powers for evil right no yeah but like they had so many things have so many applications that could have been used for good but they were so many so they made bad choices yeah it was like they they made a bunch a bunch of errors and they're awful awful people who's like but like this like what you're explaining and how we needed to figure

out a way to figure out what they were saying like getting some of that information and coming up with a plan and then a gene to then go through with that plan takes so much and obviously it's wartime like you don't really have a lot of time to waste resources they were pretty low on resources yeah very very low on resources so the fact that you have to be so innovative and you have to be so crafty to to come up with something like this is is awe-inspiring you know from from from all sides I think especially from Turingston just like figuring out what you needed to do in order to in order to succeed in order

to win like it's it's very inspirational yeah it's super cool and actually this kind of leads perfectly into the next point which is so the nigma had been cracked before not fully but it had been cracked by the Polish mathematician Marianne Rajewski in the 30s so he so he got intel from the French and basically created his own enigma machine sight unseen just from the information so he like so I really it's one sorry we're gonna go on a little tangent something that I think is really interesting and like different wartime things I'm not super into like wartime politics or whatever but I do

think it's really interesting that you can see the difference in espionage French versus Polish because the French are very like subterfuge oriented going in it's like going in and doing things and learning things with people on the ground like we saw with Josephine Baker and then you have like the British and the Polish who are kind of more removed from it I know I like this is a large generalization but the the British and the French or not the French sorry the Polish were a little bit more removed from it and trying to take the information they got from the French and figuring it out intellectually which I

think it's fascinating it's it's it's levels within levels honestly like we get I'm sure if I get invited back I would love to do something about spies I would be great that would be absolutely awesome yes 100% like so much wow that's hard is needed especially with this because you know for a good amount of time I knew like Turing wasn't necessarily sharing a whole bunch like what he was doing initially yeah I think his higher ups if I believe if I'm correct then correct me if I'm wrong no he he was operating pretty much on his own just like yeah do this please and they were like okay okay I guess this

is what you need but you had a whole team at Blushley Park but he was he was deeply involved in it so yeah so that's super cool ladybug 4673 says human intelligence versus signal intelligence yes and just the little the differences I love it I things are cool people are neat so anyway so he so Marianne Rajewski basically works out like what the rotators do and the reflectors to the point where they can basically decipher about 75% of the messages and these like these scanners that he has are called bomb base it's bombs with an ES at the end I'm assuming it said it's bomb it bomb base I like

bomb is so we're gonna say like that or bombs or bombs bombies bombies no one got for us we could it just says bomb bomb this bomb this so anyway the war goes on and the Nazis set up their security on the enigmas by changing the rotor setting every day and then adding an extra plug on the board which changes them further it just basically gets more complicated before this I think I read that the rotators have been changed every week or for two weeks something like that and now it's changed every day yeah yeah they stepped it up so Rajewski's kind of rolling with it at the time he's

like okay I'm trying figuring a way around this but then the noxies take Poland and his work leads Alan and the others at Bletchley Park to realize that linguistics isn't the answer to breaking the codes like a lot of other codes at the time were but mathematics this was a much more like math-based code rather than like an on door cipher or whatever else you're gonna do is that the right word I think that's the right word so like without his research Alan would have had to work out the enigma from scratch which would have linked into the war and it also built him or sorry I also led to him building the Colossus

machine at Bletchley Park which is what later breaks the Germans Lorenz cipher which comes after the enigma and is even more complicated somehow people who make up codes are yeah like I can't be the amount of work that goes into it was like how could I make this how can I make something as complicated as possible yeah with also at the same time getting us to interpret it in a certain way but making sure that the people that are trying to interpret it don't it's secrets only for us but also only for us and the language barrier as well like fascinating I love it so cool so we are going like a momentary touch on the

imitation game the movie there was a woman named Joan Clark she did work at Bletchley Park with Alan and Alan did propose to her and they were engaged they engagement was broke off because he tells her he's gay and she goes yeah I know I'm not surprised and then they're bros for the rest of his life which is great she's like right I don't really care yeah thank you for telling me and then he's like I don't think we should marry and she's like all right that's fine you know he's like I didn't think it was gonna go very far I know you so it's chill that's that's should be the way that it should go you know you know just

be you know you loving like just dude it's fine I'll do the dishes we can still be bros we can still hang out Joan herself is also an incredible mathematician and a cryptanalyst she was tough for class in mathematics at Cambridge in the 30s but she was she wasn't given a degree until 1948 because of some bullshit about only men can get degrees from Cambridge at the time whatever she's still tough for class she was oh what's it called there was a thing there's like a special word specific to Cambridge that like you are the top of your class I can't remember what it is but she was she was that and

they still were like now you can't have a degree you're a lady you got you you're a lady you can't have this so she gets recruited by the GCCS by a fellow student from Cambridge who saw her in geometry in class and was like that bitch is brilliant let's go and but when she gets to Bletchley Park she's stuck doing clerical work with some of the other women and then they're like oh no oh we come here no we put you in the wrong place come on yeah and she's like yeah I know we're gonna we're gonna use my talents appropriately now right they're like yes and so she is one of only two women that she was aware of that were

cryptologists at Bletchley Park yeah so she and Allen work together they do all this their bros and then in 1945 after the war ends he is recruited to the National Physical Laboratory to create an electric computer so his original design is called the automatic computing machine I'm sorry automatic computing engine the ace and is among the first completed specifications for an electricals electronic stored program all-purposed digital computer and so this would have had more memory and run faster than any of the designs at the time but his colleagues aren't as as innovative as he is and they think it's

gonna be too difficult and too small and less like they don't think they don't think it'll work so they instead go for the pilot model ace in 1950 which is smaller and less intricate there's another group I think it's the Royal Society computing the Royal Society computing group yes they they have the first computer the if they followed Allen's design they would have had the first like electronic computer but that is done in 1948 by the Royal Society computing machine laboratory and so Allen's like cool they're doing neat things I'm going there so he transfers to them as a deputy director even though

there is no director so he's in everything but name he's the director yeah he's the guy yeah and so he sorry lost my place in my notes right so he develops the computer's input and output system using the Bletchley Park technology and he designs a programming system he writes the first programming manual he's he is well on his way to like shoving computer more like closer to what we know as computers today into reality which is cool as fuck yeah it really is like coming from applications that were used in wartime and now trying to create something that's a bit more accessible especially initially when his

you know co-workers or whatever you know we're looking on it like this is this is too much this is again you know this is this I don't know if this is something that we should going for but he was already you know I've got I've got things to do so I know that this will work and at the very least it takes those pioneers to just build something yeah and start working on it for for number one to catch on and then to build off of that for other things that yeah to at least have a record of it just so that someone eventually will be like oh this makes a lot of sense even if it's like outdated by the time that they read it

they're still like oh no I see what he was doing he was right yeah so after World War two he also dabbles in quantum mechanics biology chemistry neurology all of this in the pursuit to kind of make a thinking machine that would that would learn and think with art of it he wants to make artificial intelligence which is fascinating like AI even I could you imagine the types of conversations that that would have been happening in the 40s for this start talking about he's like so what if a computer did this like what if it could on its own without giving it without us giving it commands what if I don't know

they just ran a program what if it's just a thing and they would have been like fuck yeah machine yeah machine doesn't control me we have computers and their people yes yes it's it's the women who are doing the clerical work right now those are the computers what are you talking about computers machines that will think for so he's so he's well on that way a quick interlude about him I didn't place this note very well but we're here so we're gonna talk about it Alan's a pretty sporty dude yeah as you can see in the picture he's an avid runner he said it was how we deal with having like a stressful job he'd run

between two places at work like at the National Physical Laboratory and the electronics building in Dallas Hills they'd have like meetings between those two places and his colleagues would get on public transit like take a bus or take a train and he'd run and he beat him there which is how he joined running clubs he was a competitive amateur like competitive amateur runner and he won several races in 1948 he ran a marathon in two hours 46 minutes and three seconds which was only 11 minutes slower than the Olympic winner of that same year which is incredible that's so crazy he competed to be on the Olympic

team but he didn't make it because he had an injury like he he was going after it that's awesome that's so sick like you never know you know like you know a person based on like a movie that's not even really that accurate doesn't paint a whole picture unless you actually do some research and then you learn little things like this I just like to run for some reason that's one of my favorite facts about him is that he's an added runner and he's like thank you for being the precursor for a whole bunch of AI stuff but really I'd really like to see how we can shave eight minutes off of

that running time there yeah do you need like a timer I'll sit we can do it rocky style like I'll just be in the car just having to blow having the blow horn right now so very cool very sweet in the 1950s we're going back to we're going back to smart things not physical things 1950s puts out a paper called the imitation game which is basically stating that computers can mirror outputs of humans and that the Turing test he designed in early in his career is still pretty central to the discussions on AI so he creates the Turing test which is the criteria about whether or not an artificial computer is thinking and can

be classified as artificially intelligent so it's like defining whether the computer is having an original thought or giving a sophisticated parrot of the improt that already has fascinating and he kind of talks about like okay if it's if you're looking at it and it's responding to you call it cogent you know call it what it is other people have like disputed that I think this is just kind of his his interpretation of it and I think something really interesting is that his like whole interest in like human spirit and materialism and like the loss of Christopher so early in his life kind of

influences his interest in AI and something that could mirror human output and like what does it mean like are we just fleshy computers or like what could what like what further meaning could an AI have right there's definitely more there I like what you have with the spirit because in multiple cultures like you can you can quantify a spirit like when when someone dies or whatever in different cultures like sometimes like they'll weigh an individual and then when that person passes they physically get lighter and like can you can you quantify a soul or a spirit or something like that and then just thinking about

what what Alan was thinking about here like there's definitely or he could have been thinking in the future like there may be more to this and maybe we can find some way to track or get more data on what this the spirit is and maybe I can replicate that inside of my program like inside of what I'm trying to do so there's so much what ifs in this and it's absolutely incredible to think about and like that I feel like that would just lead to like further philosophical discussions of like okay what qualifies as a spirit what qualifies to make something human like where does intellect you know have to like crossover

into like that sapient kind of I don't know there's so many questions that can come from that I I love it we could spiral for hours but we won't we will continue on our course for now for the culture yes so he also develops a new field of mathematical biology which is called morphogenesis and basically it's the mathematical explanation of how things grow how things are having to do with like cells and organisms and the development of their shape it's it's kind of like a organic or genetic blueprint and using the Ferenti mark one computer which is I think was built by the the Royal Society he hypothesizes that a

chemical mechanism could generate anatomical structures and animals and plants which kind of like creating life through math right I mean would it be something like close like a like the cloning process but I think I think that's what he would be leading to I feel like that's the direction he's starting to like sway yeah of like can you create a physical organic form and then put a soul into it I feel like I feel like if you cross morphogenesis with you know AI you just create a whole human sort of hmm so fascinating yes it's fascinating and then it comes down to like what quantifies as the soul like how it's the soul

there so philosophy again so many yeah philosophy amazing crazy crazy big big big big brain thoughts brain so 1951 to get selected to a fellow at the Royal Society of London which is a big deal because that is the world's oldest society that's focused on the like the furthering of science so he so they're they see him and they're like yes which makes a whole ton of sense because they should and then we get to 1952 so Alan hasn't been quiet about his sexuality kept it a secret from people socially it's a pretty like socially it's a pretty well-known fact but at the time homosexuality was illegal in Britain

and the charges were gross indecency which is the worst phrasing for that I've ever fucking heard yeah yeah and he's arrested in March of 1952 for his relationship with a man and he doesn't deny it he's like yeah okay he and then ghosts the judges to their faces and like this shouldn't be illegal in the first place this is a stupid and you're wrong yeah as he's being sentenced he's like this is dumb you're wrong and then gives a detailed account of his entire relationship with the man yeah amazing so he's you know he's he's not gonna deny it he's like no this is true you're wrong right and I would expect

nothing less from him but the punishment for homosexuality when it comes to gross indecency is a form of chemical castration where a series of hormones are injected that cause impotence and which also have the side effect of gynecomastia which is like the development of breast tissue which can't be fun for anyone in any direction that is fucking terrible he's one of the most brilliant minds that they have he helped shorten the length of a war that was ravaging their country and continent along with other content like the world and they're still like no because you made out with a dude we're going to make

you miserable it was a it was a refer time fucking terrible multiple from multiple people and there just hasn't been yeah he's like and even like from then to now it's only been 70 years my doing my math right yeah it's only been 70 years and obviously there have been steps leaps and bounds made from where we were to where we're at now especially with how people that are being recognized under the LGBTQ a plus better I think I said all of you didn't you got it are being recognized as as people and they should be a hundred percent like there that shouldn't have been a question I think it's just at this time

and there just wasn't enough there wasn't number one there wasn't enough information I don't think there was enough people who actually cared which is really unfortunate and then for someone to then stand up to the status quo and just be like you know what I'm not gonna cower from this punishment I'm not gonna hide I am who I am it is what it is y'all are stupid yeah here's the reasons why like that's that's awesome you don't raise hell you don't care about how much bravery that that took a lot there's there's so many people throughout history that are just ravaged because like the most innocuous thing like who do you

want to kiss oh this person no well do that I guess no rainy yeah it's I don't incontrovertible and it drives me fucking bonkers understand but Alan is resilient as fuck he's a badass he's brilliant he keeps working as long as he can pretty much an open defiance he talks about it to anyone who wants to talk about it with him and he continues to be like this is a fucking stupid law and this shouldn't be happening I mean and like it's happening to other like other men other men who didn't stop a war other women like other people it's it's a lot maddening um but homosexuality at the time is also considered a fucking

national security risk because the government is the communists are gonna get the gaze I don't I don't understand because like the main thing is that they don't want him to like he would travel around Europe right right they love traveling around Europe and he'd go like near the iron curtain and so they're like suspicious of him that they're like he's going near the iron curtain and he's gay there's a danger so I'm laughing because it's just ridiculous it's fucking annoying as hell but it's ridiculous um so he he gets convicted and then they pull a security clearance they're most one of their top mind one of their most

brilliant people they're like no no he can't work for us anymore because he kissed a dude it's insane so he's he's stuck in England he's stuck you know he you know it's it's 12 months of this hormone therapy which is misery I'm sure um and he's just kind of stuck but he keeps doing his work but in June of 1954 June 8th at the age of 41 that he has found dead in his home of an apparent suicide the suicide the suicide aspect is questionable in a couple directions so his hormone treatment had stopped more than a year previously and his friends said he'd endured it with what was it amused fortitude which is an amazing

phrase and exactly what I'd expect obviously the way someone is perceived out in the world and the way they are internally is doesn't mean you know like there's obviously a separation a separation yeah he definitely could have been having a really rough time and would it would have made sense if he were and if he had if that had contributed to his suicide that makes sense there's also theories that it was an accident from inhaling cyanide fumes from an experiment in his small home lap laboratory I think his mom talked about how he was terrible at you know keeping his chemicals separated it was

a small lab in his apartment like it the fumes could have gotten anywhere it just been an accident especially if it's not like definitive either either either way it's it's a loss you know it's just if he was driven to it that's obviously awful if it just happened it sucks and is also there's also a conspiracy that it was an assassination by the Secret Service given that he had so much knowledge and was a brilliant cryptanalyst and gays were an actual security threat they were like this shit this shit can't fly we gotta we gotta take him out yeah yeah so it could have been any of those three

who used to say ladybug 4673 says look communism was one of the scariest things of the time so it makes sense that the other super scary thing the gays would be connected so it's it's not funny but it's a little funny yeah it's like it's funny how ridiculous that people thought and in some ways still kind of think today but less so they're less it's it's getting less shitty it's getting much there's an upset yeah so Alan Alan is cremated his ashes are scattered and then in 2013 he is granted a pardon by the Queen it takes until 2013 for them to get pardoned and then 2017 Alan Turing's law is passed where a thousands

of other gay and bi men received posthumous pardons as well so I don't like I always get excuse me I always get kind of like confused about posthumous pardons because like the gesture makes sense but it doesn't really help them yeah and maybe it's more for the family members who had that are that are enduring and may have had to deal with some of the social backlash that comes with that came with that during that time so yeah it's like it's like a very light bomb it's like a recognition of you know we fucked up we fucked up we're recognizing that we fucked up hey you know we did the thing but you know

it's cool we're cool now right yeah and then now he's gonna be on the 50 pound note in in England so that's cool no and I guess we'll close with my one of my favorite favorite quotes that I found from him which is we can only see a short distance ahead but we can see plenty that needs to be done which I think is well said yeah so that's that's our boy Alan he's fascinating and lovely and so I think we're gonna jump into our builds so as usual we built to 10th level with a human either just a regular garden variety human or a variant but Reggie what what kind of what kind of class did you give our boy yes so I gave

him a warlock class is one of my favorite classes just in general I didn't write it down in the little thing but I specifically wanted to give him a pact with the with the great old one yeah I feel like at the time if I was just picturing the character for from my side when I was looking at I was like okay so if he's getting all of this all of these preconceived notions I feel like in the game maybe it comes from this from this person just whispering in his ear just saying you know what here's what you should do I'll let you have it I'll let you I'll let you do what you need to do but this is what I want you to do this

is what I want you to go and say and I felt like that was such a compelling such a compelling thing especially for him because he really did have to navigate a lot of tricky situations tricky types of conversations and you know besides having like a really strong like wisdom or dexterity or anything like that I went with the charisma like you got to be able to speak with people you got to be able to talk with them and then also be able to use that in in this setting where he would be most useful just be like okay let's have these let's have the charisma so I can have more points for my skill checks find me to do

you know persuasion or if I need to you know I don't think it would be intimidating but at least you would have it like he would be ready to go intimidating in like a like a cerebral sense me cerebral sense you know how someone can break you down just like with your with with their mind and they just give you the explanation and then they move their glasses in the little anime way and it does the shine I feel like that's what he would do I feel like that's what he would do so I also wanted to give him and focus more just like on him as a person in terms of personality traits you know ideals things like that

and I feel like for him just for the personalities like I there's nothing I like more than a good mystery and like that is just so something I feel like he would do it just be like there's a there is something out there I want to figure out what it is yeah and there's going to be a way that I can get to it but he's like because he also has the great old one who knows who knows all of the stuff he's just feeding it to him obviously there's a cost but in the short term in the short term like here's all this amazing information here's all this stuff that I'm going to be able to give you and I think something that was innate

is in as well with the ideals was just the goal of a life of study is the betterment of oneself and I felt like that really resonated really well with his philosophical beliefs and just the juxtaposition with the warlock could just just have that really interesting internal struggle just being like okay I'm studying this because I want to but I also have this information that's just being fed to me well you know there will be a cost for that at some point yeah so I just found that to be just really really interesting very I feel like a cool character thing for him with like following the great old one could be like

okay cool you're the great old one what are you and then like trying to figure that out himself as he's like taking that information be like okay cool what are you though yes I think that could be super interesting because at that point you know with the whoever the DM is was just gonna have to start coming up he was just like look I can't explain where I can't explain but yeah never played him would be insufferable in the best way insufferable I think it would just be I think it would be great and bonds obviously I've been searching my whole life for the answer to a certain question what that question is don't know

you know just have to be whatever whatever it would be for for Alan Turing there's a bunch of things that you could choose an endless stream of questions from you know from the story side and then from for a fly I just feel like I overlooked obvious solutions in favor of more complicated ones I was just thinking about the enigma machine it just it just be like there there has to be an easier way but I'm gonna do this because I feel like it's right yeah he's like okay like that's fine that's boring though I'm doing this yeah simple is is boring and no one no no one no one remembers boring so I'm gonna go with

it I'm gonna go and use like the old ones like yeah yeah yeah so good what did what were like his big skill you said you said like intimidation and yeah yeah I have some intimidation I wrote Hexblade here because I was gonna go more into it because I've seen a whole bunch of just stuff regarding Hexblade so maybe somebody can give me you know more insight into that that would be great but specifically I think of Turing has this warlock but like he's like he's cloaked like he has like this quote but he's able to move into different places obviously points in intimidation points in performance persuasion as well

as stealth I wanted to make sure that he was able to get in and get out and do whatever he needs to do but at the same time like he can hold his own with just who he is and also you know with the old one kind of guiding him as well so I wanted to make sure that the knowledge base was there so that way if there was any type of like performance check or persuasion check or specifically intimidation check just because I think he could break someone down mentally that would be or break down the situation mentally I think having if someone were to play that just be able to meticulously go down a checklist and

like here's the reasons you know here's the reasons why this is stupid and then just have ABCD and then subsection A subsection B subsection C and just be intense with it like that that I feel like just being that type of character in this would just be so much fun yeah man you're he sounds so fun to play in your build I love it yeah um did what what like what big things does he get from from did he pack that that was it did you take any packs for him I don't think I put any packs on but I think it would probably pack to the tone yeah I can see I can see him holding a book I just like I could if I could paint the

picture I would so I'm gonna do my best I'm gonna do my best to explain it so basically looks like a tall hobbit and he's got a brown he's like he's got a brown cloak okay big old tone with just you know spooky creepy you know skeleton type stuff and not necessarily bad it's just that's what it is so but he's walking around with it just in this big old big old cloak little maybe you can get some some glasses just so you can do a little anime thing and I think this is they're just right there I know he didn't wear glasses but he would do it for the dramatics of it you would yeah he would do it for the yes yes very true

and just I think he's armed more with spells than specifically equipment that's kind of the way that I wanted him built so I can talk about some of his spells that he does yeah yeah yeah hit me with some of those obviously warlock alger's blast you can't you can't not have it you can't not have it like there's no there's no way that you can't not have it um but just I wanted mine sliver prestidigitation as well as mage hand prestidigitation so useful many so many different things that you could do with that and thaumaturge you're overlooked I think they're both so useful and then mage hand just to manipulate something if I need to

like if I need to be like you know what let's grab this little thing or maybe just be like maybe I can press this little lever without me having to be there and don't have to stop that goes off that's within a box of you know 10 feet or whatever and he's like okay well I don't get hit but mage hand won't be able to take that um and then just for some for some spells I wanted to just be like just crafty and just like move around obviously comprehend languages um I felt like that was apropos for for this gentleman at the first level about just being like I want to be able to understand whatever I'm reading whatever I'm looking at so that way we know going into a situation that we are prepared as we can possibly be before something happens yeah um hex just because

I think it's fun it's a good one uh the armor of agathis or agathis and charm person charm person I feel like is an underutilized tool super useful that is just like you can use it for so many different things yeah um for just some second level spells um I wanted to choose two that really uh I got four but two that specifically jumped out at me was invisibility and uh spider climb yes I like I could just see I could just see you know this little taller than a hobbit dude just being like you know what I'm gonna go figure out what's on that ridge and then and just put his little glasses on and then keep and then just keep moving up just invisible I was like okay so he's so he's you know spider-man 2099 like he's he's and it's great and it's amazing

and oh man it would just be so much fun to do and then darkness and suggestion obviously just also great kind of using the uh little scarlet witch type powers just be like hey you should go and do this instead of instead of something else yeah that's what you should go do um I think I was supposed to have some more for the third level but specifically the ones that I just wanted to hit was like spider climbing invisibility just because it's just so interesting and then you can really get to a better vantage point and because eldritch blast is like a pretty good spell all the way through even before you can get it and put it for eldritch spear I believe um which I think gives you what 300 feet not yards because that would be yeah yeah so like you can you're a sniper at

that point and since it's a cantrip I think it's a 1d10 that you can continuously do every single turn especially especially if you're in different places like yeah just just good for taking little pot shots lots of very useful things oh very useful things I just think he's just so versatile but having the uh like the battle wasn't the thing that I made this character for same specifically wanted to have those those skill based conversational type of of play style where it's more based on you know persuasion intimidation being able to conversate being able to have enough points in charisma and you're modified number one to be able to have those types of conversations and be able to just keep having it go in your favor yeah especially if it's you know if you don't

have that because part of it you know at least the reason I play is getting into those characters getting into understanding motivations and then being able to change the play style based on one little decision that you make pre battle or pre whatever because you know obviously a dm will have a plan yeah then d20s mess it up you can scramble that plan real quick so so I just think you know that would just be this is really great um I think that's just a little basic overview of that's fantastic I I you went a completely different direction than I did and I fucking love it it's so cool that's amazing thank you I'm excited to see yours yes so um I went I went of much more intellectual route um but I I like I wish I'd added more to his charisma because that

makes that all makes so much sense to me um but I did wizard six and then I gave a multi-class to monk four um so I also made him a variant human so instead of just adding one to all his stats I added one to two of them and then I took a feat and I got I got a skill proficiency that I wanted which I gave him athletics because he was a runner um and then the feat I took was keen mind which increases your intelligence by one uh you always know which way is north you always know how the number of hours how many number of you know the number of hours left before sunrise and sunset and you can accurately recall anything you've heard or seen within the past month oh so he's got like an

idyllic memory i did idyllic memory right that's cool so that's very cool um so for wizard I went with school of invention because he was pushing the envelope constantly he was always like trying to find new things and grasp new ideas and I thought wizard school of invention was perfect for it it's on earth arcana um and so he gets tools of the inventor which is proficiency with two tools of your choice and I gave him tinkerers tools and alchemist supplies nice for obvious reasons um and then he gets our cano our cano mechanical armor so starting at second level you gain proficiency with light armor and gain a suit of our cano mechanical armor uh it's it's a magical item that only you can attune to and when you're attuned to wearing it you get resistance to force

damage um it's your your ac is 12 plus your dexterity modifier which for me was only plus one so it'd be 13 which is pretty good for a wizard still uh and then you can create a new suit at the end of a long rest um by just like you basically transform non-magical armor into that armor which is dope as hell um oh hello vader green vader hi buddy um and then also at second level you get reckless casting which is you can try to cast a spell you don't have prepared um yeah to use this ability you use your action and choose one of the following options either roll on the reckless casting table for cantrips uh and cast the resulting spell as part of the action or expend a spell slot and roll twice on the casting table um so basically you can cast a spell and either you can make it happen

but you have to be reckless twice or you can roll and hope that you get the spell you cast it's it's ridiculous like it feels very chaotic and yeah that feels very feels like wild magic almost like yeah exactly i'm i'm a big fan of wild magic i'm a huge fan so i was like oh a wild magic adjacent yes please so why are you there you're gonna turn everybody into frogs or something i've as a wild magic sorcerer i've only turned myself into weird shit never anything else yet okay um yeah so it's fine and then at sixth level you also gain alchemical casting which is you learn to channel magic through

your arcana mechanical armor to augment a spell in a variety of ways when you cast a spell wearing the armor and you're attuned to it you can expend an additional spell slot of first or second level to alter the spell uh the effect depends on the spell slot you expend so like if you use a first level spell slot to add to the spell it lets you manipulate the spell's energy so if you cast a spell that deals acid cold fire lightning or thunder damage you can instead substitute that damage type for a different one like like you could have like you could do a thunder wave but it's acid thunder or fire thunder that's nice which is neat as hell or if you expend a second level spell slot you increase the spell's raw force so the damage for the spell

is increased by 2d10 force damage wow so that's cool as hell too um yeah wacky that's that's cool yeah i need to get up on that on your spell game next time if i come back i'm coming with it good good good good good and then and then the usual wizard stuff arcane recovery blah blah blah wizard things um and then for monk i took cobalt soul which is in uh explorer's guide to wild mount i believe um and it's they're they're also very like intelligence like um gathering intelligence rooting out corruption history uh focused and uh the monks of the cobalt soul are the embodiment of the phrase know your enemy so through research like finding things this all tracks to me for alan um so i get you know

unarmed unarmed attack deflect missiles slow fall uh i don't have unarmored movement but that's not that big of a deal i'm not super stressed about it speeds increase to 40 because as i said he was a runner yep um and then he gets extract aspects which is um you can extract information about a creature when you hit them with one of your flurry of blows so you can you can get the information um damage vulnerabilities damage resistances damage immunities and condition immunities which would be huge in a fight huge yeah super helpful especially since you're moving you're moving faster than most um you get an opportunity to get that information and then especially if you're closer or if you're yelling since you're in a battle or whatever

or dm rules then you just like hey this is this is what this person's week took like hit him with that like a speedy a speedy wizard that knows things feels very dangerous to me speedy wizard like get in pop up get out hey here's information all i could see all i could see is like gandalf just like punching somebody and then moving back out see you that's awesome yeah you know could be like so many different types of wizards like i see for whatever reason i see your wizard as you know like a red a red cloak or something and just like just kick an ass hello i'm gonna kick your ass why yeah it's kicking just kicking ass and and smarter than everyone like brilliant and ass kicking amazing yeah he's like does anyone want to go on or go on and run he's like no

alan we want to rest and he's like well i'm gonna go out of rut i'm gonna go all i wish stupid i'm gonna go out of i thought his spellbook could be like all of his pay all of his like cool ass brilliant papers that he had that's just his spellbook uh component pouch maybe like chalk for all the equations he draws i don't know right uh but spells i landed on he gets four cantrips and i got mending um shocking grasp mage hand and dancing lights uh so we can do that math late into the night um first level he has unseen servant which just extra extra hands for math i love unseen servant so much fun so much fun uh comprehend languages and then illusory script which i think could be super helpful when he's trying to like keep all of his information to

himself if he needs to um second level he has invisibility gentle repose i don't know why i gave him gentle repose but i feel like he like something just something to like call back to his his love for christopher and his like ability to like you know he like uh i think you don't decay and they don't they can't be like taken they can't be turned into undead for 10 days or something like that so just kind of a callback to that and then also crown of madness which usually is like a crown of dark thorns and it's terrible i like the idea that it's just a circling um crown of really confusing equations that no one else understands yeah uh it's like that meme of that woman who's like yep i can see i don't i don't exactly what you think about but it's that but it's just condensed

in a in a ring yeah wow that would be yeah that could be a crown of madness very fun yeah yeah i can see that uh third level he has liamon's tiny hut sending uh and vampiric touch just so he has some kind of offensive spell besides shocking grasp uh and then fit forth all he has polymorph um because polymorph's good polymorph's great um i have a few items that i thought might be useful i'm not saying he has these i just thought they might be useful um amy little health would be good for his uh constitution because that was his dump for me i probably should have switched it with charisma but it doesn't really matter that much i mean he's a monk so he's you know he's more of a glass cannon than anyone especially since he's a wizard he's a squishy boy yeah squishy boy um boots

of speed because he's a speedy speedy motherfucker gem of seeing um an ion stone so that he could have like a reserve of magic uh the mantle of spell resistance which would make him a little bit heartier periaptive proof against poison because i just want to protect him from cyanide i i just want to protect him uh ring of mind shielding for mental mental sanctuary um and then a ring of spell turning also for the same reasons as above um he has 39 hit points at 10th level so he is very squishy but he's very fast so he's very fast so why me to all the points when you you know just get away you know unless you you know get hit unless you get it then it's then bad things happen the bad things happen but you know you know my my alan will talk his way out of it your alan will

punch his way out of it exactly they're a good team double alans don't duel dueling alans duel wielding alans yeah i have two character sheets in there both alan uh but yeah i think that's about it on my build as well um so yeah that's that's alan touring he is a fascinating figure in history if you are into this kind of thing please go find information i barely scratched the surface there's so much cool shit about him please go find it um reggie thank you so much for joining me if you enjoyed listening to us talk to each other you're in luck because the project we were together called earth eclipse uh which is that tribeca which is the stupidest sentence i've ever said in my life yeah which uh and you said it you said it publicly for the world

yeah i laugh every time i say it because i'm like that's right yeah this thing to say about a product that i worked on it's fantastic it's a sci-fi podcast uh if you want to hear us talk to each other more in silly voices and maybe not as friendly uh you should check it out this friday when it comes out on podcast places uh june 11th we are 11th and i'm super excited yeah what is it 11 eastern i think 11 eastern eight eight pacific cool so yeah that's that's you can you can find reggie and i there being maybe friends maybe not who's to say uh but reggie do you have anything else that you'd like to plug um just a couple of plugs i mean i got my um storytelling podcast on spotify right now quiet in the library so go check that out i go and talk about different

pieces of lore from different video games that i like and just start putting that information up so definitely check that out um check out this machinima movie that i named um it's called the pacific eight it's a war machinima uh shot in gta five uh so check that out as well as um let's see what else am i working on oh there's a final fantasy fan dub that i'm a part of as well for the war of the lions which is basically final fantasy tactics so you can check that out as well um you just put both of those into youtube and you should be pretty easy to find upsides that just you'll you'll see us in a bunch of other things i'm sure but those are the big ones for right now big ones those sound so cool dude i'm so proud of you yeah um you

and um yeah the usual the usual mayday stuff coming from my end um monday's hang out with erin at the sheep farm he's playing hitman right now and it cracked me up this week he's playing hitman it's so good i don't know which hit i think it's i'm pretty sure it's hitman one erin erin can correct me and chat if he wants to i love hitman i watched i i watched it is one okay erin said it's one it is hitman one perfect um let's let's talk uh tuesdays there's um ironsworn with sergio and one of one of our plethora of friends here on this channel every other wednesday i'm here doing heroes you should know and fridays we've still got a shoka coming out uh we're getting close we're getting close to the end here there's a lot of oh there's a lot

of stressful a lot of stressful stuff coming up but in a good way um yeah we've we've been recording doom to repeat campaign or arc two sergio's throwing us through it um i'm excited excited rough but it's good um and i think that's about it from me reggie again thank you thank you thank you for joining me i love hanging out with you i love talking to you and talking about these this stuff was a gift in my week no this was this was the highlight of of my day uh like i've been looking forward to this all week so thank you for inviting me like i said there's another one that i can jump on oh yeah i'm giving to some other stuff like i'm i'm ready i'm excited you say the word and i will be there amazing i'm sure i'm sure you will be back with us at some point

as always thank you to erin for running all of our technical thoughts things i tried i tried to say stuff and things at the same time it came out terrible um but yeah that's about it from us thank you guys for joining us um and have a lovely week goodbye friends thank you goodbye bye um so so so so

you