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| Playing Monopoly with Alan Turing | Playing Monopoly with Alan Turing |
| (4 months later) | |
| Sixty years ago, computer genius Alan Turing used to play Monopoly with a young William Newman, the son of the eminent mathematician Max Newman, in Manchester. They played on a special board hand-drawn by schoolboy William, and - surprisingly - William won. | Sixty years ago, computer genius Alan Turing used to play Monopoly with a young William Newman, the son of the eminent mathematician Max Newman, in Manchester. They played on a special board hand-drawn by schoolboy William, and - surprisingly - William won. |
| Now Google has supported a special Turing Centenary Monopoly Board based on William's, sold exclusively by the museum at Bletchley Park where Turing worked on breaking Nazi codes. It looks beautiful; I have ordered two sets already. Last Wednesday on Twitter Stephen Fry enthused: | Now Google has supported a special Turing Centenary Monopoly Board based on William's, sold exclusively by the museum at Bletchley Park where Turing worked on breaking Nazi codes. It looks beautiful; I have ordered two sets already. Last Wednesday on Twitter Stephen Fry enthused: |
| A magnificent 2012 must-have! Special Edition Alan Turing Monopoly raising funds for Bletchley Park. | A magnificent 2012 must-have! Special Edition Alan Turing Monopoly raising funds for Bletchley Park. |
But if Turing was such a genius, how come he lost Monopoly to a schoolboy? Well, as the saying goes: 'Nothing in life is certain'. Nearly 80 years ago, that was something Alan Turing proved to be true - he predicted unpredictability in his famous 1936 paper, written when he was just 23. Even before computers - real life Turing machines - were built, Turing had predicted that your computer would let you down, and you could not be sure exactly when it would happen. | But if Turing was such a genius, how come he lost Monopoly to a schoolboy? Well, as the saying goes: 'Nothing in life is certain'. Nearly 80 years ago, that was something Alan Turing proved to be true - he predicted unpredictability in his famous 1936 paper, written when he was just 23. Even before computers - real life Turing machines - were built, Turing had predicted that your computer would let you down, and you could not be sure exactly when it would happen. |
| Today, computer scientists trace such uncertainty back to the 'unsolvability of the Halting Problem for the Universal Turing Machine'. Turing showed that computers, though very useful, are not that clever. And that most complex problems are actually 'incomputable'. We can't even predict the weather reliably more than 10 days ahead. | Today, computer scientists trace such uncertainty back to the 'unsolvability of the Halting Problem for the Universal Turing Machine'. Turing showed that computers, though very useful, are not that clever. And that most complex problems are actually 'incomputable'. We can't even predict the weather reliably more than 10 days ahead. |
| According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of the word 'incomputable' goes back to 1606. Uncertainty is familiar to us from earliest times, but the word 'computable" appeared relatively late Besides discovering the very real nature of incomputability, Turing spent much of his life struggling with the dangerous beast. | According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of the word 'incomputable' goes back to 1606. Uncertainty is familiar to us from earliest times, but the word 'computable" appeared relatively late Besides discovering the very real nature of incomputability, Turing spent much of his life struggling with the dangerous beast. |
| Sadly, it killed him in the end (with some help from the British authorities), despite all the brilliant work he put in at Bletchley Park and Manchester on decoding hidden information in the world. | Sadly, it killed him in the end (with some help from the British authorities), despite all the brilliant work he put in at Bletchley Park and Manchester on decoding hidden information in the world. |
| I once stayed with Turing's only PhD student, Robin Gandy, after he had given up his Chair at Manchester University and moved to Oxford. (I first knew Robin in 1968 Manchester, shortly after he had been lost his licence for driving his car into the front of a fish and chip shop; he also rode a motor bike, and had a little of the 'Toad of Toad Hall' about him). Gandy had been talking to Alan Turing just days before he died in his Wilmslow house of cyanide poisoning. I asked him why his friend and teacher had taken his own life. Robin looked into the distance , and said "some things happen for no reason". Robin himself died in 1995. | I once stayed with Turing's only PhD student, Robin Gandy, after he had given up his Chair at Manchester University and moved to Oxford. (I first knew Robin in 1968 Manchester, shortly after he had been lost his licence for driving his car into the front of a fish and chip shop; he also rode a motor bike, and had a little of the 'Toad of Toad Hall' about him). Gandy had been talking to Alan Turing just days before he died in his Wilmslow house of cyanide poisoning. I asked him why his friend and teacher had taken his own life. Robin looked into the distance , and said "some things happen for no reason". Robin himself died in 1995. |
| There are many areas of life where unpredictability appears to verge on very real incomputability. It's a controversial topic amongst scientists. People are a huge test for the computer. Turing famously set in motion modern Artificial Intelligence (or 'Mechanical Intelligence' as he called it), giving us the 'Turing Test' for intelligence in machines - notice that he asks humans, not machines, to act as judges of intelligence. | There are many areas of life where unpredictability appears to verge on very real incomputability. It's a controversial topic amongst scientists. People are a huge test for the computer. Turing famously set in motion modern Artificial Intelligence (or 'Mechanical Intelligence' as he called it), giving us the 'Turing Test' for intelligence in machines - notice that he asks humans, not machines, to act as judges of intelligence. |
| Andrew Hodges calls his book on Turing The Enigma, referring to how little we can 'compute' of the real inner Alan Turing. My talk at the 2004 meeting in Manchester to mark the 50th anniversary of Turing's death was called 'The Incomputable Alan Turing'. A nice piece of incomputability at that event was the fire alarm going off in the final talk, which was about Turing's work on emergence of patterns in nature: the speaker Jonathan Swinton bravely completed his talk on the concrete steps outside, the surrounding audience in a big huddle, craning necks to see pictures of sunflowers and zebra stripes on the hand-held laptop. | Andrew Hodges calls his book on Turing The Enigma, referring to how little we can 'compute' of the real inner Alan Turing. My talk at the 2004 meeting in Manchester to mark the 50th anniversary of Turing's death was called 'The Incomputable Alan Turing'. A nice piece of incomputability at that event was the fire alarm going off in the final talk, which was about Turing's work on emergence of patterns in nature: the speaker Jonathan Swinton bravely completed his talk on the concrete steps outside, the surrounding audience in a big huddle, craning necks to see pictures of sunflowers and zebra stripes on the hand-held laptop. |
| In physics we now know a lot about quantum mechanics, relativity, and the origins of the universe. But we still do not know how the universe 'computes' the laws of nature or the exact values of physical constants needed to make physical theory work. Albert Einstein deplored this, and also disliked the randomness quantum mechanics contains. "God does not play dice" he famously proclaimed. | In physics we now know a lot about quantum mechanics, relativity, and the origins of the universe. But we still do not know how the universe 'computes' the laws of nature or the exact values of physical constants needed to make physical theory work. Albert Einstein deplored this, and also disliked the randomness quantum mechanics contains. "God does not play dice" he famously proclaimed. |
| Turing was fascinated by quantum unpredictability throughout his life, and sat in on lectures by the discoverer of anti-matter and Nobel Prize winner Paul Dirac in Cambridge. Of course, there is no such thing as complete randomness. But incomputability can look random. | Turing was fascinated by quantum unpredictability throughout his life, and sat in on lectures by the discoverer of anti-matter and Nobel Prize winner Paul Dirac in Cambridge. Of course, there is no such thing as complete randomness. But incomputability can look random. |
| When Alan played William Newman at Monopoly, the dice throws would have given the outcome of the game that added bit of incomputability. Adapting Einstein, we might ask "Did Turing play dice?" getting the answer: | When Alan played William Newman at Monopoly, the dice throws would have given the outcome of the game that added bit of incomputability. Adapting Einstein, we might ask "Did Turing play dice?" getting the answer: |
| Yes! and we will too this Christmas, on our new Turing Centenary Monopoly Boards. | Yes! and we will too this Christmas, on our new Turing Centenary Monopoly Boards. |
And for those of us know about Turing's unsolvable Halting Problem - @AlanTuringYear tweeted on Twitter: | And for those of us know about Turing's unsolvable Halting Problem - @AlanTuringYear tweeted on Twitter: |
| Brilliant! Where's the Halting Problem in the new Turing Monopoly? It's coded into game itself. | Brilliant! Where's the Halting Problem in the new Turing Monopoly? It's coded into game itself. |
An in-joke, for all of us who know about the incomputability of life and have memories of interminable Monopoly games! | An in-joke, for all of us who know about the incomputability of life and have memories of interminable Monopoly games! |
| Closest to home, it's economics that makes incomputability scariest. I have just returned from giving a talk on Turing and incomputability at a world congress of economists in Taiwan. It is amazing how closely Turing's work on the emergence of patterns in nature is related to the way economists try to model the complexity of the world of economics. | Closest to home, it's economics that makes incomputability scariest. I have just returned from giving a talk on Turing and incomputability at a world congress of economists in Taiwan. It is amazing how closely Turing's work on the emergence of patterns in nature is related to the way economists try to model the complexity of the world of economics. |
| And they do acknowledge their debt, talking about 'Turing's economics'. Just like Turing, they use models, Bayesian statistics, simulations, etc, to extract the information hidden in the real world. Sometimes they succeed. But all too often the beast of incomputability rears its head, and like Turing, all we have is our courage and human intelligence to get us through. We are told economic stability is here for good. And then reality is quite different. | And they do acknowledge their debt, talking about 'Turing's economics'. Just like Turing, they use models, Bayesian statistics, simulations, etc, to extract the information hidden in the real world. Sometimes they succeed. But all too often the beast of incomputability rears its head, and like Turing, all we have is our courage and human intelligence to get us through. We are told economic stability is here for good. And then reality is quite different. |
| How about these last words from Nassim Taleb, who famously predicted the 2008 crash, quoted from his best-selling book The Black Swan on unpredictability in economics (it seems leading politicians take notice of Taleb): | How about these last words from Nassim Taleb, who famously predicted the 2008 crash, quoted from his best-selling book The Black Swan on unpredictability in economics (it seems leading politicians take notice of Taleb): |
| I have spent my entire life studying randomness, practicing randomness, hating randomness. ... Every morning the world appears to me more random than it did the day before, and humans seem to be even more fooled by it than they were the previous day. It is becoming unbearable. I find writing these lines painful; I find the world revolting. | I have spent my entire life studying randomness, practicing randomness, hating randomness. ... Every morning the world appears to me more random than it did the day before, and humans seem to be even more fooled by it than they were the previous day. It is becoming unbearable. I find writing these lines painful; I find the world revolting. |
| To pre-order the Turing Centenary Monopoly set, go to Bletchley Park's website here. | To pre-order the Turing Centenary Monopoly set, go to Bletchley Park's website here. |
| Professor S. Barry Cooper is a mathematician at the University of Leeds. He is Chair of the Turing Centenary Advisory Committee (TCAC), which has co-ordinated the current Alan Turing Year, and President of the association Computability in Europe. | Professor S. Barry Cooper is a mathematician at the University of Leeds. He is Chair of the Turing Centenary Advisory Committee (TCAC), which has co-ordinated the current Alan Turing Year, and President of the association Computability in Europe. |
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