The Imitation Game (2014)
seems there was no thread for this one, so here goes:
Originally Posted by
imdb
During World War II, mathematician Alan Turing tries to crack the enigma code with help from fellow mathematicians.
Director: Morten Tyldum
Writers: Andrew Hodges (book), Graham Moore
Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode
Code:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/
*** spoilers ahead ***
comments on turing/movie quotes:
So, tell me... what am I? Am I... a machine?
aren't machines made 'in our image'? which means we have much in common (example: our bodies work like machines, our bodies are made from matter)
obviously, but quite unconventional and with some psychological issues (his machine acts like an incarnation of his dead friend/love)
if the info from the movie is correct, he was an important part of this global historical conflict (for more info see below under quoted imdb comments)
in the eyes of the crude/intolerant british law & medicine of the time (movie claims: homosexuals treated with hormonal therapy damaging their bodies, 50,000 convictions during the era for so-called indecency), which was not that long ago (around ww2), whereas they like to think of themselves as an advanced nation (advanced ones have no colonialist desires either, especially not half way across the world - too late now, history shows how advanced they really are/were)
There are five people in the world who know the position of every ship in the Atlantic.
They're all in this room.
- Oh, good God.
Oh, I don't think even He has the power that we do right now.
british humor (self-parody)?
You're not God, Alan... you don't get to decide who lives and who dies.
Yes, we do.
lol, you just decide what info to pass on, nothing else - it is helpful to the allies, but there is no way of knowing the actual events, let alone the outcome on the battlefield
You just defeated Nazism
with a crossword puzzle.
lol, they defeated themselves by having huge weak spots in their messages (timing, predictable contents) - but their real problem was their own leadership, their own leader/fuehrer blinded by greed & ambition to rule the world (notice someone having similar ambitions these days? the world's sheriff - the ironic thing is they consider themselves anti-nazi, just like the communists did - yet spread t3rror throughout the globe backed up by their ignorant voters)
so the machine wasn't really defeated (they got close?), the contents of the messages was the key to crack the code
Was I God?
No. Because... God didn't win the war.
We did.
lol, all you did was doing your part (just like everyone else) and you happened to be on the winning side
in this sense, notice the number of 'coincidences' (like turing surviving the boarding school, getting a single best friend who introduced him to cryptography, turing keeping his sanity, turing getting the job, making friends with his co-workers to improve the machine design, getting the female colleague to help him on many occasions, avoiding the shutting down of his project numerous times, getting a genuine enigma machine, getting the money to build his own machine, german overconfidence and obvious cryptographic flaws of their messages, realizing they have to keep it a secret, having such a strange/unusual personality,...) needed for all these events to take place - anyone tried calculating the probabilities yet?
I think... that sometimes it is the people, who no one imagines anything of, who do the things that no one can imagine.
exceptions to the expected, no?
imdb comments on the historical truthfulness of the story:
Originally Posted by
imdb comments
1:
The plot is drivel. If you take this film at face value you will leave believing that Turing was single-handedly responsible for just about everything at Bletchley including the original idea for the B*mbe machine not to mention constructing it on his own in a barn, recruitment of staff, the first breaking of any Enigma traffic, the idea of using known words to crack messages, making strategic decisions about whether or not to save trans-Atlantic convoys and countless other things.
Most of the film is just nonsense. There is no way that Turing would have been in a position to decide not to save the convoy (or even know that there was one to save). He wasn't responsible for the idea of using standard text in messages as ways into the Enigma settings (which had been done since before the war). The construction of the B*mbe machines was a huge exercise involving a team of technicians and parts supplied by external manufacturers, not Turing wiring it up alone in a barn in his shirt-sleeves. It wasn't actually even his idea; the idea of using a machine was brought to him by Dilly Knox from pre-war ideas worked up by a Polish team. Nor could the machine spit out deciphered messages after a couple of minutes. Turing wasn't in charge either, he didn't come up with ideas of using crosswords to find recruits and he wasn't alone in writing to Churchill; several of them signed the letter. Oh yes, and there were several women code-breakers at Bletchley.
2:
It is a shame this movie is a stack of lies.First time polish broke enigma it was in 1932, 1933 they created first working example of Enigma, and first anti-enigma device, narrowing settings combination to 105 456. In 1936 Germans changed the design, and Polish answered with Rejewsky b*mb, machine with 6 enigma connected together,breaking new daily code in 2 hours.Another German changes required building 54 different machine designs, and Poland didn't have enough money so they asked allies to help.July 1939 Uk and French representatives visited Warsaw and got all documentation how to break ENIGMA.After beginning of the war, polish encoders moved to Paris, and British started Bletchley Park operation. Unfortunately, Polish people are always forgotten, because they are not part of US/UK/France/Germany nation.Shame on you Britain.
some thoughts on AI:
Originally Posted by
wiki: The philosophy of artificial intelligence
The philosophy of artificial intelligence attempts to answer such questions as:[1]
Can a machine act intelligently? Can it solve any problem that a person would solve by thinking?
it can solve that which it was programmed for - the better the program, the better the machine - however, it is not the actual machine that is becoming intelligent, it simply reflects the intelligence of its 'creator' (the programmer), ie. human intelligence - the machine has the same level of intelligence as any other matter does, the machine (or the software) only appears to have more (simulation)
also, define intelligent action - the way in which matter arranges its various structures can also be called intelligent, the same goes for the interaction & co-existence of matter & other beings in the universe
likewise, aren't the creations of intelligent beings necessarily also intelligent or showing signs of intelligence or having an intelligent design?
Are human intelligence and machine intelligence the same? Is the human brain essentially a computer?
similar, not the same - machine intelligence is the result of applied human intelligence (though someone may say they are the same in essence 
)
brain is very much like a machine, both have low levels of (self) awareness, just like other matter does
you are not your brain, your brain is a part of your body and you are not your body either
Can a machine have a mind, mental states and consciousness in the same sense humans do? Can it feel how things are?
not by itself or by human intervention, machines ought to be viewed as matter
it cannot feel just like matter cannot feel, it can only be programmed to mimic such behavior (like having feelings)
however, matter may be viewed as consciousness of a very low level of awareness or self-awareness
'Can a machine have a soul?
Finally, those who believe in the existence of a soul may argue that "Thinking is a function of man's immortal soul." Alan Turing called this "the theological objection" and considers it on its own merits. He writes
In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.[77]
- thinking is a feature (of higher levels) - the higher the level, the more features available
- a soul is not necessarily immortal - if it was created, it can be uncreated too
you cannot usurp that which you don't have any power over
you cannot create souls, you cannot create nor destroy anything at all (you are a part of the process of transforming/changing states, from one state to another, within a cycle)
you cannot create a child, not even the body, you only act as a part of this process
try 'children' or 'dear creations' (that share the experience) instead of 'instruments'
if god creates souls, he also provides mansions (bodies) for those souls, the underlying logic & mechanism of the process, etc. - its an omnipotent intelligence, remember?
btw, this quote doesn't sound nearly as something the movie version of turing would say (more hollywood cookery?)
'the soul' can be understood as very similar to 'the spirit' or 'the consciousness' or 'the essence' - everyone has consciousness and is able to experience it (being conscious of or consciously aware of ...), in fact, this is the only thing we can prove with certainty as we perceive it directly (and it contains our identity) - everything else we perceive indirectly (via mediating senses)
so, can a machine have a (human-like) soul? not by itself or by human intervention (but, if we include divine 'accidents'... )
...that some philosophers of AI will do battle with the idea that:
AI is impossible (Dreyfus),
AI is immoral (Weizenbaum),
The very concept of AI is incoherent (Searle).
impossible? impossible to fully implement and interconnect, especially the abstract parts, not to mention (self) awareness
immoral? whoever thought a human could resist such an idea in the first place? besides, it teaches humans about the incredible complexity & intelligence needed for human capabilities to exist, to have their particular functionalities, not to mention operate in harmony with all the other parts of the human body or being, environment, universe, etc.
incoherent? perhaps in terms of its purpose or functionality, since it would maybe act as some kind of an encyclopedia, giving simple answers, not having the ability to use them in abstract ways or get ideas or reproduce unpredictable subconscious information, or develop on its own, etc.
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