[netcan]

Just the references here are probably an amazing resource for early computer science, and I'm not going to argue against such a force.

Seems to be a lot of uneasiness, of late, about the way credit is allocated in science. IMO, it's mistaken to point this at the top: nobel laureates, heroic icons like Einstein or Turing. These figures are supposed to be idolized and idealized. Yes, this is "untrue," technically. But, it serves many purposes. A nobel prize win elevates science by singling out scientists for hero status. Achilles elevated Greece by giving Greeks something to collectively aspire to or adulate.

If you're already deeply interested in computer science, of course the detailed narrative recognizing dozens of brilliant early computer scientists is richer. Of course!

Where poor credit allocation matters isn't historical hero narratives, it's at the working scientist level. The grants & positions level. Here, it's important to be accurate, fair, etc. Being inaccurate, unfair or corrupt at this level creates actual deficits.

[simonh]

Right, we shouldn't underestimate the importance of narratives. We need narratives about the theoretical foundations of computer science, and Turing is the perfect figure to weave many of those narratives around. It's good for young people and the general public, and good for the field.

The Turing machine is a key conceptual model for understanding the basics of computation. The Turing Test is a great model for thinking about what being intelligent means. Hardly a week goes by without the term Turing Complete appearing somewhere in a HN comment. The fact that he also played an important role in the design and construction of actual practical computing machines, and did so to fight nazis seals the deal.

Of course there's more to it, there's plenty of credit to go around, but Turing is the perfect entry point for people to appreciate and learn more about all the work that went into the founding of computer science. It elevates the profile of the whole field.

[roenxi]

We also shouldn't underestimate the importance of truth. Dealing with the world as-it-is has better results than interacting with a story we'd like to be true but isn't.

People waste their lives in service of causes and ideas that just are not grounded in reality. Not just in the philosophical sense that we cannot know truth, but in the practical sense of "the outcome you want will not flow from the actions you are taking today". Narratives are inferior to truth when it comes to making decisions.

[simonh]

I'm not advocating telling lies. Sometimes we simplify, and doing so can be perfectly appropriate. Unfortunately that does open the stage for nitpicking and pedantry.

[sandwall]

Story telling is how our society has transferred information since we started to communicate-- understanding the map is not the territory, nor should it be. A beautiful narrative can convey important kernels more efficiently than endless minutiae-- Awareness of this is important and elaborations are helpful for those interested in the details.

I'm reminded of, "The Glass Bead Game," which discusses an academic society that forgets the names of contributors since they're all just part of the flow of humanity

[Retric]

The issue with stories is they focus on unimportant bits often for propaganda reasons. Pick some arbitrary first and every country can find someone to play up as a home town hero. The US just happens to be rather quite around who “invented“ electricity but longer lasting incandescent lightbulbs and kites in lightning storms that’s the ticket. The British tend to streamline the Benchley park narrative by dropping the preceding polish contribution etc etc.

In that context narratives end up glorifying endless minutiae.

[sandwall]

Historians are all storytellers. Critical review is important. I really like this paper which starts by paraphrasing Jane Austen, "i think it quite odd history should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention" :

https://www.cmu.edu/epp/people/faculty/research/Fischhoff-Fo...

[TeMPOraL]

Arguably our storytelling was an efficient hack in an age before writing. A story is a very high-overhead, low SNR way of communicating kernels of truth, but it's robust over time, so it allowed transfer and accumulation of knowledge across societies and generations.

But then we've invented and perfected writing, developed symbolic languages and notations (e.g. math, musical), long-duration storage media for text, and eventually networked digital computers. In terms of communicating and preserving knowledge, stories are pretty much the worst possible option you can choose.

We're comfortable with narratives because we didn't have anything else for hundreds of thousands of years. Stories are pretty much hardwired into our brains. But that doesn't make them the right choice, now that we've figured out much better alternatives.

More than that, I'm personally suspicious of stories being used in communication. There's no good reason to use them, and there's plenty of bad ones - it so happens that what makes a good story robust over time is the same thing you need to manipulate people into believing lies and shut off critical thinking.

[NineStarPoint]

The main benefit of stories is that they are easier for people to remember than dry details. In terms of communicating knowledge, they are the form that are most likely to stick with us as opposed to going in one ear and out the other. Especially when it comes to areas where someone doesn’t have expertise. This is as you noted incredibly prone to manipulation, but it doesn’t change that it you want a random person picked off the street to actually synthesize the knowledge you’re trying to tell them, a story is by far the way most likely to work. And I’d say that’s important, since knowledge written down somewhere that no one remembers or cares about does nothing to change the way people act.

As far as preserving information goes, no argument there. Stories aren’t a good way to preserve the truth of matters for future generations. To look and determine if the stories told have truth in them requires more detailed writing.

[mrtranscendence]

Stories place ideas into context, not only making them easier to remember (as mentioned by another comment) but also easier to understand. Analytic philosophers are used to dry, precise language, but even they often rely on scenarios and narratives -- this can help reveal what the reader thinks intuitively and bring that into sharper contrast. By remaining story-free you're giving pedagogy the short shrift.

What has empirically brought more folks into careers in science, dry textbooks foisted by teachers or Star Trek? I'd argue Star Trek and science fiction more generally. You can chalk that up to human failings if you like, but inspiration is a need that can't be avoided if you wish to convince.

[nzmsv]

Disagree. A finely crafted but ultimately false story can be actively harmful. A young person may think that they are not of the same caliber as "the greats" and cannot make their mark on a field, which would discourage them from trying. All the while in reality "the greats" were never as great as the historians later depicted them. "Come on in, collaborate, and make a difference" would be a much more positive message and wouldn't be any harder to explain than what amounts to the creation of personality cults.

[UncleMeat]

This is where the humanities has the tech world beat. While we quibble over correct narratives and seek one option, the humanities has been completely soaked in the idea that there are nearly unlimited narratives that describe any given human endeavor and they weave together into a rich and ever-changing tapestry.

This is why a historian can read, understand (both the pros and the cons), and respect books that represent an economic history, a social history, an information history, a microhistory, and even a great-man history of a given subject without trouble.

More reason for engineers to take humanities courses!

[nzmsv]

So can I continue to prefer my narrative? It seems to gather some upvotes and some downvotes, so at least it is interesting and elicits a reaction :)

Also, the more I learn about my heroes the more I realize that they never saw themselves as ubermensch. If anything, self doubt seems to be the common thread. I think this angle does not get enough attention.

However, I agree with you on a broader point. This is just one perspective. Here is another one: Turing the historical figure is necessarily oversold because many more people than Turing the real person contributed to his aggrandizement. Like all cultural icons, Turing the idea outlived and outshined Turing the man.

[simonh]

Nobody here is advocating telling false stories. Saying that Turing laid the foundations for computer science is not false. It's a perfectly valid opinion to hold. We might say it's a simplification, or even an exaggeration, arguably saying he's one of them might be better, but it's not a false statement.

[nextaccountic]

Setting the record straight on this matter isn't nitpicking and pedantry, it's just giving credit where it is due. Since the intent of the "simplification" isn't to deceive, this shouldn't be a problem.

[mangodrunk]

I don't think it's true that these narratives (false or true) are helpful, especially when their false. I think it's counterproductive, and ultimately takes away credit from others which can impede collaboration (say one country disagrees with another on who invented something).

[netcan]

Don't forget the tragic way society later betrayed him.

[breuleux]

Why do we need idols, though?

If there was no narrative, no idols, no celebrities, would people be less motivated to do science? Why do we need to lie to ourselves so?

> If you're already deeply interested in computer science, of course the detailed narrative recognizing dozens of brilliant early computer scientists is richer. Of course!

Personally I'm mostly uninterested in who did what, but maybe that's just me. It seems obvious to me that nearly every scientific discovery could have been done equally well by millions of people, it's just a matter of who had the resources to be educated, who decided to research the problem, who managed to snipe the answer first, and who had the right connections to get it acknowledged. They're still great achievements, for sure, but they're not the markers of exceptional genius we want to think they are, not for Turing or Einstein, but not for anyone at all, really.

[netcan]

>>They're not the markers of exceptional genius we want to think they are, not for Turing or Einstein, but not for anyone at all, really.

The point isn't to prove that they're special. The point is that something special happened and these people are designated symbols for that... and they're kind of selected for being good at this. We're not doing this for them, they're dead. The celebrity of Einstein is a deification of his relativity theories. We need idols for our symbolic world, to work without them in the real one.

[breuleux]

But what purpose do these idols or symbols serve, exactly? I'm speaking as someone who doesn't care who came up with relativity and doesn't care whether there is a founding person of computer science or not let alone who that would be, and would like to know what others see. Is it an inspiration thing? A motivation thing?

[bentonite]

I'd say its a bit of both inspiration and motivation. That said, I think the main motivators for these kinds of idols/heroes are to craft ethical or normative stories for how people should (or shouldn't) behave as well as to assist with teaching people theories and concepts.

Learning about why correlation doesn't equal causation (and spurrious correlations) is more impactful if you also learn about Wakefield's sins at the same time. He's a villian.

Archimedes and the bathtub is a great story - and I learned it in elementary school and still remember it and the lessons it teaches. We like to associate people with events and they help for learning and retaining information.

[PartiallyTyped]

Not necessarily a motivational thing, but events such as these become widespread and allows for easier dissemination of information.

It's easy to see then that such events allow for the eventual "recruitment" of other scientists, and in showing society that "science is working" and "solves important problems".

Both of which serve to enrich the scientific world with new researchers and funding to keep the engine running.

[slibhb]

> Why do we need idols, though?

Because we're flesh and blood, i.e. utterly irrational.

> If there was no narrative, no idols, no celebrities, would people be less motivated to do science? Why do we need to lie to ourselves so?

Yes, definitely, a huge amount of what motivates scientists is desire for fame, being considered a genius, Nobel prizes, scientific immortality, and so on. It is entirely unrealistic to imagine that we can stop being like this, it's almost a religious belief, akin to thinking that, one day, people can live without sin.

> Personally I'm mostly uninterested in who did what, but maybe that's just me. It seems obvious to me that nearly every scientific discovery could have been done equally well by millions of people, it's just a matter of who had the resources to be educated, who decided to research the problem, who managed to snipe the answer first, and who had the right connections to get it acknowledged. They're still great achievements, for sure, but they're not the markers of exceptional genius we want to think they are, not for Turing or Einstein, but not for anyone at all, really.

This may be an accurate description of your personality, in which you're one in a million, or it may be that you're ignorant about the things that actually drive you. The vast majority of people are driven by some kind of desire for fame, recognition, status, upvotes, and so on.

Suggesting that Turing and Einstein were not "exceptional geniuses" is bizarre. Even in proper context, they were exceptional geniuses, just among other, lesser-known, exceptional geniuses. If we take your view seriously, we remove all human agency and uniqueness, we remove the idea of an "achievement" and we can only give credit to luck, the historical process, and various contingent circumstances. Even if your view is accurate, people simply cannot live that way. Creating narratives is part of what makes us human and narratives need protagonists (idols, heroes, whatever).

[mangodrunk]

>Yes, definitely, a huge amount of what motivates scientists is desire for fame, being considered a genius, Nobel prizes, scientific immortality, and so on

That might do more harm than good. Once someone wins a Nobel, their productivity tends to decrease. Fighting over credit can be really toxic (see Newton vs Leibniz which probably stunted the development of calculus) and lead to less collaboration and knowledge sharing.

It may be unrealistic to think we can be different, but at least seeing that it's problematic should be unrelated to that. It's unrealistic to think crime will stop, but we should at least try to minimize it.

[breuleux]

> This may be an accurate description of your personality, in which you're one in a million, or it may be that you're ignorant about the things that actually drive you. The vast majority of people are driven by some kind of desire for fame, recognition, status, upvotes, and so on.

Or it might be that people who are driven by fame and recognition are more likely to become famous than those who aren't, which skews our idea of what motivates people. Given how emphatic society is about fame and money as markers of success, I feel people tend to be mistaken in the other direction: many people think they are, or should be driven by fame or money even when it simply contradicts their personality.

Even if it was indeed the case that most people are motivated by fame, I think those who aren't are more like 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 than 1 in a million. It might be 1 in a million in actually famous people, but not in the population at large.

> Even in proper context, they were exceptional geniuses, just among other, lesser-known, exceptional geniuses.

If I am correct that millions of people had the capability, that would place "exceptional genius" at 1 in 1000, or 1 in 10000. I think that's a reasonable ballpark.

> If we take your view seriously, we remove all human agency and uniqueness, we remove the idea of an "achievement" and we can only give credit to luck, the historical process, and various contingent circumstances.

Whether we acknowledge exceptional geniuses or not, it remains the case that 99.99% of people are not exceptional geniuses. Are you saying these people don't have agency, or that they aren't unique? I think we all have agency, we're all unique, and we all have achievements. Some achievements are more impactful than others, some achievements are more impressive than others, but these are not necessarily the same, and neither is necessarily remembered, because what matters most is not the person or the achievement, but how the story fits in the narrative. In any case, you don't need to care about that narrative to care about or acknowledge agency, uniqueness or achievement.

[reedf1]

Idolatry seems like an emergent property of human collective consciousness. You can try to ignore it (it's been tried), downplay it (also been tried), and ban it (and again).

[simorley]

> Seems to be a lot of uneasiness, of late, about the way credit is allocated in science.

Of late? You should read up on Newton/Leibniz hysterics over who invented calculus. The arguments over who invented the first light bulb, car, etc. Whether greek knowledge ( the foundation of western civilization ) originated in the near east or even in india. Heck, people still argue about who "discovered" america first. There is national, religious, ethnic, racial, gender, sexuality pride tied to "priority". It's not just in science/math, it's applies to everything.

> These figures are supposed to be idolized and idealized

Why? They weren't particularly good people. Neither were saints.

> Achilles elevated Greece by giving Greeks something to collectively aspire to or adulate.

Are you talking about science/knowledge or politics? But you are right on the point. It's what this is all about at the end of the day. Politics.

Without politics, the discovery/knowledge would be what is important. Because of politics, the people become the focal point.

[hyperpallium2]

An aspect of lionization is a wish and motivation to emulate and become heroic oneself...

But one soon realizes you probably won't get heroic credit even if you do contribute something heroic, neutralizing that encouragement.

Therefore, you'd better do it for the love of the work itself or for how it helps others.

There's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't mind who gets the credit.

[paganel]

Not scientists but some of the best writers of the 20th century never got a Nobel, I'm thinking especially about Proust and Kafka (and I would say Céline was more worthy of the Nobel than Camus and especially Sartre), I'm sure the same thing happens in science in regards to this Swedish prize.

[netcan]

True, but writing has many forms of hero culture. Tolkien doesn't need a nobel, neither does Kafka. They became heroes regardless.

[mcguire]

"Seems to be a lot of uneasiness, of late, about the way credit is allocated in science."

This is always been the case---medieval and renaissance thinkers would publish anagrams of their key findings because they didn't want to give someone else the advantage of knowing the finding but also wanted to prove that they thought of the idea. IIRC, Isaac Newton did not publish any of his findings until someone else threatened to publish their independent results. And he's known as the creator of calculus because the British Royal Society got into an academic slap-fight with the French.