If this pseudo-apology-for-past-sins-by-dead-people bandwagon gets going, where's it going to stop? Will we define a year zero prior to which we will not be apologizing for what we now regard as foul behaviour by the elite who ran the country at that time? Or do we form national bureaucracies to deal with the massive inbox of accumulated misdeeds down the ages?

On the other hand the reverse argument is that although many young white South Africans have had nothing to do with apartheid directly, many of them are indirectly better from it - eg - the suburb/area they're raised in, the business connections they have, etc.

I don’t have a concrete opinion on this, because I’m not South African. However, being an Australian, I can see how important the public apology to the indigenous Australians was.

Before the public apology was given, many (particularly older generation Australians) disagreed by your line of argument – which is that we shouldn’t apologise for something done by people in the past.

It’s true that the atrocities committed towards Indigenous Australians are in the past, but where the Indigenous Australians are now is a result of all that has happened to them. To these people the apology goes a lot deeper than just a symbolic gesture. It's a form of closure that begins and allows the healing process.

My views on this is different and sure to be controversial, but here it goes (you are free to differ with me). Firstly, white people did not benefit from Apartheid. Taxation (of whites) during Apartheid was higher than taxation during the Mbeki era (the middle class white people actually got a lot richer during the Mbeki era).

The Apartheid experiment also cost a lot of money. All the universities (for both black and white people) were built during the apartheid era. So did the costs of setting up governments in the homelands. The apartheid government tried to “kick start” the economies near major black areas – buy for instance starting industrial zones that are free of value-added tax (a lot of those factories are empty now).

Now, the new South African government only replaced the white ruling elite with even smaller black ruling elite. For that small elite life is better in the new South Africa – but for all the other black people the living standards fell.

Here are a few good examples: Since 1995 the income inequality greatly increased – both between black and white and in the black group itself (i.e. the forming of an elite). The number of people living on less than a dollar a day increased by more than a million since the end of apartheid. Life expectancy took a nose dive and unemployment significantly increased (unemployment is 40%+). The new government did not build a single new university during the past 15 years. What is worse, they closed all the teacher and technical colleges. These colleges mainly served black people (especially in rural areas) and it led to the current severe shortage of qualified teachers. Violent crime significantly increased. The government was also not willing to provide anti-retrovirals to HIV positive people for a long time – which caused probably a million of people to die.

Here is an article that discusses some of the aspects I mentioned: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/may2004/safr-m21.shtml

So with all these metrics, you cannot realistically say that the Apartheid government was worse than the current government. What you can however say was that the motives for the actions were different.

Now for the apology part. Many white South African’s have apologised repeatedly for Apartheid and have repeatedly been shamed for it. All of South Africa’s ills are blamed on Apartheid/white people (a universal scapegoat). If you are a white person you are expected to be ashamed that you exist and take all accusations. Affirmative action have become somewhat of a joke. For example, the biggest municipality in Gauteng put a moratorium on the tendering of contracts to white owned business.

Affirmative action has become just an excellent excuse to enrich a few cronies. The biggest benefactors of BEE are black billionaires with ANC connections (e.g. Patrice Motsepe, Tokyo Sexwale, Sandi Majali, Saki Macazoma) (This is basically a black oligarchy)

My point (rant?) is that white people are politically and culturally powerless. The only sustainable solution I see(in which everyone will be happy) is for white people to leave South Africa (a million already did). Most young people I know have either short term (1-2 years) or medium term (2-5 year) plans to leave this country. I will go overseas to study early next year – I doubt that I will return after I finished.

The retarded behavior against people who just want to live their life in their chosen way, and which does not in any way affect the lives of others is a real blemish on our society. And I fear we will not be getting rid of this during the rest of my life.

Frankly, I really don't understand what the fuss is all about, so what if some people like other people from the same gender. Just let them be, it is their lives after all.

Just like any binary system, all combinations in the table are valid combinations, those for whom the 'bits' line up in some way or other do not get to the tell the others they can't or should not exist.

Do not let yourself use the "to each his own" argument. Its PROVEN (like 2+2 = 4) that that outlook is plain ol' wrong (you can find it on wiki or something).

What about people who roam around naked? Whats wrong with that? Its their bodies, who are we to discourage them? What about child molesters, they are having CONSENSUAL sex with young teenagers, who are we to stop them its their bodies.

Please pick a better argument.

Now: Treating homosexuals as outcasts is no worse than treating black people as outcasts for the way they are born. These people are not doing anything wrong (some might even argue that they are doing right by our society by helping with overpopulation problems) and they just want to be treated as normal people who happen to do something you don't completely approve of, not as criminals, or outcasts!

In any case people have discriminated against groups for all of recorded history. So we need to stop it as much as possible because from ALL of history we can see what good comes out of discrimination.

Nothing, unless the owner of the place they're roaming objects. There are, in fact, places where the owner(s) do not object, and few people are up in arms about it, especially in Europe.

What about child molesters, they are having CONSENSUAL sex with young teenagers, who are we to stop them its their bodies.

Molesting is not consensual, by definition. You might want to argue about what activities are or are not molestation, but if you make your argument about "child molesters", you've already lost any hope of convincing any of us that only non-molestation was going on. ;)

I'd say that the "to each their own" argument works really well in many situations.

> I'd say that the "to each their own" argument works really well in many situations.

Agreed. The dividing line is generally around an action affecting someone else. If it does, then there is the possibility that we should make it illegal.

Of course, this can become more nuanced. At the risk of getting (slightly) off topic, Deborah Stone's book Policy Paradox (http://www.amazon.com/Policy-Paradox-Political-Decision-Revi...) has an interesting discussion.

Some of the known-successful ways to get around said "benchmark" are "this time it's different", "this government is good", "group C deserves it", and "we're not doing B".

Gay people are now mostly treated very well, except for that dumb restriction against nationally recognized same sex marriage. Give it 15 years though and one of the last bastions of state-sanctioned inequality will vanish.

OK - here comes the however. You can't apologise to just one person for the persecution of homosexuals during that era. What was done to Turing was disgusting and probably we should be ashamed of it as a nation but it was done to so many - any apology must be to them all.

What does the plight of the gay community, the world over, have to do with the exceptionally unfair treatment of one Alan Turing by the British Government?

An apology to the whole community and any survivors is in order and a posthumous knighthood for A. M. Turing.

That would do nicely.

On another note, whether or not Alan Turing gets knighted I don't think it should make any difference to the rest of us, the man should be a true hero of anybody that knows even a little bit of the history of computing.

It's like what happened to Oppenheimer during McCarthyism. Thousands of perfectly fine people forced out of their work because they were socialist or communist or even just didn't hate communism as much as was expected. At least Oppenheimer got something of an apology. That's not as bad as being chemically castrated, but I think the situation bears some similarities.

Are you saying that in terms of the public profile he had and the major contributions he made?

Because that's suggesting Turing deserved, and still deserves, special treatment for being a clever person (even though he actually faced less than some gay men at the time).

I don't know but I don't imagine even Turing himself would want to hold a position like that. Im sure many more brilliant men were persecuted for their homosexuality most of whom we will never have heard of and never got their chance to make their contribution! :)

Canonise the example, sure. But perhaps not the man: let him be known best for his contribution!

That is very true, but he wasn't violated / mutilated because of his serving the country (and the rest of the world incidentally).

It wasn't to make an example of him. The only reason we even have the spotlight of how inhumane homosexuals were treated in those days is probably because an exceptional thinker also was homosexual.

If not for that it is highly doubtful that there ever would be a way to petition about this with any chance of success.

That's a sad thing, but I suspect it to be the truth.

Even if your concern is only with exceptional people, think of this: what if a potential future Alan Turing is stymied from exceptional achievements because of barriers due to societal intolerance of his sexual orientation?

Granted, you probably meant that common people doing common jobs makes it possible for those exceptional people to do the exceptional things, but I take issue even with that.

It seems based on the premises, 1. that, absent technology, providing for basic human needs would take up all of an individual's productive time, 2. that art and science are similarly completely consuming (or, perhaps, that the outcome is worthless if not worked on full time), and 3. that a group effort at providing for basic human needs provides no surplus beyond a sum of the effort of the individuals.

I assert that all three premises are patently false.

Agree, but this is a way to do exactly that, isn't it?

Absolutely. For an idea of how bad this was have a look here:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/328/7437/427

One of the more shocking parts is that this practice apparently continued in to the 1970's.

Sure, but it was hardly a phenomenon unique to the UK. That kind of treatment of homosexuals (and indeed, much worse treatments) were sanctioned by every government on Earth. In addition, just about every religion, club, society, private business and the vast majority of individuals. And not just in that era, but from the dawn of time until very recently (and continuing 'til today in many countries). So any apology needs to be by everybody.

Ah, but why just homosexuals? All sorts of other groups have been treated unfairly throughout history, often in far more horrible ways than happened to Alan Turing. And let's not forget all the individuals who were treated poorly in their lives for reasons that have nothing to do with membership of any group. So ideally, any apology should be from everybody to everybody -- nothing else would be fair.

Oh, okay, fine. On behalf of the human race, I'd like to apologize for every bad thing ever done by any now dead member of the human race to any other now dead member of the human race. Also, on behalf of the human race, I accept that apology. Can we get on with our lives now?

>worse treatments) were sanctioned by every government on

>Earth. In addition, just about every religion, club,

>society, private business and the vast majority of

>individuals. And not just in that era, but from the dawn

>of time until very recently

That's a very strange reading of history. There's been massive variations in the way homosexuality is treated across cultures, just go back to classical Greece and Rome for some examples. Homophobia isn't a natural instinct, it's something we learn.

I don't like historical apologies either, but I hate the implication of your argument against this one. We have to make moral judgments about history, so we can figure out how to do better. Sure it's hard and uncomfortable, but anything else is a cop-out.

In India homosexuality had only recently been decriminalised. The only reason it had been illegal was due to an old British rule. From what I know there was nothing in Indian law punishing homosexuality prior to this.

I imagine pre-Islam India must have been even more liberal, given some of the carvings on the ancient temples ...

http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/08/letter-to-her-majesty-queen....

> "I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient subject,"

This left a very bad taste in my mouth.

In a country with over a thousand years of history, traditions arise that persist, even when the original circumstances no longer exist. Some of those traditions take the form of words which, in and of themselves, are effectively "code phrases." They should not be interpreted literally, but instead, they must be regarded as idioms within the context.

Taking these sorts of things out of context and trying to interpret them literally leads to mistakes and misunderstandings. This is why lawyers exist, to help take what you want to say, and to say it in a way that is correct in the context of a court.

In effect, the same thing is happening here. This form of words is a formula that is used. Without it the petition fails on a technicality, as it were.

I don't know what country you are from, or where you grew up, or where you are now, so I can't even try to give examples that might make more sense to you, but cross-cultural context shifts are an absolute minefield.

As a simple example, I recently went to an event where the invitation read "Black Tie". This doesn't mean that you should wear a black tie, it means you should wear a dinner suit (UK/Australia) or tuxedo (USA). Similarly, another invitation read "Business Dress". That was a code phrase for "Collar and tie," but was interpreted by some as meaning "What you usually wear for your day job" and they came in jeans and a T-shirt.

You can probably think of some idiomatic code-phrases of your own which, when interpreted literally, would be totally mis-understood by others not of you cultural context. Being aware of this can really, really help.

Finally, having Aspergers is a bit like having the entire rest of the world full of code phrases like this that other people seem magically to understand. Treating this as a puzzle.problem to solve can help a lot in getting along with people.

"Yo, Liz. No love for AMT? Dude deserves a KCMG. Peace out, John"

You should make stickers, with a picture of turing. Across the bottom it should say: "Dude deserves a KCMG".

But assuming RiderOfGiraffes is right about this being nothing more than a code phrase... well, it is a funny one!

Protocols, especially royal protocols, have evolved to ensure that people know what is expected of them and can behave in a way so as not to cause embarrassment or offence. In some ways they really are very similar to computer protocols. They are there to help people communicate effectively without distraction. Many computer protocols seems overly verbose, and they often deal with the potential for things that can no longer happen.

So it is with social protocols. At least with computer protocols and royal protocols they are pretty explicit. Often when in a social context your really don't know how you're expected to behave, and hence become anxious, and there is the potential for huge gaffes.

Again, don't underestimate the cruft that collects over thousands of years. Most people never have to deal with it.

Similarly, I've been introduced to the Queen (twice), addressed her as "Your Majesty" followed thereafter as "Ma'am" (to rhyme with "jam", not "arm"), and held an intelligent conversation. Again, no way that would've happened without first being vetted.

Random people in the USA don't get simply to walk up to the President, random people in the UK don't get simply to walk up to the Queen.

I'm halfway convinced the only reason anyone still puts up with this shit is that Elizabeth in particular seems to be pretty cool. Once Prince Chuckles takes over there might be a considerable uptick in republican sentiments.

It's only comparatively recently that letters, especially from a man to a woman, ceased to be signed "Your obedient servant." To this day business letters are signed "Yours faithfully". If you write that, do you really mean it? If you don't write that, you'll be considered an ignorant oik.

> I'm halfway convinced the only reason anyone still puts up with this shit is that Elizabeth in particular seems to be pretty cool.

Maybe, maybe not. It seems that you and most others are unaware that this is simply one miniscule example in an entire ocean of formal diplomatic and social protocol. Recently when giving a talk at one of the Livery companies in London there were similar forms to which one adhered.

In short, I think that the people who are pointing and laughing and saying it's stupid are those who don't actually know how it works and what it does. I'm not defending it or saying it's rational, I'm merely saying that looking in from the outside, you and others are speaking from a position of well-reasoned ignorance. I grew up in an informal country, similarly thinking that all this diplomatic protocol crap was an insult and a waste of time.

I was wrong.

Personally, I'm largely convinced that it's an unwillingness even to try to understand the historical and cultural reasons for this sort of "shit" that makes so many people in Europe so dismissive of so many Americans. I've lived in three different cultures and seen this in action. One culture looks at another not only with incomprehension, but an unwillingness to try to understand. The Europeans have a multitude of cultures on their doorstep, and many of them travel, so the situation isn't as bad. In the US there are cultural differences across the states, but nothing like the differences across the borders in Europe. As a consequence, it seems, people from the USA seem much less able to see, understand, and adapt to cultural differences.

Not all, of course, and perhaps not you. But think about it.

Hackers are historically reknowned for not accepting anything on faith, and thereby ensuring that while they manage to invent things no one else has thought of, they are equally constantly reinventing the wheel. That's changed a lot lately, but there is still an air of "If it's not done the way I think it should, then it's wrong." If you can accept that what someone else does actually works and has some benefits, even if you wouldn't do it like that, then you've taken a big step.

This is no longer Hacker News, but cultural differences exist in hacking, and understanding is always worth striving for.

The historical and cultural reasons are clear to me: Britain has an unelected, hereditary monarchy that historically held final authority and had people killed if they weren't subservient enough. (To be fair, England's experiment with republicanism was no less tyrannical.) Over time, more and more checks grew against royal authority until eventually they grew powerless in reality. There even seem to be a few practical benefits from having the same titular head of state for decades, since most sources agree that the Queen provides intelligent and thoughtful advice to her Prime Ministers. It's a role that most parliamentary republics have replicated, albeit in an elected role.

But there was a time when addressing a monarch by the phrase "I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient subject" actually meant what it sounds like. In practical terms, maybe royal protocol isn't a real problem. Maybe people tend to create their own royalties and aristocracies without the presence of a real one. But no, I wouldn't do it like that, though I understand and appreciate that it seems to work for Britain.

I couldn't help but think of this Ronald Reagan joke.

"I told him the joke about the American and the Russian who were arguing about how much freedom they had. And the American finally said to the Russian, ``Look,'' he said, ``I can walk into the Oval Office. I can pound the President's desk, and I can say, `Mr. President, I don't like the way you're running our country.''' And the Russian said, ``I can do that.'' And the American said, ``You can?'' He says, ``I can go into the Kremlin. I can walk into the General Secretary's office. I can pound the desk and say, `Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan's running his country.'''"

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/072986e....

If you ask for a knighthood and an apology from the royal family then that's what you do. I think knighthoods are pretty silly (and what with Roger Moore and others of little achievement receiving such knighthoods their value is questionable anyway).

Each person has to live in the time they are in -- and looking back from each age to the previous one, we've always thought the old ways were barbaric.

This means that everybody in those ages did things we think are awful: persecution of gays, slavery, infant selection, serfdom, Jim Crow Laws -- the list goes on and on and on.

Going back and applying our current morality to 50 years ago is silly. The people this happened to are dead. The people who did this are either dead or very, very old. Many thousands or millions more suffered the same fate and received no such modern recognition. It serves no purpose other that to pat ourselves on the back at how much more morally superior we are today. And in fifty more years? Guess what? They'll be feeling the same way about us.

We live in a world where people are still kept as slaves. Where millions starve. Where governments systematically kill large groups of people who they don't like. I'm thinking we should take real, live action against current evils in the world instead of symbolic action against evils we had no part in and did not observe.

EDIT: I'm going to rant a bit more here, because I think we've grown this generation of people who think that all of history has to fit inside of their modern mind, i.e. that history is some kind of morality play made for current moral standards. It's not. It's a complicated dance of personalities and forces that has to be observed in it's own way, by it's own lights. To retroactively expect history to fit into some kind of conception of what you think it ought to be denies all those people their humanity. </rant>

If so, then I think you'll find that you have little in common with most commenters here. If you reject the premise that Britain's treatment of Turing was objectively wrong, then the rest of debate will be unfruitful.

I'd rather put it like this: according to the best I know, Turing was treated unfairly. I do not believe it is moral to treat somebody this way. (Morals, to me, are inherently personal)

Looking at my own life, I find things that I feel are immoral to me yet I allow them to happen anyway: modern slavery, the narcotizing of our youth with technology, or genocide.

When I see things in the past that I find reprehensible or immoral, the interesting question to me is: how did moral and ethical people at time feel about this? Why was it allowed? It seems that understanding these people for who they were -- warts in all -- is to respect them and try to understand them.

The moment I step back and start applying my values totally to another age, I stop individualizing the people who lived there. They become puppets or cartoons for me to lionize or demonize depending on my personal values.

Take Jefferson and slavery. Jefferson is one of my heroes -- he lived very close to my house, and I admire his thoughts and works. He was the brilliant author of the DOI, and more importantly, the Virginia Declaration of Human Rights.

Yet at the same time he allowed slavery -- kept slaves, in fact. There's even proof that he sired children by his slaves. What to make of that? Was he a genius? An evil slave-holder?

The truth is that he was person, who lived in his times and did the best he could. He knew slavery had to go yet couldn't figure out for the life of him how things would change eventually. He once compared slavery to holding a rabid wolf by the ears: you don't dare hold on to him, but you don't dare let him go, either.

Looking at these conflicts in people is how we identify and learn from what happened. It gives history depth, and it give us a little humility.

Looking back through history, and applying just a little bit of that humility, it seems totally obvious to me that a hundred years from now people are going to be doing the same to our generation. And I don't like it. The things I've done that are immoral I did for what I thought to be good reasons, likewise these folks with Turing. The people of this age, both good and bad, deserve our respect because that's the way we want to be treated by future generations.

It's not a matter of being right or wrong. It's a matter of all of us being human, and respecting each other for it.

You say that Jefferson was "doing his best". I think you chose Jefferson to make such a statement as easy as possible for yourself. I don't believe that the people most responsible for Turing's fate were "doing their best". I think they knew they were doing something wrong. I think that the Taliban know that blowing up girls' schools (and the girls) is wrong.

This is why I say you lack a common moral foundation with supporter of an official apology to Turing. I say that it's wrong, always and everywhere, for a man to be hounded to suicide for his sexual orientation. If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future? (that's largely a rhetorical question; I'm well aware that there have been two millennia of debate over absolute ethics, but for me this issue is clear as day).

EDIT: Grammar-- damn this vanity.

I would totally disagree with this. Unfortunately, I think that this assumption that those who are against us "really" believe as we do and are deliberately acting in a way they know is wrong is terribly corrosive to finding solutions; it implies both that we need not sincerely explain ourselves to "the bad guys", and simultaneously, that they can be convinced to stop doing bad things if we shine a light on the things they're doing, since it's assumed that they're really feeling guilty and don't believe the things they say.

You cannot shame a person into behaving properly if they believe they are already behaving properly.

Besides, the evidence is against you here. When the Taliban announced last month that are now devoting themselves to protecting civilians, I can't imagine that their embrace of the PR value is completely detached from reality.

BTW - This is still nate_meurer... I can't login from my home for some reason, thus the new account.

Also BTW - Yes, I am equating the folks who hounded Turing to this death with the Taliban.

This is an essay that describes his research on morality: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html

I strongly recommend it! It changed my understanding of what morality is and what moral beliefs to expect in others, and deepened my understanding of my own moral intuitions.

The key insight that is relevant here is that educated Westerners (like me and, presumably, you) see morality as mostly about harm and fairness. But that view of morality is not so popular outside the West. When we see people doing harm to innocent girls we find it hard to believe that they think they're doing good. But other cultures are relatively more concerned with morality relating to authority/obedience, in-group/out-group treatment, and purity/disgust.

When people persecute homosexuals or let improperly-dressed girls burn[1] they're acting based on the purity/disgust aspect of morality, and probably authority/obedience too. I expect they also usually feel conflicted about it, because burning schoolgirls must register on the harm-based morality meter. I think the way to engage with fundamentalists who do this kind of thing is to emphasize the harm done, and try to undermine the concept of purity-based morality.

(Westerners also have some reckoning to do with disgust-based morality. It is hard to argue against infertile adult consensual incest using the morality of harm and fairness, but many Westerners still regard it as immoral, and find it hard to explain their moral intuitions. Similarly, Bush Administration-appointed bioethicist Leon Kass coined the term "the wisdom of repugnance"[2], using the argument against genetic engineering. I wish humans would abandon repugnance as relevant to morality.)

[1] Are we talking about this incident? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1874471.stm

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_repugnance

I think that repugnance and disgust exist precisely because they are pretty good heuristics for things humans thrived by avoiding in general (like your example of incest), and continuing to thrive may depend on allowing your disgust to influence what you do even when you can't articulate a rational reason for it.

Yes, I recommended Haidt because the topic was whether the fundamentalists were acting according to their understanding of morality. If you're saying that research on morality doesn't yield conclusions on something like "real true morality", then I agree. But I'd add that Haidt's research helped me see inconsistencies in my morality, and in this way it's affected my view of the morality I ought to have.

I agree that repugnance can be a good heuristic for personal actions. I wish that people wouldn't impose their sense of repugnance on others, though. You know how Jews aren't allowed to mix dairy products and meat? I thought that was just an arbitrary rule until I went to Israel and talked to some Jews. They didn't just find it immoral because the Torah said so; they found the idea of a cheeseburger or a meat-topped pizza disgusting, as we might find the idea of meat ice cream disgusting. So I'm concerned that repugnance can easily get attached to arbitrary things.

More abstractly, we can view repugnance as nature's buggy hack to get us to avoid harmful things, dating from before we were as intelligent and knowledgeable as we are now. Purity-morality is just harm-morality implemented on an obsolete system. Now that we're intelligent enough to judge harm more competently than instinct (i.e. we get fewer false positives), we can and should override that judgment, when it helps us. (Trivial but real example from real life: I used to find mushrooms disgusting, just because. After Haidt got me thinking about the usefulness of repugnance, I looked up the nutritional value of mushrooms, found that mushroom-phobia was unhelpful, and decided to get over it.)

Hubris!

I hadn't heard of the fire in Saudi Arabia, but yes, that's just the kind of thing I'm talking about.

I would say that at least some of the Taliban are evil, sure. Does that mean they can't change, or that they can't be reasoned with, or at least intimidated into not harming people? No, though that might be the case with some. I dunno.

How does it benefit us to assume that about our enemies?

Seeing your enemies as they are can only help, as far as I can see. Assuming that they really believe what you do, but for some reason have acted as though they don't -- well, I don't think that's going to be very helpful in predicting their future actions.

The distinction I'm after is this:

Nate's brand of Taliban: Blowing up this school serves a greater good, which overwhelms whatever bad is inherent in the act.

Your brand of Taliban: Blowing up this school and killing everyone inside, in this situation, is unambiguously good.

My problem is that I don't believe that the Taliban, in general and as a rule, are completely without a trace of Nate's description. If there's any evidence at all that I'm right, and I think there is, then recognizing this gives us at least something to work with-- makes them less alien.

However, I do understand your overall point about the danger of ascribing moral bases across cultural lines, and you may well be right. We've waded into territory where I'm largely a layman.

I think you've reached exactly the opposite conclusion from what I am trying to say.

I'm saying that we have a obligation to apply our standards as a group to other cultures in the present age -- much more so than to people who aren't around to defend themselves.

If you believe that Jefferson knew he was wrong then I envy you -- you live in an age where you understand what is truly moral and those in ages past did not. It must feel good (and I'm only being a bit sarcastic here) to feel so free of ambiguity and nuance when it comes to reviewing other people's lives.

If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future?

If you truly are interested in preventing immoral things from happening in the future, wouldn't your best course of action be to identify and confront those things you find immoral in the present day that nobody does anything about? Why go beating up folks who aren't around? There's so much actual bad stuff, does it make you feel better to lionize Turing and demonize his tormentors than to actually stand up against, say, the violence against Tibetians? Or slavery in the Arab world? Or genital mutilation in Africa?

When you start dealing with modern morals, you find that it gets tricky very quickly: to make a difference you have to navigate all of this stuff between you and effective action. Yet to deal with some historical injustice it's very easy: find the good guy, find the bad guy, and make some kind of symbolic statement.

Odd that you can't see that the very difficulties you face today in being moral were also faced by those in the past.

No matter how right or wrong you are about things, unless you're actually changing something it's all so much whining. Turing is a good example of somebody we can rally around and feel good about supporting -- he had a great mind and was treated terribly. But our reaction is all just so much fluff. It's modern morals: change your lightbulbs to CFI, write a check to a charity and leave the heavy-lifting to somebody else.

Just not my cup of tea.

I think if they want to Knight the guy that's a completely different thing, and it sounds like a great idea. Just not so much the navel-gazing and symbolic and empty self-flaggelation.

I'm not getting a real strong moral-relativism vibe from you. I mostly perceive apathy.

I'd rather be dispassionately interested than a member of the mob-of-the-day club.

Yes.

Sounds like progress.

You can sign it too: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/

However, writing to the Queen in support of the knighthood would be within your rights as a citizen of a Commonwealth country, I should think.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Petition-verlangt-Entschuldig...

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20409

The same goes for British soldiers in WW1 who were executed for cowardice and recently pardoned.

What was done to Alan Turing and other homosexuals in that period was absolutely despicable and apology, even though much too late is a way of recognizing this.

For an encore, there is plenty of stuff done TODAY to homosexuals all over the world that we would do well to recognize and to act upon.

There are only people, any attempt at discriminating some subgroup is wrong.

Nobody is trying to rewrite history here, it is rare that governments will admit to errors and it takes persistence by individuals living today to 'educate' the governments of their responsibilities. Let's hope that actions like this will make people think twice before doing stupid stuff today.

People living in future times are the ultimate judges.

We apologies for our actions to acknowledge that what we did under the guise of governance was a crime, a crime against humanity, a crime against our fellow humans. To be able to take the moral ground against those who commit those very same crimes today.