Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Via White Crane Institute // ALAN TURING

 

Died
Alan Turing
1954 -
ALAN TURING, British mathematician and computer scientist died (b. 1912) from cyanide poisoning, eighteen months after being given libido-reducing hormone treatment for a year as a punishment for homosexuality. Turing is generally considered to be the Father of Modern Computer Science. He provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine.
 
In 'the Turing Test" Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation is a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so the result would not depend on the machine's ability to render words as speech. If the evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give correct answers to questions, only how closely answers resemble those a human would give.
 
With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, although it was never actually built.
 
In 1948 he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers. During WWII Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's code breaking center, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis.
 
He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electro-mechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. Turing was Gay in a period when homosexual acts were illegal in Britain and homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness and subject to criminal sanctions.
 
In 1952, Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old recent acquaintance of Turing’s, helped an accomplice to break into Turing's house, and Turing went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray, and a crime having been identified and settled, they were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Turing was unrepentant and was convicted of the same crime Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years before. He was given the choice between imprisonment and probation, conditional on his undergoing hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido.
 
To avoid going to jail, he accepted the estrogen hormone injections, which lasted for a year, with side effects including gynecomastia (breast enlargement). His lean runner's body took on fat. His conviction led to a removal of his security clearance and prevented him from continuing consultancy for GCHQ on cryptographic matters. At this time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents. In America, Robert Oppenheimer had just been deemed a security risk.
 
On June 8, 1954, his housekeeper found him dead; the previous day, he had died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten beside his bed. The apple itself was never tested for contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death was established by a post-mortem.
 
Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. Others suggest that Turing was reenacting a scene from "Snow White", reportedly his favorite fairy tale. Because Turing's sexuality would have been perceived as a security risk, the possibility of assassination has also been suggested. His remains were cremated at Woking crematorium on June 12, 1954.
 
There is an urban legend that the Apple Computer “bite out of an apple” logo is a tribute to Turing. It is exactly that: an urban legend. But that’s not to say that the idea of paying homage to Turing is something the creators of Apple were against. When actor Stephen Fry once asked his good friend Steve Jobs if the famous logo was based on Turing, Jobs replied, “God, we wish it were.” Hodges biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma is the basis of the film The Imitation Game (a reference to “the Turing Test” which is also referenced in the film Ex Machina.
 

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 7, 2023 💌

  


 

"Meditation helps other parts of your life become more simple. As you enter quieter spaces you will see how clinging to desires has made your life complicated. Your clinging drags you from desire to desire, whim to whim, creating more and more complex entanglements. Meditation helps you cut through this clinging.

If, for example, you run around filling your mind with this and that, you will discover that your entire meditation is spent letting go of the stuff you just finished collecting in the past few hours. You also notice that your meditations are clearer when you come into them from a simpler space. This encourages you to simplify your life."

- Ram Dass -

 

 

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Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Equanimity

 


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RIGHT INTENTION
Cultivating Equanimity
Whatever you intend, whatever you plan, and whatever you have a tendency toward, that will become the basis upon which your mind is established. (SN 12.40) Develop meditation on equanimity, for when you develop meditation on equanimity, all aversion is abandoned. (MN 62) 

The purpose of equanimity is warding off attachment. (Vm 9.97) When a person seeing a form with the eye is not attached to pleasing forms and not repelled by unpleasing forms, they have established mindfulness and dwell with an unlimited mind. For a person whose mindfulness is developed and practiced, the eye does not struggle to reach pleasing forms, and unpleasing forms are not considered repulsive. (SN 35.274)
Reflection
Equanimity is the antidote to aversion. Just as we can develop an aversive tendency through practice and habit, we can develop equanimity as a primary character trait and latent tendency. We can practice this at the level of primary sensory contact, such as described here using visual information. Practice just seeing what is there, without attachment or aversion; gaze upon your visual sphere with equanimity.

Daily Practice
When you are looking at something using your eyes, notice when this is accompanied by a subtle “I don’t like this” or “This is not good.” When you are aware of this happening, try replacing the aversion with an attitude of equanimity: “This is the way this is. I don’t need to judge it or disapprove of it. Let it be.” In this way the eye is not struggling against unpleasing forms and is thus not attached to their being different than they are. 

Tomorrow: Refraining from Frivolous Speech
One week from today: Cultivating Lovingkindness

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Via Daily Dharma: Clear Faith

 Clear faith blooms when we recognize in another the possibility of living a free, happy, peaceful life, and this recognition compels us to look for a way to get there ourselves.

Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, “Good Enough Faith”


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Via White Crane Institute // THOMAS MANN

 This Day in Gay History

June 06

Born
Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann
1875 -
THOMAS MANN, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955); a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and intellectual.
His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
 
Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his sexuality, which found reflection in his works, most prominently through the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy Tadzio in the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912).
 
Anthony Heilbut's biography Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997) was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre. Gilbert Adair's work The Real Tadzio describes how, in the summer of 1911, Mann had been staying at the Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice with his wife and brother when he became enraptured by the angelic figure of Władysław Moes, an 11-year-old Polish boy. Considered a classic of homoerotic passion (if unconsummated) Death in Venice has been made into a film and an opera. Blamed sarcastically by Mann’s old enemy, Alfred Kerr, to have ‘made pederasty acceptable to the cultivated middle classes’, it has been pivotal to introducing the discourse of same-sex desire to the common culture.
 
Mann himself described his feelings for young violinist and painter Paul Ehrenberg as the "central experience of my heart." Despite the homoerotic overtones in his writing, Mann chose to marry and have children; two of his children, Klaus, also a writer, who committed suicide in 1949, and Erika, an actress and writer who died in 1969 and who was married to W.H. Auden for 34 years, were also Gay. His works also present other sexual themes, such as incest in The Blood of the Walsungs (Wälsungenblut) and The Holy Sinner (Der Erwählte).
 
 

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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute

"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson

Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org

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Monday, June 5, 2023

The Stomach-Churning Things Nazis Did To Gay Men

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 4, 2023 💌

 
 

"When you stand back far enough, all of your life experiences, independent of what they are, are all learning experiences. From a human point of view, you do your best to optimize pleasure, happiness, all the nice things in life. From your soul’s point of view you take what comes down the pike. So from the soul’s perspective, you work to get what you want and then if you don’t, ‘Ah, so, I’ll work with what I’ve got."

- Ram Dass -




[GBF] New Talk: Meeting the Fragility and Vulnerability of Life - Devin Berry

How do we respond when we witness suffering?
 
In this talk, Devin Berry reflects on passages from the Dhammapada related to compassion for others and ourselves in the face of dukkha.

He shares that the Buddha described compassion as "the trembling of the heart in response to suffering."

Especially in marginalized communities, we practice to create a refuge of belonging, which requires opening our heart. However, the habit of seeing those we encounter as 'other' can constrain our willingness to actively respond with care. Compassion requires a willingness to lean into suffering and be touched.
______________
 
Devin Berry is an Insight Meditation Society guiding teacher. A meditator since 1999, his practice is primarily informed by the metta and vipassana teachings of the Insight Meditation tradition. He has undertaken many periods of silent long-term retreat practice. Devin is committed to the personal and collective liberation of marginalized communities knowing that through the integration of reflection and insight, clarity and wisdom give rise to wise action. Devin was mentored by Larry Yang, Lyn Fine, Joseph Goldstein, Carol Wilson and Andrea Fella. He lives in New England and the Bay Area and teaches nationally. 

Listen to the full talk here: https://gaybuddhist.org/podcast/devin-berry/
--
Enjoy 750+ free recorded dharma talks at www.gaybuddhist.org/podcast/

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

 


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RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering
And what is the way leading to the cessation of suffering? It is just this noble eightfold path: that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. (MN 9)

One perfects their ethical behavior by abandoning misbehavior among sensual pleasures . . . (DN 2)
Reflection
This is by now a familiar theme for us, the focus on refining ethical behavior and abandoning actions driven by sensual pleasures. The path to the cessation of suffering can be followed only by observing the ethical precepts, and the precept guarding against inappropriate sexuality is as important as the others. Remember: sensuality can include a much wider range of interpretations than the merely sexual.

Daily Practice
Reflect honestly on your own behavior, especially the extent to which it may or may not be entangled in sensual desire. Sensuality is a sensitive and challenging topic, and it often seems there is an extra charge around matters of sexuality. This text is inviting you to look openly at ways leading to the end of suffering and in particular to look for ways in which a different perspective on sensuality might help reduce some kinds of suffering.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Equanimity
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering

Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel

Questions?
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Via Daily Dharma: Patience Is Peace

 

Patience gives you joy in the process of awakening. Without patience, you may find yourself at war with your own forgetfulness or reactivity.

Tara Brach, “Finding True Refuge”


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Sunday, June 4, 2023

Via Daily Dharma: Routine Paired with Vision

 The key to development along the Buddhist path is repetitive routine guided by inspirational vision.

Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, “Vision and Routine”


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