I. J. Good

I. J. Good
I. J. Good
Born	Isadore Jacob Gudak; 9 December 1916; London, UK
Died	5 April 2009 (aged 92); Radford, Virginia, US
Alma mater	Jesus College, Cambridge
Awards	Smith's Prize (1940)
	Scientific career
Fields	Statistician, cryptologist
Institutions	Trinity College, Oxford; Virginia Tech
Doctoral advisor	G. H. Hardy

Irving John ("I. J."; "Jack") Good (9 December 1916 – 5 April 2009)^[1]^[2] was a British mathematician who worked as a cryptologist at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing. After World War II, Good continued to work with Turing on the design of computers and Bayesian statistics at the University of Manchester. Good moved to the United States where he was professor at Virginia Tech.

He was born Isadore Jacob Gudak to a Polish Jewish family in London. He later anglicised his name to Irving John Good and signed his publications "I. J. Good."

An originator of the concept now known as "intelligence explosion," Good served as consultant on supercomputers to Stanley Kubrick, director of the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.^[3]

Life[edit]

Good was born Isadore Jacob Gudak to Polish Jewish parents in London. His father was a watchmaker, who later managed and owned a successful fashionable jewellery shop, and was also a notable Yiddish writer writing under the pen-name of Moshe Oved. Good was educated at the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, at the time in Hampstead in north west London, where, Dan van der Vat writes, Good effortlessly outpaced the mathematics curriculum.^[3]

Good studied mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating in 1938 and winning the Smith's Prize in 1940.^[4] He did research under G.H. Hardy and Besicovitch before moving to Bletchley Park in 1941 on completing his doctorate.

Bletchley Park[edit]

On 27 May 1941, having just obtained his doctorate at Cambridge, Good walked into Hut 8, Bletchley's facility for breaking German naval ciphers, for his first shift. This was the day that Britain's Royal Navy destroyed the German battleship Bismarck after it had sunk the Royal Navy's HMS Hood. Bletchley had contributed to Bismarck's destruction by discovering, through wireless-traffic analysis, that the German flagship was sailing for Brest, France, rather than Wilhelmshaven, from which she had set out.^[3] Hut 8 had not, however, been able to decrypt on a current basis the 22 German Naval Enigma messages that had been sent to Bismarck. The German Navy's Enigma ciphers were considerably more secure than those of the German Army or Air Force, which had been well penetrated by 1940. Naval messages were taking three to seven days to decrypt, which usually made them operationally useless for the British. This was about to change, however, with Good's help.^[3]

Alan Turing... had caught Good sleeping on the floor while on duty during his first night shift. At first, Turing thought Good was ill, but he was cross when Good explained that he was just taking a short nap because he was tired. For days afterwards, Turing would not deign to speak to Good, and he left the room if Good walked in. The new recruit only won Turing's respect after he solved the bigram tables problem. During a subsequent night shift, when there was no more work to be done, it dawned on Good that there might be another chink in the German indicating system. The German telegraphists had to add dummy letters to the trigrams which they selected out of the kenngruppenbuch... Good wondered if their choice of dummy letters was random, or whether there was a bias towards particular letters. After inspecting some messages which had been broken, he discovered that there was a tendency to use some letters more than others. That being the case, all the codebreakers had to do, was to work back from the indicators given at the beginning of each message, and apply each bigram table in turn in the same way as Joan Clarke had done before. The bigram table which produced one of the popular dummy letters was probably the correct one. When Good mentioned his discovery to Alan Turing, Turing was very embarrassed, and said, 'I could have sworn that I tried that.' It quickly became an important part of the Banburismus procedure.

Jack Good's refusal to go on working when tired was vindicated by a subsequent incident. During another long night shift, he had been baffled by his failure to break a doubly enciphered Offizier message. This was one of the messages which was supposed to be enciphered initially with the Enigma set up in accordance with the Offizier settings, and subsequently with the general Enigma settings in place. However, while he was sleeping before returning for another shift, he dreamed that the order had been reversed; the general settings had been applied before the Offizier settings. Next day he found that the message had yet to be read, so he applied the theory which had come to him during the night. It worked; he had broken the code in his sleep.^[5]

Good served with Turing for nearly two years.^[3]

Subsequently, he worked with Donald Michie in Max Newman's group on the Fish ciphers, leading to the development of the Colossus computer.

Good was a member of the Bletchley Chess Club which defeated the Oxford University Chess Club 8–4 in a twelve-board team match held on 2 December 1944. Good played fourth board for Bletchley Park, with C.H.O'D. Alexander, Harry Golombek, and James Macrae Aitken in the top three spots.^[6] He won his game against Sir Robert Robinson.^[7]

Postwar work[edit]

In 1947 Newman invited Good to join him and Turing at Manchester University. There for three years Good lectured in mathematics and researched computers, including the Manchester Mark 1.^[3]

In 1948 Good was recruited by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), successor to Bletchley Park. He remained there until 1959, while also taking up a brief associate professorship at Princeton University and a short consultancy with IBM.^[3]

From 1959 until he moved to the US in 1967, Good held government-funded positions and from 1964 a senior research fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, and the Atlas Computer Laboratory, where he continued his interests in computing, statistics and chess.^[2] He later left Oxford, declaring it "a little stiff".

United States[edit]

In 1967 Good moved to the United States, where he was appointed a research professor of statistics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. In 1969 he was appointed a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, and in 1994 Emeritus University Distinguished Professor.^[8] In 1973 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.^[9]

He later said about his arrival in Virginia (from England) in 1967 to start teaching at VPI, where he taught from 1967 to 1994:

"I arrived in Blacksburg in the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month of the year seven in the seventh decade, and I was put in Apartment 7 of Block 7...all by chance."^[10]

Research and publications[edit]

Good's published work ran to over three million words.^[3] He was known for his work on Bayesian statistics. He published a number of books on probability theory. In 1958 he published an early version of what later became known as the fast Fourier transform^[11] but it did not became widely known. He played chess to county standard and helped popularise Go, an Asian boardgame, through a 1965 article in New Scientist (he had learned the rules from Alan Turing).^[12] In 1965 he originated the concept now known as "intelligence explosion," which anticipates the eventual advent of superhuman intelligence:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.^[13]

Good's authorship of treatises such as "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" and "Logic of Man and Machine" (both 1965) made him the obvious person for Stanley Kubrick to consult when filming 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), one of whose principal characters was the paranoid HAL 9000 supercomputer.^[3] In 1995 Good was elected a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.^[2]

According to his assistant, Leslie Pendleton, in 1998 Good wrote in an unpublished autobiographical statement that he suspected an ultraintelligent machine would lead to the extinction of man.^[14]

Personality[edit]

The slender, bushy-moustached Good was blessed with a sense of humour. He published a paper under the names IJ Good and "K Caj Doog"—the latter, his own nickname spelled backwards. In a 1988 paper,^[15] he introduced its subject by saying, "Many people have contributed to this topic but I shall mainly review the writings of I. J. Good because I have read them all carefully." In Virginia he chose, as his vanity license plate, "007IJG," in subtle reference to his World War II intelligence work.^[3]

Good never married.^[16] After going through ten assistants in his first thirteen years at Virginia, he hired Leslie Pendleton, who proved up to the task of managing his quirks. He wanted to marry her, but she refused. Although there was speculation, they were never more than friends, but she was his assistant, companion, and friend for the rest of his life.^[17]

Death[edit]

Good died on 5 April 2009 of natural causes in Radford, Virginia, aged 92.^[18]

Books[edit]

Good, I.J. (1950), Probability and the Weighing of Evidence, London: Griffin, ASIN B0000CHL1R
Good, Irving John (1965), The estimation of probabilities: An essay on modern Bayesian methods, Research monograph no. 30, M.I.T. Press, ASIN B0006BMRMM
Good, Irving John (1965), The scientist speculates: An anthology of partly-baked ideas, Capricorn Books
Osteyee, David Bridston; Good, Irving John (1974), Information, Weight of Evidence: The Singularity Between Probability Measures and Signal Detection, Springer, ISBN 978-3-540-06726-9
Good, Irving John (2009) [1983], Good Thinking: The Foundations of Probability and Its Applications, of Minnesota Press (Republished by Dover), ISBN 978-0486474380

Notes[edit]

^ "Passings". Los Angeles Times. 13 April 2009. Retrieved 13 April 2009.
^ ^a ^b ^c The Times of 16-apr-09, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6100314.ece (subscription required)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Dan van der Vat (29 April 2009), "Jack Good" (obituary), The Guardian, p. 32, retrieved 9 October 2013
^ Appendix to Barrow-Green, June. "'A corrective to the spirit of too exclusively pure mathematics': Robert Smith (1689-1768) and his prizes at Cambridge University." Annals of science 56.3 (1999): 271-316.
^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma: The Battle for the Code, p. 189.
^ Chess Notes 4034. The code-breakers by Edward Winter; based on a report from CHESS, February 1945, p. 73.
^ British Chess magazine, February 1945, p36
^ "Good, Irving John", CV, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 6 April 2009, retrieved 9 April 2017
^ View/Search Fellows of the ASA, accessed 2016-08-20.
^ Salsburg, David (2002), The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, Macmillan, p. 222, ISBN 9781466801783 .
^ "The interaction algorithm and practical fourier analysis," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 361–372, 1958, addendum: ibid. 22 (2), 373–375 (1960).
^ "The mystery of Go", The New Scientist, January 1965, pp. 172–74.
^ I.J. Good, "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" Archived 28 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine. (HTML), Advances in Computers, vol. 6, 1965.
^ Barrat, James (2013). Our final invention : artificial intelligence and the end of the human era (First ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312622374. In the bio, playfully written in the third person, Good summarized his life’s milestones, including a probably never before seen account of his work at Bletchley Park with Turing. But here’s what he wrote in 1998 about the first superintelligence, and his late-in-the-game U-turn: [The paper] 'Speculations Concerning the First Ultra-intelligent Machine' (1965) . . . began: 'The survival of man depends on the early construction of an ultra-intelligent machine.' Those were his [Good’s] words during the Cold War, and he now suspects that 'survival' should be replaced by 'extinction.' He thinks that, because of international competition, we cannot prevent the machines from taking over. He thinks we are lemmings. He said also that 'probably Man will construct the deus ex machina in his own image.'
^ I.J. Good, "The Interface Between Statistics and Philosophy of Science," Statistical Science, vol. 3, no. 4, 1988, pp. 386–97.
^ http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/story.php?relyear=2009&itemno=276
^ http://io9.com/why-a-superintelligent-machine-may-be-the-last-thing-we-1440091472
^ Virginia Tech news release of Good's death.

References[edit]

Dan van der Vat, "Jack Good" (obituary), The Guardian, 29 April 2009, p. 32.
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma: The Battle for the Code, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000, ISBN 978-0-297-84251-4.

External links[edit]

I. J. Good at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
Good's web page at Virginia Tech
Bibliography ("Shorter Publications List", running to 2300 items) (PDF)
Biography focusing on Good's role in the history of computing
Project Euclid An interview with Good can be downloaded from here
VT Image Base Photographs
Obituary, Virginia Tech, 6 April 2009
Obituary, Daily Telegraph, 10 April 2009
Obituary, The Times, 16 April 2009
Obituary, The Independent, 14 May 2009
Eulogy Mathematical eulogy (with Maple code) by Doron Zeilberger, 2 December 2009

[Passings-1] "Passings". Los Angeles Times. 13 April 2009. Retrieved 13 April 2009.

[The_Times-2] The Times of 16-apr-09, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6100314.ece (subscription required)

[GuardianObit-3] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Dan van der Vat (29 April 2009), "Jack Good" (obituary), The Guardian, p. 32, retrieved 9 October 2013

[4] Appendix to Barrow-Green, June. "'A corrective to the spirit of too exclusively pure mathematics': Robert Smith (1689-1768) and his prizes at Cambridge University." Annals of science 56.3 (1999): 271-316.

[5] Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma: The Battle for the Code, p. 189.

[6] Chess Notes 4034. The code-breakers by Edward Winter; based on a report from CHESS, February 1945, p. 73.

[7] British Chess magazine, February 1945, p36

[8] "Good, Irving John", CV, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 6 April 2009, retrieved 9 April 2017

[9] View/Search Fellows of the ASA, accessed 2016-08-20.

[10] Salsburg, David (2002), The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, Macmillan, p. 222, ISBN 9781466801783 .

[11] "The interaction algorithm and practical fourier analysis," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 361–372, 1958, addendum: ibid. 22 (2), 373–375 (1960).

[12] "The mystery of Go", The New Scientist, January 1965, pp. 172–74.

[13] I.J. Good, "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" Archived 28 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine. (HTML), Advances in Computers, vol. 6, 1965.

[14] Barrat, James (2013). Our final invention : artificial intelligence and the end of the human era (First ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312622374. In the bio, playfully written in the third person, Good summarized his life’s milestones, including a probably never before seen account of his work at Bletchley Park with Turing. But here’s what he wrote in 1998 about the first superintelligence, and his late-in-the-game U-turn: [The paper] 'Speculations Concerning the First Ultra-intelligent Machine' (1965) . . . began: 'The survival of man depends on the early construction of an ultra-intelligent machine.' Those were his [Good’s] words during the Cold War, and he now suspects that 'survival' should be replaced by 'extinction.' He thinks that, because of international competition, we cannot prevent the machines from taking over. He thinks we are lemmings. He said also that 'probably Man will construct the deus ex machina in his own image.'

[15] I.J. Good, "The Interface Between Statistics and Philosophy of Science," Statistical Science, vol. 3, no. 4, 1988, pp. 386–97.

[16] ttp://www.vtnews.vt.edu/story.php?relyear=2009&itemno=276

[17] ttp://io9.com/why-a-superintelligent-machine-may-be-the-last-thing-we-1440091472

[18] Virginia Tech news release of Good's death.

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Mercury	Hg	I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift
Venus	Na	or the battle to the strong
Earth	Xe	nor does food come to the wise
Mars	Fe	or wealth to the brilliant
Jupiter	Si	or favor to the learned;
Saturn	K	but time
Uranus	Ur	and chance happen to them all.

ABRA	HA	M
IS	A	AC
J	AC	OB

Judah contains "had' backwards	Ve nus contains half the worrd love and sun. Revelation 12:1	Saumrai nothing to do with Uncle Sam, Samael, Samson or computers.	Ivan, my fathers name, has nothing to do with: NAVIDAD over CHRISTMAS	Amoz, father of Isaiah is a world trying to imprison his son while he controls him. Isa 20
Job has nothing to do with "the Trilubation'	Medusa has everythign to do with the DMB song "The stone"	You found God on `1st and Amistad	Adonai nothing to do with computers.	A.D. is the time line, and my initials.
Mary has something to do with "why" and "sea"	get me a job.	Adidas god telling AD he's not sad. Listen.	Wall and halls fade away -DMB "wearehouse" my middle name is Mars.	TPR's "Dear Sister" is not about dawn being home or my sister's gfven name
authority tells me I am "thor" or an "author" again Y.	AMD makes computer chips, is my initials	Moses spoke with a programming language (Lisp)	Exodus spells "let there be light" in Linux	Adam has nothing at al to do with "morning" must be "setting son"
Joshua's father is a letter, and the "sea" of Egypt	Judas, "J" no sad about being J and world hating. Feed me.	Jerusalem Dr. Who's question answered by, wait for it, I am Legend. Air-y.	St means "Saint"	Neptune has nothing to do with nepotism or music
Yahu, YHVH, Who-ah? ^ Cindy Who? knowAdamah is @	Samson this guy is cleary not the "son of sam."	ha'esh the word for holy fire does not contain a parted sea--it parts the sea.	Prometheus batles an "eagle," name contains country pressing eagle's people.	Amduat means "underworld" in Egyptianish, contains my initials
Jupiter, Hey Zeus, and P'tah might relate to "never never land"	Eve is short for Everyone. See Genesis 1:2 and the Holy Grail.	Adonis "cousin" dies with one eye in the mirror and dreams all girls should be his partner.	Eternity contains the word "and" 4 times in Latin, Matrix, Rock, and Spanish. It's why.. "eternity."	God predicted 9/11 and told the world through the fiery words of a President named Bus

3 And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light.
ד וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאוֹר, כִּי-טוֹב; וַיַּבְדֵּל אֱלֹהִים, בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ.	4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
ה וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם, וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה; וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם אֶחָד. {פ}	5 And God called the light Day, and thedarkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. {P}
ו וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, יְהִי רָקִיעַ בְּתוֹךְ הַמָּיִם, וִיהִי מַבְדִּיל, בֵּין מַיִם לָמָיִם.	6 And God said: 'Let there be a firmament in themidst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.'
ז וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹהִים, אֶת-הָרָקִיעַ, וַיַּבְדֵּל בֵּין הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מִתַּחַת לָרָקִיעַ, וּבֵין הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מֵעַל לָרָקִיעַ; וַיְהִי-כֵן.	7 And God made the firmament, and divided thewaters which were under the firmament from thewaters which were above the firmament; and it was so.
ח וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָרָקִיעַ, שָׁמָיִם; וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם שֵׁנִי. {פ}	8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. {P}
ט וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, יִקָּווּ הַמַּיִם מִתַּחַת הַשָּׁמַיִם אֶל-מָקוֹם אֶחָד, וְתֵרָאֶה, הַיַּבָּשָׁה; וַיְהִי-כֵן.	9 And God said: 'Let the waters under theheaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so.
י וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לַיַּבָּשָׁה אֶרֶץ, וּלְמִקְוֵה הַמַּיִם קָרָא יַמִּים; וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים, כִּי-טוֹב.	10 And God called the dry land Earth, and thegathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good.


002:034 Khan	:	And (remember) when We said to the angels: "Prostrate yourselves before Adam.". And they prostrated except Iblis (Satan), he refused and was proud and was one of the disbelievers (disobedient to Allah).

002:034 Sherali	:	And remember the time when WE said to the angels 'Submit to ADAM,' and they all submitted. But Iblis did not. He refused and deem himself too big; and he was of the disbelievers.

Verifiable proof we live in The Matrix, woven through it a map to building Heaven of it.. and of an insane global conspiracy to hide this proof that literally is in every word... and every song, and every town (... is Babylon... it's as crazy as it's ever been.... all we have is ... no).

1. Water into blood (דָם): Ex. 7:14–24[edit]

In Hebrew Exodus means Names, read in reverse and translated from Unix Commands: "LET THERE BE LIGHT"

NOW.

Are eye Dr. Who or Master Y?

They Sung "It's Rael..."

Oopsy.

Home is where the Heart is...

We are in dire straights.

Hell is ending, thank your lucky star.

This is a story about turning Holy Water into people, the multitude into stars, from sea to shining sea.

Names, Elements, and Unix Commands

In Hebrew Exodus means Names, read in reverse and translated from Unix Commands: “LET THERE BE LIGHT”

God’s “genes” shining throughout Genesis

From John Hancock to Philip K. Dick by way of Richard Nixon and Deepthroat

The Page of Hazards

The fire of Hell

Let there be light

The Tribulation

What if God was one of us?

John F. Kennedy and Adam M. Dobrin together on ending the Plague of Darkness

Just before the beginning.. The TOC looked much prettier before I pasted these e-mails here as a … record.

… IN THE BEGINNING ...

A number of prophetic verses regarding the Day of the Lord and the Sign of the Son now become much more clear, in light of 9/11 being the day..

Earlier in the book of Exodus.. OUI, the PPL

IS RA EL?

J ER USA LE M

Technocracy, Die Bold... Mary Land and Moby Dick

MIDAS, JUDAS, AND ADIDAS

KEY NES AND LOCK E

One night in Heaven, a day cruise to Atlantis... and rocking the world with an Iron Rod

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. John 7:17

Minority Report or Linguistic proof of Creation?

Like a thief in the night. (thief.lamc.la: on time and pre-crime)

The nations will mourn and the elements will melt with fervent heat.

... Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception ...

➏ 5 4 3 2 1

The EP "virtual" love affair of "Do you understand who I am, do you even want to know me?" and Taylor Michel Momsen.

do you not think

an angel rides in the whirlwind,

directing this storm?

A talking and walking Magic Decoder Ring

Monday, Junkanoo. All you hear is Babel? "Still I build my towers high, and still I burn this Earthen fire; still I burn this Earthen fire." -Cake

Raise your hand if you think Donald Trump should acquire the newspaper or TV station you (might) work for.

User:Damonthesis:talk

Today's date is 19 Kislev 5777, 12:04 AM, Mas or Mor?

Bible code

I am nowhere near as big of a dick as you are going to think I am.

Tricky Dick and now … it’s really a John Hancock

Adverb[edit]

Usage notes[edit]

Abbreviations[edit]

Are eye Dr. Who or Master Y?

They Sung "It's Rael..."

Oopsy.

Home is where the Heart is...

The Legend of St. George and the Dragon

Biblical text[edit]

Achilles' heel

Septuagint, Talmud and Targums[edit]

Ancient Christian versions[edit]

Jewish interpretations[edit]

Christian interpretations[edit]

Muslim interpretation[edit]

Hosea 1New International Version (NIV)

Hosea's Wife and Children

Name[edit]

Location[edit]

Family[edit]

Christian thought[edit]

Horus

Etymology

Origin mythology

Mythological roles

Sky god

Conflict between Horus and Set

Homer

"Lives of Homer"[edit]

Works attributed to Homer[edit]

Homeric style[edit]