6 ms·

Alan Turing's Suicide in Doubt

208 points by wr1472 14y ago

adventureful 14y ago
That's an extremely horrible story that I previously knew very little about. It was 60 years ago, but it felt a bit mentally violating to read it now (how Turing was treated). It's worth noting that the claims by Copeland are seemingly just as unsupportable as those he's arguing against. For example this: "immediately after his conviction had told a friend: "The day of the trial was by no means disagreeable. Whilst in custody with the other criminals, I had a very agreeable sense of irresponsibility, rather like being back at school." "On the face of it, these are not the expressions of someone ground down by adversity." It's just as plausible that Turing was lying to his friend about his real state of mind. That's an extraordinarily common thing for people to do, and some do it no matter how dire their current circumstances. Copeland doesn't do a very good job of supporting the notion that it wasn't suicide (and it may well have not been).
- epo 14y ago
  We can't know, we will never know and all speculation is facile and pointless. Your speculation, based on nothing other than a BBC web page doubly so.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    I wasn't speculating either direction about Turing's death, but what I said regarding Copeland's statement was correct. Judging someone's state of mind by what they project externally is not an accurate approach. Taking a single psych course would inform you of that, so would knowing someone that has committed suicide without the cliche external signals.
  - andreasvc 14y ago
    By the same token we should give up on things like archaeology as well. We will never know for certain, but we can reason that given the evidence we do have, such and such is a likely scenario.
  - gruseom 14y ago
    Not all speculation is pointless. There's a point in knowing that the evidence for Turing's suicide is inconclusive. A recent biography of Van Gogh challenges the evidence for his suicide too.
- jberryman 14y ago
  Right, if you look at what Tyler Clementi was saying on and offline before he committed suicide you'll see the same sort of thing. (not trying to draw too many comparisons here)
- Someone 14y ago
  Which of Copeland's claims do you dispute? I assume those statements about what he said at varous times a d about his chemical experiments are true. From there, I find Copeland's conclusion perfectly reasonable: "The thing is to tell the truth in so far as we know it, and not to speculate." "In a way we have in modern times been recreating the narrative of Turing's life, and we have recreated him as an unhappy young man who committed suicide. But the evidence is not there."* "The exact circumstances of Turing's death will probably always be unclear," Prof Copeland concludes."
- ScottBurson 14y ago
  It's just as plausible that Turing was lying to his friend about his real state of mind It's also plausible that he wasn't lying, but actually felt more cheerful having made the decision to end his life. This is also not unheard of. Still, Copeland makes an interesting case. I'm inclined to agree -- the fact that Turing had cyanide in his house, ostensibly for purposes other than suicide, makes accident seem at least equally plausible. It's tragic either way, of course.
  - defrost 14y ago
    He was also a classic example of a British eccentric inventor, at one point he fashioned his own mercury delay lines for digital storage. I have no trouble at all with the notion that he (foolishly) had a small unventilated room with cyanide, mercury, bismuth, probably a small kiln furnace for metal casting, floor to ceiling racks of odds and ends and semi regular small explosions and benchtop melt downs. It's a lifestyle that's accidentally killed more than one person and it could very well have claimed Turing.
  - eternalban 14y ago
    > It's tragic either way, of course. True. But the point being it may have been criminal, or perhaps not even remotely related to his sexuality.
samwillis 14y ago
I think the point made at the end of the article is what we should take away from this. We will never know the truth about how he died and it does him an injustice to speculate as the coroner at the time did. We should instead celebrate his life and achievements, not let his death and persecution define him.
- raganwald 14y ago
  Fortunately we do celebrate his achievements. The Turing Award is handed out for contribution to the field, not for overcoming persecution.
rmc 14y ago
at the inquest, the coroner, Mr JAK Ferns declared: "In a man of his type, one never knows what his mental processes are going to do next." What he meant by "of this type" is unclear. Oh please, we know exactly what the coroner meant by "of this type". He meant homosexuals. He (and many many other people in the medial and government at the time) thought homosexuality was a mental illness and very unnatural affliction.
- geuis 14y ago
  The man was a genius. He was largely responsible for creating the foundations of modern society in many ways, in his work with computation, cryptology, AI, and other fields. "Of this type" means that he was an out of the box thinker and hard to predict. It in no ways should be understood as you are stating.
  - schrijver 14y ago
    How can you be so sure geuis? It’s well possible the coroner wasn’t aware of Turing’s genius at all.
    - planetguy 14y ago
      We're well into speculative territory here. Are we suggesting that the coroner was aware of his homosexuality but not of the fact he was a brilliant mathematician? I mean, the coroner must at least have known that he had a chemistry lab, working with dangerous chemicals, in the house. That's way more unusual than gaying it up.
      - easp 14y ago
        Well, he was a man who had taken female hormones as an alternative to going to prison, and who had indicated that the hormones had given him breasts. Do you think a dead man with breasts would have gone unnoticed by the coroner? Do you think he might have wondered why Turing had breasts? It's quite reasonable to think that the coroner would have known that he was homosexual, and it is quite reasonable to think that would have been viewed as a flaw, since, you know, the whole state-sanctioned "choice" between prison and chemical castration thing.
Produce 14y ago
This is stomach turing. Sorry, had to inject a little humor because this is actually making me sad. The way he was treated by the authorities (seriously, chemical castration!?) is beyond hellish. I'm ashamed that I live in the country which perpetrated this. And it all happened just a lifetime ago.
- vladd 14y ago
  Today most US states deny the right of marrying the person you love. Which makes me wondering why are we feeling so strongly, as a human race, to regulate what other people are able to do (even in cases where it doesn't affect us) and to inflict punishment on those that break the social norms. It's probably a combination of evolutionary traits, fear of unknown, desire for protection of self at the expense of others, and the desire to be in groups with similar characteristics of our own. Only lately it appears that we embraced 'diversity', where we respect the right of others to be, behave and think differently than our own ways, without feeling threatened by them or feeling the need to prosecute them. Why is this happening only now and how can we make sure that we don't revert to the old ways? Part of it is history, I think - we're more aware now of the mistakes of the past, the world-wide wars, and the poverty effects of oppressive regimes. We also improved agriculture and technology to the point where most of us can have a decent living without stealing from others, conducting wars with our neighbors or by practicing slavery / communism. It might very well be the case of the famous saying, "you cannot do democracy on an empty stomach". I only hope the trend will accelerate and that we'll be able to reap up the benefits of mutual respect and decency for human rights sooner rather than later. And never return to the past.
- adimitrov 14y ago
  Well, chemical castration is still used to "combat" paedophilia. I'm pretty sure the Ancient Greeks and Romans would find that repulsive. Now, I'm a child of my time, so I think homosexuality is OK, and I think paedophilia is a crime. But were I a child of, say, the thirties or forties, where in my youth fascist regimes burned homosexuals by the thousands, what would I say? Would I have the empathy, or the courage to understand and express against the strong sentiment of society my understanding for the gay cause? I also want to note that "chemical castration" is a harsh term, and I find the treatment to be an interesting, indeed even acceptable, alternative to just straight incarceration. In the face of a force society considers dangerous to itself, it is a good thing that we can use medication to combat it — and we still do when applicable, for example also with psychopaths and other severe mental illnesses. That homosexuality was viewed as dangerous to society back then is certainly sad, even terrible. But how will people fifty years hence look onto our debates about whether to allow people to marry? How will they look onto our treatment of socially not accepted sexual deviants. Social ousting, sex offenders list, incarceration, the eroding of free speech in the name of reducing just the chances of sexually "deviant" activity? People back then did what they did because they thought it right. It is not what they did that we should find repulsive, because their methods are by and large the same we employ today when faced with similar value judgements. It is the why. Homosexuality is not a mental illness. We have finally learned this, and I hope it won't take more than the dying out of the current generation of politicians for society at large to accept this. (I'm sorry to have drawn a parallel between homosexuality and paedophilia — I'm not meaning to suggest any similarity between the two on a biological or indeed conceptual level. I wanted to explain my view that the concept of homosexuality in the society of the 50s was indeed a similar one to the concept of paedophilia today.)
JonnieCache 14y ago
I recommend listening to the audio clip that accompanies the article as it includes the fact, omitted from the text, that while the police were able to smell cyanide in his lab days after his death, 50% of men are genetically unable to smell it at all. This is surely crucial.
- gwern 14y ago
  > This is surely crucial. And worth investigating, surely? If it is genetic, then this may be testable via his relatives, or more intrusively, his remains.
antihero 14y ago
This is pretty distasteful on his birthday.
klmr 14y ago
While all this raises some interesting questions, the assertion that he had born a hormonal treatment robbing him of his sexual desires, and playing havoc with his body’s hormone balance “with good humour” seems ludicrous. In fact, the treatment was more likely a serious burden, both physically and emotionally. And if Turing acted cheerful in spite of that this suggests he was hiding his real emotions under a mask.
- teeja 14y ago
  Hear hear. It's a dismissive and flippant assertion of the kind made by a people who deservedly feel guilty. The "chemical castration" was an option created by people who were clearly willing to do worse. No doubt the behavior of the Cambridge Five created a climate justifying suspicion by "the type so inclined".
antidoh 14y ago
A lot of people are surprised to learn of Turing's treatment. If you're at all interested in this, you might think about reading biographies and other material on Turing and other computer scientists. Or the history of computer science. Or the history of science.
jdietrich 14y ago
See also: The death of Gareth Williams, a brilliant young mathematician and cryptographer who died in mysterious circumstances in 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams
- eternalban 14y ago
  > "mysterious circumstances" "His decomposing naked remains were found in a red North Face bag, padlocked from the outside, in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom." The mystery being how he managed to lock the bag from the inside.
  - toyg 14y ago
    It's now accepted that he didn't. In truth, such hypothesis was clearly ludicrous from the start, to anyone with half a brain; it was kept dangling just to distract the public, trying to paint it as "just another homo killed by his own weird fetish". Either this was a cold-war style assassination, or the guy brought home a stranger too many; we'll likely never know the truth about it anyway.
- notatoad 14y ago
  I don't know if you have any information not in the Wikipedia article but I don't see anything there suggesting suicide was ever considered as a possibility. All is see is the police and coroner saying he was murdered but they don't know who did it.
gruseom 14y ago
"Indeed, the police never tested the apple for the presence of cyanide." That is dumbfounding. It alone calls the verdict into question. Edit: according to http://sciencemuseumdiscovery.com/blogs/insight/the-spirit-of-alan-turing/ http://sciencemuseumdiscovery.com/blogs/insight/the-spirit-o..., autopsy found that Turing's stomach contained four ounces of cyanide solution and the apple had nothing to do with it.
- DanBC 14y ago
  That's not mentioned by the article, yet it seems important. 4 ounces is 110 ml - a reasonably bug gulp. It's not the kind of dose that you'd get from accidentally licking your finger, or absent mindedly eating an apple that had rested in a splash of cyanide. The article is right about modern inquests needing clear evidence before they record a verdict of suicide. But that was even more so in the past, when suicide was a crime, and much more likely to be seen as sinful.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    when suicide was a crime Punishable by death, ironically.
    - gruseom 14y ago
      Punishable by death, ironically Where and when was that?
      - spullara 14y ago
        It is suicide, if you successfully commit it, you are dead. Everywhere, for all time.
        gruseom 14y ago
        Oh I see – I find myself in a lame joke subthread. Must remember to stick to Emacs with jrockway.
SagelyGuru 14y ago
Ask yourself in what circumstances might a coroner come to a hurried 'suicide' conclusion in the absence of any supporting evidence? Instead of evidence engage in character assassination of 'a man of this type' having 'unpredictable mental processes'? If the coroner did not find any suicide evidence it can mean only one thing: there wasn't any. Furthermore, why would he claim that Turing ate a poisoned apple when it was not poisoned? Why would Turing's visiting Norwegian friend disappear without trace? Turing had become a convicted criminal and overnight he turned into a security nightmare: someone with detailed knowledge of secrets but without the security clearance.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  He was convicted two years before he died.
unabridged 14y ago
Could it be possible he was assassinated by the Russians (or I guess even by UK/US if they felt he might end up in the hands of the Russians)? I'm assuming by this time he was well known in intelligence circles for his work during WW2, this is someone that could possibly turn the tide in a war, he was a very valuable/dangerous man.
alanh 14y ago
> Although famed for his cerebral powers, Turing had also always shown an experimental bent, … Nit-picky of me, but experimentation is hardly counter to cerebral activity, but rather a reflection of it.

208 points by wr1472 14y ago

That's an extremely horrible story that I previously knew very little about. It was 60 years ago, but it felt a bit mentally violating to read it now (how Turing was treated). It's worth noting that the claims by Copeland are seemingly just as unsupportable as those he's arguing against. For example this: "immediately after his conviction had told a friend: "The day of the trial was by no means disagreeable. Whilst in custody with the other criminals, I had a very agreeable sense of irresponsibility, rather like being back at school." "On the face of it, these are not the expressions of someone ground down by adversity." It's just as plausible that Turing was lying to his friend about his real state of mind. That's an extraordinarily common thing for people to do, and some do it no matter how dire their current circumstances. Copeland doesn't do a very good job of supporting the notion that it wasn't suicide (and it may well have not been).

epo 14y ago
We can't know, we will never know and all speculation is facile and pointless. Your speculation, based on nothing other than a BBC web page doubly so.
- adventureful 14y ago
  I wasn't speculating either direction about Turing's death, but what I said regarding Copeland's statement was correct. Judging someone's state of mind by what they project externally is not an accurate approach. Taking a single psych course would inform you of that, so would knowing someone that has committed suicide without the cliche external signals.
- andreasvc 14y ago
  By the same token we should give up on things like archaeology as well. We will never know for certain, but we can reason that given the evidence we do have, such and such is a likely scenario.
- gruseom 14y ago
  Not all speculation is pointless. There's a point in knowing that the evidence for Turing's suicide is inconclusive. A recent biography of Van Gogh challenges the evidence for his suicide too.
jberryman 14y ago
Right, if you look at what Tyler Clementi was saying on and offline before he committed suicide you'll see the same sort of thing. (not trying to draw too many comparisons here)
Someone 14y ago
Which of Copeland's claims do you dispute? I assume those statements about what he said at varous times a d about his chemical experiments are true. From there, I find Copeland's conclusion perfectly reasonable: "The thing is to tell the truth in so far as we know it, and not to speculate." "In a way we have in modern times been recreating the narrative of Turing's life, and we have recreated him as an unhappy young man who committed suicide. But the evidence is not there."* "The exact circumstances of Turing's death will probably always be unclear," Prof Copeland concludes."
ScottBurson 14y ago
It's just as plausible that Turing was lying to his friend about his real state of mind It's also plausible that he wasn't lying, but actually felt more cheerful having made the decision to end his life. This is also not unheard of. Still, Copeland makes an interesting case. I'm inclined to agree -- the fact that Turing had cyanide in his house, ostensibly for purposes other than suicide, makes accident seem at least equally plausible. It's tragic either way, of course.
- defrost 14y ago
  He was also a classic example of a British eccentric inventor, at one point he fashioned his own mercury delay lines for digital storage. I have no trouble at all with the notion that he (foolishly) had a small unventilated room with cyanide, mercury, bismuth, probably a small kiln furnace for metal casting, floor to ceiling racks of odds and ends and semi regular small explosions and benchtop melt downs. It's a lifestyle that's accidentally killed more than one person and it could very well have claimed Turing.
- eternalban 14y ago
  > It's tragic either way, of course. True. But the point being it may have been criminal, or perhaps not even remotely related to his sexuality.

samwillis 14y ago

I think the point made at the end of the article is what we should take away from this. We will never know the truth about how he died and it does him an injustice to speculate as the coroner at the time did. We should instead celebrate his life and achievements, not let his death and persecution define him.

raganwald 14y ago
Fortunately we do celebrate his achievements. The Turing Award is handed out for contribution to the field, not for overcoming persecution.

rmc 14y ago

at the inquest, the coroner, Mr JAK Ferns declared: "In a man of his type, one never knows what his mental processes are going to do next." What he meant by "of this type" is unclear. Oh please, we know exactly what the coroner meant by "of this type". He meant homosexuals. He (and many many other people in the medial and government at the time) thought homosexuality was a mental illness and very unnatural affliction.

geuis 14y ago
The man was a genius. He was largely responsible for creating the foundations of modern society in many ways, in his work with computation, cryptology, AI, and other fields. "Of this type" means that he was an out of the box thinker and hard to predict. It in no ways should be understood as you are stating.
- schrijver 14y ago
  How can you be so sure geuis? It’s well possible the coroner wasn’t aware of Turing’s genius at all.
  - planetguy 14y ago
    We're well into speculative territory here. Are we suggesting that the coroner was aware of his homosexuality but not of the fact he was a brilliant mathematician? I mean, the coroner must at least have known that he had a chemistry lab, working with dangerous chemicals, in the house. That's way more unusual than gaying it up.
    - easp 14y ago
      Well, he was a man who had taken female hormones as an alternative to going to prison, and who had indicated that the hormones had given him breasts. Do you think a dead man with breasts would have gone unnoticed by the coroner? Do you think he might have wondered why Turing had breasts? It's quite reasonable to think that the coroner would have known that he was homosexual, and it is quite reasonable to think that would have been viewed as a flaw, since, you know, the whole state-sanctioned "choice" between prison and chemical castration thing.

Produce 14y ago

This is stomach turing. Sorry, had to inject a little humor because this is actually making me sad. The way he was treated by the authorities (seriously, chemical castration!?) is beyond hellish. I'm ashamed that I live in the country which perpetrated this. And it all happened just a lifetime ago.

vladd 14y ago
Today most US states deny the right of marrying the person you love. Which makes me wondering why are we feeling so strongly, as a human race, to regulate what other people are able to do (even in cases where it doesn't affect us) and to inflict punishment on those that break the social norms. It's probably a combination of evolutionary traits, fear of unknown, desire for protection of self at the expense of others, and the desire to be in groups with similar characteristics of our own. Only lately it appears that we embraced 'diversity', where we respect the right of others to be, behave and think differently than our own ways, without feeling threatened by them or feeling the need to prosecute them. Why is this happening only now and how can we make sure that we don't revert to the old ways? Part of it is history, I think - we're more aware now of the mistakes of the past, the world-wide wars, and the poverty effects of oppressive regimes. We also improved agriculture and technology to the point where most of us can have a decent living without stealing from others, conducting wars with our neighbors or by practicing slavery / communism. It might very well be the case of the famous saying, "you cannot do democracy on an empty stomach". I only hope the trend will accelerate and that we'll be able to reap up the benefits of mutual respect and decency for human rights sooner rather than later. And never return to the past.
adimitrov 14y ago
Well, chemical castration is still used to "combat" paedophilia. I'm pretty sure the Ancient Greeks and Romans would find that repulsive. Now, I'm a child of my time, so I think homosexuality is OK, and I think paedophilia is a crime. But were I a child of, say, the thirties or forties, where in my youth fascist regimes burned homosexuals by the thousands, what would I say? Would I have the empathy, or the courage to understand and express against the strong sentiment of society my understanding for the gay cause? I also want to note that "chemical castration" is a harsh term, and I find the treatment to be an interesting, indeed even acceptable, alternative to just straight incarceration. In the face of a force society considers dangerous to itself, it is a good thing that we can use medication to combat it — and we still do when applicable, for example also with psychopaths and other severe mental illnesses. That homosexuality was viewed as dangerous to society back then is certainly sad, even terrible. But how will people fifty years hence look onto our debates about whether to allow people to marry? How will they look onto our treatment of socially not accepted sexual deviants. Social ousting, sex offenders list, incarceration, the eroding of free speech in the name of reducing just the chances of sexually "deviant" activity? People back then did what they did because they thought it right. It is not what they did that we should find repulsive, because their methods are by and large the same we employ today when faced with similar value judgements. It is the why. Homosexuality is not a mental illness. We have finally learned this, and I hope it won't take more than the dying out of the current generation of politicians for society at large to accept this. (I'm sorry to have drawn a parallel between homosexuality and paedophilia — I'm not meaning to suggest any similarity between the two on a biological or indeed conceptual level. I wanted to explain my view that the concept of homosexuality in the society of the 50s was indeed a similar one to the concept of paedophilia today.)

JonnieCache 14y ago

I recommend listening to the audio clip that accompanies the article as it includes the fact, omitted from the text, that while the police were able to smell cyanide in his lab days after his death, 50% of men are genetically unable to smell it at all. This is surely crucial.

gwern 14y ago
> This is surely crucial. And worth investigating, surely? If it is genetic, then this may be testable via his relatives, or more intrusively, his remains.

antihero 14y ago

This is pretty distasteful on his birthday.

klmr 14y ago

While all this raises some interesting questions, the assertion that he had born a hormonal treatment robbing him of his sexual desires, and playing havoc with his body’s hormone balance “with good humour” seems ludicrous. In fact, the treatment was more likely a serious burden, both physically and emotionally. And if Turing acted cheerful in spite of that this suggests he was hiding his real emotions under a mask.

teeja 14y ago
Hear hear. It's a dismissive and flippant assertion of the kind made by a people who deservedly feel guilty. The "chemical castration" was an option created by people who were clearly willing to do worse. No doubt the behavior of the Cambridge Five created a climate justifying suspicion by "the type so inclined".

antidoh 14y ago

A lot of people are surprised to learn of Turing's treatment. If you're at all interested in this, you might think about reading biographies and other material on Turing and other computer scientists. Or the history of computer science. Or the history of science.

jdietrich 14y ago

See also: The death of Gareth Williams, a brilliant young mathematician and cryptographer who died in mysterious circumstances in 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams

eternalban 14y ago
> "mysterious circumstances" "His decomposing naked remains were found in a red North Face bag, padlocked from the outside, in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom." The mystery being how he managed to lock the bag from the inside.
- toyg 14y ago
  It's now accepted that he didn't. In truth, such hypothesis was clearly ludicrous from the start, to anyone with half a brain; it was kept dangling just to distract the public, trying to paint it as "just another homo killed by his own weird fetish". Either this was a cold-war style assassination, or the guy brought home a stranger too many; we'll likely never know the truth about it anyway.
notatoad 14y ago
I don't know if you have any information not in the Wikipedia article but I don't see anything there suggesting suicide was ever considered as a possibility. All is see is the police and coroner saying he was murdered but they don't know who did it.

gruseom 14y ago

"Indeed, the police never tested the apple for the presence of cyanide." That is dumbfounding. It alone calls the verdict into question. Edit: according to http://sciencemuseumdiscovery.com/blogs/insight/the-spirit-of-alan-turing/ http://sciencemuseumdiscovery.com/blogs/insight/the-spirit-o..., autopsy found that Turing's stomach contained four ounces of cyanide solution and the apple had nothing to do with it.

DanBC 14y ago
That's not mentioned by the article, yet it seems important. 4 ounces is 110 ml - a reasonably bug gulp. It's not the kind of dose that you'd get from accidentally licking your finger, or absent mindedly eating an apple that had rested in a splash of cyanide. The article is right about modern inquests needing clear evidence before they record a verdict of suicide. But that was even more so in the past, when suicide was a crime, and much more likely to be seen as sinful.
- jrockway 14y ago
  when suicide was a crime Punishable by death, ironically.
  - gruseom 14y ago
    Punishable by death, ironically Where and when was that?
    - spullara 14y ago
      It is suicide, if you successfully commit it, you are dead. Everywhere, for all time.
      - gruseom 14y ago
        Oh I see – I find myself in a lame joke subthread. Must remember to stick to Emacs with jrockway.

SagelyGuru 14y ago

Ask yourself in what circumstances might a coroner come to a hurried 'suicide' conclusion in the absence of any supporting evidence? Instead of evidence engage in character assassination of 'a man of this type' having 'unpredictable mental processes'? If the coroner did not find any suicide evidence it can mean only one thing: there wasn't any. Furthermore, why would he claim that Turing ate a poisoned apple when it was not poisoned? Why would Turing's visiting Norwegian friend disappear without trace? Turing had become a convicted criminal and overnight he turned into a security nightmare: someone with detailed knowledge of secrets but without the security clearance.

WalterSear 14y ago
He was convicted two years before he died.

unabridged 14y ago

Could it be possible he was assassinated by the Russians (or I guess even by UK/US if they felt he might end up in the hands of the Russians)? I'm assuming by this time he was well known in intelligence circles for his work during WW2, this is someone that could possibly turn the tide in a war, he was a very valuable/dangerous man.

alanh 14y ago

> Although famed for his cerebral powers, Turing had also always shown an experimental bent, … Nit-picky of me, but experimentation is hardly counter to cerebral activity, but rather a reflection of it.