[ExI] turing movie

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf
Of Harvey Newstrom


>...Turing was only 40 years old and still working on secret cryptography
for the British government when he was arrested for being gay... the
government that he helped in defeating the Nazis decided that *Turing* was
the security threat and that to protect our way of life, *he* should be
barred from any further work on government encryption programs.  He was dead
of an apparent suicide two years later...
--
Harvey Newstrom   www.HarveyNewstrom.com
_______________________________________________


No doubt they will tell the rest of it, as they should.

I haven't followed the research, but last I heard there is reasonable doubt
Turing committed suicide.  I don't know how the theory has held up; perhaps
someone here knows or knows a reference.  There is a possibility Turing
perished by accidental poisoning from a chemistry experiment he was doing.  

My reasoning goes thus:  I am one who is deeply interested in many things.
Doing any kind of experimentation is the physical manifestation of
curiosity.  If one is sufficiently despondent to be driven to
self-destruction, my intuition tells me that curiosity and experimentation
would be the first casualty, and would have disappeared at least weeks
before the suicide.  Perhaps psychology hipsters among us, such as BillW
could comment, but it seems to me unlikely that one would go from performing
chemistry experiments to suicide in the same week.

This is not denying Turing was treated abominably for all the wrong reasons
by the British government; clearly he was.  To this day, that government has
failed to fully own the shame of that disgraceful affair.  Perhaps a good
cinematic treatment of Turing's life, which just tells the unembellished
truth, will help bring about resolution.

spike