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God's Lonely Programmer

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Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#121

Post by dereferenced2 »

m0th87 wrote: post #20

What fascinates me about Terry is that his schizophrenia doesn't somehow prevent his ability to make something as complex as an entire operating system. Maybe this suggests that while schizophrenics look discordant to the rest of us, there's an internal consistency that very much makes sense.

A computer offers direct irrefutable feedback about your input. If you program something that doesn't work, you get a syntax error.

The real world doesn't. If your beliefs about god, religion, etc are wrong, well.. it gets a lot murkier.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#122

Post by yebyen »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #101
innguest wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really makes it patently obvious, when the subject is a mentally ill person that is doing well for themselves, that the agenda of the collectivist is really about controlling how other people live, and the fact that they are mentally ill, or poor, or gay, or any other special group, is just an excuse to meddle with their lives. This doesn't affect just minorities. Oh, you want to marry someone? Well, then society…

I wish I knew how to disabuse these people from their collectivist hypnosis but as you can see from your interaction, they don't use reason - "leaving them alone isn't a good decision" is just a feel-good sentence with no substance. Why is it unreasonable to offer help to the mentally ill?

Or anyone, for that matter. "Do you need help" is something you can say to anyone, ill or not. What a horrible place it would be if the only people you can help are anyone who does not seem to be in immediate need of it.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#123

Post by jmduke »

MrBra wrote: post #97
jmduke wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting from the first page of @TempleOS's comments (censorship mine, of course): I spend my days clubbing retard-n s. CLUB! CLUB! DIE N ! CLUB! RETARD! N ! DIE!! CLUB! N ! Regardless of his mental state, this is not content that I want in any of my online communities.

Right, and the sense of my comment is that this does not necessarily imply that he would not actually work and then fit nice in team with a black guy, for example. That's just how I perceive that..

I don't think he would work and fit in with any person who objects to the casual use of that term, which is hopefully the overwhelming majority of the industry.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#124

Post by Tenhundfeld »

kstenerud wrote: post #110
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all you have to say. "No, thank you. Please leave me alone." And then you're left alone. We live in a world where we help each other. Offering help isn't a bad thing. Some people aren't as strong as you.

I wish I could impart upon you the disempowering effect of condescension. When you "offer help" to someone who is happy with where they're at, and not in distress, you're basically telling them that they probably can't make it without you stepping in to support them. You're telling them that they, the wretched ones, are dependent upon the real people, who come down from on high to help them sort their obviously broke…

This Terry guy collects disability and lives with his parents. He seems to be asking for help constantly by virtue of the fact that he's only surviving due to the generosity of society. Don't project your personal experience onto everyone else.

On a side note, I don't know anything about you, but judging solely from the comments in this thread, you are causing yourself so much unnecessary pain. You are the only one who controls what can hurt you, emotionally. If you are "HURT" because people offer to help, that is a tragedy. Apathy hurts. Rejection hurts. Being unable to do simple things others take for granted hurts. A well-intentioned stranger offering to help in a way that underestimates you, that shouldn't HURT.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#125

Post by anigbrowl »

fallat wrote: post #92
drivingmenuts wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To determine that might require face-to-face contact and since he is a diagnosed schizophrenic, it might still be unclear. Even if the racism only comes out during manic periods, it would be difficult to parse that in an online medium. Since very few of us are trained to deal with that sort of episode, it is probably best to avoid the issue entirely.

Why not just ask?

Terry's God is only as coherent as Terry's offerings of executable code on any given day, and He mediates all of Terry's social communication.

The best way to satisfy your vuriosity is to read his internal monologue stuff, which he documents religiously: http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/TADRants.h...

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#127

Post by MrBra »

jmduke wrote: post #123
MrBra wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and the sense of my comment is that this does not necessarily imply that he would not actually work and then fit nice in team with a black guy, for example. That's just how I perceive that..

I don't think he would work and fit in with any person who objects to the casual use of that term, which is hopefully the overwhelming majority of the industry.

Maybe there would be no reason to discuss about that once started working and that habit would probably sink in front of more interesting/important stuff.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#128

Post by lomnakkus »

67726e wrote: post #114
lomnakkus wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. People may say racist things without necessarily being racist. The difference between "being X-ist" and "saying X-ist thing" is basically predicated on having a "persistent belief that X" or having a "momentary belief that X". (I'm using "belief" in the philosophical sense.)

When you consistently espouse racist ideology, you're a racist. Or maybe a performance artist disguised as a Kazakh journalist, but most probably a racist. It could be that he just says these things all the time for the hell of it, or it could be that he believes what he says. I'll leave determining which is more likely as an exercise to the reader.

I was mostly talking about a person who cannot actually realize that they're saying racist things (through impairment of their faculties), but I guess I kind of formulated that badly. I certainly didn't mean to be some sort of apologist.

FWIW, I was thinking of this with my original comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdxeFcQtaU

(... but I see that it doesn't necessarily apply in this context.)

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#129

Post by fuligo »

I wonder if he would get this much positive attention if he wasn't a Christian extremist. Would the article have conveniently left out his racism if he was, say, a militant antisemite instead of being focused on black people as he is? Would people admire his worship of a random number generator if he used it to spit out slogans of a religious text that isn't as revered as the Bible?

While his schizophrenia probably comes with very bad episodes, there is absolutely nothing that can be found in his own words allowing for the conclusion that this view is just a tourette-like symptom. On the contrary. His violence-laden hate speech is one of the constant factors defining him. Contrary to what has been suggested here he doesn't use slurs randomly and generically, either. There's a story behind his views that is just as coherent as the cute "god's own programmer" schtick.

Where his illness clearly manifests is the interpretation of random events all having a specific meaning. The radio talking to him, all the events in his life being just so that an invisible power is communicating with him, all the way down to literally a random number generator whose nature he cannot grasp. That's schizophrenia. If there was an adequate cure or means of suppressing it, this world view would completely go away.

It's more complicated to separate the man from the illness when it comes to pretty much anything else. At the very least I would be extremely hesitant to call him, as people do in this thread, an "inspiration". I'm not even sure it's safe to be in the same room with him.

Closing with a quote straight from his most recent account:

  "I spend my days clubbing retard-n$ggers. CLUB! CLUB! 
   DIE N$GGER! CLUB! RETARD! N$GGER! DIE!! CLUB! N$GGER!*"
HN's majority opinion of this guy makes me more uncomfortable than his comments by themselves. I don't get how we can label this guy as being "high functioning" and at the same time sweep 99% of everything he ever says under the rug. It's either or.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#130

Post by josteink »

anigbrowl wrote: post #109
alexbecker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While regrettable, his hellban is entirely necessary. Almost every comment he makes refers to "f------- n------" (censorship mine). To quote one from his page of most recent comments: "I spend my days clubbing r----d-n------. CLUB! CLUB! DIE N-----! CLUB! R----D! N------! DIE!! CLUB! N-----!" That's not really something we can have on HN. (edit: right, asterisks are formatting here)

Inc ase people weren't aware, there's a 'showdead' option in your HN profile that lets you see dead comments and submissions, eg those from hellbanned accounts. I don't think terry's comments are so consistently offensive as suggested above but he does post a lot of stuff that is bizarre or offensive to the casual reader, so the hellban makes sense. Other times he posts lucid informative comments on technical topics…

Inc ase people weren't aware, there's a 'showdead' option in your HN profile

Thank you. I wasn't aware of this, and I'm glad I can sidestep what has (in my opinion) at times been a too narrow moderation of these forums.

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