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God's Lonely Programmer

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Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#141

Post by king_jester »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #58
GuiA wrote: post #40

I'm a huge fan of Terry's work, because he works hard, has a clear vision for what he wants to do, and makes it happen. That's more than can be said of many self-professed hackers who never see a project to completion or are motivated solely by peer recognition. You may disagree with the logical coherency of his goals - I for one think the "temple for God" thing is pure kookery - but he is a master craftsman, and in…

Every time his story comes up, there are people who respond with answers along the lines of "what can we do for him? can we find him assisted employment? can we raise money for him?" etc. While these comments are surely well intentioned, they end up being mostly condescending and out of place, as if talking about a completely helpless being. He is openly racist. He can't find a job on his own, unless it's among other…

> His racism probably isn't his fault. It's probably a factor of his condition.

I don't know if his racism is the result of or related to his condition. However, even if it is, so what? Why exactly does that behavior get to be overlooked as though it doesn't have a real effect on people who suffer from it? Why does he get assistance to find a job while non-white people struggle to find work in tech?

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#143

Post by pluma »

jmduke wrote: post #89
MrBra wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to him saying "nigger" multiple times, then I think that that to him is more like a a kind of a generic bad-word to go with, and that he's not actually using it in a true "racist" sense. Of course I agree that just using that word to insult someone classifies as racist, but so far I've never seen anywhere in his comments or rants that he actually argumented something against black people.

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.

So that's what the "r---d" censor meant. I've never seen that word bleeped out before.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#144

Post by kenrikm »

alexbecker wrote: post #52
_exec wrote: post #41

I've stumbled upon Terry's work a long time ago...and suffice to say he's been a major inspiration. It's a shame the majority of netizens (Yes, HN and Reddit included) can't look beyond his eccentricity and mental health issues (then again, it takes some digging and google-fu to find out the full story / context behind the man...his posts don't exactly come with a disclaimer). Going down the rabbit hole of Googling,…

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)

When I was a kid I used to have a councilor that had Tourette's Syndrome, he was one of the nicest people and really helpful and good at his job. However every now and then he would have an attack a spitoff nearly the same vitriol F$%# N%^$#er, C$%k S%#$er etc.. after a few seconds he would recover and apologize. There really are mental illnesses out there that will make you say and do things that you don't actually believe when you're not under it's influence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette_syndrome

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#145

Post by andywood »

To anyone brandishing the word 'racist' here, can you point us to any instance where what Terry wrote was not merely a rambling screed with the n-word in it, but actually racist thought. Because to me, those are different things - the former likely an excusable symptom, and the latter, y'know, actual racism.

Maybe you think it's the same. Maybe you're enforcing your zero-tolerance policy. If so, we disagree. To me it looks like a huge assumption, possibly more offensive than Terry's rants.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#146

Post by innguest »

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?

Because it overwhelms them (anyone that needs help) with pity and condescension. If they need help they'll either ask or find a way to telegraph it to those around them. If you're one of those people then it's OK to offer help. It is not OK for society at large to offer help that way, because it ends up being counterproductive - we end up collectively helping everyone and we're all that much poorer for it.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#147

Post by ecdavis »

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…

It would be neat if a sufficient number of upvotes could cause a comment from a hellbanned account to show up as normal. I guess this could be gamed to circumvent bans, but in Terry's case it could lead to his informative/worthwhile comments being visible to more people.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#148

Post by anigbrowl »

robin_reala wrote: post #135
anigbrowl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a problem in the same way that Tourette's Syndrome often creates employment problems (some people with TS have an uncontrollable urge to swear a lot, a problem known as coprolalia - this can make it hard to get served as a customer in a store, never mind hold down a job). You gotta treat God as entertainment, mostly. He's not prophetic in this. I caution against latching onto any particular thing He says. If I…

The verbal tics in Tourettes are impossible to hold back when they come, but commenting online is not the same as verbalising. You can choose to post, and you can choose to edit your post.

You could say that about any obsessive-compulsive behavior. Why do gambling addicts go into casinos or spend their entire paycheck on lottery tickets? Why do some people repeatedly engage in high-risk sexual behavior or make hundreds of telephone calls in a day? Couldn't they 'choose to' do otherwise, or to stop their problematic activity?

Well, no they can't. If you're in the grip of compulsion you can dislike what you're doing, know it's a terrible idea, be fully aware of the negative consequences, but nonetheless be unable to help yourself, in the same way that it's hard for a passenger in a car to exert much control over a dangerous driver. If volition were such a reliable mechanistic thing then we'd have little need for psychiatric hospitals - psychiatrists could just tell mentally ill people what they were doing wrong and call them cured.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#149

Post by emodendroket »

nyolfen wrote: post #64
_exec wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he actually racist, or are his moments of unclarity racist?

there's no material difference for the purposes of fostering social spaces devoid of racism

Just about all Americans exhibit some racism, although most of it manifests itself in the form of less-obvious, but still insidious, biases and so on, rather than calling people the n-word on Hacker News.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#150

Post by vertex-four »

btilly wrote: post #133
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.)

I don't believe that you should be downvoted. If you read Paul Graham's essay http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html , it is clear that our current hypersensitivity to racism is a current moral fashion. You're not allowed to be racist, you're not allowed to think racist things, you're not even allowed to question our society's chosen approach to racism. Which is just silly. Facts remain facts even if we don't like them.…

> How careful do you have to be when saying this?

The issue is that in saying that, you tend to be saying that black people intrinsically have lower intelligence than white people unless you're careful to be explicit about what you mean. As it is, that's not necessarily the case - there's a lot of disagreement over whether or not IQ tests are a correct measure of intelligence over more than one culture, for a start.

The fact that IQ tests were decided to be illegal, follows the idea that you can't discriminate on factors that would affect certian subgroups without sufficient reason. For example, if you required that all employees wear no headgear, you'd be discriminating against Sikhs and Muslims. However, possibly you could require that if there were serious safety concerns. You couldn't require that all employees are OK with alcohol... unless, of course, their job actually involves alcohol. Nobody's job involves filling out IQ tests, or is directly relevant to anything on an IQ test, to IQ tests are not allowed.

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