>If he won the lottery three times, he asks, would she believe?
I would... :)
God's Lonely Programmer
171–180 of 339 posts
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#172The lionization of this guy reminds me of the reporting of the Charge of the Light Brigade. All those noble British soldiers, following orders even unto death, what courage, what majesty... when what should really have been said was: what a bunch of bloody idiots, who got themselves killed for no reason. And so the same foolishness repeated throughout the first world war. So let me say it: this guy, whether through h…
Clearly he should make another JavaScript framework.
Say what you like about the utility of the system, but it's definitely interesting.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#173The lionization of this guy reminds me of the reporting of the Charge of the Light Brigade. All those noble British soldiers, following orders even unto death, what courage, what majesty... when what should really have been said was: what a bunch of bloody idiots, who got themselves killed for no reason. And so the same foolishness repeated throughout the first world war. So let me say it: this guy, whether through h…
Hold on, let me get this straight: You think that someone who does what he does because he honestly believes he is doing god's work (because of a mental illness) is a dumbass? Next you'll call John Nash fucking retarded for being afraid of men in red ties.
Nash was great in spite of his issues, not because of them; his work was a real, useful contribution to human knowledge, because (in contrast to this guy) he worked with the wider mathematical community, which then in turn later built on his work.
Being afraid of men in red ties is still a dumb thing to do, and won't make you a great mathematician. We romanticize the outsiders, but the great bulk of the mathematical edifice was constructed by relatively ordinary, well-adjusted people like Euler. If you want to be a great mathematician, it isn't Nash you should model yourself on.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 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. That's an issue, I don't think it's the issue, not be a long shot. Try being very careful and explicit about what you mean, it's not gonna help one whit, you're already on the third rail as soon as the words black, white and intel…
I don't really find people's apprehension of this subject strange.
Racist stereotypes have traditionally in large part been about difference in intelligence between "races", how some were more evolved than the animalistic others, etc. (i.e. dehumanization of "others")
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, in years past, we only heard (in the mainstream) from the few that succeeded, not the huge numbers of individuals that just ended up in asylums or, worse, dead. That's not to take anything away from the "project" (as art), but let's be realistic about the possible gains we (as a society) can gain from this. My conjecture is that it would be better to try to get some help for this person.
I find it very weird that his treatment is being viewed as unnecessary due to him producing something. Any other disease and this would be frowned upon. His disease is a sad and miserable existence. Being schizophrenic is like have everyone against you; religion is his coping mechanism not to freak out against everything, but who knows how long it's going to last. Anyone suggesting he could get be offered a job clear…
I don't think treatment is unnecessary at all - I assume if he was on medication he'd be gainfully employed writing code somewhere, and potentially producing even more interesting things.
Rather I was highlighting that individuals possessing a certain artistic talent, potentially correlated with propensity for mental illness, when untreated may produce incredible works of art as a side effect.
I'm not at all saying that him or society has a net benefit from that at all, but rather it's a second-order effect that is quite different from what we often observe (and stereotype) in terms of schizophrenia and mental illness.
Purely an observation vs a judgment.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#176[deleted]
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#177Earlier 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.
It's this sorta wording that has watered down the word "racist" and "islamophobic".
This is from a Kurd/Iranian with a muslim background living in Sweden.
This thinking is also conventionally and conveniently used by white relativist liberals living in predominately white neighbourhoods.
Not saying you are. It's just it's what I've experienced.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you will actually read my comment, I said "ask him whether he wants help."
Or, you know, just leave him the fuck alone. He's done alright with his life by his own measure and doesn't need the condescension of "hello you poor soul, do you need help?" (which, I'm sure, he's already heard a million times by now)
I don't think that we're really capable of judging the stability of someone's existence based on their creative output and a biographical sketch written by an apparently sympathetic blogger.
That goes for assumptions that intervention by people with a much better understanding of a person's current situation can't improve it as much as the assumption that they could or should.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#179Earlier 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.…
> Facts remain facts even if we don't like them.
It depends not only on your definition of "facts", but on the interpretation of the same, and how that affects policy and decision making. For instance, these too are all "facts".
"Poor people have lower IQ's than rich people"
"Americans have lower IQ's than the Japanese, Italians, Mongolians, British, Austrians and many many others"
"More men have high IQ's than women" (more men in the top 10%)
"More men have low IQ's than women" (more men in the bottom 10%)
"As pirates decrease, global warming increases"
The real point, and something that Paul completely missed in his essay, is that we now analyse these things with a greater degree of historically-informed sophistication. Your statement could just as well read "On average, when given a written test invented by white men over 100 years ago, a sample group consisting of historically enslaved, disenfranchised and under-educated people of African heritage in the United States performed less well than a sample of their European-descended counterparts". Indeed, I'm sure that's true. The leap though to racism, which is making blanket assumptions about people based on skin colour, is completely fallacious.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#180Earlier 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.…
That's disingenuous though; the vast majority of people who want to spout "On average, blacks have lower IQs than whites" are not doing it for genuine reasons. They want to feel superior or they want to hand-wave away inequality.
Blacks on average have lower IQs because they are on average poorer, have less access to education, etc. If you test 5 yr old children and control for income, parental involvement, etc then there are no differences. So the more nuanced detailed version of that statement is that the intellectual potential of blacks (on average, in the USA) is not developed as highly as it could be, due to socioeconomic factors that are very complex, but so far as we can tell are not due to any underlying differences in potential.
Your method of making the same statement is most often used as an explanation; the equivalent of "that's how we've always done it". Mine is a more full and correct revelation that it is economic and social factors wasting the potential of bright young black kids and is something that can be and should be corrected.
It's called context kids, and no amount of complaining or smug sperglording can paper over the actual underlying motivation, despite any technical correctness. It's like complaining that black people can say the "N" word or pointing out the 1 out of 10,000 times that some black people were racist toward a white guy. I can only say "no shit sherlock". The vast, vast, vast majority of the time, if things are unequal, it is white men who benefit.