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 c…
He's 'high functioning' in the sense that he can produce elaborate computer software that runs fast, in other words he has impressive engineering skills. Socially he's pretty incapable. I think his offensive racist, homophobic and other offensive remarks are part and parcel of his condition because I've spent quite a lot of time reading his rants, and disagree with your claim that his use of slurs is not random and g…
My point was about whether he is an "inspiration" or not. Mentally ill people can be assholes, too. It's debatable and probably an unsolvable question to which extent his badness comes from his disease, so all we're left with at this point is to simply judge him by his behavior, and maybe charitably take some factors into account in his favor. But even after doing that, I can't get to a state where I can say: "this person is awesome and a continuing inspiration to me".
The nature of mental illness makes it very hard to talk about the core personality of affected people. Their illness is a part of them, just as all of our little hangups and traumata are a part of every one of us. These properties are us in a very real sense.
On a multidimensional scale of personalities, I do judge him way more harshly than a person with Tourette's syndrome, precisely because there is meaning behind the words when he speaks them - even after I make a conscious effort to discard the instances where that meaning was distorted, there is still enough content left that I'm uncomfortable with subscribing to this person.
Ultimately I'd like to reiterate: my frustration is not with him. With this illness, he got a bad deal in life. I hope he stays safe and gets all the care he needs. I hope he can continue to find creative outlets like his operating system. My frustration is with people idolizing him in his entirety, accepting or maybe even sharing his views. I do think it's possible to admire the work a person does without subscribing to their views, but when doing so you have to work extra hard to separate the two. You can't just admire that person without reservations. Frequently, on this thread and elsewhere, no reservations were even visible. We even got people talking about how he was factually right about calling black people dumb.