I really liked the article. It was very respectful towards Terry and shown a deeper understanding of his life and issues he faced. It was explaining, not judging. I now have a much more complete picture of the man I know only from shadowbanned comments here on HN.
God's Lonely Programmer
31–40 of 339 posts
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#32I wonder if there is something the programming community could do to help him. I'm not sure what this could entail, but I'd hope there are people who would be willing to talk with him about his interests or attempt to set up some kind of assisted employment situation - he is by all accounts a very talented engineer.
Why are you under the impression that he is in need of help? It seems to me that he has no problem finding outlets to talk about his interests, and that he doesn't seem to desire assisted employment.
I don't think there's sure evidence either way, but I did read this line:
> Unable to work, he collects Social Security disability and spends most of his time coding, web surfing, or using the output...
I have no idea if Terry would like to work or not, but I don't see harm in someone making it possible for him by extending an offer. In addition, I think it's hard to see the huge number of TempleOS posts and comments throughout the web as anything other than an attempt to talk about his interests with people.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#33I really enjoyed this window into the life of "LoseThos".
I am glad that he seems to be both relatively safe and happy.
I think in the long run the value his life's work will be comparable or greater than the worth of most of his peers.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#34i have had a number of experiences very similar to what terry went through. connecting computing to religion, seeing 'larger patterns' that weren't there, believing in conspiracies directed at me... it was rough.
i was lucky enough to have a few people really step up and support me when i was at the edge. it's weird reading this and feeling like i know exactly what he means when he says this stuff that sounds crazy.
here's a description of one experience i had in april 2011, a day before joining uber:
http://www.reddit.com/r/BipolarReddit/comments/l7nij/interes...
this is something i submitted later to hn, while cto of a gaming company:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3877483
i made it out of all that, though. thanks almost entirely to daily love and support from my now wife. if you have friends in a position like this - you CAN help them, it's just a crazy amount of work.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dont know him, I just know his name. I think we all know him here as Terry.
In fact his chosen name here is his project name, 'TempleOS': https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TempleOS It was previously 'losethos', when that was his project's name: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos
He's got a couple of others too, but
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TempleOSV2
is the only one I can remember off the top of my head. For a while he was using TempleOS and TempleOSV2 concurrently, but it seems he hasn't used V2 in over a year.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#36Although the guy lives arguably outside the fringe of society, I cannot question his commitment to his project.
We tend to celebrate the successes like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg and then quietly go back to our daily lives, and compromise our creativity for family, wealth accumulation and professional advancement. The opinionated amongst us will debate which of their favorite value is the "right way," (If LoseTheOs got the help and settled down with his family, a partner or friends; If LoseTheOs found a job at Red Hat and channeled his energy towards Linux Kernel development...).
But choices and our commitment to these choices are what defines us. TempleOS in this regard, seems more like a work of art in the medium of code. Of course, the merit of that art is up to the beholder (and tbh, I don't think I'd have appreciated Van Gogh a priori.) "The difference between genius and insanity is measured only by success," but is the guy who doesn't succeed by conventional sense but finds his own meaning and keeps going, insane?
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dont know him, I just know his name. I think we all know him here as Terry.
In fact his chosen name here is his project name, 'TempleOS': https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TempleOS It was previously 'losethos', when that was his project's name: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos
Also, previously, SparrowOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SparrowOS
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#38Throughout the span of modern history, we've had gifted creators whose talent is at a minimum intertwined if not completely predicated on their mental illness. Whether it was Van Gogh or Kurt Kobain, we've seen it consistently.
Terry is potentially one of the first if not the only creators of this type using a completely digital medium.
TempleOS is essentially a 10-year art project.
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#39I find this guy's moments of clarity amazing. I'm not very familiar with mental illnesses in any form, but it surprises me how clearly he understands how the rest of the world views him. It makes me think about what the world might be like if we reverse the situation, and the article were about the only man who can't hear the voice of God.
> I find this guy's moments of clarity amazing.
Oh, that's because:
> I'm not very familiar with mental illnesses [...]
:)
Schizophrenics are frequently lucid. Well, a modified sort of lucid... It's as if they are rational folks for whom first principles or axioms have been shaken up, and indeed are malleable all the time.
It doesn't sound like Terry would ever think that his dinner plate would sprout legs and walk across the table. But as he stated in the article, he has thought that some dinners were poisoned.
See, the first one can't happen. The second one could technically happen. Schizophrenics aren't stupid, you know? :) But, their plausibility metrics are broken.
Regarding the plausibility of a dinner plate walking across a table: Well, it could happen if the plate is some Transformers(R) style robot, or something. It could be, if those exist, right? When a schizophrenic tells you something is true but you think it is implausible, remember: it's not implausible to them, because they are rational folks employing a different set of base assumptions than you. Walking plates are normal in a world that has Transformers(R).
Why would a rational person believe in fictional toy robots? Or even that someone wants to poison them? ...Well, once you believe in God, or time travel, or aliens, or that the universe is a simulation, or any number of "crazy ideas"... once you actually believe one crazy idea, it's all down hill from there.
But, it is generally an otherwise sane individual that is running down that hill...
Terry specifically mentioned a feeling or belief that God picks random numbers or events as a way to communicate with folks. "I can sit down with my parents and praise God and open the Bible randomly," he says, "and it will talk." All of those sorts of beliefs are rooted in some form of the following base principle: "The world is fundamentally not what the common man thinks it is." Once you think that some entity which has the power to alter individual atoms or the results of a coin toss (God, aliens, whatever) exists, then the belief that they would use that power to communicate is just a small logical step away.
[EDIT: Indeed, I just found this quote from him: God controls ALL the random numbers in yer life [...]. Every [...] random number from when you awake to sleep [...] So in his world, if you run over a nail in your car and get a flat... Well, you did something to deserve it!]
NOTE: Apparently some schizophrenic folks experience vivid, realistic open-eyed hallucinations sometimes (at the peak of a manic episode) or all the time. I don't have much experience with that. Sometimes those events coincide with seizures and events in which awareness and consciousness is lowered. I am guessing that my "these are rational folks" argument does not apply at those times (or to some people any the time).
Re: God's Lonely Programmer
#40I'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 this context it's all that really matters. There are people who devote their entire lives to pointless things. There are people who work on supposedly pointless things, which later turn out to not be so pointless. There are people who are supposedly working on world-changing things, which really are completely pointless. In the end, you can't predict the future. Just do honest work that you feel is worthwhile, and see what happens.
(if you want to play the hypothetical game, who's to say that Terry Davis won't develop some extremely efficient low level algorithms/techniques never done before that will dramatically impact computing?)
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. But Terry strikes me as anything but helpless - based on the various interviews he's given and comments he's posted, he seems to be quite content with his situation, and that "assisted employment" is the last thing he'd want or need. If anything, this is just a further argument for reforms like basic income and better treatment of mental conditions (e.g. with better early detection).
There are also always comments expressing surprise at how one can suffer from such a mental condition and yet do complex intellectual work like low level programming. These questions are based on the premise that schizophrenia (or a similar condition) impacts your brain in such a way that would make logical reasoning impossible. But that's not how it operates - logical reasoning is largely unaffected. Like `daveloyall says in another comment in this thread [0], what's affected are a few key "first principles". For instance, if you're persuaded that you're being constantly tracked by the CIA, removing all your clothes or dismantling your car to make sure you aren't bugged are very logical, reasonable things to do. The problem is that when you're operating under premises that are shared with no one else, the resulting dissonance makes integration with the rest of society problematic. But with this in mind, it's easy to see why one could be schizophrenic and yet still be able to program or do math or weave baskets, especially if the skills were mastered before the condition developed.
Terry is a maker of miniatures [1], and I'm happy we have such people walking among us.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8658958
[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/10/in-the-reign-of...