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God's Lonely Programmer

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301–310 of 339 posts

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#301
post #299
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Irish people until recently were considered to be "black", and in the UK, still kind of are. Is this from personal experience? If not, can you link me somewhere? Do you mean sounds Irish / looks Irish / is Irish / is Catholic / something else or a mix of these? I don't disagree with you (not sure either way tbh) but do have a personal interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment#21st_cent... provides some good starting points.

Thank you. Now convinced. I think I just found 'black' a bit jarring as a generic 'not-white' descriptor but now I see the use.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#302
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally would love to have him host an AMA-style thread where we could ask him things about TempleOS and his illness. I'm tentative as to how that would turn out though.

In case you missed it, there's a link in the article to a sort-of-Q&A discussion he took part in a couple years back on MetaFilter: http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Son... (Back then he called his OS "LoseThos" and used that as his username.)

LoseThos was his username here for a while too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go on.

The parent may be (I have no idea...) referencing a line from the (hilarious) "A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages" [1]. The entry for 1987 is: """ 1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall's forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall's monitor isn't random but an example program in a programming language that God wa…

Although that's of course an exaggeration, there's this bit in his Wikipedia article [1]:

"""

Wall's Christian faith has influenced some of the terminology of Perl, such as the name itself, a biblical reference to the "pearl of great price" (Matthew 13:46). Similar references are the function name bless, and the organization of Perl 6 design documents with categories such as apocalypse and exegesis.

"""

Also in [2] he alludes to his faith having played a major part if not in the decision to create Perl then at least in the design decisions (e.g. TMTOWTDI) he made.

He's not as overtly religious (and most definitely not as mentally unstable) as the author of TempleOS, but he's certainly far above the norm compared to other well-known creators of programming languages.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall

[2]: http://interviews-beta.slashdot.org/story/02/09/06/1343222/l...

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

No, I don't think we should leave the mentally ill alone. That's not how society works, nor how it should work. I think we should respect their wishes, when appropriate, but leaving them alone isn't a good decision.

Does he hurt himself or others? If yes, interfere, otherwise, don't.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, getting sick of being downvoted for asking questions ...

I would think the downvotes were because his name was in the article and due to the fact that a good percentage of people around here know his name, people assumed you were being snarky with the question as opposed to curious.

The key here is : '...People ASSUMED you were being snarky...'.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#306
post #33

I 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.

How do you figure that?

I'm genuinely interested. He's made a network-less OS with a fixed, low-resolution display, that is of seriously limited utility in the modern world and (AFAICT) doesn't advance the state of the art, all as an act of worship.

It's a curiosity, but of value? Not so much.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#307
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you deal with the mentally ill you begin to see the differences between intentionally abusive behavior and behavior that's just highly erratic or unusual. Sometimes the mentally ill are dicks. But also, sometimes they just say or do things that are culturally insensitive without intending to hurt anyone's feelings, or understanding how they could do so. While I think the above comment is offensive, it also appears…

"So I don't think he should be held to the same standard everyone else is." I think you're misunderstanding how standards work. It doesn't matter if he believes it or means it to be abusive or if it's just trolling/performance art or if it's because of mental illness. Racist speech is offensive to the community and the people who repeatedly use it will be moderated. There are people with mental illness that expose th…

In the cases you cite, the way to deal with problem behavior usually involves medication, treatment, care, etc, but they still get to be participatory members of society.

The solution you're proposing would just lock them up in a high tower where the public could remain blissfully unaware that the mentally ill even exist, and never have to deal with them. I'd rather have to deal with somebody shitting on a bus once in a while than ostracize them and force them into a minimum security prison.

Standards are a guideline for how something should normally be. If someone is, by no fault of their own, radically outside this standard, they may require a separate standard to determine how they can be 'normal', and then find and receive treatment in order to live as close to normal as possible. Using the same standard for everyone would result in people being thrown into insane asylums for everything from anxiety to stress-induced nervous breakdown, bipolar disorder, OCD, schizophrenia, etc.

In 2012, there were an estimated 9.6 million adults aged 18 or older in the U.S. with a serious mental illness in the past year. This represented 4.1 percent of all U.S. adults. There were an estimated 43.7 million adults with any mental illness ; 18.6 percent of all U.S. adults. So yeah, I still don't think everyone should be held to the same standard, and I think treatment options should exist other than "hiding or banning from society".

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#308
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting question. Is there a third option? Should there be? Are there other ways for them to "participate in reality" other than by getting a job and contributing to the economy? Look at the insanity in how we allocate resources and which activities we incent. People literally die as a result of our priorities. So, should we assume that he is better off by "joining us" and contributing to that reality? I don't kn…

Sorry; I think I mistook your comment for some sort of reality-relativistic sentiment by managing to ignore the context. I agree that the most important factor here is not whether the person in question is able to work a traditional job and contribute to the economy. The way I see it, treatment and quality of life is what's important here. Rather, I meant that he would likely be better off the closer to reality he go…

Ah, I see. No, nothing quite so deep.

Like a lot people, I do ponder the quality of reality, and I also find it interesting that I will never know reality as you or any other person actually perceives or experiences it. I can only know that there are "overlapping points of agreement", based on our senses, mental processing, communication, etc.

But, there is certainly an agreed-upon reality on which our society is built.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#309
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the best demonstration of continued racism, is that there's no way Obama - being half-black, half-white - would have been able to get away with self-identifying as white.

That's not really an aspect of racism. It's the way races are (poorly) defined. He qualifies as black unless we can kill the meme of races entirely, even in a world that had no prejudice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#310
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > Unable to work, he collects Social Security disability He's doing ok because the 'collective' takes care of him.

I didn't know that. I'd argue that those more local to him would be in a better position to help him than the collective, which needs to pool money from all its constituents, give it to bureaucrats who take their share of it, in order to eventually make a check arrive at his inbox. So if we really care for him, it should be eye-opening how those good intentions turned into "Everyone! Give one cent to this politician…

Those policies aren't there to enforce some kind of state monopoly on the distribution of aid, they're there because rich people don't want to be reminded homeless people exist.
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