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The circus freaks of open source

drewdevault.com

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Re: The circus freaks of open source

#41

Post by JuniperMesos »

themafia wrote: post #11

> The press and fan attention was deeply harmful to Terry and likely exacerbated his mental illness. What are you basing this on? Did you know him? This person you call a "circus freak?" > Whenever TempleOS or Terry came up online Which was often because Terry himself made an effort to live stream his work and his opinions on computing. Which this author seems to have missed is those strong opinions were shared by a…

And these qualities are hardly unique to Terry Davis - there are lots of people with untreated mental illnesses who refuse help and end up living the kind of wandering, homeless lifestyle that risks their own lives, as well as the lives and property of other people they may come into contact with. Terry Davis was just also internet-famous for his esoteric operating system.

There's no non-coercive way to treat a mentally ill person who doesn't want to be treated. I am in favor of treating some mentally ill people coercively regardless, in cases where the mental illness puts other people at risk of harm. But I don't claim that this is primarily for their benefit.

Re: The circus freaks of open source

#42

Post by zozbot234 »

roenxi wrote: post #10

> I often see that people who I otherwise respect and recognize as allies and kindred spirits are participating in these rituals of humiliation, harassment, and voyeurism. I don’t think it’s right to gossip over or sensationalize the mental health crises faced by members of our communities. This paragraph tickles me. Superficially, someone who I respect but for the humiliation, harassment and voyeurism is maybe not s…

> But communities have a minimum standard of behaviour. People who fall below that standard need to be ostracised, people who meet the standard have to be tolerated. The dynamic requires people with mental health problems to be ostracised

We should not equate mental health problems in a general sense with outright anti-social behavior, these are very different issues. Moreover, the appropriate way of addressing anti-social behavior does not involve harassing the supposed bad actor; such harassment is counterproductive, since it tends to drive away the very best contributors while having the opposite effect on the worst (since they now have a ready-made excuse for behaving badly). 'Calling out' bad behavior sometimes happens, but this should be done in a polite and restrained way.

(As far as the example in the OP goes, my guess is that people feel free to poke fun at Kent's seeming AI psychosis because they interpret it as a case of intentional trolling; they don't really think Kent is expressing sincere, actually held beliefs about his AI girlfriend.)

Re: The circus freaks of open source

#43

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

avaer wrote: post #3

What about the "circus freaks" that get funding, influencers that maintain audience support, or those who get elected to office? I don't understand how to tell the difference, other than what society and the media collectively judges to be genius versus disordered, and where the money accrues. The people and their personalities are not all that different, other than how palatable/sellable they are. That's not to say…

The difference is the person's wealth or the wealth of the people who want to push that agenda.

I like to compare the treatment of the extremely wealthy with extreme hoarders. Someone who fills their house with piles of e.g. magazines/newspapers, will be recognised as having mental problems. Meanwhile if someone keeps pursuing the gain of more wealth after they have far more money than can ever be spent, then typically society will fawn over them and respect their opinions, no matter how distasteful or outright wrong they are.

Re: The circus freaks of open source

#44

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

InfiniteRand wrote: post #2

This reminds me of actors or entertainers who clearly are going through a manic phase that is veering towards psychosis or a crash. Sometimes leave Britney alone means actually leave her alone.

The entertainment business (especially Hollywood) has always been guilty of exploiting artists and then throwing them away when they're no longer bankable.

Re: The circus freaks of open source

#45

Post by nixon_why69 »

illright wrote: post #36
boomer_joe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's a good thing I found his personal statement about this report before I found the report itself — https://drewdevault.com/blog/Addressing-harassment/ Having read both now, I'm willing to take him at his word and accept his apology for the heinous things he has said in the past. I encourage people to read his statement to get a perspective for both sides and make up their mind That said, I still find the original…

But it's in the context of him compiling a dossier to hang Stallman for things he said in the past, without giving Stallman any sort of grace for being clearly neurodivergent.

I wouldn't hang someone for old ill-advised reddit comments and I wouldn't hang Stallman for being weird. I certainly wouldn't do it and then write a blog post about kindness to these poor souls.

Re: The circus freaks of open source

#47

Post by trumpdong »

vidarh wrote: post #37
delusional wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The text already responds to this concern > The press and fan attention was deeply harmful to Terry and likely exacerbated his mental illness. I don't know if that's true, if Terry would be better off, had the internet not found him entertaining. I also don't know if this is an internet phenomenon, or if we haven't always poked and prodded at the "different". What I do know is that Drew thinks Terry had it worse beca…

I don't know what attention he got on 4chan, but here he was shadow banned (rightly so; his comments were frequently full of slurs and more), and quite a few people had showdead on in part to see his comments (me included) because they occasionally let through things that were worth it. I think that was perhaps a reasonable middle ground. He wasn't on full display, and it avoided some of the worse responses he'd have…

> (rightly so; his comments were frequently full of slurs and more)

Isn't it so interesting how bans are deserved based on the form of a communication rather than its content

Re: The circus freaks of open source

#48

Post by trumpdong »

boomer_joe wrote: post #29
illright wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it appropriate to make these kinds of assumptions about the author. It's okay to disagree, but it would help the conversation if you elaborated why you didn't enjoy the article

[flagged]

Very spotty evidence here. I'd say this is illegal defamation. Drew might be able to win a lot of money from whoever made the site, who might even go to jail.

Re: The circus freaks of open source

#49

Post by mplanchard »

trumpdong wrote: post #47
vidarh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what attention he got on 4chan, but here he was shadow banned (rightly so; his comments were frequently full of slurs and more), and quite a few people had showdead on in part to see his comments (me included) because they occasionally let through things that were worth it. I think that was perhaps a reasonable middle ground. He wasn't on full display, and it avoided some of the worse responses he'd have…

> (rightly so; his comments were frequently full of slurs and more) Isn't it so interesting how bans are deserved based on the form of a communication rather than its content

Form and content are not perfectly separable, especially when we are talking to people, where the purpose of language is often to create a lossy expression of our thoughts. Content expressed with a slur for an ethnic group, for example, says something about a person’s underlying thoughts that the use of a more neutral term does not.

Re: The circus freaks of open source

#50

Post by trumpdong »

mplanchard wrote: post #49
trumpdong wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (rightly so; his comments were frequently full of slurs and more) Isn't it so interesting how bans are deserved based on the form of a communication rather than its content

Form and content are not perfectly separable, especially when we are talking to people, where the purpose of language is often to create a lossy expression of our thoughts. Content expressed with a slur for an ethnic group, for example, says something about a person’s underlying thoughts that the use of a more neutral term does not.

It says he's schizophrenic, at least.
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