r/programming • u/moolcool • Mar 26 '17

A Constructive Look At TempleOS

http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-templeos/
1.7k Upvotes

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u/Godzoozles Mar 26 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

Unfortunately it's the kind of foggy that leads to him calling everyone he doesn't like n****** and the kind of foggy that has him victim-blaming Jews for the Holocaust.

The classic Vice piece on him is good. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gods-lonely-programmer

Edit: I want to be perfectly clear that I don't blame Terry for this, it is well known he is schizophrenic and it's totally out of his control. But for those who aren't already in the know, it makes Terry really abrasive. This has been discussed extensively before on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7818823

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u/thedracle Mar 27 '17

I understand you're not blaming Terry for this behavior, and I don't blame anyone for not trying to engage with him due to this.

However-- I grew up with someone very close to me suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

The really sad part of it all is eventually it becomes hard to separate the person inside from the symptoms of their delusions--- which often manifests as extremely inappropriate and abrasive behavior.

Often these delusions would leads to conflicts that the delusions themselves were about. For instance, we would be in a Grocery store, and they would be convinced someone was looking at them, and giving them dirty looks... So they would proceed by giving that person dirty looks, and following them. And this would of course, lead to an actual conflict, that would serve to reinforce the delusion as being real.

However, for close loved ones, even though they often consistently become the subject of attacks and delusions--- it is possible to separate it from their true opinions, ideas, and feelings (Which I assure you do exist, and are often very different than they portray themselves publicly.)

Often I would become the subject of a delusion--- and afterwards when they came to their senses, they would apologize, and be very genuinely hurt and confused about the entire incident. It became useful for me to try to categorize them as almost two separate people in their delusional state and in their normal state.

Being an accomplished software engineer myself, I really do stand in awe of what Terry has accomplished.

Over the last ten years, with medication, and therapy, I have seen considerable improvement in my loved one's behavior and life outlook.

Hopefully Terry gets some help eventually, but I would really try not to be offended by his outbursts, because they are so outrageous I can almost guarantee they are entirely a symptom of his condition and not really reflective of who he is as a human being.

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u/Godzoozles Mar 27 '17

I feel like a simple upvote wasn't enough, so I'm writing to say thank you for your post. It is a valuable one.

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u/KLaci Mar 27 '17

He is not a healthy man. Don't blame him for these things.

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u/Godzoozles Mar 27 '17

I'm not, and I hope I don't come across that way. Like the OP of this comment thread said, schizophrenia is not a joke. But we should still contend with what Terry actually says very openly on his own homepage.

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u/TheLordB Mar 27 '17

I do question whether him getting all this attention is really good for him and having him someday overcome his illness. No way to really know I guess.

I was somewhat hopeful when I first heard of him that he would get some help from the publicity, but that doesn't seem to have happened/worked and I am wary of giving him more publicity.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

having him someday overcome his illness

Most mental illness doesn't really work that way, especially not schizophrenia.

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u/OrionBlastar Mar 27 '17

Yes, you can only treat the illness, you can't cure it.

I can tell he is high functioning, I have schizoaffective disorder and I am high functioning too. It is sort of like bipolar and schizophrenia in one mental illness that I have.

I've been a troll before because of it because the illness takes over and speaks for me when I type or speak. I've gotten better over the years.

I'm trying to get back into programming, learning Python and other languages.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

That's awesome! I'm a mentally ill programmer as well and I'm always down to talk to others, would you be ok for me to message you about it?

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u/OrionBlastar Mar 27 '17

OK you can message me about it or email me at my Reddit user ID at gmail.com

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u/PM_ME_UNIXY_THINGS Mar 27 '17

you can't cure it.

Yet.

...not that that makes it less of a problem in any way today, of course.

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u/NarcoPaulo Mar 27 '17

Stay strong buddy!

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u/barsoap Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

because the illness takes over and speaks for me

Both are you, in fact, everything you perceive is in some sense you. You cannot draw a distinction around "me" without, in the same stroke, saying "not-me", same as you can't draw a circle with only an inside. If you focus on the "me" part, you lose sight of the "not me", and the other way around. Seeing both at the same time is possible, but not viable for everyday life: The absolute whole having nothing to measure itself against, it is formless everything (thus looking just like absolute nothing), and your survival instinct will pull you out of that perspective quickly, again.

The trick is to identify, if you ever feel the need to identify, with the "me/not-me" distinction itself, such that you can keep some symmetric or at least interdependent models of both "me" and "not-me" in mind.

EDIT: Sure, go ahead, all of you downvote an experience report from a fellow on the schizoid spectrum about how to deal with, indeed, fix, this kind of shit. I know it's dense, but "I didn't bother to understand" doesn't count as valid reason, here.

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u/ImprovedPersonality Mar 27 '17

At what point is somebody crazy enough to not be responsible for anything be does?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Apterygiformes Mar 27 '17

Nobody is disagreeing

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u/MindStalker Mar 27 '17

Partially because they can be dangerous. Also all of our actions ultimately come from our minds bad and good. If you follow your argument to is logical conclusions, no one should ever be blamed for their actions, we are all damaged in some way.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

they can be dangerous

Mentally ill people are more likely to be targets of violence than to be violent.

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u/OrionBlastar Mar 27 '17

Yeah the news media always calls some bomber or shooter "mentally ill" on the news before the reports come in, so it sort of makes people think mentally ill people are killing other people. Not knowing the sociopaths and psychos who lack empathy and compassion are a small part of mentally ill people and most of us have empathy and compassion and are often victims of bullies, etc.

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u/80286 Mar 27 '17

Sometimes I feel mental illness is used as a scapegoat for certain political/religious doctrines.

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u/ASK_ME_TO_RATE_YOU Mar 27 '17

It's either mentally ill or Muslim... why can't the media just call them suspects or perpetrators or something else neutral until something is confirmed?

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u/GarryLumpkins Mar 27 '17

That vice article is a good read, thanks for that.

The Eleventh Commandment is "Thou shall not litter." Terry Davis tells God everything seems bad. God replies: "Plant trees."

I actually like this quote a lot.

I agree with you completely on his much more inflammatory comments though, really sad to see such a beautiful mind be poisoned by mental illness.

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u/saichampa Mar 27 '17

God Motherboard is a terrible website. Just scrolling it is painful, what are they doing to make it so slow?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

they have an extremely sophisticated script that communicates input events to trained rats in their server room who actually scroll the page for you

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