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Comment by bshimmin | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why I'm doing this, but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5YokNW7tIs (Fairly obviously NSFW or the readily-offended if you have the sound on.)

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Here's the thing: Sometimes there are people who are exceptionally talented in a given field, yet suffer from a serious illness or disability. The symptoms can be apparent in their physique (such as Stephen Hawking), or in their mind (such as Terry Davis). I can understand why people who do not have direct experience with mental illness might have trouble separating the symptoms from the person, but I would encourage those who criticise Terry for the highly unfortunate way his illness manifests itself to try to find compassion for the man, not ridicule.

I'm willing to bet pretty good money that less than 1% of people on HN, and the software development industry in general, could achieve the technical feats on the level of what Terry has done. In fact it's probably considerably fewer than that. Here's a guy who's built an entire platform from scratch, including kernel, development tools, user interface, and applications. While there are obvious flaws (such as the visual appearance and lack of memory protection), some of the other design decisions like presentation of documentation and the way different parts of the system integrate with each other put mainstream operating systems to shame.

We should be emphasising Terry's technical work, not the symptoms of his debilitating illness.

I've always felt sad that Terry A. Davis doesn't seem to have a very strong support system (family, friends, children, etc.). There are other brilliant people that have been diagnosed with similar illnesses (Daniel Johnston[0] comes to mind) that were able to retain their public dignity while still doing fantastic work.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Johnston

With dignity is a way of treating people. Whether I do so or not says something about me, not the other person.

That's not right. Dignity is "the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect". Someone has (or doesn't have) dignity irrespective of how they are treated.

People deserve to be treated with dignity regardless. Not doing so says something about me.

I think it's trivially obvious that some people do not deserve to be treated with dignity (e.g. child molesters, mass murderers, etc.). The fact that you treat them with dignity in spite of that is obviously virtuous, but they don't deserve it. As opposed to people that do: Gandhi, Jesus, MLK, and so on.

> it's trivially obvious that some people do not deserve to be treated with dignity

I don't agree, and I know many people who also would disagree. Another point of view is that perhaps some people don't deserve dignity, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know which ones and only an omniscient supernatural being would know enough to make that judgment.

For me, this is the most memorable statement that concept; probably not the best, but it's where I first grasped it:[0]

Frodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill him when he had the chance.

Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Also, I don't know of anyone who should throw stones. I hope I'm treated with dignity when I make mistakes; certainly nothing is gained when I'm not.

[0] There are at least a couple variations I found in a quick search; don't take this one as authoritative.

What a person thinks says something about that person not about the reference objects of their thoughts.

Are you saying that Terry's dignity has been diminished because there is no one around him that censors him?

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Look here's the deal with him. The man is unwell. What do you have to gain from digging down rabbit holes like this?

In regards to Terry I have taken a "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything" policy. Every once in a while, if you like his work send him a note telling him so. Don't endeavor to increase his suffering. The same fate may await any of us.

I'm with you cmdrfred.

I don't understand why anyone would do these things.

Terry wrote an entire OS+Bootloader, dozens of remarkable apps for it, the toolchain for the custom programming language it's written in (which he also created) by himself.

The scale of that achievement boggles my mind. There's no -lreadline anywhere there.. No curses.. No gcc. No copy/pasting phkmalloc and so on.

Absolutely nothing that he didn't write himself.

I'm stunned by his achievement.

And yet we're googling for videos where he's manic for laughs?

Have some fucking respect.

If you can't do that then have the manners to keep silent.

This person achieved more than any developer I'm aware of and none of us are in position to mock him.

Shame on those who are trying to.

You make it sound like Terry is completely innocent. Have you seen his comments?

A sufferer of schizophrenia is not guilty of the way their condition manifests. They are the victim of an illness.

You can't just blame it all on the sickness. He's apparently an extreme racist, crazy or not. The way you put it sounds like he doesn't even exist and is all just the sickness.

I suggest the book angelhead to give you some perspective on this. If you come to understand this condition you will regret this comment.

https://www.amazon.com/Angelhead-Brothers-Descent-into-Madne...

You make it sound like he's braindead and has no own will. He posts racial slurs even in his most sane comments.

Your comments have all the empathy of someone who has zero understanding of schizophrenia.

Good job of convincing or educating me with that strong argument. How about you tell me how it works instead? Right now you're making it sound like a schizophrenic can do whatever they want, whenever they want because they are victims. Even if it's outside an episode.

I'm not someone who takes the mental illness excuse lightly, but I have from time to time had the privilege of catching Terry in a more lucid state and let me assure you the man you understand him to be is not who he is.

Would you accuse a person with tourette's syndrome of racism due to their outbursts? This disease is far more pervasive and systemic than that.

Vincent van Gogh was similarly mentally ill as a society we look past the things he could not control and instead focus on what he has created. I suggest the same course of action here as I believe the situations are uncannily similar. This is all I will say on the matter.

Thank you. If that's the case and he's completely normal without any racism and hatred between his episodes I was wrong and I apologize.

Having read a lot of what he's said, he uses words and phrases in an idiosyncratic way that isn't the same as they would be used by, say, a politician. He may or may not be racist, but he's schizophrenic so we should probably chill out on him and go police someone who isn't schizophrenic instead.

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