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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I'm not entirely sure why this is upsetting me so much, but I think it has to largely to do with empathy.

While I'm nowhere as severe as Terry, I do suffer from manic depression (bipolar II), and if it weren't for the support of friends and family I'm certain I would have offed myself years ago.

Terry suffered from an illness, but he was undoubtedly a smart guy. TempleOS and HolyC, even if they were niche, are certainly interesting projects, and aren't something that any lay-person could make.

While I'm relatively certain that his racist profanity-filled posts are how he's going to be remembered, I'll try and think of him as a misguided and misunderstood person who needed more help than society was really able to provide.

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I'm not entirely sure why this is upsetting me so much

There may be some element of feeling guilty because he was shadow banned here. It seems to be a common pattern that people who didn't know how to help when the person was alive feel some kind of responsibility for the death, like he might have lived if only we could have figured out how to engage him more effectively or something.

Individual outcomes are never entirely individual. There are always a great many factors involved and that makes it complicated to figure out who is responsible for what and how much.

I didn't really know him. But it's nice to see some of the remarks here. I sometimes am very angry when I see nice comments about a dead person who was excluded in life. But I don't have any idea how it could have been handled differently in this case.

Some things are simply tragic.

> While I'm relatively certain that his racist profanity-filled posts are how he's going to be remembered

I'm not quite so sure. Michael Jackson, for example, isn't remembered today as a pedophile or a degenerate, even though everyone was quick to demean the man while he was alive. Maybe the same will be true for Terry Davis. Respect is often something that is given posthumously. People tend to forget and forgive when the negative is vastly outweighed by the positive.

Kidding, right? Its all I remember about MJ. Never listened much so that must be it. But TD's work was even more obscure to most people

>Implying that your anecdotal experience represents anyone besides yourself.

Maybe not being obvious enough. My example of my experience with a well-known-but-not-by-me dead rock star, is extendible to a not-well-known-outside-a-certain-circle programmer. Because some actions in life are very much more visible to the outsider with no appreciation/knowledge of the finer accomplishments

Please don't use meme arrows on HN. It's not hard to write normal English.

It's pretty common to deeply fear mental illness because we're all secretly afraid of it happening to us. It's the same feeling you get for a homeless person on the street, a combination of empathy and terror at the thought of ending up there.

Yeah, I mentioned this in a reply to to a post that appears to have been flagged (I don't think it should have been, even though I disagreed with it), but I feel like none of us are fully immune from something like this happening to us; all it takes is one bad head injury to cause brain damage, and then all bets are off an how it's going to affect your mental state.

I wish everyone felt like we do. Most people with comfortable (or better) lifestyles who have never endured suffering could never imagine themselves homeless. For the record, I've had as pampered a life as any, but I still empathize with homeless people, especially those who seem to be homeless because of schizophrenia.

I'd never heard of the posts you mention and will forget you mentioned it. I like to remember him as a troubled man who dedicated so much of his time to showing us the silliness of our own technological orthodoxy.

Part of the troubled aspect of his mind is that he was spouting all this hate. You can t pick and choose the parts of someone you like if you are actually going to respect them.

He made and OS that was far beyond an average person. He also spouted hatefull messages constantly. It's a package deal

Thank you, I feel exactly the same way. It would be nice to see the black bar on HN.

He needed a lot of help, but a great hacker has passed, and we should remember him for his work

>It would be nice to see the black bar on HN.

Seconding this. He was a great programmer, and deserves to be remembered.

Thirding this.

Terry definitely was an old-school hacker that didn't care about whether or not his products saw mass adoption, he did it because it was what he wanted to do most. There is a lot of humor in TempleOS and Terry in his more reasonable moments was actually a very nice and caring person. I spent some time trying to convince HN to look past his troubles but alas it did not come to pass.

He's always been one of the best arguments for enabling `showdead`. His posts were frequently incoherent, but they deserved to be seen.

You needed to watch a lot of his videos and read enough of his daily posts he used to make on his site to understand it, but everything he said was actually perfectly consistent within his own world view.

It'll certainly be the first time a black bar is shown for a user that's been repeatedly banned.

Fourthed or whatever.

God decreed that 640x480 in ring 0, was enough.

Agreed RIP

I'm surprised (and somewhat upset, though probably irrationally) there's not a black bar right now.

I think his flaws, borne of crippling mental illness as they were, will be largely forgotten in favor of his intelligence, his oddness, the unique nature of TempleOS, and his obvious pain. The phrase, “tortured artist” is thrown around a lot, but he really was a tortured artist. I think it’s natural to be sad st his death, because it’s a sad end to a life thst went awry for reasons beyond his or anyone’s control. I think most people would have wished for a way to help him, but also realized thst was just impossible, even for his nearest and dearest.

In short, a tragedy should be upsetting, especially when at the heart of the tragedy was a bright man with a serious illness.

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