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Comment by OfSanguineFire | Hacker News Reader

As someone who first knew Terry Davis from Slashdot where his clearly mentally ill posts seemed to get downvoted a lot of the time, it is remarkable to see that the products of his madness have become regarded as real art with staying power. He is like the Adolf Wölfli of the hacker crowd.

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He's also the origin of the word "glowie": https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/glowie

AFAIK that originated with the video where he said this:

NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbG6u86t4bA

Then the word “glowie” was coined in 4chan based on that, as others commented here already.

Kind of? he never actually used the word glowie AFAIK. 4chan is the origin.

He coined the phrase which the word is descended from, infamously, on a video livestream

THAT part is true.

Perhaps the modern/mainstream popularization.

Huh? Where do you think it originates then?

"Glowing" was used as a description of government agents before Terry's "popularity"; the most common modern version is tongue-in-cheek "jokes" using the term while "outing" someone, usually someone who is asking odd, or personal questions, especially in a security or privacy community.

Do you have any reference to support your claim that "glowing" was used in this context before Terry's livestream?

You're hoping I'll permalink you to...decades old IRC and other chat and forum conversations?

It's from Terry.

But the shortened, less overtly racist term 'Glowie' comes from 4chan and similar environs

TempleOS is actually pretty cool, when viewed as the product of one man's dream. How many people can say they've written a 64-bit, multi-core, protected mode OS that comes with its own programming language? Then, throw in a flight simulator game, just for giggles.

Honestly, if it weren't the product of religious delusions common with schizophrenia, I'd say TempleOS and HolyC would be more than enough of a resume to get hired into many programming jobs.

For someone so delusional, it's interesting that he was effective enough to do anything. How far detached from reality can you be and still create something that objectively works?

Could someone delusional also create a rocket ship? Or is there something special about programming that makes it compatible with delusional thinking?

"Delusional thinking" is a pretty broad umbrella. There's nothing that's fundamentally incompatible with a delusional thought process per se, but the particulars might be a problem.

In Terry's case, it sounded like he suffered from a lot of delusions of persecution (e.g. thinking the CIA is after him), and religious delusions. Neither of these are fundamentally incompatible with any sort of technical or scientific thought process. Had he not been delusional, I suspect we might either never have heard of him, or he'd be one of the people making the front page of HN on a semi-regular basis.

> Could someone delusional also create a rocket ship? Or is there something special about programming that makes it compatible with delusional thinking?

Newton studied alchemy and Linus Pauling believed against all evidence that vitamin C cured cancer and basically everything else. Humans are very good at applying their (ir)rationality to certain subfields while abandoning it in others.

I'll give you Pauling, but Newton studying alchemy in the 17th and 18th centuries would have been far from delusional when you consider "Robert Boyle pioneered the scientific method in chemical investigations"[0] around that time. According to the same Wikipedia article, it was only sometime between 1720-1740 when "alchemy" came to mean "attempts to transmute other materials into gold." Newton died in 1726.

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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy#Later_modern_period

Alchemy was a pre-curser of Chemistry, and it is logical leap that this is not delusional, just 'early science'.

BUT. Newton also studies Bible Numerology. Trying to find number patterns in the Bible.

So maybe Newton also had his quirks.

Maybe any mind that is exploring new ideas, will sometimes go down some blind alleys.

Vitamin C cures cancer like ivermectin kills COVID-19 - it doesn't actually fix the bigger problem, but, if your body has been trashed so badly that you actually have medical need to have one of these put into your arm, the improvement in your immune system would be drastic.

> Could someone delusional also create a rocket ship? Or is there something special about programming that makes it compatible with delusional thinking?

Programming (eg, TempleOS) can be successful as a solo endeavor. I'm not sure we have enough technical leverage for a single person to create a rocket ship (ie, something capable of lifting real loads to orbit). Maybe in the future when AI systems can fill in some of the details and/or automate the construction.

If you have to coordinate with other humans, insanity is tough. Nobody else can hear the voices in your particular head.

Sort of related, I was browsing the github of the author of the Hyprland wayland compositor to see what else he's built. Smiled at https://github.com/vaxerski/Holy6800 - I love this kind of useless but cool project.

I totally agree; regardless of Terry Davis' strangeness, there's no doubt a certain level of brilliance to it. Honestly, I think that's kind of why TempleOS has been so compelling to people. It's insane, but also beyond the skills of 99.99% of the population.

So much of the so-bad-its-good stuff required effort, and TempleOS is no exception.

> Honestly, if it weren't the product of religious delusions common with schizophrenia, I'd say TempleOS and HolyC would be more than enough of a resume to get hired into many programming jobs.

He actually was employed as a programmer before the whole schizophrenia/TempleOS arc.

He had a master's degree in electrical engineering from Arizona State University and worked at Ticketmaster as a VAX programmer. He also started programming in assembly from an early age.

He comes from a time where they had to share 2 MB of memory among 100 users. He can run circles around many modern programmers.

It's interesting, because in reviewing TempleOS, and his way of explaining what he had done, and how he spoke about it, I always got the vibe that the religious references were him "doing his duty" (what he was compelled to) while just being a hacker.

Not that the whole OS was an offering to God.

Did I miss that?

>Honestly, if it weren't the product of religious delusions common with schizophrenia

Are you forgetting or whitewashing his racist delusions, or are you saying that religious delusions imply racist delusions?

Going around delusionally telling everyone that Jesus loves them isn't the same thing as shouting the n-word at everyone.

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