Edit: After watching this video, I understand the SparrowOS name (audio required): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tuXweEJNFI
Look at his post from a little more than two years ago: http://i.imgur.com/qL01m.png
There are no insults in that post, instead you see a man who's created something wonderful and isn't getting anything back for it. Of course the icing on this cake is that, that very post was marked as dead... his cry for help was not seen or heard by anyone.
He deserves a good doctor. If we can do anything, then we should set up a fund for medical treatment. He has said that doctors haven't been able to help him, but maybe whoever is caring for him hasn't been able to afford top-tier care. It makes a huge difference.
In practice, setting up such a fund would be difficult because we don't know who's caring for him or how.
[0]:http://i.imgur.com/IIMGYKE.png (the last comment made me laugh)
I have showdead on all the time and I see him posting his garbage every day. Every day. He has no good days.
Personally, I'm disappointed this is at #1 on the front page, cool project or not.
To be racist, I think it should be clear that the person is making value judgments about others based solely or primarily on the target's race. Nobody knows what Terry is thinking.
Either way, please don't hold it against him for prolific use of the n-word and other slurs. Isn't it obvious he has no clue what he's saying? He lives in a world where everyone is a potential attacker/saboteur.
I mean, how would you want to be treated if your genes were a little less signal and a little more noise?
This kind of illness bleeds into a person's personality. Mental illness is a complex spectrum, not a boolean value. The more a person's capacity for reasoning about the world is compromised, the less relevant it becomes what that person wants. Clearly, if losethos would get what he wants, we'd all die a horrible death. Let that sink in for a second. So to answer your point: if I was a thoroughly crazy person, what I want would be irrelevant.
Of course, all of these points and counterpoints between us are somewhat dancing around the actual issue. So I'll come out and say it: I don't like that dude. For me personally his views outweigh the programming things he does. Your opinion differs. You write off what you don't like as noise, and cherry-pick the things you like for praise. Both viewpoints have certain merits.
However, when you summarize my point of view as
> You're disappointed that a cool project is #1 on hacker news?
you crossed the line into outright misrepresentation by using a polemic sound bite designed to distort the meaning behind the original argument. Yes, I personally am disappointed this is #1 on HN. Yes, it's a cool project. However, it should also be exceedingly obvious that I'm not disappointed because a cool project is featured prominently. And you did the same thing again with
> "this guy is a nutcase and should be denied praise since he's ill."
Yes, that guy is a "nutcase". And yes, he should be denied praise. But once again you imply a causal link between those statements where you know is none: I don't want to deny praise because he's ill. I want to deny praise because he's an asshole.
You did this maneuver two times. There is little reason to doubt you're trying to ridicule my argument by faultily restating it.
But let's put your rhetorics aside. This all is based on my personal opinion about losethos. You have a different one, and at the time of writing this, it is shared by at least 139 people. Be happy about that. It means you're probably right.
It does mean we should judge him less for it. But it also means it might be a good decision to ban him so that he does not tarnish the community with too many flame threads.
No, that doesn't work. A person not saying racist things might be a racist on his day off. The absence of racist speech cannot be used to declare a person not racist, because:
1. The person might harbor racist but unspoken thoughts.
2. We're all racists.
Number (2) pretty much settles the issue. I emphasize that the fact that we're all racists doesn't mean we're all bigots, or that we're not ashamed of our racism and sincerely wish to be free of racism.
> I believe that racism is a conscious choice at some level and mental illness is not.
I've met people raised in the south before modern times, and for many of them, racism was not a conscious choice. I've often disagreed with federal intervention in local politics, but as to civil rights, I have to say that was one case where federal intervention was absolutely necessary and just:
http://media.northjersey.com/images/0825t_shuttle2_50p.jpg
Also, mental illness can sometimes be a conscious choice as well. We can talk ourselves into a very unhealthy mental state -- or out of one. I'm talking only about the many kinds of mental illness that aren't biological in origin -- the kinds of mental illness that were voted into existence, and that make the DSM* noticeably bigger with each new revision.
* More about the DSM controversy: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-s...
EDIT: I cannot believe someone downvoted this terrific reply. If I say so myself, it's first-rate, and it represents the height of irony that it was downvoted.
Lest anyone believe this, let me emphasize that this project's author is suffering from schizophrenia, and schizophrenia is a physical disease. Your brain physically deteriorates.
That doesn't contradict the idea that many mental illnesses have no physical or biological connection, indeed many are inventions of psychologists for their own personal benefit, and were created by votes, not research.
> and schizophrenia is a physical disease. Your brain physically deteriorates.
Very true, which is why schizophrenia isn't a mental illness, it's physical illness with mental symptoms. This isn't remotely controversial.
Neuroscience has a long way to go before it can offer what medicine offers for conventional diseases. But in the long term, it will make psychiatry and psychology look like astrology.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-s...