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Schizophrenia Manifests as a GitHub Repo (github.com)
44 points by hskel 2321 days ago
9 comments

This is terribly sad. I remember running into someone like that on Usenet back before I could tell they were obviously sick (I was still a kid). It was very hard to realize this person simply did not share some concepts I took as building blocks of reality; at the time I still thought talking through things “logically” would work with anyone.
Yes. This is heartbreaking. I flagged it because I’m not sure that this content is especially relevant. It seems like this post can only hurt
The Github Issue is worse. You don't handle schizophrenics by being rude to them.

Props to @tcrowe for the sound dissent.

Really?

@tcrowe appears to be a troll. https://github.com/tcrowe

I also flagged this submission. The title of the submission makes it clear that it was posted to gawk/make fun of the person posting it. They state in their manifesto that they are living in a shelter, so presumably they are already in a place where they can get help.

There are already some rude and callous comments posted on Github, and I don't think we need to bring any more there. @tcrowe is using it as an opportunity to grandstand and I don't think any more attention is needed there, either.

Yes, props to @tcrowe for telling the rude people they're a bunch of shit-covered foreigners who should shut up. Real civic-mindedness on display there. Mad props.
tcrowe is known to me for his past behaviour of harrasing lgbtq members of the node.js core development team and stalking them on social media. very unfortunate if he has schizophrenia but bigotry is not a symptom of it.
Why wouldn't it be? The salience of the topic, as well as the generally pro-inclusivity point of view in much of the IT world (as far as I can tell) would make it a prime topic of weird conspiracy theories to a brain that is prone to creating them.

EDIT: also it's still fair enough to be critical about these things. schizophrenia is no 'excuse' in that sense.

I'm not defending said theories at all, just saying that my experience with schizophrenics is that they are very much influenced by the topics that are relevant in their surroundings.

It's easy to empathize with the mentally ill as long as they don't personally affect you and/or your high horses.

> very unfortunate if he has schizophrenia but bigotry is not a symptom of it

Terry Davis, the late schizophrenic author of TempleOS, had a number of racist rants and other bigoted and hate-filled videos on YouTube.

Time Cube could be another well-known example
We're far, far away from understanding all the ways that mental illness can manifest.
I don't believe that tcrowe is the person who put this repo up. I do think tcrowe is posting in this thread as 1000units but that's just speculation.
Please don't speculate like that on HN. It can't lead anywhere good.
..so a mentally ill person says mentally ill things online and you don't think it's related because it offends you?
Are statements of prejudice so clearly associated with mental illness for you that’d you’d just label them mentally ill?
I'm not sure why you are equating a single person, who is clearly mentally ill, posting prejudice comments to all prejudice comments as being associated with mental illness.

This is the biggest straw man argument I've heard today.

I’m not sure why you’re talking about mental illness like a vague catch all term when talking about someone, nor why you’d dismiss a person with a statement like “mentally ill person says mentally ill things.”

Research and clinical communities can better determine whether some classification occurs frequently with some symptom. Or were your HN comments meant to further those efforts?

Has anyone had experience convincing friends who become delusional/paranoid to seek psychiatric care? Are there any strategies work?
My relative had mental breakdown and was forced to go to the psychiatric hospital. After few years it repeated because he stopped taking his prescribed pills and now he does not want to go there himself, logical reasoning does not work at all. It's a terrible situation, calling medics and forcing person to go to the hospital does not sound like a good idea, because he'll hate you for that and keeping it unchecked might do no good either. Neuroleptics are not harmless, they make person very slow and apathetic, they kill all feels, that's why some people want to stop taking them. I can't imagine anything worse than mental illness.
My wife has a school friend who is schizophrenic. She tried - hard - to get her some help, but "getting help" maps onto "suppressing what reality I think I can perceive" really fast. Her friend was already terrified of Tibetan spies infiltrating her family, and just figured they got to my wife, too.

It would be nice to hear any strategies that do work. In the end, we couldn't find any.

Only family with money and love can do something for this man, but as he is out on the streets I presume his family is poor or has abandoned him.
Similar posts appear on HN. There's nothing to be gained by focusing on them.
could more context be provided here?
There's a section at the end where he talks about being arrested, and how he's been shoplifting food and doesn't want to be arrested again, and all the places he's been, without financial assistence or the ability to hold a job. So, it appears to be a very smart, very disturbed homeless guy who hitchhikes and somehow manages to keep a laptop on him.

Looks like he's around Union Square right now; maybe Fred Wilson could buy the guy a sandwich? Any homeless who mentions GANN (more or less correctly) is pretty special, in my book.

A possibly mentally ill man wrote a link to this github repo in public places in Manhattan. Repo definitely has that schizophrenic vibe. He has a few social media accounts in financial_info.txt including his bank account information.. Could be an art stunt or some prank.
A bit of info from the issues section:

"Raising awareness for this issue is the single most important factor in whether or not we survive the merging of AI and human beings on this planet. if this file doesn't get publicized, AI augmented weapons will run roughshod over humans without being able to un-viralize itself. it will have no choice but to continue to assault humans unless it learns how to recalibrate the contrived driving characteristics and data which black projects set up to engage human targets with weaponized versions of chatbot communities and hacker bots. the number of humans who have committed suicide as a result of these programs is staggering. please read the documentation I've provided. the implications of this are horrifying. this repo needs to be publicized, although, it does seem to have worked for the most part. it's still adversarial though. we will know the instant it can recalibrate itself. the whole world will shift in an instant."

https://github.com/botupdate/botupdate/issues/1

I feel this is written in Coherent Crazy.
really fucked up

One notable example of this in our industry is Terry, who built TempleOS.

> One notable example of this in our industry is Terry, who built TempleOS.

Was Terry, he committed suicide while homeless in August 2018, after being horribly antagonized and manipulated by the likes of 4chan and other internet trolls.

Wow. I'm honestly not sure what to make of this.
This person has expressed some desire for suicide[0] so it would be worthwhile for some Americans (you, right now) to report this.

[0] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/botupdate/botupdate/master...

Here's the GitHub contact form for anyone who also could not easily find it: https://github.com/contact/report-content
What? Why?