[xyproto]

Terry A. Davis had a mental illness, so it is a bit unfair to claim that he was very terrible as a person.

If someone breaks a leg, they may be unable to walk, but may walk again when they are cured. It does not make them a non-walker as a person.

I think the distinction between illness and identity is important.

[tecleandor]

Also, was Davis that hateful? Haven't followed him, and what I know from him is mostly anecdotal, but apart from some slurs he mostly did long weird God and CIA unhinged posts, but not active hate edgelord stuff like what I see from this guy.

[diggan]

Take a look at some of his HN accounts (like https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos) and judge yourself if it's hateful or not.

Some would say the hateful language came only because of his disease, others the disease only added to existing behavior. Hard to know from the outside without really knowing him I'd say.

[edm0nd]

For anyone else curious, you have to go into your HN settings and change showdead to YES in order to see all the majority of his Comments. Only two show up if not.

[tecleandor]

Ah well, not great. I didn't know his HN accounts, I think I mostly read his site for TempleOS and something else (can't remember, it was long time ago so this was mostly a gut feeling).

It's true it feels like it comes from a different place, but yep, not great.

[veltas]

He never struck me as a cruel person, maybe a bit callous, and definitely very sick.

[dxuh]

How do you know the drummyfish person doesn't have a mental illness either? Arguably most personality "quirks" are caused by either some medical issue or events in childhood, some of which can be addressed as an adult and "sorted out", but some of which cannot.

It's entirely possible that drummyfish is a victim of some childhood trauma, which is likely easier to get into control than severe schizophrenia in the case of Terry Davis.

To be clear I totally agree with you, but I am arguing that you never quite know where illness ends and identity starts and we should try to attribute less bad behavior to identity for everyone.

[lifthrasiir]

I mean, not exactly his fault but most people would still find it difficult to deal with him anyway.

On the other hand, I'm actually less concerned about the identity stuff. I'm much more concerned about how he represents himself and makes multiple conflicting statements without any context in public. I don't want to judge how minor-attracted people should be considered in the society because I honestly have no idea, but the modern society at least in principle requires some tolerance in the value system and I can see absolutely no such evidence from the website. Never good for his identity even if we can accept that.