[billadoid]

He's quite racist[0] and people won't tolerate his hate. It's for the best he got hellbanned, so the "saner" ones won't be tempted to get into a flame war with him.

[0]:http://i.imgur.com/IIMGYKE.png (the last comment made me laugh)

[sillysaurus2]

He's not necessarily racist. He's suffering from a mental illness. He believes god talks to him.

[Udo]

And on top of that, he's still a racist (and a homophobe if memory serves). Some of his rants are also more than a bit violent and scary, I wouldn't want to be near him when he isn't heavily medicated. The tragedy with illnesses like this is that it becomes almost impossible to draw a line between the condition and the person's personality.

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.

[jessedhillon]

I'm not sure you can call him a racist. He has an unintrospectable (by us at least) mental state, and the things he says can't be taken as representations of his opinions. He literally can't either control what he's saying, or perceive reality clear enough to get a usable picture of it.

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.

[wbhart]

I agree that he's quite probably not racist. He appears to have a fascination with computerised randomisation as a means of divining words from God. This would explain some of his (otherwise unintrospectable) comments. And it also leads me to believe that his frequent mention of the CIA and the n-word has some special, possibly even internally consistent, meaning to him, of which we are simply unaware. I am at least able to pick up on some of the religious allusions he makes elsewhere. That doesn't make him sane. But it might perhaps excuse what would otherwise be unacceptable.

[sillysaurus2]

You're disappointed that a cool project is #1 on hacker news?

[Udo]

Willful misunderstanding is of course always an option, I guess.

[sillysaurus2]

I was consciously trying not to misunderstand you. I can't parse what you said in any way except "this guy is a nutcase and should be denied praise since he's ill."

I mean, how would you want to be treated if your genes were a little less signal and a little more noise?

[Udo]

Your two posts where you are re-stating my opinion in your own words should qualify as a strawman-like attack, so willful misunderstanding is a fair charge.

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.

[tinco]

Saying racist things makes you racist, wether you are mentally ill or not.

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.

[tippytop]

Then does not saying racist things automatically make you not-racist? Or is there other criteria we need to apply before hanging the label? For example, do they believe the words coming out of their own mouth? What about someone with Tourette's? I'm not trying to fall in a philosophical hole, but I believe that racism is a conscious choice at some level and mental illness is not.

[lutusp]

> Then does not saying racist things automatically make you not-racist?

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.

[sillysaurus2]

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.

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.

[lutusp]

> Lest anyone believe this, let me emphasize that this project's author is suffering from schizophrenia

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.

[derefr]

Does this mean spambots that get trained on a corpus containing racism are racists? Can you be a racist without knowing what race is? (This tangent brought to you by "things I'd rather HN talk about than this topic")

[mehmehshoe]

So I guess a large majority of comedians are racist. That may hurt ticket sales.

[crux]

Saying racist things makes those things racist. Being mentally ill makes you mentally ill and—in this case—prone to saying racist things.

[dsego]

Just like Jesus?