[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.

[sillysaurus2]

My intent wasn't to misrepresent you. It was to clarify you. I have no interest in making people look bad. I'm interested in the truth. Thank you for clarifying that, and I'm sorry if I was being uncharitable.

[Udo]

I'm sorry if I saw intent where there maybe was none. But I hope you see how it would look that way to someone when you paint a picture like that. Also, reading intent in forum posts is hard, especially if you don't know the person. So let me restate that those two conclusions you drew about my motivations are false, but the end result is probably pretty close anyway.