4 ms·

It doesn't quite apply but I think it kind of does: I consider TempleOS to be a form of "outsider art". Terry obviously was a trained engineer, but he still ef

It doesn't quite apply but I think it kind of does: I consider TempleOS to be a form of "outsider art". Terry obviously was a trained engineer, but he still effectively taught himself a lot of the stuff to build a kernel and operating system and compiler and a few dozen games. He was also obviously extremely mentally ill, but that's also kind of what makes TempleOS fascinating. It's an extremely bizarre thing to play with, and it can be a surprisingly big time sink if you really decide to get into it, and I don't think all the ideas in there are bad. For the most part, it doesn't feel like there are a ton of original operating systems anymore; most people seem happy enough to use a dialect Linux of FreeBSD if you need something specialized, or Windows and macOS for general purpose. I don't blame these people, that's certainly what I would do too, but I have to give credit to Terry for deciding to do his own thing from scratch in assembly code. He was sort of a relic of a bygone era in that regard. I certainly don't want to engage in any apologetics for Terry's outright racism and conspiracy theories, that stuff is horrible and I have no nice things to say about it, but he will always be a figure that I'm a little fascinated by.

LoganDark 2y ago
From the article: > The boot sequence up to this point looks completely different than any other primary/secondary bootloader I’ve ever looked at. It demonstrates a lot of creativity in the writing process It's clear that this guy didn't think like the rest of us, didn't code like the rest of us. But he was so incredibly talented. I'm in awe.
- tombert 2y ago
  Yeah, that's kind of why I think it's important to reinvent the wheel sometimes. The "logical" choice if you want a custom OS is to start with a Linux, glue together Grub and a kernel and if you're really ambitious maybe write your own windowing system on X or Wayland or something. I think it's safe to say that's what most of us on this forum would do, and it's certainly what I would do, and I don't think that's an incompetent decision. But I think it's important for people shoot for the moon and inject entropy into the process. Terry definitely had a very interesting way of thinking than the average engineer, and I think there are more than a few clever ideas buried within TempleOS that we might not have otherwise. If we don't occasionally inject entropy into the process, I think we find plenty of local maxima, but miss a lot of potentially higher potential maxima.
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    > If we don't occasionally inject entropy into the process, I think we find plenty of local maxima, but miss a lot of potentially higher potential maxima. Someone sent me this video a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHuFSnhKG9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHuFSnhKG9I The video uses an analogy that stuck with me, and the basic idea is that if autistics are good at deeply building out a single idea, schizophrenics / schizotypals find it very easy to adopt entirely new ideas. This could also be one of the mechanisms behind schizophrenic delusions, which are difficult to fight with logic, because they're not based on logical combinations of existing ideas, they stand on their own. I think it's extremely fascinating. I don't think there's any doubt that he was suffering from his illness, but I don't think he suffered only due to his illness. I think general society doesn't yet understand mental illness and neurodivergence in general well enough to know how to approach it. I don't know if I'll live long enough to see real studies catch up to even just what I currently know and feel intuitively, and that makes me a little sad. To me, autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, DID, BPD and so on, all feel critically misunderstood by medical literature.
    - zem 2y ago
      for a brilliant science fictional treatment of some of these themes, check out friedman's "this alien shore" and sequel
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    IIRC Terry literally injected entropy, in that he used a PRNG to suggest what to work on next. At the time, it occurred to me that that might have been an effective way to make sure all of the system got a little implemented, instead of only ever working on his favourite subsystems?
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
"I certainly don't want to engage in any apologetics for Terry's outright racism and conspiracy theories" Indeed, but one may consider this is often part of mental-health symptomatology in many cases. I watched people I knew for decades slowly develop schizophrenic disorders, and they tended to fixate on visible appearances about 10 months before cycling into a full psychotic episode. It is not a permanent state, but rather they would later cycle back into lucid states where they were the same people they used to be for awhile. The modern medications are far more effective at tamping down the frequency and severity of the paranoia symptoms with fewer side-effects. As you age, even without a psychopathology background one will learn people are delicate, madness is a gradient, and some people break in ways you won't understand. The modern internet is hardly accommodating to anything unique or controversial, as the vitriol often flows far more easily than compassion. Take care of yourselves, and remember to be kind to each other =3
- tombert 2y ago
  I completely agree. When Terry died a few years ago, I actually had some arguments here about people fully condemning him for the racist stuff, and I pushed back claiming that mental illness could happen to anyone and it's important to approach these things with a bit of sympathy [1]. I go back and forth, but I generally try hard to approach these things with some level of empathy. The human brain is a frustrating and annoying thing, it breaks in non-obvious ways for non-obvious reasons causing non-obvious effects. Dementia is something that will affect a lot (most?) of us at some point, and who the hell knows how any one of us are going to handle that? While I think it's totally fine to condemn the individual statements that Terry said, and maybe even ok to use the reductive-but-useful label of "asshole" to describe him, I also think it's important to remember that fundamentally, he was a human. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913372
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    "Dementia is something that will affect a lot" Most with such a family history should be regularly eating a diet including Edamame, fresh eggs, fungi, and seaweed. The FDA will be clearing a new treatment this year which includes some of the same Edamame protective compounds if I recall, and should help many people slow degenerative symptoms by over 80%. Gene therapies are also outpacing projected models, and should be more viable in coming decades. Cheers =3

LoganDark 2y ago

From the article: > The boot sequence up to this point looks completely different than any other primary/secondary bootloader I’ve ever looked at. It demonstrates a lot of creativity in the writing process It's clear that this guy didn't think like the rest of us, didn't code like the rest of us. But he was so incredibly talented. I'm in awe.

tombert 2y ago
Yeah, that's kind of why I think it's important to reinvent the wheel sometimes. The "logical" choice if you want a custom OS is to start with a Linux, glue together Grub and a kernel and if you're really ambitious maybe write your own windowing system on X or Wayland or something. I think it's safe to say that's what most of us on this forum would do, and it's certainly what I would do, and I don't think that's an incompetent decision. But I think it's important for people shoot for the moon and inject entropy into the process. Terry definitely had a very interesting way of thinking than the average engineer, and I think there are more than a few clever ideas buried within TempleOS that we might not have otherwise. If we don't occasionally inject entropy into the process, I think we find plenty of local maxima, but miss a lot of potentially higher potential maxima.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  > If we don't occasionally inject entropy into the process, I think we find plenty of local maxima, but miss a lot of potentially higher potential maxima. Someone sent me this video a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHuFSnhKG9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHuFSnhKG9I The video uses an analogy that stuck with me, and the basic idea is that if autistics are good at deeply building out a single idea, schizophrenics / schizotypals find it very easy to adopt entirely new ideas. This could also be one of the mechanisms behind schizophrenic delusions, which are difficult to fight with logic, because they're not based on logical combinations of existing ideas, they stand on their own. I think it's extremely fascinating. I don't think there's any doubt that he was suffering from his illness, but I don't think he suffered only due to his illness. I think general society doesn't yet understand mental illness and neurodivergence in general well enough to know how to approach it. I don't know if I'll live long enough to see real studies catch up to even just what I currently know and feel intuitively, and that makes me a little sad. To me, autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, DID, BPD and so on, all feel critically misunderstood by medical literature.
  - zem 2y ago
    for a brilliant science fictional treatment of some of these themes, check out friedman's "this alien shore" and sequel
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  IIRC Terry literally injected entropy, in that he used a PRNG to suggest what to work on next. At the time, it occurred to me that that might have been an effective way to make sure all of the system got a little implemented, instead of only ever working on his favourite subsystems?

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

"I certainly don't want to engage in any apologetics for Terry's outright racism and conspiracy theories" Indeed, but one may consider this is often part of mental-health symptomatology in many cases. I watched people I knew for decades slowly develop schizophrenic disorders, and they tended to fixate on visible appearances about 10 months before cycling into a full psychotic episode. It is not a permanent state, but rather they would later cycle back into lucid states where they were the same people they used to be for awhile. The modern medications are far more effective at tamping down the frequency and severity of the paranoia symptoms with fewer side-effects. As you age, even without a psychopathology background one will learn people are delicate, madness is a gradient, and some people break in ways you won't understand. The modern internet is hardly accommodating to anything unique or controversial, as the vitriol often flows far more easily than compassion. Take care of yourselves, and remember to be kind to each other =3

tombert 2y ago
I completely agree. When Terry died a few years ago, I actually had some arguments here about people fully condemning him for the racist stuff, and I pushed back claiming that mental illness could happen to anyone and it's important to approach these things with a bit of sympathy [1]. I go back and forth, but I generally try hard to approach these things with some level of empathy. The human brain is a frustrating and annoying thing, it breaks in non-obvious ways for non-obvious reasons causing non-obvious effects. Dementia is something that will affect a lot (most?) of us at some point, and who the hell knows how any one of us are going to handle that? While I think it's totally fine to condemn the individual statements that Terry said, and maybe even ok to use the reductive-but-useful label of "asshole" to describe him, I also think it's important to remember that fundamentally, he was a human. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913372
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  "Dementia is something that will affect a lot" Most with such a family history should be regularly eating a diet including Edamame, fresh eggs, fungi, and seaweed. The FDA will be clearing a new treatment this year which includes some of the same Edamame protective compounds if I recall, and should help many people slow degenerative symptoms by over 80%. Gene therapies are also outpacing projected models, and should be more viable in coming decades. Cheers =3