4 ms·

i'm not writing this off completely, but i should ask what you hoped to bring to the conversation by sharing this? i can't help but feel it's a bit exploitative

i'm not writing this off completely, but i should ask what you hoped to bring to the conversation by sharing this? i can't help but feel it's a bit exploitative. i've been familiar with losethos for a long time, and i respect the curiosity for experiencing schizophrenia on an eye witness basis. but, given the nature of schizophrenia, i couldn't imagine being thrilled finding a post like this. surely there is another source that could satisfy your intent?

steveklabnik 14y ago
The linked story is a story about love. My post is a story about rejection. My intent is not gawking. My intent is to confront everyone with the reality that they're indirectly shunning one of their own (if anyone fits Hacker News, it's someone who wrote his own entire OS/language/demos/etc) due to mental illness. Due to the way that hellbanning works, he continues to reach out to us, and we ignore him. I consider this to be one of the great failures of this community. Furthermore, as you can see by some of my sibling replies, many people are _not_ actually aware of Terry or his accomplishments. SparrowOS is actually pretty amazing, for a number of reasons, and so I wanted to draw attention to them in a time when it's conversationally appropriate. I am not religious in any way, but since Terry quotes the word of God so often, > “Then the King will answer, > ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, > you also did for me.’ > > Matthew 25:40 Terry, like the woman in the story, needs our compassion and support. Compare the HN shadowban with the way that MetaFilter engaged him: http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Songs-from-God http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Son... I'm not saying the right answer is to un-shadow ban him either. I don't know what the right answer is. But I can tell you that I think about him and it a lot. I wish more people would. Frankly, I saw http://i.imgur.com/USsN6.png http://i.imgur.com/USsN6.png this morning and almost cried.
- pekk 14y ago
  I don't disagree with your points about SparrowOS. But I don't agree in practice that HN is the best place to find discussion of things like a hobbyist OS written in ASM, because it is so strongly oriented toward the business end of the startup scene. It is very typical to see posts about how engineers are arrogant and socially inept, or how annoying it is that there is so much technical stuff on HN, or how RMS is dangerous and revolting, etc. So frequently the yardstick for judging things is popularity and money and ability to manipulate perceptions, rather than knowledge or playfulness or building things which are really high quality for its own sake. So while (say) Zuckerberg's "Hacker" concept might go down well here, I don't think that old school "Hacker" values really have much place here.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    Originally, this place was "Startup News," but it got changed to "Hacker News" to broaden its scope. That said, there's always a difference between 'in theory' and 'in practice,' and so I sorta agree and disagree with you at the same time. I would like to see it more and more away from Zuckerberg and more and more towards old school, so I'm attempting to be the change I want to see in the world. ;)

steveklabnik 14y ago

The linked story is a story about love. My post is a story about rejection. My intent is not gawking. My intent is to confront everyone with the reality that they're indirectly shunning one of their own (if anyone fits Hacker News, it's someone who wrote his own entire OS/language/demos/etc) due to mental illness. Due to the way that hellbanning works, he continues to reach out to us, and we ignore him. I consider this to be one of the great failures of this community. Furthermore, as you can see by some of my sibling replies, many people are _not_ actually aware of Terry or his accomplishments. SparrowOS is actually pretty amazing, for a number of reasons, and so I wanted to draw attention to them in a time when it's conversationally appropriate. I am not religious in any way, but since Terry quotes the word of God so often, > “Then the King will answer, > ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, > you also did for me.’ > > Matthew 25:40 Terry, like the woman in the story, needs our compassion and support. Compare the HN shadowban with the way that MetaFilter engaged him: http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Songs-from-God http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Son... I'm not saying the right answer is to un-shadow ban him either. I don't know what the right answer is. But I can tell you that I think about him and it a lot. I wish more people would. Frankly, I saw http://i.imgur.com/USsN6.png http://i.imgur.com/USsN6.png this morning and almost cried.

pekk 14y ago
I don't disagree with your points about SparrowOS. But I don't agree in practice that HN is the best place to find discussion of things like a hobbyist OS written in ASM, because it is so strongly oriented toward the business end of the startup scene. It is very typical to see posts about how engineers are arrogant and socially inept, or how annoying it is that there is so much technical stuff on HN, or how RMS is dangerous and revolting, etc. So frequently the yardstick for judging things is popularity and money and ability to manipulate perceptions, rather than knowledge or playfulness or building things which are really high quality for its own sake. So while (say) Zuckerberg's "Hacker" concept might go down well here, I don't think that old school "Hacker" values really have much place here.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  Originally, this place was "Startup News," but it got changed to "Hacker News" to broaden its scope. That said, there's always a difference between 'in theory' and 'in practice,' and so I sorta agree and disagree with you at the same time. I would like to see it more and more away from Zuckerberg and more and more towards old school, so I'm attempting to be the change I want to see in the world. ;)