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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

The lionization of this guy reminds me of the reporting of the Charge of the Light Brigade. All those noble British soldiers, following orders even unto death, what courage, what majesty... when what should really have been said was: what a bunch of bloody idiots, who got themselves killed for no reason. And so the same foolishness repeated throughout the first world war.

So let me say it: this guy, whether through his own fault or because of his problems, is acting like a dumbass. He's pouring a lot of talent into a pointless project that no-one will ever use or benefit from. He is not someone to look up to or admire, and certainly not to emulate. Do not romanticise his foolishness.

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Hold on, let me get this straight: You think that someone who does what he does because he honestly believes he is doing god's work (because of a mental illness) is a dumbass?

Next you'll call John Nash fucking retarded for being afraid of men in red ties.

Nash was great in spite of his issues, not because of them; his work was a real, useful contribution to human knowledge, because (in contrast to this guy) he worked with the wider mathematical community, which then in turn later built on his work.

Being afraid of men in red ties is still a dumb thing to do, and won't make you a great mathematician. We romanticize the outsiders, but the great bulk of the mathematical edifice was constructed by relatively ordinary, well-adjusted people like Euler. If you want to be a great mathematician, it isn't Nash you should model yourself on.

What about Erdős :) ?

Erdős was one of the greats, but emphasis on "one of". Again, it's easy to romanticize someone who's different, like a microcosm of orientalism. Erdős may even have been the best mathematician of his generation, but he wasn't head and shoulders above everyone else the way people sometimes seem to imply, and he wasn't (IMO, if the question even makes sense) the best of all time.

It's essentially an art project.

Which, for me at least, exempts it from evaluation on grounds of pure utility.

Clearly he should make another JavaScript framework.

Say what you like about the utility of the system, but it's definitely interesting.

In some countries they have huge working places for the mentally disabled to do pointless work. One place screws caps on bottles for a day, then they ship the bottles to another place, where they screw the caps off the bottles. I prefer TempleOS's work.

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