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Merits 55 from 4 users
Re: Everyone on this site except for me is psychotic and evil.
by
PowerGlove
on 16/08/2025, 13:18:37 UTC
⭐ Merited by nutildah (30) ,DireWolfM14 (10) ,EFS (8) ,ABCbits (7)
(...) to ADVANCE SCIENCE, whatever the fuck that means.
When OP says "BITCOIN DOES NOT EVEN HAVE A MINING ALGORITHM THAT IS DESIGNED TO ADVANCE SCIENCE", I think what they mean is that they think it's a pity that the definition of Bitcoin's PoW scheme missed an opportunity to embed a niche computer engineering problem. They're saying that if the PoW scheme had been defined in just the right way, then it would have effectively caused any advancements in Bitcoin mining to also have been advancements in reversible computing. (OP even attempted such a thing here.)

I've gotta say, when I carefully read through OP's old posts, I get kind of emotional...

One of the (unrelated-seeming, but, bear with me) stories from recent memory that affected me most (as in, even now, ~7 years later, I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it) is the story of Terry A. Davis:



That dude was a programming legend. In fact, I don't think I've ever crossed paths with someone that I'm fully convinced can even understand just how talented he was (I mean, programmers, as a rule, tend to all think that they're something special, but, when measured on a scale that tops out with what Terry managed to pull off on his own, it's like he's turning out perfectly-set chocolate soufflés while most everyone else is stuck trying to microwave their turds, or something). Solo-programming complicated things (like, for example, a software-rasterized 3D engine) using only dependencies/libraries that you wrote yourself, to run on an operating system that you wrote yourself, all using a compiler that you wrote yourself for a C-like programming language that you designed yourself, is a feat that puts him in a group so small that anyone that figures they belong in that same group is almost certainly mistaken and very probably thinks that getting something like a homebrew Forth or Lisp environment to run on bare metal and then host a small VGA game is just about the size of it (it isn't).

The thing is, you'd never be able to see or say that about him if you graded what he did at face value. His work (TempleOS, I mean) was very difficult to take seriously and looked childishly stupid in many ways. What gave it the patina of amateurism was the fact that he had serious mental health issues (starting from around age 27 and eventually leading to him being homeless and then taking his own life at age 48). He came to believe that he was in direct communication with God (who gave him instructions, like never to implement SVGA, and to stick to a 16-color 640x480 video mode), and when he wasn't programming what he believed to be the Third Temple prophesied in the Bible, he was having manic episodes that would leave him in situations like having driven hundreds of miles to escape capture by the CIA before throwing his keys into the desert and dismantling his vehicle to look for tracking devices. That kind of thing. Toward the end, and for a long time leading up to it, it was impossible to follow WTF he was even talking about most of the time, but, if you engaged him in anything programming-related, he'd be completely lucid.

Anyway, I have no idea what's going on with OP. Maybe he's a troll, or maybe he really is who he says he is. I can't grade his work (I'm not a mathematician), and so I can't say where he might sit on the scale of giftedness. I also can't speak to his seemingly-obvious mental health issues (I'm not a psychiatrist), and so I can't say where he might sit on the scale of craziness. But, I do get some Terry-vibes from his posts (the religious/divine-justice stuff, the phrase-fixation, the repetitive incoherent nonsense, the lucid technical thoughts). With that in mind, my advice to everyone would be to pick between ignoring him or showing him kindness (I mean, that's good advice in general, I think, even though I often fail to apply it myself, and while I know it's difficult to do that when someone is being especially disruptive or saying unhinged things, in my experience, kindness goes a very long way, and there really is no point in trying to argue with someone who cannot perceive that they're playing chess with checkers pieces, so to speak).