Look through the comments when this is more or less done. Decide if the quality of coments warrants having temple os on the front page yet again. (How many times now?) Everything sensible has been said, repeating that signal just gets lost in the noise. Noise at best...
This is certainly a well-known phenomenon, both on here and other similar websites. However, the subject matter is genuinely interesting (there’s a lot to be learned from the design of TempleOS and HolyC) and the linked blog post adds new content to the discussion instead of simply rehashing the argument. She does a great job of avoiding most of the controversy in both of the posts in the series, which can’t always be said for many of the other articles on this topic. The first couple of paragraphs probably weren’t necessary, but they did provide context for people who were unaware.
I find it deeply unfortunate that we can’t have a good discussion on the interesting technical aspects of Terry’s project as opposed to the man himself, especially since the post is about one particular technical feature.
I'm not sure why or if it's just me but the run button in the example given in the article here:
https://christine.website/static/blog/tos_2/wasm_exec.html
Seems to be greyed out and unclickable on mobile. I tried chrome and another browser based on gecko and the same thing occurred both times.
I'm on android. In chrome the button's just unclickable in the other browser it automatically selects the text box and opens the keyboard instead. Even zoomed in directly onto the button.
Here is a great video on TempleOS and Terry Davis himself.
It talks about the development of the OS, it's history and his life in a chronological order.
The early paragraphs of this article are a huge distraction from the rest of the article. So the article is supposed to be about someone porting a random number generator to webassembly, but inexplicably pontificates (without sources or references) that Terry Davis believed in some 4-sided Trinity of God, and that Evangelical Christians are like Terry, and how Evangelical Christians think insanity is normal (all without sources). Making a bunch of unfounded hot-button religious statements is a sure fire way to distract people from what could be interesting about a random number generator written in web assembly.
It's an article about TempleOS and the author is (briefly) trying to put TempleOS's use of randomness in context. Perhaps the interpretation is too superficial or inaccurate for your tastes and standards but it's not really 'inexplicable' nor do you need 'sources' every time you write (or read!) a bit of introductory material.
Post about random number generators, meh, post about TempleOS while stirring the pot... Top HN. But yeah, historically mental illness was closely linked to divine inspiration. Before modern times it is very likely Terry would have been some sort of oracle in a temple. To a schizophrenic benign things start having meaning and they focus on those things and build a whole narrative around them, in this case a whole technology is built around it. How is that not different from any religion. A whole system of meaning and narrative is built around things that to an outsider seem silly or insane and yet they utilize some common ideas that have a lot of resonance to all of humanity.
Schizophrenia is a spectrum disorder, (meaning there are high functioning schizophrenics that can go about routinely in their lives), of unknown origin, maybe it's a way for some sort of virus or bacteria to control all of human society. Maybe it's a normal part of human behavior and society and has been for a long time.
I started reading the article hoping it would be about a clever alternative implementation for random number generators, but closed the tab after reading the first two paragraphs.
Rationality is relative to your own personal goals.
I don't want to have kids. To many people this isn't considered rational. Some people want to be famous. To me this doesn't seem rational (it is not worth the tradeoffs).
As there are no universally held goals, the notion of rationality (as typically applied) only makes sense within one's own universe, the dimensions of which are mapped by one's own personally held axioms. Using the notion of irrationality as a judgement against others is equivalent to saying "this person should hold the same goals/values as I do." But the thing is, people have wildly different interests, and some people even disagree on the most common goals (such as staying alive). You can judge these people's value systems as being incorrect, but they don't have to listen to you.
Now, the notion of rational/irrational does make some degree of sense when someone is blocking their own goals through their own actions. Even then, people often have multiple competing goals which may disagree with one another, so what appears to be "irrationality" is merely different internal processes competing with one another to accomplish their respective goals. (This is the basis of the Internal Family Systems branch of psychology if you are interested.)
You're talking about instrumental rationality, but you're replying to a comment which seems to be implicitly using "rationality" to mean epistemic rationality, which is almost entirely unrelated to the instrumental rationality you're talking about. Epistemic rationality is not relative to goals, it does not depend on value systems, and it is not subjective. So your comment is irrelevant to the comment you're replying to.
There is a weak connection between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality: plans based on false beliefs are more likely to have undesired results. (This is why sometimes people lie in order to manipulate others' actions.) But often they don't.
> The TempleOS guy is a good reminder that being rational and being smart are on orthogonal dimensions.
I don't know if you can realistically derive an epistemic or instrumental orientation based on this short comment. That said, if the comment was referring to epistemic rationality, your point is taken.
Edit: given the broader context of Terry's apparent delusions about the world, you're probably right about this.
Goals are rational within your own value system and beliefs. Wanting to be famous or not wanting to be famous can both be rational goals within different belief and value systems.
Well, if it's exactly what you just said, then I completely misunderstood what you said. Repeating it isn't going to help.
What I thought you said was that rationality is relative to goals, and that different people have different goals.
What I was trying to add to the discussion is that these goals are rational behaviors that arise from our value systems and beliefs. Different people can have different goals but the same beliefs, they might have more in common with each other than people with the same goals but different beliefs.
Yes, I agree. In typical usage, labeling something as "rational" implies it furthers a goal. As each person has their own unique values and goals, rationality is highly individualized.
> Different people can have different goals but the same beliefs, they might have more in common with each other than people with the same goals but different beliefs.
OK, I see the distinction here. This is true. I'd further note that individual goals often come with sub-goals (conscious or not), and people with overlapping central goals often have disagreements over sub-goals.
This is a major problem in politics (the "narcissism of small differences"), and part of effective politics is getting people to ignore their own sub-goals in service of shared central goals. One may often feel more sympathy with an "outsider" who shares fewer actual concerns with you than with a neighbor who disagrees on specific implementations.
Except he was rational in his own mind. If you think some shady government agency is out to get you, you will behave very strangely to other people around you.
I think this is conflating factual and rational. They are not mutually inclusive.
Although its a book on economics, Von Mesis's "Human Action" premise is that all human activity is necessarily 'rational' from the viewpoint of the actor. Moreover, the goal of "human activity" in general is to bring about a higher state of happiness. Even the refusal to perform an action, is in effect an 'action' who's goal is to increase happiness compared to the alternative.
A person who is convinced they are being hunted by aliens, so wraps their head in aluminum foil is behaving completely rational from their view (by increasing their happiness of not being tortured)...whether or not this is factual is a different issue.
Are you really in a position to declare that that was not the case? Do you posses all evidence, or is there actually a chance that there are things about the situation that you don’t know?
Also he was mentally ill, his brain worked differently than normal. Rationality depends on perspective. He was probably acting with rationale according to his experiences.
Rationality is continuous like everything else. You can be more or less rational. You don't have to be all or none. With a mental disorder, your mind works more rationally some of the time, and less rationally other times.
If you're smart, but irrational, then the things you do will exhibit 'interestingness' but won't be connectable to existing bodies of knowledge and understanding, i.e. out of the norm. You have to work harder to understand what's going on, to connect the dots between the elements.
In everybody's brain, thoughts are connected with each other because brains are organized to provide continuity of experience. Rationality concerns how well you can convey that continuity to others.
> Rationality is continuous like everything else. You can be more or less rational
Philosophers and others distinguish different kinds of rationality – such as, theoretical rationality (rationality of one's beliefs) from practical rationality (rationality of one's actions). Instrumental rationality is the rationality of one's means given one's ends, which according to some philosophers (e.g. Humeans) exhausts practical rationality (putting one's choice of ends themselves beyond rational criticism), whereas others (e.g. Kantians, Thomists) believe that one's ends themselves can also be subject to rational judgement. Some philosophers want to reduce some of these types of rationality to others, something which other philosophers object to–on that topic see https://www.princeton.edu/~tkelly/erair.pdf
I don't really have an opinion on whether or to what extent Terry Davis was or wasn't rational. (I don't really feel qualified to have such an opinion, especially since I never knew him personally, and also since I lack knowledge and/or experience with his illness.) But it is interesting that people are throwing the word "rational" around without appearing to be familiar with the complexity of the debates about how to even define it.
I think there is a distinction. Rational/irrational is a relative form. It depends on perspective. For people that are wired like most other people, irrational behavior is ... irrational, but if you are wired completely differently mentally, your behavior might seem irrational to onlookers, but it might not actually be. A crude example, but effective: you wouldn’t call a dogs behavior irrational if it acted very differently to a human. Same with people wired differently in the brain, like people with mental illness. Might seem irrational to you even though it isn’t.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're making the argument that there is no such thing as "rational behavior", at least that can be measured somewhat objectively. If that is the case, I must disagree.
Rational behavior is behavior with purpose. It is acting out of self-fulfillment / self-interest / self-preservation in a logical (or internally consistent) way. "I want this, so I am going to do these things because they will help me achieve this goal".
Irrational behavior is when your behavior does not serve to fulfill any sort of goal whatsoever, or if the behavior is totally at odds with your desired goal.
A dog is rational when he wags his tail to entice gifts of food (because his desire is food). A dog is irrational when he bites the hand that feeds him (because he is a dog and still wants food).
Using this formulation of "rational behavior", mentally ill people frequently fall into the "irrational" group, as they will frequently do things for inexplicable and/or random reasons, which do nothing to serve their purported goals. Obviously this depends massively on what type of mental illness we are talking about, but I think Terry's schizophrenia/bipolar disorder generally qualified, as it led to frequent internally-inconsistent behavior.
I’m saying rational depends on perspective. For a person with mental illness, it might be rational the way they act because their brain for example works differently, they experience things differently, and from their experience, what they do might have purpose, it might serve to meet a goal, it’s rational. But since their experience perhaps is skewed from our reality, from our perspective, from our experiences, the behavior looks irrational.
I'm not sure how my re-statement of your initial comment is any different from what you are saying, but regardless, I still disagree with the idea that "rational depends on perspective".
Internal inconsistency can be objectively measured: "you said you wanted pizza but now you are ordering a burger". I would argue that internal inconsistency is the opposite of rational behavior. Therefore, if mental illness causes internal inconsistencies, it is causing irrational behavior.
Having a mental illness doesn't mean that purported goals cease to exist. You can still ask a person with schizophrenia "what do you want", and they will give you an answer, because they are a person and not an animal.
Taking this back to TempleOS: Terry seemed to want to be known as the greatest programmer on earth. At the same time, his mental illness caused frequent outbursts that were off-putting to many people. It is hard to have a positive reputation as the greatest programmer when your behavior pushes people away from you. I would qualify such an inconsistency as "irrational", would you not? Using racial slurs in an online outburst is not "rational" behavior if your goal is to be respected as an amazing programmer.
And I’d argue that rationale depends entirely on how you react to your experiences. Your experiences can be objectively wrong compared to our shared reality, but true to your internal reality, and if you behave rationally according to your internal experiences, then thats rational behavior.
Your experiences might not be real or factual, but that doesn’t mean you can’t act rationally to them. Factual and rational are not dependent on each other. You can for example act rationally on the basis of a lie you were told. Doesn’t make your behavior irrational.
Ok, but if your experiences are objectively wrong compared to our shared reality, "we" can make value judgements in the context of our shared reality as to whether the behaviors based on your objective experiences are rational or not.
Sure, you can say "he is behaving rationally thru the lens of his own perspective" if you want, but that means the rest of us in the shared reality can say "these behaviors are irrational thru the lens of our shared reality". And since we're still here, and he is unfortunately not, I think "our" perspective is the one that matters at this point.
> Ok, but if your experiences are objectively wrong compared to our shared reality, "we" can make value judgements in the context of our shared reality as to whether the behaviors based on your objective experiences are rational or not.
Well, sure, but if we take some definitions of rational:
> Consistent with or based on reason or good judgment; logical or sensible.
or
> Having or exercising the ability to reason. synonym: logical.
I'd say rational doesn't care about factual or not, or others experiences or not. Rational is entirely dependent on how you react to what you experience.
> Sure, you can say "he is behaving rationally thru the lens of his own perspective" if you want, but that means the rest of us in the shared reality can say "these behaviors are irrational thru the lens of our shared reality". And since we're still here, and he is unfortunately not, I think "our" perspective is the one that matters at this point.
I think that's a wrong conclusion.
He was mentally ill. This perhaps skewed his experiences according to our shared reality. His experiences was not factual, one could say. Were his actions irrational? I don't think we can say that from what we know because he might have been acting rationally. The problem might just have been how he was experiencing things, which makes the basis of his actions not based on something we can say is factual or "real". However, if he was acting rationally on his experiences, even though his experiences were "wrong", he was still acting rationally.
