Terry Davis' crazy is actually pretty easy to understand. He believes that God exists. However, the word of god is a random sentence generator he created (though he would say god willed him to do it). This means he is following the will of an RNG. If he's not trolling (look how long Andy Kauffman would hold a gag), I don't find his zealotry for his version of God much different than other religious zealotry. At least, his schitzophrenia is functional, and it's very interesting to watch software development dictated by an RNG.
There seems to be a correllation between the DSM-IV classification of Aspergers and a predilection to views outside social norms.
if you can get past the blatant and often blinding racism he'd spew on HN, Davis actually had some really interesting insights in his posts. Shame they were all greyed-out.
I looked at the RNG in TempleOS out of curiosity. I assumed he was mixing in some noise sources that could be explained as some kind of universal communication subchannel from god. Here's the relevant code (in HolyC of course):
I32 RandI32()
{//Random I32. Xor with TimsStamp.
sys_rnd_seed.i32[0]=(1664525*sys_rnd_seed.i32[0]+1013904223)^GetTSC>>4;
return sys_rnd_seed.i32[0];
}
So the last returned value is used as part of the seed for the next one. The initial seed is set in kend.cpp:
sys_rnd_seed =93186752^GetTSC;
he's now using Donald Knuth's LCG
http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Kernel/KMathB.html
God does not throw dice. Apparently, he does use a linear congruential RNG.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/221/
The God/code part might have some sort of logic to it, but he also likes to go on rants about "the CIA Niggers" that are completely incoherent
> He hangs out on HN, mostly blabbing nonsense, racial slurs, or conspiracy theories, but the rare times he's lucid can be very interesting.
I don't feel great about highlighting negative sides of somebody who already has genuine difficulty finding understanding despite (presumably) meaning no harm to others. Especially if you think he may be reading this. I took the liberty of flagging this post.
He also does some fascinating videos and sometimes interesting live streams, sometimes multiple times a day, on his YouTube channel...
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gods-lonely-programmer
He was shadowbanned, though, because it just wasn't worth putting up with the shit. See this discussion: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=7818823