There are plenty of people who are not "sane" who don't hold and espouse those opinions, and I doubt anyone would take such umbrage with those people, so it's unreasonable and disingenuous to suggest that people are "mean to him because he has a mental disorder".
Do you really think the quote you posted has the slightest thing to do with race? I realize that in it he repeatedly uses a very bad word, but, bad as it may be, it is merely a word; I should like to hope some allowance might be made for the very plain fact that the man's mind isn't right, to say nothing of the minor point that, allowing for differences in phrasing and style, even a luminary like Paul Graham might well make the very same argument about unnecessary complexity.
Then again, when even a luminary like Paul Graham has to be careful about what he can and can't say [1], I suppose it's not too surprising that people should care more about the style of Mr. Davis's remarks than about their substance.
If someone you didn't know were posting these things as, say, YouTube comments, it would still be immediately apparent that their "mind isn't right", as you put it, but of course it would be perfectly acceptable to write them off. The allowance you're making is really because he's inside the group that HN readers have an interest in. If he wasn't a programmer, he would be just another religious nut to you.
I can't tell if you're saying "people shouldn't have to hear racism around them even if the person is mentally ill" (so shadowban it or whatever) or if you're saying "mental illness is not the reason that person's racist" (so I am free to pass moral judgment on them.)
Neither. I'm saying that people are responding to the words in his posts, rather than the underlying cause of those words. They're not saying, "Ugh, a mentally ill person, hate", they're saying "Wow, that's pretty offensive, hate".
In contrast, when the artwork of a schizophrenic gets posted (there's a particular one that pops up from time to time), people mostly respond with fascination.
But that's just the point. The words in question aren't any more charged with racialist intent than would be an equivalent work by the same person in a nonverbal medium, but one of those words in particular is linked to a reflex response called "offense", which apparently is so exceptional as to preclude any further analysis whatsoever even in people who don't fall within the group for whom the reflex-trigger word is a slur, and who therefore by definition cannot be insulted by its use.
I don't know, maybe it's just me. But when I see a lot of different people who've all apparently been trained to react identically and without thought or consideration to a given set of triggers, regardless of any context in which those triggers occur, it creeps me out just a little.
When you say the post is disingenuous, you are implying intent on the part of the poster. I don't see that (I don't disagree with your point that the characterization is inaccurate though).
How literal is your meaning when you say "Wow, that's pretty offensive, hate" below? Because I think hatred directed at a bigot is sort of a not very fruitful response to bigotry. In that sense, people being nasty because someone is saying offensive things isn't a huge improvement over people being nasty because someone is mentally ill.
I do see some need to deal with people that are being disruptive (whether intentionally or not), but I don't see much justification to do it with rancor.
