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Urbit feels more like an ARG than a serious project. You need to buy into what feels like an entirely new language and religion.

It has some real TempleOS vibes.




I don't think that's fair to TempleOS. While portions of it reflect Davis' bouts of insanity, the core of it is a world that has passed us by, and all of the anger that goes along with losing something that you can never get back. For all of the shortcomings, it's hard to not look back at what computers were like in the time of the Commodore 64 and not have at least a little contempt for how everything panned out afterwards.

Urbit is what happens when you have smoke blown up your ass for too long. It's everything that TempleOS didn't want to be; for all of its aspirations of being a Third Temple, the point was always that TempleOS was within your ability to understand. Urbit is postured in a way that implies it's never meant to be truly understood.


TempleOS was practically straightforward by comparison. The language it's written in is almost (but not quite) C, and it generally follows the design patterns of an older (perhaps early-90s?) software application. It's certainly got its weird aspects, but they exist at a higher level -- in its self-imposed design constraints and naming conventions, for example.


Terry Davis' TempleOS was one man's project and shared with the world. It was accessible, if somewhat eccentric.

Urbit is a collective project that includes a redefinition of true as false and false as true. It is deliberately inaccessible, and quite eccentric. They seem to have an objective of creating an inner sanctum, a group of high priests for this technological future. They obfuscate with their writing rather than trying to provide illumination for others to be able to participate.

These two things oughtn't be compared.


> technological future

I presume you meant to put that in inverted commas, otherwise, very funny.


Um, what does "ARG" mean in this context?


Alternate reality game.


And, just like TempleOS, its founder has published some racist ideological rants.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin


I think Terry's outbursts are of a very different character in light of his general condition. Yarvin appears genuinely, intellectually committed to being a bigot.




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