"Delusional thinking" is a pretty broad umbrella. There's nothing that's fundamentally incompatible with a delusional thought process per se, but the particulars might be a problem.

In Terry's case, it sounded like he suffered from a lot of delusions of persecution (e.g. thinking the CIA is after him), and religious delusions. Neither of these are fundamentally incompatible with any sort of technical or scientific thought process. Had he not been delusional, I suspect we might either never have heard of him, or he'd be one of the people making the front page of HN on a semi-regular basis.

> Could someone delusional also create a rocket ship? Or is there something special about programming that makes it compatible with delusional thinking?

Newton studied alchemy and Linus Pauling believed against all evidence that vitamin C cured cancer and basically everything else. Humans are very good at applying their (ir)rationality to certain subfields while abandoning it in others.

I'll give you Pauling, but Newton studying alchemy in the 17th and 18th centuries would have been far from delusional when you consider "Robert Boyle pioneered the scientific method in chemical investigations"[0] around that time. According to the same Wikipedia article, it was only sometime between 1720-1740 when "alchemy" came to mean "attempts to transmute other materials into gold." Newton died in 1726.

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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy#Later_modern_period

Alchemy was a pre-curser of Chemistry, and it is logical leap that this is not delusional, just 'early science'.

BUT. Newton also studies Bible Numerology. Trying to find number patterns in the Bible.

So maybe Newton also had his quirks.

Maybe any mind that is exploring new ideas, will sometimes go down some blind alleys.

Vitamin C cures cancer like ivermectin kills COVID-19 - it doesn't actually fix the bigger problem, but, if your body has been trashed so badly that you actually have medical need to have one of these put into your arm, the improvement in your immune system would be drastic.

> Could someone delusional also create a rocket ship? Or is there something special about programming that makes it compatible with delusional thinking?

Programming (eg, TempleOS) can be successful as a solo endeavor. I'm not sure we have enough technical leverage for a single person to create a rocket ship (ie, something capable of lifting real loads to orbit). Maybe in the future when AI systems can fill in some of the details and/or automate the construction.

If you have to coordinate with other humans, insanity is tough. Nobody else can hear the voices in your particular head.