Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#61

Post by erikrothoff » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 9:38 AM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #60

There is me before my first psychedelic trip, and there me after, and those two are probably not the same person. I still maintain that everyone of a sound mind should do psychedelics once. There are no real negatives (only meta negatives such as from loss of coordination leading to a fall, all of which are prevented by a trip sitter), and the perspective it gives you, namely being able to experience different emotio…

What in your life or your personality changed? What have been the real effects on your life from this? Did you switch career paths, stopped being depressed, made a big move, stopped feeling ugly, etc? Or is it just that you see certain things differently? I'm really interested in this subject.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#62

Post by russelg » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 9:46 AM UTC

docdeek wrote: post #30

I was traveling around north-west Australia in 2001 and hadn’t seen the news in weeks. I stopped at a cheap hotel in Broome for a couple of days as a treat and to take a warm shower after weeks of camping, switched on the TV, and saw the wall-to-wall coverage of 9/11 that had happened the day before. I didn’t understand what I was seeing and I sure didn’t understand why it had happened. I decided I should try and fig…

Only possible in Broome, where there really isn't all that much to do

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#63

Post by caspii » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 9:46 AM UTC

March 2020: Finding the body of my mother in the basement. She had died suddenly and unexpectedly that morning. The neighbours were alarmed because they couldn't reach her. I went to investigate. She was 74, so she didn't go too early and had a good death.

I realised that my life will be over relatively soon too. I decided to make it count (in little ways). Quit my job. Became a freelancer. Made a big effort to cut bullshit from my life. To give less fucks about irrelevant stuff. To be happier in simple and sustainable ways.

My favourite quote: "We all have 2 lives, the second begins when we realise we have only 1".

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#64

Post by t-3 » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:05 AM UTC

Oh, there are infinitely many moments where the course of my life branched into some different direction, but nothing that really changed me. That's probably why I'm a loser, I never changed in since I was young, just let life wash over me like water.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#65

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:07 AM UTC

shimonabi wrote: post #24

euroderf wrote: post #12

I had a religious experience decades ago. Stone cold sober. I only talk about it with my closest friends, because I don't want to be perceived as another nutter. But it keeps me up when I am feeling down, and holds out the promise of living a life on a proper path. My 0,02€, YMMV.

You don't have to be drunk or high to have hallucinations.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#66

Post by coldtea » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:10 AM UTC

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #36

shimonabi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be drunk or high to have hallucinations.

Not at all surprised this is getting downvoted. There's a decent book on this theme: https://www.amazon.com/Hallucinations-Oliver-Sacks/dp/030794... where the author postulates that a decent portion of society experiences hallucinations at least once in their lifetime without any "helpers" like drugs or sleep deprivation. (I don't remember the exact percentage, read that thing ages ago). I think this is how religions…

This is neither here, nor there.

Not all hallucinations are religious.

And not all religious experiences are hallucinations.

In fact, when we talking about a specific kind of experience, the term hallucination has no meaning.

You're not "seeing things", you're feeling and thinking things. So there's no relevance at all to whether they're "really there".

You could have a religious experience by runinating on something that's actually, 100% there (e.g. an experience with near death from a car accident that makes you appreciate life in a religious way, or even a nice sunset).

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#67

Post by parabyl » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:11 AM UTC

hahnchen wrote: post #53

paskozdilar wrote: post #46

I remember a conversation with a dear friend of mine. I was studying CS at the time, he was studying Philosophy. We went into a discussion over some esoteric topics, and we got stuck on a definition of a word, so I asked him "but how do we know what exactly does [the word] mean ?", to which in response he paused, looked me in the eye, and just said: It means whatever the hell we agree it means. That sentence has been…

Yeah it’s interesting how much people unknowingly fight over semantics. > Ever since I've been spending a lot of time learning how to communicate effectively How exactly do you learn this?

For me, simply spending time with a Philosophy graduate in, and having these exact sorts of discussions around language quite frequently has had the effect of encouraging me to constantly question how efficiently I'm communicating (at times, to detriment).

On a more basic level however, logical sentence structure is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_form

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#68

Post by paskozdilar » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:12 AM UTC

hahnchen wrote: post #53

paskozdilar wrote: post #46

I remember a conversation with a dear friend of mine. I was studying CS at the time, he was studying Philosophy. We went into a discussion over some esoteric topics, and we got stuck on a definition of a word, so I asked him "but how do we know what exactly does [the word] mean ?", to which in response he paused, looked me in the eye, and just said: It means whatever the hell we agree it means. That sentence has been…

Yeah it’s interesting how much people unknowingly fight over semantics. > Ever since I've been spending a lot of time learning how to communicate effectively How exactly do you learn this?

> How exactly do you learn this?

Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer to this. My learning process is somewhat chaotic and random. Reading analytic philosophy and psychology definitely gave me important insights.

However, the method I've found works the best is try to imagine society as a system, and humans as processes in the system. Every human has their own will, and they decide what they will or will not do. Nobody owes anyone anything, so every human protocol relies on the will of the other person to follow the protocol with us. So the most important question for any kind of communication is "how do we get the other person to do what we want?".

This may sound selfish, but is (in my experience) more efficient than trying to read minds or conform to some abstract authority of how we should act, then being mad at other people when they act the way that doesn't fit the abstract authority. Even more, it makes dealing with you easier for other people, which makes other people like you more.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#69

Post by coldtea » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:13 AM UTC

nicolas_t wrote: post #58

CalRobert wrote: post #31

In 2012 I bought a book called "Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America". It had a chapter on how to move to (almost) every country in the world. Nothing seemed practical, I didn't have the skills and there was a recession. But in the end there were some interviews with people who had left, and there was a throwaway line: "I got a working holiday visa for Ireland" I didn't even know working holiday visas existed!…

I always mention looking at working holiday visas to any friends who bemoans how hard it is to leave their country. For anyone below 30, it's often a very good pathway to immigrating, getting a job and eventually a more stable visa situation. I've also seen it combined with student visas, so one year on a student visa to learn the language (that costs more in most countries, although there are some countries with rel…

In many cases you don't even need a "working holiday visa" to go and live somewhere else.

E.g. if you have a remote job, you can just travel to a third country and work from there. Most countries just require that you get out for a few days per 3 or 6 months (which can be just visiting a nearby country, staying in a hotel, and returning) to renew your plain tourist visa.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

#70

Post by baal80spam » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:14 AM UTC

nikivi wrote: post #34

Yes. When I figured out how to do hyper keys with Karabiner. https://wiki.nikiv.dev/macOS/apps/karabiner

This is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand but my employer provided me a MBP yesterday. Being a Windows guy all my life, I naturally wanted to remap some keys so I looked for an app to do that. Karabiner-elements was the most recommended so I got it. I was _shocked_ to see how much space this tiny app uses [1]. I bet such an utility for Windows written in terse C/C++ would take no more than 1MB (if that). I truly hate today's "programming" using ton of frameworks built upon ton of other frameworks.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/DSSXY39.jpeg

/rant over