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

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

#71

Post by nindalf »

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?

I found the book Nonviolent Communication helped me a lot to improve my style of communication.

It helped reinforce the importance of listening and communicating in a way that the other person knows they’ve been listened to. How to change the framing of what I’m saying so the other person doesn’t feel like they’re being attacked.

Maybe some of this stuff is obvious/natural to some people. But for the rest of us are this book is a good place to start.

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

#72

Post by coldtea »

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?

In lots of ways?

Good spelling, grammar, and syntax, for example are basic prerequisites (and many people have margins for improvement).

An expanded and more precise vocabulary is also important. For this you can make an effort of looking up dictionary definitions (especially for any word you're not 100% clear on its meaning), read technical, historical, and philosophical dictionaries (those are special-purpose dictionaries, as opposed to a generic one).

Reading (widely accepted as) good prose and non-fiction also helps pick up ways to structure your own communication.

Reading books on writing (e.g. "On writing well", "The elements of style") will also help.

Learning a second language also makes more evident all kinds of internal language workings and subleties that monolingual people often ignore or take for granted.

And, of course, practice (talking to people, speaking publicly, writing a blog, etc.) makes perfect...

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

#73

Post by zargon »

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…

It's not the factual accuracy of the comment that's getting downvoted, it's the disrespectful attitude, tactless delivery, and/or assumptions about the nature of a religious experience.

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

#74

Post by thunderbong »

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…

I get this epiphany every time I start driving on a particular side of the road!

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

#75

Post by nicolas_t »

coldtea wrote: post #69
nicolas_t wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd be careful with this. I've done that in the past in Malaysia, going through the border from Malaysia to Thailand every 3 months.. Eventually when I took a plan from the airport to travel somewhere else, I got questioned by immigration because of the patterns of staying 3 months and then leaving for a few days. They asked me how I could finance my stays and told me that any work I was doing while in Malaysia remotely violated my visa.

In the end, nothing happened but ymmv. I also know a few people who did the same in HK and eventually got into trouble because of that.

I do think it works well but it's not a long term plan and if you do it, you must plan with potentially being denied entry eventually.

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

#76

Post by CalRobert »

coldtea wrote: post #69
nicolas_t wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, though I've always been a "cross my t's and dot my i's" kind of person. Keeping things above board saved me a lot of worry.

It worked out nicely; as an Irish citizen I still have the right to live and work in both the EU/EEA and the UK, which is handy.

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

#77

Post by roey2009 »

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…

There's a discipline of communication called, Nonviolent Communication. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7TONauJGfc It talks about communication via emotions, vs thoughts. I would suggest taking a look.

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

#78

Post by oleander73 »

jpnc wrote: post #51
oleander73 wrote: post #42

(Not trying to score sympathy points) I got diagnosed with metastatic cancer (incurable). Five weeks later (while getting chemo) I quit my job. I was a workaholic software developer. I haven't programmed since. Best decision I ever made and I'm happy and enjoy life (with some limitations).

Genuine question: what keeps you coming back to this site?

I think partially out of habit and every now and then there's something really interesting that reinforces the habit :-)

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

#79

Post by orwin »

Yeah, a tv advert for a new CS school.

I was studying to be a youth camp (or similar) director, specialized on culture. I drafted a second year pedagogical project was about computers, and i saw this emission (which might have been a disguised ad) about a new school, where the selection was basically one month of coding non-stop to learn the basics. I crushed the online tests (i did have a mathematic bachelor degree at the time, it helped). I hated the CS class of my uni, but thought it would refresh my mind a little.

The first three days, i learned about the command line, bash scripting and git. I was amazed at what i could do with a few commands (check for every picture on a computer, check the date, then put them in folders depending on the creation year?). The following two days were about syscalls and functions, not that interesting, but the "recursivity" day was the one that blew my mind. I proceeded to rewrite everything with recusivity or backtracking, overcomplicating things (i was really new). I think this is the moment when i told myself "i want to continue working with this".

Now i write API calls and response and write yaml configuration files for kubernetes. How things change.

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

#80

Post by Markoff »

Plenty, travelling in Southeast Asia, already booked flights to Burna, got visa and just doing two interviews with Chinese companies (one over phone, other over webcam) from guesthouse (actually i found these offers also by luck through talking in travellers forum and some guy mentioned they are looking for people), both quickly responded they are hiring me, so instead Friday flight to Burma from Bangkok switching to flight to Hongkong, taking Shenzhen to Beijing train without seat reservation (24+ hours) and Monday going to sign papers in Beijing.

Plus plenty of life threatening situation where I was lucky, slipped on rock in jungle but hey didn't fell down, slipped with motorbike in mountains doing Mae Hong Son loop, but hey handled it in the end without falling down or across railing, lost in jungle etc. But in general I know my limits and trying to avoid life threatening situations not relying on luck.

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