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Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
111–120 of 247 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#112In 2007, I joined the US Army infantry at the height of the Iraq war, two months after my 17th birthday. I had grown up brainwashed into the idea of military service being the single best thing a person can do, and wanted nothing more at that point than to get out of my small hometown.
As I was training with my unit for deployment, we were spending days on end practicing combat drills to storm buildings. This was the peak of the insurgency, so our mission was more or less kidnapping persons of interest and sending them off to Abu Ghraib. It was in that moment, practicing room clearing with automatic weapons, that I knew that this wasn't who I was. An entire (short) lifetime of being completely sure about my identity vanished in an instant. I knew that I had more to give to the world than this; being a tool of violent fascism.
I went AWOL shortly after. Spent months hitchhiking across the southwest. Eventually turned myself in and (miraculously) got out with an honorable discharge. But I learned the most important lesson in my life, which is that everything is meaningless once you lose your ethical standing. Nothing is more crucial than safeguarding your humanity.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#113I visited (trespassed) in an underground bomb shelter with accomodations for 11000 (eleven thousand) people. It was mothballed and parts of it were used as storage, but most of what would be needed for housing people there if war or nuclear fallout would hit was there. Dry toilets with no privacy, toilet paper, some dry rations, mattresses, blankets, air filters, first aid kits etc. For 11k people. It was two giant v…
>> Made me stop playing war games and watching war movies. Thats really interesting reaction - probably totally opposite of mine. I honestly believe that war is one of mankind's stupidest invention and suspect that there are no heroes on any battlefield - only naive, stupid and unlucky ones that mostly use pieces of metal with high kinetic energy to pierce through flesh of others. I would never agree to take active p…
War isn't mankind's invention - apes has been waging wars since forever
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>it's the disrespectful attitude, tactless delivery, and/or assumptions about the nature of a religious experience.
What on earth are you reading to get this? The parent is a concise statement of fact:
You don't have to be drunk or high to have hallucinations.
How is that anything like you describe? How is it "tactless" and "disrespectful"? How does it assume anything? Try applying the most charitable view to the comments.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#115Not really, but I did have an experience that has probably had a significant effect on how I think about the nature of human experience. I would call it an experience of prolonged yet subjectively instantaneous non-being. I was about 15 years old and was having my first surgery. I remember them putting a mask on my face then counting. The next instant I vomited. But it turned out that happened 5 hours later in the recovery room. The transition from one moment to the next was like flipping a light switch. I've had a number of other surgeries since and I've never had quite the same experience. There seems to have been something special about the circumstances that bypassed the usual period of slow groggy waking up that one typically gets with anesthesia or when waking from sleep.
How has this affected my thinking ? Well for one thing it showed me that non-existence was nothing to be afraid of. I also realized that the experience would have been the same whether it had lasted for 5 hours or for 5 billion years. That is one of several factors that has made me skeptical of the idea that death is followed by an eternity of non-existence, even under the hypothesis that materialism is true. If that is the case then the instant of one's death would be subjectively identical with the end of the universe, and I'm not convinced the universe has an end.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#116When a kid (10+ years younger) at a rave told me --being a vegetarian at the time-- that I'm not "nice to animals" and not "doing enough" and if I cared to be consistent with my beliefs I should go vegan. Also: children, DMT, studying Buddhism and a not to be named hard-core socialist music festival near Berlin.
Wow. One can never satisfy these woke little know it alls hah?
Wise people appear to never be quite sure about what they say, so they rarely incur huge changes in people life, but dumb people have such a limited map of reality that everything is crystal clear and therefore they are the ones people pay attention to.
A good nutritionists would never say such nonsense but that varies on how we definite "good".
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#117I visited (trespassed) in an underground bomb shelter with accomodations for 11000 (eleven thousand) people. It was mothballed and parts of it were used as storage, but most of what would be needed for housing people there if war or nuclear fallout would hit was there. Dry toilets with no privacy, toilet paper, some dry rations, mattresses, blankets, air filters, first aid kits etc. For 11k people. It was two giant v…
>> Made me stop playing war games and watching war movies. Thats really interesting reaction - probably totally opposite of mine. I honestly believe that war is one of mankind's stupidest invention and suspect that there are no heroes on any battlefield - only naive, stupid and unlucky ones that mostly use pieces of metal with high kinetic energy to pierce through flesh of others. I would never agree to take active p…
War games and movies mostly focus on the soldiers. But they are a really small part of the people involved in it.
Being exposed to this faux imagery of war messes with people's perception of war. This is especially true for people from countries that have not experienced war on their own territory in centuries and only see it on TV.
Obligatory mention of the game "This War of Mine" where the protagonists are civilians. I could not bring myself to try it, I would probably lose sleep over it.
Unfortunately, being a male in a conscription country, I do not have the luxury of choosing whether to take part in it or not (well I could choose a prison sentence instead). If our neighbors get belligerent, I will be called to arms. Last time I checked, there is a seat in an armored vehicle with my name on it.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#118In 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 live in Europe, but I would love to move to America someday; the opportunities to start something there are vastly more visible (European startup culture is nearly a contradiction in terms). Sadly, it becomes increasingly more difficult.
You probably want to do that when you are young and healthy.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#119When I was a little kid, I was at a department store and saw a guy doing something with a television. Or so I thought. Me: What are you doing? He: I am programming. What's your name? Me: MG He: Check this out: 10 PRINT "MG" 20 GOTO 10 Me: Woah! I picked a book from a shelf about "Basic" and started to try figuring out how this worked. And never stopped. Have been looking at these "televisions" more than anything else…
Scene playing out ca. 2013:
Store Manager: It looks like someone hacked our computer, let's call the police, they'll know what to do.
FBI: Our diligent detective work has uncovered the perp is named MG. We will lock him up for 20 years for a CFAA violation.
Store Manager: Isn't that kind of harsh? I've since called the tech support line who told me to turn it off and back on again, and that seems to have fixed it.
Corporate management: We don't support this prosecution.
Prosecutor: Our job is to work in the public interest. Microsoft has suffered because people might think their operating system isn't secure.
MG: All this stress of being persecuted by a bureaucratic meat grinder is making me awfully depressed ...
... talk about a much different type of life changing event.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
#120I 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!
That tends to be a short-lived kind of epiphany.