13 ms·

Been there, done that. Have the postcard. I got to experience the even more fun version where you feel like your death is imminent, you watch your surroundings

Been there, done that. Have the postcard. I got to experience the even more fun version where you feel like your death is imminent, you watch your surroundings stop rendering chunk by chunk, and your long term friend is telling you it is indeed all a simulation that everyone but me knew about, and I really was dying (more accurately: going "offline" for an upgrade, and my "spirit" wouldn't be persisted across versions). She later apologized and said she thought I was joking. We don't talk anymore. As for recovery, Jesus saved me. He can save your friend too, if she lets Him. It is interesting to observe, retrospectively, how the brain can adopt a new set of axioms and coerce every one of the "senses" into supporting those axioms - no matter how detached from "our typical understanding of reality" (whatever that means) they are.

simonvc 3y ago
[flagged]
- explaininjs 3y ago
  No. I am aphantastic.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    (which, not-so-coincidentally, played a major role in all the above)
    - nmarinov 3y ago
      Could you elaborate? I'm trying to imagine how it relates from your short summary[1] but I'm confused how Aphantasia plays into that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645
      - u32480932048 3y ago
        I think they're saying, somewhat facetiously, that they don't see dead people because they're aphantastic. Phenomenologically, I'm not sure people typically "see" Jesus (Holy Spirit, et al) as much as perceive their presence or influence. (I'd say the seeing dead people thing was a simple, bad-faith comment, but I believe it was Thomas Aquinas who made the "if you can't see it, it's because God didn't want you to see it" class of arguments regarding insensible phenomenon, so maybe it's actually a profound theological treatise they're working up.)
        explaininjs 3y ago
        > I think they're saying, somewhat facetiously, that they don't see dead people because they're aphantastic. Yes. > Phenomenologically, I'm not sure people typically "see" Jesus (Holy Spirit, et al) as much as perceive their presence or influence. Not quite. Jesus is unique in the Trinity as being the fleshly form of God that can indeed be associated with a clear image, that people (at least at some point in history) were expected to see and hear. Accordingly, I have heard some (but certainly not all) Christians speak of "seeing" Jesus in a phantastic sense (sometimes quite regularly - even constantly), and conversing with Him at length in this same sense. That is beyond my ability to reason about, so I do not. > if you can't see it, it's because God didn't want you to see it Indeed. Learning of my own aphantasia left me feeling profoundly broken, and it was in a sense the subject of that original "bad trip". It was unsettling to learn that "everyone else" has some seemingly magical power that I do not, and I had developed a fascination with finding a way to "fix myself". I've since come to consider my nature to be God's intentional creation, so if there is some way I am different from others there is certainly a good reason for it – even though I might not know what that reason is.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  I’m pretty agnostic, but what are you answers to seemingly untraceable questions of life, meaning, and existence? I’m starting to come around to the view that ridicule of religiosity is quite often more vacuous than spirituality.
  - hhjinks 3y ago
    I'm a flesh automaton created to house a polymer that is capable of propagating itself through time. For what end? Maybe it's emergent behavior from a structured universe, maybe life is meant to converge towards some higher end. Who knows.
    - codr7 3y ago
      Yeah, that's the thing, who knows? So who has any right to ridicule anyone else for having a different perspective? Just choose whatever narrative that floats your boat and live and let live.
      - psiops 3y ago
        Ridiculing is one thing. Waging holy war, murdering, burning and dehumanizing is unfortunately a common reaction to differing viewpoints among religious folk.
        bmelton 3y ago
        religious folk and every other kind
        explaininjs 3y ago
        Yes, but also: Waging war, murdering, burning and dehumanizing is unfortunately a common reaction to differing viewpoints among folk.
        2devnull 3y ago
        And I would add, the world is more peaceful and loving and moral under Christian morals (the morals we all currently share) than under the ethics of the Roman Empire. Christians ended the slave trade for specifically, uniquely Christian reasons. It was a religious issue. Modern progressives grew out of the Protestant culture of puritan founders. It’s why we embraced immigration. It’s one thing to be ignorant of the creator (and deny creations miraculous nature), but to be ignorant of world history; please read about Rome.
- dang 3y ago
  Religious flamewar isn't ok here, so please don't post like this. Ditto for any flamewar, but the religious kind is particularly bad and also easy to avoid. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
elwell 3y ago
What does it mean when you say "Jesus saved me"? This is an earnest question, not instigative.
- explaininjs 3y ago
  You're asking me to summarize years of reflection and several near-death experiences into an internet message board comment, but I'll try to scrape the surface. In short, I had lost all faith in the "official narrative" of creation/existence/whatever as taught in schools/society/etc. that I had grown up believing (growing up I'd have called myself atheist, then agnostic). You might call this an anti-science view, but I'd counter it is more scientific to reject a theory when it does not match observations than to keep it just because it's "the standard". Anyways, this put me on a path of not knowing anything to believe, which is to say any seemingly small flashback/thought/whatever could shatter whatever worldview I had been temporarily existing in and send me into a seizure. This continued for some time until I began to be touched by what christians would call the Holy Spirit, which guided me towards preachers of the Gospels (aka "The Word", aka "Jesus Christ" (see John 1)). I began to see the innate truth presented by The Word, as I saw how my lived experiences were consistently in agreement with it. For one, I embraced prayer and observed the Father respond to it. Basically, I built up a new worldview around The Word (Jesus Christ) and it has been unshakable, in stark contrast to all the attempts I had made to do the same without Jesus (Matthew 7:24-27 summarizes this well).
  - hellweaver666 3y ago
    Sounds to me like you're still hallucinating.
    - explaininjs 3y ago
      Get behind me, hellweaver! For it is written: Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. (For those following along, this is a cute and fun example of Scripture being used to rebuke attempts to shake the foundation. The forces that be typically aren't so overt.)
HKH2 3y ago
> It is interesting to observe, retrospectively, how the brain can adopt a new set of axioms and coerce every one of the "senses" into supporting those axioms - no matter how detached from "our typical understanding of reality" (whatever that means) they are. Brainwashing is real. Just make people really emotionally unstable and then hit them with an onslaught of social pressure with a vision.
- achenet 3y ago
  a more general take on the subject https://opentheory.net/2019/11/neural-annealing-toward-a-neural-theory-of-everything/ https://opentheory.net/2019/11/neural-annealing-toward-a-neu...
- baq 3y ago
  Yeah KGB, CIA, FSB et al. had that figured out some time ago.
2devnull 3y ago
Yes, God may have created psychedelics for a reason, but why not cut out the middleman and just “go to the source.” What many in AA learn, the higher power is the only way. Everything else is a treadmill.
nyc_data_geek1 3y ago
The line between faith and delusion is tenuous at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_delusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_delusion
- dang 3y ago
  No religious flamewar on HN please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 3y ago
We detached this subthread, which went offtopic and flameward, from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995044. > As for recovery, Jesus saved me. He can save your friend too, if she lets Him. It's best not to proselytize on HN. It's ok to talk about your own experience of course, but when it starts to move into standard religious tropes, that's already a kind of flamebait and discussion quality plummets, and boy did that happen in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- explaininjs 3y ago
  Would you have preferred I left out that second sentence? The parent seemed to be asking for help and that seemed to be on-topic. Though I suppose it could be inferred from the first sentence... but I think even the first sentence alone would have been likely to instigate the same response. Which then makes me wonder if it really is "ok to talk about [my] own experience" in an entirely on-topic discussion?
  - dang 3y ago
    It would have been better, yes, and it would also have been better if you hadn't fed the offensive replies by replying to them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

simonvc 3y ago

[flagged]

explaininjs 3y ago
No. I am aphantastic.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- explaininjs 3y ago
  (which, not-so-coincidentally, played a major role in all the above)
  - nmarinov 3y ago
    Could you elaborate? I'm trying to imagine how it relates from your short summary[1] but I'm confused how Aphantasia plays into that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645
    - u32480932048 3y ago
      I think they're saying, somewhat facetiously, that they don't see dead people because they're aphantastic. Phenomenologically, I'm not sure people typically "see" Jesus (Holy Spirit, et al) as much as perceive their presence or influence. (I'd say the seeing dead people thing was a simple, bad-faith comment, but I believe it was Thomas Aquinas who made the "if you can't see it, it's because God didn't want you to see it" class of arguments regarding insensible phenomenon, so maybe it's actually a profound theological treatise they're working up.)
      - explaininjs 3y ago
        > I think they're saying, somewhat facetiously, that they don't see dead people because they're aphantastic. Yes. > Phenomenologically, I'm not sure people typically "see" Jesus (Holy Spirit, et al) as much as perceive their presence or influence. Not quite. Jesus is unique in the Trinity as being the fleshly form of God that can indeed be associated with a clear image, that people (at least at some point in history) were expected to see and hear. Accordingly, I have heard some (but certainly not all) Christians speak of "seeing" Jesus in a phantastic sense (sometimes quite regularly - even constantly), and conversing with Him at length in this same sense. That is beyond my ability to reason about, so I do not. > if you can't see it, it's because God didn't want you to see it Indeed. Learning of my own aphantasia left me feeling profoundly broken, and it was in a sense the subject of that original "bad trip". It was unsettling to learn that "everyone else" has some seemingly magical power that I do not, and I had developed a fascination with finding a way to "fix myself". I've since come to consider my nature to be God's intentional creation, so if there is some way I am different from others there is certainly a good reason for it – even though I might not know what that reason is.
DiggyJohnson 3y ago
I’m pretty agnostic, but what are you answers to seemingly untraceable questions of life, meaning, and existence? I’m starting to come around to the view that ridicule of religiosity is quite often more vacuous than spirituality.
- hhjinks 3y ago
  I'm a flesh automaton created to house a polymer that is capable of propagating itself through time. For what end? Maybe it's emergent behavior from a structured universe, maybe life is meant to converge towards some higher end. Who knows.
  - codr7 3y ago
    Yeah, that's the thing, who knows? So who has any right to ridicule anyone else for having a different perspective? Just choose whatever narrative that floats your boat and live and let live.
    - psiops 3y ago
      Ridiculing is one thing. Waging holy war, murdering, burning and dehumanizing is unfortunately a common reaction to differing viewpoints among religious folk.
      - bmelton 3y ago
        religious folk and every other kind
      - explaininjs 3y ago
        Yes, but also: Waging war, murdering, burning and dehumanizing is unfortunately a common reaction to differing viewpoints among folk.
        2devnull 3y ago
        And I would add, the world is more peaceful and loving and moral under Christian morals (the morals we all currently share) than under the ethics of the Roman Empire. Christians ended the slave trade for specifically, uniquely Christian reasons. It was a religious issue. Modern progressives grew out of the Protestant culture of puritan founders. It’s why we embraced immigration. It’s one thing to be ignorant of the creator (and deny creations miraculous nature), but to be ignorant of world history; please read about Rome.
dang 3y ago
Religious flamewar isn't ok here, so please don't post like this. Ditto for any flamewar, but the religious kind is particularly bad and also easy to avoid. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

elwell 3y ago

What does it mean when you say "Jesus saved me"? This is an earnest question, not instigative.

explaininjs 3y ago
You're asking me to summarize years of reflection and several near-death experiences into an internet message board comment, but I'll try to scrape the surface. In short, I had lost all faith in the "official narrative" of creation/existence/whatever as taught in schools/society/etc. that I had grown up believing (growing up I'd have called myself atheist, then agnostic). You might call this an anti-science view, but I'd counter it is more scientific to reject a theory when it does not match observations than to keep it just because it's "the standard". Anyways, this put me on a path of not knowing anything to believe, which is to say any seemingly small flashback/thought/whatever could shatter whatever worldview I had been temporarily existing in and send me into a seizure. This continued for some time until I began to be touched by what christians would call the Holy Spirit, which guided me towards preachers of the Gospels (aka "The Word", aka "Jesus Christ" (see John 1)). I began to see the innate truth presented by The Word, as I saw how my lived experiences were consistently in agreement with it. For one, I embraced prayer and observed the Father respond to it. Basically, I built up a new worldview around The Word (Jesus Christ) and it has been unshakable, in stark contrast to all the attempts I had made to do the same without Jesus (Matthew 7:24-27 summarizes this well).
- hellweaver666 3y ago
  Sounds to me like you're still hallucinating.
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    Get behind me, hellweaver! For it is written: Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. (For those following along, this is a cute and fun example of Scripture being used to rebuke attempts to shake the foundation. The forces that be typically aren't so overt.)

HKH2 3y ago

> It is interesting to observe, retrospectively, how the brain can adopt a new set of axioms and coerce every one of the "senses" into supporting those axioms - no matter how detached from "our typical understanding of reality" (whatever that means) they are. Brainwashing is real. Just make people really emotionally unstable and then hit them with an onslaught of social pressure with a vision.

achenet 3y ago
a more general take on the subject https://opentheory.net/2019/11/neural-annealing-toward-a-neural-theory-of-everything/ https://opentheory.net/2019/11/neural-annealing-toward-a-neu...
baq 3y ago
Yeah KGB, CIA, FSB et al. had that figured out some time ago.

2devnull 3y ago

Yes, God may have created psychedelics for a reason, but why not cut out the middleman and just “go to the source.” What many in AA learn, the higher power is the only way. Everything else is a treadmill.

nyc_data_geek1 3y ago

The line between faith and delusion is tenuous at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_delusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_delusion

dang 3y ago
No religious flamewar on HN please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dang 3y ago

We detached this subthread, which went offtopic and flameward, from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995044. > As for recovery, Jesus saved me. He can save your friend too, if she lets Him. It's best not to proselytize on HN. It's ok to talk about your own experience of course, but when it starts to move into standard religious tropes, that's already a kind of flamebait and discussion quality plummets, and boy did that happen in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

explaininjs 3y ago
Would you have preferred I left out that second sentence? The parent seemed to be asking for help and that seemed to be on-topic. Though I suppose it could be inferred from the first sentence... but I think even the first sentence alone would have been likely to instigate the same response. Which then makes me wonder if it really is "ok to talk about [my] own experience" in an entirely on-topic discussion?
- dang 3y ago
  It would have been better, yes, and it would also have been better if you hadn't fed the offensive replies by replying to them.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]