I've told only a few people about my near death experience, and most of them were polite, but obviously didn't believe a word I was saying. To be honest, I wouldn't believe it either if I had not experienced it myself.
I did not "see" anything other than a bright light, but I was overcome with an incredible feeling that I was in the presence of, and communicating with somebody who was conveying a message of absolute love for, and total understanding of everything that I was. The feeling of euphoria is impossible to fully describe, because of the absoluteness of it.
I wanted to stay where I was. It was the best feeling I'd ever experienced, and I was content. Somehow, I was "shown" some bits of what I had to live for -- people I had not yet met, and amazing places and things that I had not yet seen or done. I don't really remember making a choice to return, but I woke up in a hospital with a broken back and other injuries. I later learned that I had been hit by a car while riding my bicycle, and was given CPR by a passing stranger.
It makes me uncomfortable to talk about this because it's all just so unbelievable, but there it is.
As the years have gone by, I've met the friends and family that I had in my visions, and I've also been to the places and done the things that I saw myself doing in the vision.
My whole perspective on life was changed by this event, and I have no fear of death whatsoever.
This is HN so I'm not trying to evangelize you or anyone here, but what you described is 100% in line with Spiritism [1], a French-founded doctrine that's very popular both in France and Brazil [2]. I'm a believer.
> To be honest, I wouldn't believe it either if I had not experienced it myself.
If you anticipated that others would find this hard to believe, why not write down those visions in detail at the time? That would have provided evidence others could have used to later evaluate whether your visions were accurate.
As a skeptic, and without knowing more details, I am leaning towards self-fulfilling prophecy (you did the things in the visions because you had the visions) or confirmation bias (similar to how horoscopes feel accurate because they're vague enough to map many situations).
My memory is a bit hazy, but I thought what you are describing is very common with people who flatline and come back? I have vague memories that a new anesthetic drug was developed and used on soldiers undergoing surgery in the Vietnam war, and there was something about it that caused the same kind of reaction in those who were put under. Again, my memory is very hazy on the subject. I should go do some research and update this comment (and I just might).
EDIT
I did a little searching. I think it might have been an old report about Ketamine before it became more wide known. Apparently it was used during the Vietnam War.
I was going to mention ketamine. Famous for this type of effect. I don't want to belittle the meaningful experience, but the mind is a really powerful organ and it's a safer bet to treat these experiences as arising from mind rather than beyond it. Shrug.
>>it's a safer bet to treat these experiences as arising from mind rather than beyond it
Your brain has to be alive and exist normally for it to have these experiences. So its quite obvious, nothing is coming from outside of it.
I do feel like its some kind of brain rebooting itself or something like that.
Its sad babies can't tell us if they experience the same during childbirth, but I have a guess that they experience something similar as well.
Its just that the brain is starting up and checking if there is a OxDEADBEEF or a fresh boot. And giving you the primal, brain not initialising any other interface(like eyes, ears, limbs etc). You experience what life would be if only brain existed on its own without everything else apart from it.
It matches what I briefly experienced when I felt ill staying alone in a hotel. (E. g. I understood that the events of the few recent days were sort of preparing me for that; I could ask questions.)
BTW there's a book "The night of fire" by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt that describes a similar experience he got staying alone in a desert. And, of course, countless other descriptions, e.g. "The varieties of religious experience" by W. James. You cannot convince anyone, of course; but there's also no way to fake it.
I don't know, this sounds like your subjective experience, I have no reason to disbelieve it. If you had said that your experience showed you the future, and X Y and Z were going to happen, then I might not believe that, but why wouldn't I believe you experienced what you say you did? Why would you lie?
While staying in a high-end D.C. area hotel, I once discovered a hidden hard-wired speaker under the bathroom sink. Somebody had written "F.B.I." on it with nail polish.
I already knew that speakers could be used as microphones, and it occurred to me that putting a speaker in a hotel room in the name of "safety" would be a great cover story for a surveillance operation.
There's also the game that they play where they spoof BGP announcements that cause routing changes for domestic traffic that makes it flow out and then back into the US, making it fair game for collection. Also, our Five Eyes partners aren't prohibited from collecting on US targets, and we all share.
I've been using SpamCop for years (decades?) but lately I've been wondering if they're still relevant.
One example: they seem to have a size limit of 50KB when you report a spam mail via their web form. I've received quite some spam that exceeds that because they use base64 encoding of the body, add non-visible filler content to drown out the actual spam/phishing message, etc.
SpamCop suggests to cut off the message and still process it but then they miss e.g. the link to the phishing website and thus they can't send out a report for that.
Speaking of phishing links: a lot of the phishing mails I receive, link to some account on storage.googleapis.com. I've seen mails with links to the same account for weeks on end before they switch to a different one, implying that these links remain online for a long time. You would think that marking such mails as phishing in GMail (they are already flagged as spam) would get them on some kind of radar but apparently not...
I've started using phish.report along with SpamCop to specifically report phishing sites separately. They do a hosting lookup and link directly to the abuse contact or form.
Phishers are definitely trying to become cleverer. My "favourite" so far is adding the phishing link only in a QR code in an embedded PNG.
This EFF article does not announce any legal action they are taking as a result of Google complying with the government's request. I'm not really sure what the purpose of the article is. If you object to the NSL non-disclosure requirements, sue the US Government. Google is probably blameless here.
I've migrated everything from Google except for Google Voice. I have yet to find an alternative that can match the feature set and ease of use, regardless of the cost.
I have one page with my full history of text messages, full transcription of all voice messages, contacts information connected with every number, and I can search everything. I can configure which of my phones ring.
And, possibly most importantly to me right now, my current phone has only a data connection and I make and receive calls using the Voice app. I think SIP eats too much battery and data and doesn't work well for wifi<->lte switching, but it's been a long time since I used it much.
I'm not sure what the OP does, but at least for me I find myself chained to Google Voice for SMS 2FA use because it's basically the only phone number provider that cannot be exploited with a sim swap attack (same deal with Google Fi). And while I don't necessarily trust Google, their account security is leagues ahead of anyone else imo.
I previously looked at jmp.chat but they didn't really inspire confidence on the security front.
My use cases include 2FA and I like the added security that Voice provides, but it's not really added security, it's just moving the risk from your cell provider to Google. IMHO, Google does security better than the cell providers do.
I like the muti-platform integration of Voice. I use it on my iPad, on my Android phone, and mostly from my desktop. It works well on all platforms.
When I'm at home, I mainly use my VoIP phones. GV forwards to them, and they spoof my GV numbers when I make outgoing calls.
I like the spam text and call protections that GV provides. I believe they're partnered and integrated with Nomorobo.
I also have jmp.chat. It has capabilities that GV doesn't have, but it's not well integrated. (I use Cheogram on my Android phone, but there's no easily usable client on my iPad, or my desktop.)
I don't like they way they've made it harder for me to see what they actually offer vs. what I offer myself (with my FreePBX VoIP client). I wish they would (maybe on a separate page) show the capabilities of their SIP trunk. E.g. Does it support SMS? Does it support video calling? Does the client require a static IP? Etc.
I like your idea, and I wish that it could be practically implemented.
As with voting, implementing your idea would be subject to exploitation. For it to work, you would need a way of ensuring that each taxpayer/voter was authorized to vote, and voted only once. You would need to somehow prevent "harvesting" too.
Those who have an interest in exploiting the system would lobby for built-in weaknesses that they could exploit.
Here's my question:
If the attorney-client privilege, and more importantly, the work product doctrine don't apply here, would they also not apply to direct conversations between an attorney and an AI?
It seems to me that the court would need to apply some twisted logic to claim that those protections apply to an attorney, but not to a petitioner or respondent.
1. "Conversation" is purely anthropomorphism. It's software input and output. If the client makes an excel spreadsheet about the cost benefit of ripping off people, it's not work-product.
But the lawyer's draft damages analysis in excel has always been protected.
2. If we're going to buy the "conversation" conceit, lawyers talking to consulting experts have always had a lot more work product protection than testifying experts.
The lawyer talking to Claude feels like talking to a consulting expert, especially since Claude can't have independent knowledge of facts that would allow it to testify.
A spreadsheet I produce for myself probably isn't attorney-client privileged. A spreadsheet or word document I produce for my lawyer can be attorney-client privileged (especially if it's literally only for the lawyer). If a ChatGPT or Claude chat is legally like a spreadsheet, it sounds like it's probably not privileged, but a ChatGPT chat you create "for your lawyer" would be.
The ruling explicitly overrules Shih, thus making exactly that argument:
> Shih, of course, is not binding on this Court, and this Court respectfully disagrees with its holding. As relevant here, the court in Shih principally concluded that the work product doctrine is not limited to materials prepared by or at the direction of an attorney. Id. But that conclusion undermines the policy animating the work product doctrine, which, as one of the cases cited in Shih explains, is "to preserve a zone of privacy in which a lawyer can prepare and develop legal theories and strategy 'with an eye toward litigation.'"
Does that imply that materials produced by the client in conversation with the attorney (e.g. attorney says to client "Ok write here in your own words what happened so I can understand your perspective") are not privileged?
Or would those presumably exist under the umbrella of privacy because they're relevant to the lawyer preparing and developing their legal strategy?
With so many attorneys using AI to write their court filings (and many being fined for the AI-generated hallucinations), I suspect there are many stupid attorneys that are already doing this.
I can tell you, just as a lot of developers are using AI and maybe not saying it, a lot of lawyers are using AI right now. The ones I know are all on the Pro $250/mo plans too, since they can afford it.
I did not "see" anything other than a bright light, but I was overcome with an incredible feeling that I was in the presence of, and communicating with somebody who was conveying a message of absolute love for, and total understanding of everything that I was. The feeling of euphoria is impossible to fully describe, because of the absoluteness of it.
I wanted to stay where I was. It was the best feeling I'd ever experienced, and I was content. Somehow, I was "shown" some bits of what I had to live for -- people I had not yet met, and amazing places and things that I had not yet seen or done. I don't really remember making a choice to return, but I woke up in a hospital with a broken back and other injuries. I later learned that I had been hit by a car while riding my bicycle, and was given CPR by a passing stranger.
It makes me uncomfortable to talk about this because it's all just so unbelievable, but there it is.
As the years have gone by, I've met the friends and family that I had in my visions, and I've also been to the places and done the things that I saw myself doing in the vision.
My whole perspective on life was changed by this event, and I have no fear of death whatsoever.
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