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I was once using an old but high end HP DC power supply to test a repaired 12V microcontroller circuit that someone else mysteriously blew up "with a spark". Before I hooked up the fraying and grimy alligator clips coming off the supply, I had the thought to check the actual voltage with a multimeter, in case the supply was out of calibration. Before I consciously perceived what my multimeter read, my hands rapidly dropped the frayed wires. I connected up the multimeter again, and it read 120V! Someone had mistakenly missed a decimal point, and the archaic LED display made it look like 12.0V.

A low level part of my brain definitely took over control of my hands, based on interpretation of visual signals. That was 6 years ago and I still think about it every few days.




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