Category: Inspiration

Trelograms #18 — What Do You Worry About?

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I just finished listening to Life 3.0: Being Human in The Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Max Tegmark. The book argues that we badly underestimate the existential risk posed by the imminent onset of artificial, superhuman intelligence, and calls for a global and collaborative safety research program.

From the book:

“Not only can non-living matter have goals, at least in [the sense that it was designed to accomplish a goal], but it increasingly does. If you’d been observing Earth’s atoms since our planet formed, you’d have noticed three stages of goal-oriented behavior:

    1. All matter seemed focused on dissipation [of energy].
    2. Some of the matter came alive and instead focused on replication and subgoals of that.
    3. A rapidly growing fraction of matter was rearranged by living organisms to help accomplish their goals.

(…) not only do we now contain more matter than all other mammals except cows (which are so numerous because they serve our goals of consuming beef and dairy products), but the matter in our machines, roads, buildings and other engineering projects appears on track to soon overtake [in weight] all living matter on Earth.” (pp. 257–258)

So, if we overcome our anthropocentric bias and understand human intelligence as simply one of the many possible instantiations of intelligence in our Universe, then all it takes for superintelligent machines to be a serious concern is for them to have goals misaligned with our own, and we might end up being treated by those machines much like we treat ants today — we largely don’t care about whatever might be their goals.

Importantly, those machines need not at all be rebellious — in fact, they don’t even need to be aware of what they’re doing, especially not subjectively so, or how that conflicts with the pursuits of other sentient beings.

That worries me.

How about you — what do you worry about?

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Featured photo: a pig head at a market in Lviv ( January ’18 )

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‘Trelograms’ is a wordplay between ‘telegram’ and ‘trélos’ (Greek for ‘mad’)

Trelograms: inspiration

Trelograms #17 — A Time + Money Conservation Law?

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Another question i often get is, “how do you manage to travel for so long with so little money?”

With plenty of time!

Thinking about this often brings me back to one of my training tours a couple of years ago between Copenhagen and Oslo, while i was still living and working in the former. The experiment in that short tour was to do it without direct help from hospitality networks or paid accommodation.

The most natural path between Copenhagen and Oslo is to ride north along the Swedish West Coast. Having never done anything quite like that before, i figured that would be the perfect stage for such an experiment — Sweden has one of the world’s most generous right of access culture and laws — you’re essentially allowed to camp for one night just about anywhere in the country, as long as it’s not a nature preserve, you’re far enough from developed land and leave no trace — this is literally referred to as “the every [man]’s right” — in Swedish, allemansrätten.

I had not yet discovered the amenity of a surgical water bottle bath (use your imagination), and i wanted my campsites to be near the water, so i could wash like we all should — with a skinny dip! It would often take me up to three hours from the moment i decided to stop riding for the day until i found myself sitting down to cook dinner at my campsite — this brought me to seriously consider whether i’d ever want to be on a cycle tour in those terms for longer than just a week or two.

Upon coming back home to Copenhagen, i realized that i’d been, in a very tangible way, doing just that — working for about three hours a day to “find a comfortable place to sleep at night.” Indeed, rent for a bedroom (sharing a kitchen with five other tenants) cost me roughly one third of my salary as a postdoctoral researcher at University of Copenhagen — not to mention how insanely lucky i was to even find such a deal in that city, as those familiar with the surreal housing market in Copenhagen will certainly agree.

It got me thinking — and i still haven’t quite figured it out . . .

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Featured photo: “dinner table” view from a campsite in my second Copenhagen–Oslo tour ( Summer ’16 )

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‘Trelograms’ is a wordplay between ‘telegram’ and ‘trélos’ (Greek for ‘mad’)

Trelograms: inspiration; cycle touring; Denmark, Norway, Sweden

Trelograms #16 — Aren’t You Afraid?

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That’s one of the questions i hear the most — typically about whether i’m not afraid of people, not traffic.

I’m terrified!

— mostly of traffic, but also of people — how could i not be?

I’ve been taught throughout most of my life to be suspicious of strangers, and i always feel apprehensive when entering a new country while cycle touring, or another car while hitchhiking — gosh, i’m often apprehensive about meeting my Couchsurfing host/guest for the first time!

Whether or not i’ll finally manage to update this misleading intuition, i’m not sure — for now, i’ll just share some of the questions my overwhelmingly positive experience on the road so far has raised.

  • What is your own attitude? How do you behave, as a stranger to someone else? Is your immediate impulse to assess how you could benefit from the situation to their detriment, or to consider what you can offer in answer to their request and in support of their mission?
  • I find it hard to believe it is former — why is that? — are you that much better than the average person out there?
  • I also don’t think so — aren’t we simply more likely than not to get the same indifference at worse or kindness at best from a stranger that we would show them were the roles reversed?

Indeed, there are plenty of stories of long-term, overland travelers being harmed in all sorts of ways — robbed, raped, beaten up, abducted, murdered, you name it — we’re not immune to the ills of the world those traveling in more conventional ways (or not traveling at all) also report, possibly at higher rates in some cases — a quick web search will yield several studies and reports over the past few decades suggesting that the majority of victims of violent crime actually knew their perpetrator.

While i will leave the research and statistical analysis up to the interested reader, here’s one thing most of us can do right now to make hitchhiking and cycle touring objectively safer: drive more carefully 😉

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Featured photo: hitchhiking with my wife in Ukraine after dark and under moderate snowfall ( January ’18 )

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‘Trelograms’ is a wordplay between ‘telegram’ and ‘trélos’ (Greek for ‘mad’)

Trelograms: inspiration; cycle touring, hitchhiking; worldwide, Ukraine

Trelograms #15 — Remember, You’re Going to Die

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“To be a truly happy person, one must contemplate death five times a day.”

Bhutanese folklore

Although i wasn’t aware of this practice in any of my previous cycle tours, there are at least two things i can confidently say about them:

  1. My cycle tours have been the backdrop for the most peaceful and mentally settled periods of my life;
  2. No other experience has exposed me so consistently and so vividly to the fragility and inevitable finitude of life.

We’ve all seen roadkill, and i’m sure at least some of you will agree that their various shapes, sizes and states of putrefaction are much better appreciated from a bicycle than from a car — dogs, deer, squirrels, badgers, mice, birds, toads, snakes, snails, or whatever that used to be during its brief, confused life come by the daily dozens on a cycle tour — their individual lives rendered relatively insignificant by the context underlying their impending but still unexpected death

That’s my own fate!

I‘m very glad i’m on a cycle tour.

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Featured photo: a freshly killed dog just outside Drobeta-Turnu Severin (Romania, April ’17) 

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‘Trelograms’ is a wordplay between ‘telegram’ and ‘trélos’ (Greek for ‘mad’)

Trelograms: inspiration; cycle touring; worldwide, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine

Trelograms #14 — Solo, Not Alone

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In the village of Zatoka (Odessa Region, Ukraine), another person passing by recognized me as “the Brazilian” — where should i know this one from though!?

I didn’t — Zhenya recognized my cycle touring rig from the photos the lovely Magazin Kashtan ladies showed him (that’s the shop in Kilija where i stopped three days before to buy bread and wound up having one of my strongest emotional encounters on the road so far). Although Zhenya didn’t speak much more English than i spoke Ukranian or Russian, we somehow managed to synchronize and enjoy a great time riding the remaining 60Km or so left to Odessa.

It is always refreshing to find someone going in the same direction and at about the same pace as me — it reminds me that, although the overarching journey is ultimately mine, it can be shared with others whenever and wherever it intersects with theirs!

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Featured photo: the moment Zhenya and i parted ways upon reaching Odessa ( May ’17 )

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‘Trelograms’ is a wordplay between ‘telegram’ and ‘trélos’ (Greek for ‘mad’)

Trelograms: inspiration; cycle touring; Ukraine