Blag

The summer is nice. I brewed some tea, Chinese, red, pungent. Went out to a park. There’s a river, and flowers, and smudged shapes of people strolling about. I walk into the thicker part of the woods, and there’s a clearing and a wooden table, and I settle down and take out my notebook. 

(isn’t the internet a bottomless sinkhole where any amount of text disappears, never to be seen again?) 

(why am I writing here where I don’t know anybody?) 

I’ve landed in Nuremberg, will be here for a couple of days. I’ve been to Bavaria before, but briefly, and never to Franconia. I’m giddy for something to happen, but I’ll have to take initiative here. 

Last time in Munich was absolutely rad. I’ve brought my German back from the state of grave disrepair, gotten to know a few people, played cello, walked through most of the city center,  been to a theater, and that’s in less than a day. This time I’ve got five days here which should be plenty if only I won’t stew in my hotel room or spend all evening meditating in a castle courtyard. Come to think of it, this latter is not half bad. 

Over the last several days I’ve been reading through the #80000hours website. They seem to have done our homework for us. You know how sometimes you’re trying to reason about the best course of action and you write down the problem, think hard, but then get tired and pick just about any appealing option and wing it from there? They make it much easier to *really* think things through and find the right meta-level on which to apply effort to do the most good.

One of the unobvious things I’ve learned is that there are pressing problems, and then there are *really fucking urgent* problems which seemingly should have resourses thrown at them indiscriminately because thousands if not millions of human lifes are at stake and every dollar makes a difference.

Like, go and pay for some malaria nets right now or something. Make a poor black kid live to see another day.

Another thread of reasoning starts with the observation that direct action is much less effective than taking several steps back and working on strategy, social cohesion, health, education, sustainability or plain making sure we don’t all die suddenly for no good reason. But the further we go on the ladder of these meta-level problems, the more nebulous the benefits seem. Sure, Newton’s discoveries have laid a few bricks in the foundation of modern technology, but does that mean that you should pursue your talent for natural philosophy and abstract reasoning and devote your life to what will most likely to only be more obscure abstract nonsense? 

There must be an optimum somewhere, but discovering this optimum, even reasoning about it, is precisely such an endeavour: on the one hand it looks like overthinking and not doing anything of consequence, on the other hand it’s essential because of how the problem space is squished: finding an important problem that you can make progress on seems to be really important:

(taken from https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing-problems/)

I notice that I am confused. I’ll go on to procratinate reading their website and rationalize away my anxiety that keeps me from writing to FHI, MIRI and all the nice places where the above reasoning says I should fight tooth and nail to be accepted.

There’s a TV full of talking heads and nauseating jumpy moving pictures (I’m not used to tellys). For the last several hours is has been displaying the very same streets I’ve walked this morning, and yesterday, and the day before, and the calm, warm, friendly stones are now teeming with people. Angry, concerned, exalted about something — thousands, *tens of thousands* of them on the streets of Paris. There are signs which wiggle too fast for me to read. The’s a scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen which is telling bits of vaguely related stories. Something something brexit something something communist party something someting.

My flight is held up because the plane is broken, or something, no one seems to know what. When I stand up from the piano — oh, of course there’s a grand piano, all red velvet and white lacquer — to check up on my flight, someone comes by and *breaks* it. Like, how do you break a grand piano?

I come to the business lounge, pour myself a glass of ice and settle down to write. My spidey sense is tingling and I feel a story coming. 

A guy across me asks if we’ve ever met. We talk and figure that we didn’t. I don’t know anyone named Muhammed, not personally, and I haven’t been to London, like, ever. We both write code. We both like Omar Khayyam, but Muhammed’s lucky to be able to read him in original Persian.

We chat some and hit on a project we could do together. He’s got an idea and is working on the backend, I can work on the frontend and as we sit I sketch out strategy — turns out I’m familiar with the problem domain and he’s pleasantly surprised with the articles I send his way and my overview of the competition. 

I remember that I have a postcard to send. I have an empty postcard on me, I even have a postal stamp, but there’s no post office in the airport. One of the business lounge assistant kindly offers to take it outside and post it for me, so I draw a picture of the divine Parisian architecture — partly from memory, partly from the photos I’ve snapped, even though this sort of thing should be drawn from nature — and off she goes as it’s the end of her shift.