Manolis Kellis: Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything | Lex Fridman Podcast #142

the following is a conversation with. manolis kellis his fourth time on the. podcast he's a professor at mit and head. of the mit computational biology group. since this is episode number. 142. and 42 as we all know is the answer to. the ultimate question of life the. universe and everything according to the. hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. we decided to talk about this. unanswerable question of the meaning of. life in whatever way we two descendants.

of apes could muster from biology to. psychology to metaphysics and to music. quick mention of each sponsor followed. by some thoughts related to the episode. thanks to. grammarly which is a service for. checking spelling grammar sentence. structure and readability. athletic greens the all-in-one drink. that i start every day with to cover all. my nutritional bases and cash app the. app i use to send money to friends.

please check out these sponsors in the. description to get a discount and to. support this podcast. as a side note let me say that the. opening 40 minutes of the conversation. are all about the many songs that formed. the soundtrack to the journey of. monolith's life it was a happy accident. for me to discover yet another dimension. of depth to the fascinating mind of. manolas i include links to youtube. versions of many of the songs we. mentioned. in the description and overlay lyrics on. occasion but if you're just listening to.

this without listening to the songs or. watching the video i hope you still. might enjoy as i did the passion that. manolis has for music his singing of the. little excerpts from the songs and in. general the meaning we discuss that we. pull from the different songs. if music is not your thing i do give. timestamps to the. less musical and more philosophical. parts of the conversation. i hope you enjoy this little. experimenting conversation about music.

and life. if you do please subscribe on youtube. review it with five stars on apple. podcast follow on spotify support on. patreon or connect with me on twitter at. lex friedman and now here's my. conversation with manolas kellis. you mentioned leonard cohen and the song. hallelujah as a beautiful song. so. what are the three. songs you draw the most meaning from. about life. don't.

get me started so there's really. countless songs that have marked me that. have sort of shaped me in periods of joy. and imperials of sadness. my son likes to joke that i have a song. for every sentence he will say because. very often i will break into a song with. a sentence he'll say. my wife calls me the radio. because i i can sort of recite hundreds. of songs uh that have really shaped me. so it's very it's gonna be very hard to. just pick a few so i'm just gonna tell. you a little bit about my. song transition.

as i've grown up in greece it was very. much about as i told you before the. misery the poverty but also a very. calming adversity so some of the songs. that i that have really shaped me are uh. harry salixiu for example is one of my. favorite singers uh in greece. and then there's also really just old. traditional songs that my parents used. to listen to like one of them is. [Music]. which is basically oh if i was. rich. and the song is painting this beautiful.

picture about all the noises that you. hear in the neighborhood in his poor. neighborhood the train going by the. priest walking to the church and the. kids crying next door and all of that. and he says with all of that i'm having. trouble falling asleep and dreaming. if i was rich and then it was like you. know um. break into that so it's this. juxtaposition between the spirit and the. sublime and then the physical and the. harsh reality it's just not having.

troubles not not not being miserable so. basically rich to him just means out of. my misery basically. and then also being able to travel being. able to sort of be the captain of a ship. and you know see the world and stuff. like that so it's just such a beautiful. image so many of the greek songs just. like the poetry we talked about they. acknowledge. the the cruelty the difficulty of life. but are longing for a better life that's. exactly right and another one is the. holy yeah and this is one of those songs. that has like a fast and joyful half and.

a slow and sad half and it goes back and. forth between them and it's like. [Music]. so poor you know basically. uh it's the state of being poor i don't. i don't even know if there's a word for. that. in english and then fast parties. and then it's like oh you know um. basically.

like the state of being poor and misery. uh you know for you i write all my songs. etc and then the fast part is in your. arms grew up and. suffered and you know stood up and. you know rose. men with clear vision. this whole concept of. taking on the world. with nothing to lose because you've seen. the worst of it. this imagery of. silaki pariso pula jarastakori so it's.

describing the young men as cypress. trees. and that's probably one of my earliest. exposure to a metaphor to sort of you. know this very rich imagery and i love. about the fact that i was reading a. story to my kids the other day and it. was dark. and my daughter who's six is like oh can. i please see the pictures and jonathan. was. eight so some of my daughter cleo uh is. like oh let's look at the pictures and. my son jonathan he's like but but cleo. if you look at the pictures it's just an. image.

if you just close your eyes and listen. it's a video. that's brilliant it's beautiful. and he's basically showing just how much. more the human imagination has. besides just a few images that you know. the book will give you and then another. one oh gosh this one is really like. miserable. it's it's called perigali. uh and it's basically describing how. uh. vigorously we took on our life and we.

pushed hard towards the direction that. we then realized was the wrong one. [Music]. and it again these songs give you so. much perspective there's no songs like. that in english that will basically you. know sort of just smack you in the face. about sort of the passion and the force. and the drive and then it turns out ah. we just. followed the wrong life yeah and it's. like wow. okay so that was you all right so that. that's like before 12. so so you know. growing up in sort of this.

horrendously miserable you know sort of. view of romanticism of you know. suffering. so then my pre-teen years is like you. know learning english through songs so. basically you know listening to all the. american pop songs and then memorizing. them vocally before i even knew what. they meant. so you know madonna and michael jackson. and all of these sort of really popular. songs and you know george michael. just songs that i would just listen to. the radio and repeat vocally and.

eventually as i started learning english. i was like oh wow this thing i've been. repeating i know i now understand what. it means without re-listening to it but. just with re-repeating it was like oh. again michael jackson's man in the. mirror is uh teaching you that it's your. responsibility to just improve yourself. you know if you want to make the world a. better place take a look at yourself and. make the change this whole concept of. again i mean all of these songs you can. listen to them shallowly or you can just. listen to them and say. oh there's deeper meaning here and i.

think there's a certain philosophy of of. song as a way of touching the psyche so. if you look at regions of the brain. people have lost their language ability. because they have an accident in that. region of the brain can actually. sing. because it's exactly the symmetric. region of the brain. and that again teaches you so much about. language evolution. and sort of the the duality of. musicality and you know rhythmic. patterns and. eventually language do you have a sense.

of why songs developed so you're kind of. suggesting that it's possible that. there is something important about our. connection with song and with music on. the level of. the importance of language is it. possible. it's not just possible in my view. language comes after music language. comes after song no seriously like. basically my view of human cognitive. evolution. is. rituals. if you look at many early cultures.

there's rituals around every stage of. life. there's organized dance performances. around mating. and if you look at mate selection i mean. that's an evolutionary drive right there. so basically if you're not able to. string together a complex dance as a. bird you don't get a mate and that. actually forms. this development for many song learning. birds not every bird knows how to sing. and not every bird knows how to learn a. complicated song so basically there's.

birds that simply have the same few. tunes that they know how to play and a. lot of that is inherent and genetically. encoded and others are birds that learn. how to sing. and the you know. if you look at a lot of these exotic. birds of paradise and stuff like that. like the mating rituals they have are. enormously amazing and i think human. mating rituals of you know ancient. tribes are not very far off from that. and in my view the sequential formation. of these movements.

is a prelude to the cognitive. capabilities that ultimately enable. language. and it's fascinating to think that. that's uh not just an accidental. precursor to intelligence yeah it's uh. sexually selected it's well sexually. selected and it's a prerequisite yeah. it's like it's required for intelligence. and and even as language has now. developed. i think the artistic expression. is needed like badly needed by our brain.

so it's not just that oh our brain can. kind of you know take a break and go do. that stuff no i mean you know i don't. know if you remember that scene from oh. gosh we're certain technical movie in. new hampshire. uh. all all working no play make jackal dull. boy boy uh the shining the shining. so there's this amazing scene where he's. constantly trying to to concentrate and. what what's coming out of the. typewriters is gibberish. and i have that image as well when i'm.

when i'm working and i'm like no. basically all of this crazy you know. huge number of hobbies that i have. they're not just. tolerated by my work they're required by. my work this ability of sort of. stretching your brain in all these. different directions. is. connecting your emotional self and your. cognitive self. and that's a prerequisite to being able. to be cognitively capable at least in my. view yeah i wonder if the world without. art and music. you're just making me realize that.

perhaps that world would be not just. devoid of. fun things to look at or listen to but. devoid of all the other stuff all the. bridges and rockets and science exactly. exactly creativity is not disconnected. from art. and you know my kids i mean you know i. could be. doing the full math treatment to them no. they play the piano and they play the. violin and they play sports i mean this. whole you know sort of movement. and. going through mazes and playing tennis.

and you know playing soccer and avoiding. obstacles and all of that. that forms your three-dimensional view. of the world. being able to actually move and run and. play in three dimensions. is extremely important for math for you. know stringing together complicated. concepts. it's the same underlying cognitive. machinery. that is used for navigating mazes and. for. navigating theorems. and sort of solving equations so i can't.

you know i can't have a conversation. with my students without you know sort. of either using my hands or. opening the white board in. zoom and just constantly drawing or you. know back when we had in-person meetings. just the whiteboard in my lifeboard yeah. that that's fascinating to think about. uh so that's michael jackson man amir. careless whisper george michael which is. the song i like. whisper i mean i didn't say that i like. that one that's me i had two parties i. had recorded no no that it's an amazing.

song for me i had recorded a small part. of it as it played at the tail end of. the radio and i had a tape where i only. had part of that song. over and over and over again just so. beautiful it's so heartbreaking. that song is almost greek it's so. heartbreaking i know. george michael he's greek is he great. he's greek he's known george michael. he's right i mean he's greedy yeah. you know. so sorry to offend you so deeply not. knowing this.

so okay so anyway so we're moving to. france when i'm 12 years old and now i'm. getting into the songs of gansburg. so gansburg is this incredible french. composer he is always seen on stage like. not even pretending to try to please. just like with his cigarette just like. mumbling his songs but the lyrics are. unbelievable like basically entire. sentences will rhyme he will say the. same thing twice and you're like. whoa. [Laughter]. and in fact another speaking of greek a.

french greek george mustachy. this song is just magnificent avec. magulo demetec de chief eran de. patragrec so with my. face of. metec is actually a greek word it's uh. you know it's a french word for a greek. word but met mean comes from meta and. then ek from ikea from ecology which. means home so medtech is someone who has. changed homes for a migrant so with my. face of a migrant and and you'll love. this one the juice.

the patrick. of a meandering jew. of greek pastor. [Laughter]. so again you know the russian greek you. know jew orthodox connection so. emesis. with my hair in the four wings avec. mesut de la vega. with my eyes that are all washed out who. gives me the pretense of dreaming but. who don't dream that much anymore with.

my hands of thief of musician. and who have. stolen so many gardens with my mouth. that has drunk that has. kissed and that has bitten without ever. pleasing its hunger. with my. skin that has been rubbed. in the sun of all the summers. and anything that was wearing a skirt. with my heart.

and then you have to listen to this. first it's so beautiful. fair with my heart that. knew how to make suffer as much as it. suffered. but. was able to that knew how to make in. french is actually. fair. that knew how to make yes. verses that span the whole thing it's. just beautiful you know.

yeah on a small tangent do you know jack. jacques. bro. of course of course. that song gets me every time so there's. a cover of that song by one of my. favorite female artists not nina simone. no no no no. modern carol emerald. she's um from amsterdam. and uh she. she has a version of new mexico where. she's actually added some english lyrics.

[Music]. and it's it's really beautiful but again. the mekita pai is just so i mean it's. you know the promises yeah the volcanoes. that you know will restart yeah it's. just so beautiful. and uh i love so there's not many songs. that so. sh shows such depth of desperation for. another human being that that's so. powerful. [Music].

and then high school now i'm starting to. learn english so i moved to new york so. stings englishman in new york. yeah magnificent song and again there's. if manners magus man has someone said. then he's the hero of the day. it takes a man to suffer ignorance and. smile. be yourself. no matter what they say. and then. takes more than combat gear to make a. man. takes more than a license for a gun.

confront your enemies avoid them when. you can. a gentleman will walk but never run. it's it again. you're talking about songs that teach. you how to live i mean this is one of. them basically says it's not the combat. gear that makes a man where's the part. where he says uh there you go. gentle uh gentleness sobriety a rare in. this society at night a candle is. brighter than the sun. so beautiful he basically says well you. just might be the only one.

modesty propriety can lead to notoriety. you could end up as the only one it's um. it basically tells you you don't have to. be like the others be yourself show. kindness. show generosity don't you know don't let. that anger get to you. you know the song fragile how fragile we. are how fragile we are so again as in. greece i didn't even know what that. meant how fragile we are but the song. was so beautiful and then eventually i. learned english and i actually.

understand the lyrics and the song is. actually written. after the contras murdered ben linder in. 1987 and the us eventually turned. against supporting. these guerrillas. and it was just a political song but so. such a realization that you can't win. with violence basically. and that song starts with the most. beautiful poetry so if blood will flow. when flesh and steel are won.

drying in the color of the evening sun. tomorrow's rain. will wash the stains away. but something in our minds will always. stay. perhaps this final act was meant to. clinch a lifetime's argument that. nothing comes from violence and nothing. ever could. for all those born beneath an angry star. lest we forget how fragile we are. damn right.

i mean that's poetry. it was beautiful. and he's using the english language in. just such a. refined way. with deep meanings but also words that. rhyme just so beautifully. and. evocations of when flesh and steel are. won. i mean it's just mind-boggling yeah and. then of course the refrain that. everybody remembers is on and on the. rain will fall. etc but like this beginning.

yeah. and again tears from a star how fragile. we are i mean just these rhymes are just. flowing so naturally this something it's. it seems that more meaning comes when. there's a rhythm that uh i don't know. what what that is that probably connects. to exactly what you're saying if you pay. close attention you will notice that the. more obvious words sometimes are the. second verse. and the less obvious are often the first. verse. because it makes the second verse flow. much more naturally.

because otherwise it feels contrived oh. you went and found this like unusual. word yes. in dark moments uh the whole album of. pink floyd and the movie just marked me. enormously yeah as a as a teenager just. the wall. um and there's one song that never. actually made it into the album that's. only there in the movie about when the. tigers broke free and the tigers are the. tanks of the germans. and. it just describes again this vivid. imagery it was just before dawn one.

miserable morning in black 44. when the forward commander was told to. sit tight when he asked that his men be. withdrawn. and the generals gave thanks as the. other ranks held back. the enemy tanks. for a while and the ancient. bridgehead was held for the price of a. few hundred ordinary lives. so that's a theme that keeps coming back. in pink floyd with us versus them. us and them god only knows that's not.

what we would choose. to do. forward he cried from the rear. and the front rows. died from another song it's like this. whole concept of us versus them and. there's that theme of us versus them. again where the child. is discovering how his father died when. he finds an old and founded one day in a. draw the whole photographs hidden away. and my eyes still grow damp to remember.

his majesty signed with his own rubber. stamp. so. it's so ironic because it seems the way. that he's writing it that he's not. crying because his father was lost he's. crying because kind old king george. took the time to actually write mother a. note about the fact that his father died. it's so ironic because he basically says. we are just ordinary men and of course. we're disposable. so i don't know if you know the root of. the word pioneers.

but. you had a chess board here earlier a. pawn. in france is a pyong. they are the ones that you send to the. front to get murdered slaughter this. whole concept of pioneers having taken. these whole disposable ordinary men. to actually be the ones that you know. we're now treating as heroes. so anyway there's this just supposition. of that and then the part that always. just strikes me is the music and the. tonality totally changes and now he. describes the attack. it was dark all around there was frost.

in the ground. when the tigers broke free. and no one survived from the royal. fusiliers company z. they were all left behind most of them. dead. the rest of them dying. and that's how the high command. took my daddy from me. and that song even though it's not in. the album. explains the whole movie. because it's this movie of misery it's.

this movie of. someone being stuck in their head and. not being able to get out of it there's. no other movie that i think has captured. so well. this. prison that is someone's own mind. and this wall that you're stuck inside. in this you know. feeling of loneliness. and so if is there anybody out there. uh and you know sort of hello hello is. there anybody in there. just not if you can hear me.

is there anyone who. [Music]. anyway so yeah the prison of your mind. so those are the darker moments exactly. these are the darker moments. yeah it's in the darker moments the mind. does feel. like you're you're trapped in alone in a. room with it yeah and there's this this.

scene in the movie which like where he. just breaks out with his guitar and. there's this prostitute in the room he. starts throwing stuff and then he like. you know breaks the window he throws the. chair outside and then you see him. laying in the pool with his own blood. like you know everywhere and then. there's these endless hours spent fixing. every little thing and lining it up. and it's this whole sort of mania versus. you know. you can spend hours building up. something and just destroy it in a few. seconds. one of my turns is that song and it's.

like. i feel. cold as eternity. dry as a funeral. drum and then the music people are. saying run to the bedroom there's a. suitcase on the left you'll find my. favorite axe. don't look so frightened this is just a. passing phase one of my bad days it's.

just so beautiful i need to rewatch it. that's so yeah but imagine you're. watching this as a teenager. it like ruins your mind. like so many. such harsh imagery and then um you know. anyway so so there's the dark moment and. then again going back to sting. now it's the political songs russians. and i think that song. should be a. a new national anthem for the u.s not. for russians but for red versus blue. mr khrushchev says we will bury you i.

don't subscribe to this point of view. it'd be such an ignorant thing to do. if the russians love their children too. what is it doing it's basically saying. the russians are just as humans as we. are. there's no way that they're going to let. their children die. and then it's just so beautiful how can. i save my innocent boy from.

oppenheimer's. deadly toy and now that's the new. national anthem are you reading. there isn't no monopoly of common sense. on either side of the political fence. we share the same biology. regardless of ideology. believe me when i say to you. i hope the russians love their children. too. [Music].

there's no such thing as a winnable war. it's a lie we don't believe anymore. i mean it's beautiful right and for. god's sake america wake up. these are your fellow americans they're. your your fellow biology you know there. is no monopoly of common sense on either. side of the political fans it's just so. beautiful there's no crisper. simpler way to say russians love their. children too the the common humanity.

yeah and remember the what i was telling. you i think in one of her first podcasts. about the. the daughter who's crying for her. husband from for her brother to come. back for more and then the virgin mary. appears and says who should i take. instead this turk here's his family. here's his children. this other one he just got married etc. and that basically says no i mean if you. look at the lord of the rings. the enemies are these monsters they're. not human and that's what we always do.

we always say they you know they're not. like us they're different they're not. humans etc so there's this. dehumanization that has to happen for. people to go to war. you know if you realize just how close. we are genetically one with the other. this whole 99.9 identical. you can't bear weapons against someone. who's like that. and the things that are the most. meaningful to us in our life lies at. every level is the same. on all sides on both sides exactly so.

not just that we're genetically the same. yeah we're ideologically the same we. love our children we love our country we. will you know we will fight for. our family. yeah so. and the last one i mentioned last time. we spoke which is johnny mitchell's both. sides now. so. she she has three rounds one on clouds. one on love and one on life. and on cloud she says. rose and flows of angel hair and ice. cream castles in the air and feather.

canyons everywhere have looked at clouds. that way. but now they only block the sun. they rain and snow on everyone. so many things i would have done. but clouds got in my way. and then i've looked at clouds from both. sides now from up and down and still. somehow it's. clouds illusions i recall.

i really don't know clouds. at all. and then she goes on about love how it's. super super happy or it's about misery. and loss and about life how it's about. winning and losing and so so forth but. now old friends are acting strange they. shake their heads they say i've changed. well some things lost since something's. gained and living every day. so again that's growing up and realizing.

that well. the view that you had as a kid is not. necessarily that you have as an adult i. remember my poem from when i was 16. years old of this whole. you know children dance now all in row. and then in the end even though the snow. seems bright without you have lost their. light sound that sang and moon that. smiled so this whole concept of if you. have love and if you have passion you. see the exact same thing from a. different way you can go out running in. the rain or you could just stay in and. say ah.

sucks i won't be able to go outside now. both sides anyway and the last one is. last last one from leonard cohen this is. amazing by the way you're. i'm so glad we stumbled on how much how. much joy you have in so many. avenues of life and music is just one of. them that's amazing but yes leno cohen. going back to the undercover and since. that's where you started so uh leonard. cohen's danced me to the end of love. that's what that was our opening song in. our wedding with my wife oh no that's.

what came out to greet the guest he was. dancing to the end of love. and then another one which is just so. passionate always and we always keep. referring back to it is uh i'm your man. and it goes on and on about sort of i. can be every type of lover for you and. what's really beautiful in marriage is. that we live that with my with my wife. every day. you can have the passion you can have. the anger you can have the love you can. have the tenderness there's just so many. gems in that song if you want a partner.

take my hand or if you want to strike me. down in anger. here i stand. i'm your man. then if you want a boxer i will step. into the ring for you. if you want a driver climb inside. or if you want to take me for a ride. you know you can so this whole concept. of you want to drive. i'll follow you want me to drive i'll. drive. um and the difference i would say. between like that and namaki to paw is.

this song he's got an attitude he's like. uh he's proud of this his ability to. basically be any kind of man for the. money as opposed to the. jacques brown like. desperation of. what do i have to be for you to love me. that kind of desperation. but but but notice there's a parallel. here there's a verse that is perhaps not. paid attention to as much which says. ah but a man never got a woman back. not by begging on his knees.

so it seems that the amber man is. actually an apology song. in the same way that number kitty pie is. an apology song. i'm sorry baby and in the same way that. the careless whisper is now screwed up. yes that's right i'm never gonna dance. again. guilty feet have got no rhythm. um so so this is an apology song not by. begging on his knees or i'd crawl to you.

baby and i'd fall at your feet and not. howl at your beauty like a dog. heat and i'd close at your heart not. tear at your sheet i'd say please. and then. the the last one is so beautiful. if you want a father. for your child. or only one to walk with me a while. across the sand. i'm your man.

that's the the last verses which. basically says you want me for a day. i'll be there do you want me to walk. i'll be there you want me for life if. you want a father for your child i'll be. there too it's just so beautiful oh. sorry remember i told you i was going to. finish with a lighthearted song yes ah. last one you ready. so yeah. alison krause and union station country. song believe it or not the lucky one. so. i i've never identified as much with the.

uh lyrics of a song. as this one and it's hilarious my friend. serving patoglo. is the guy who got me to genomics in the. first place i owe enormously to him and. he's another greek we actually met. dancing believe or not so we used to. perform greek dances uh i was the. president of the international students. association so we put on these big. performances for 500 people at mit. and uh there's a picture on the mit tech. where seraphim who's like you know. bodybuilder was holding on his shoulder.

and i was like like doing maneuvers in. the air basically um so anyway this guy. seraphim um we were driving back from um. a conference and there's this russian. girl who was describing how every member. of her family had been either killed by. the communists or killed by the germans. were killed. like she had just like you know misery. like death and you know sickness and. everything everyone was decimated in her. family she was the last standing member. and we stopped at a the serpent was. driving and we stopped at a at a rest.

area and he he takes me aside and he's. like manolis we're gonna crash. [Laughter]. get her out of my car. and then he basically says but but but. i'm only reassured because you're here. with me and i'm like what do you mean. he's like he you know he's like from. your smile. i know you're the luckiest man on the. planet. so there's this really funny thing where. i just feel freaking lucky all the time. and it's an it's a question of attitude.

of course i'm not any luckier than any. other person but if it's science. something horrible happens to me i'm. like and in fact even in that song the. the song about sort of you know walking. on the beach and this you know sort of. taking our life the wrong way and then. you know having to turn around at some. point he's like you know in the fresh. sand we wrote her name. aurea buffy so bad so shows how nicely. that the wind blew. and the writing was erased. so again it's this whole sort of.

not just. saying ah bummer but oh great i just. lost this this must mean something. right. horrible thing happened it must open uh. that's the door turns and you do a. beautiful chapter so so alison krause is. talking about the lucky one so i was. like oh my god she wrote a song for me. and she goes you're the lucky one i know. that now as free as the wind blowing. down the road loved by many hated by. none i'd say you were lucky cause you.

know what you've done not the care in. the world not the worrying side. everything's gonna be all right cause. you're the lucky one. and then she goes uh you're the lucky. one always having fun a jack of all. trades a master of none you look at the. world with the smiling eyes and laugh at. the devil as his train rolls by i'll. give you a song and a one-night stand. you'll be looking at the happy man. because you're the lucky one it. basically says. if you just don't worry too much.

if you don't try to be. you know. a one. hor a one-trick pony if you just embrace. the fact that you might suck at a bunch. of things but you're just gonna try a. lot of things and then there's another. verse that says. well you're blessed i guess but never. knowing which road you're choosing to. you the next best thing to playing and. winning is playing and losing. it's just so beautiful. because it basically says. if you try.

your best. but it's still playing if you lose it's. okay you had an awesome game. and um again superficially it sounds. like a super happy song but then there's. a the last verse basically says no. matter where you are that's where you'll. be you can bet your luck won't follow me. just give you a song and then one night. stand you'll be looking at a happy man. and in the video of the song she just. walks away or he just walks away or. something like that. and it basically tells you that freedom.

comes at a price freedom comes at the. price of non-commitment this whole sort. of vertical love of births will cry. you can't really love. unless you cry you can't just be the. lucky one the happy boy. and yet have a long-term relationship. so it's you know on one hand i identify. with the shallowness of this song of you. know you're the lucky one jack of all. trades or master none. but at the same time i identify with a. lesson of well you can't just be the.

happy mary go lucky all the time. sometimes you have to embrace loss and. sometimes you have to embrace suffering. and sometimes you have to embrace that. if you have a safety net you're not. really committing enough. you're not you know basically you're. allowing yourself to slip. but if you just go all in. and you just you know let go of your. reservations that's when you truly will. get somewhere. so anyway that's like the the i managed.

to narrow it down to what 15 songs. thank you for that wonderful journey. that you just took us on the the the the. darkest possible places of. greek. song to uh to ending in this a country. song i haven't heard it before but uh. that's exactly right i feel the same way. depending depending on the day is this. the luckiest human on earth. and there's some there's something to. that but you're right. it it needs to be. we need to now return to the muck of.

life in order to be able to. to uh. to truly enjoy it so that's what you. mean muck what's muck. uh the messiness of life the. things the word things don't. turn out the way you expect it to yeah. the way so like to feel lucky is like. focusing on the on the beautiful. consequences yeah but then that feeling. of things being different than you. expected that uh. you stumble in all the kinds of ways. that that seems to be needs to be paired.

with the feeling there's basically one. way the only way not to make mistakes is. to never do anything. right basically you have to embrace the. fact that you'll be wrong so many times. in so many research meetings. i just go off on a tangent and say. let's think about this for a second and. it's just crazy for me who's a computer. scientist to just tell my biologist. friends what if biology kind of worked. this way. and they humor me they just let me talk.

and. rarely has it not gone somewhere good. it's not that i'm always right but it's. always something worth exploring further. that. if you're an outsider with humility. and knowing that i'll be wrong a bunch. of times but i'll challenge your. assumptions. you know and often take us to a better. place. is part of this whole sort of messiness. of life like if you don't try and lose. and get hurt and suffer and cry and just.

break your heart and all these feelings. of guilt and you know wow i did the. wrong thing. of course that's part of life and that's. just something that you know. if you are the a doer. you'll make mistakes. if you're a criticizer yeah sure you can. still sit back and criticize everybody. else for the mistakes they make. or instead you can just be out there. making those mistakes and frankly i'd. rather be the criticized one than the. criticizer. brilliantly put every time somebody. steals my bicycle i say well i know my.

son is like why do they steal our. bicycle that and i'm like. aren't aren't you happy that you have. bicycles that people can steal. i'd rather be the person stolen from. than the steeler yeah. not the critic that counts yeah so. that's we've just. talked amazingly about life from the. music perspective. let's uh. talk about life from human life from. perhaps other perspective and it's. meaning so this is episode. 142.

uh. there is perhaps uh. an absurdly uh. deep. meaning to the number 42 that uh. the our culture has has elevated so this. is a perfect time to talk about the. meaning of life we've talked about it. already but do you think this question. that's so simple. and so seemingly absurd. has value of what is the meaning of life. is it something.

that. raising the question and trying to. answer it. is that a ridiculous pursuit or is this. some value is it answerable at all. so first of all i i feel that we owe it. to your listeners to say why 42 sure. so of course the hitchhiker's guide to. the galaxy came up with 42 as basically. a random number just you know. the author just pulled it out of a hat. and he's admitted so he said mile 42. just seemed like. just random numbers any.

but in fact there's many numbers that. are linked to 42. so. 42 again just just to summarize is the. answer that these super mega computer. that had computed for a million years. with the most powerful computer in the. world had come up with at some point the. computer says um. i have an answer. and they're like. what. it's like you're not going to like it. like what is it it's 42.

and then the irony is that they had. forgotten of course what the question. was yes. so now they have to build a bigger. computer to figure out what the question. was the question to which the answer is. 42. so as i was turning 42 i basically. sort of researched uh why 42 is such a. cool number and it turns out that and i. put together this little passage that. was explaining to all those guests to my. 42nd birthday party why we were talking. about the meaning of life. and. basically talked about how 42 is the. angle. at which light reflects off of water to.

create a rainbow. and it's so beautiful because the. rainbow is basically the combination of. sort of it's been raining but there's. hope because the sun just came out it's. a very beautiful number there so 42 is. also the sum of all rows and columns of. a magic cube that contains all. consecutive integers starting at one. so basically if you if you take all. integers between one and however many. vertices there are the sums is always. 42. 42 is the only number.

left under 100 for which the equation of. x to the cube plus y to the q plus z to. the cube is n. and was not known to not have a solution. and now. it's the you know it's the only one that. actually has a solution. 42 is also 1 0 1 0 1 0 in binary again. the yin and the yang the good and the. evil one and zero the balance of the. force. 42 is the number of chromosomes for the. giant panda. and the giant panda. i know it's totally random.

or a suspicious symbol of great strength. coupled with peace friendship gentle. temperament harmony balance and. friendship whose black and white colors. again symbolize yin and yang the reason. why it's the symbol for china. is exactly the strength but yet peace. and so forth so 42 chromosomes. it takes light. 10 to the minus 42 seconds to cross the. diameter of a proton. connecting the two fundamental. dimensions of space and time.

42 is the number of times a piece of. paper should be folded to reach beyond. the moon. so. um. which is what i assume my students mean. when they ask. that their paper reaches for the stars i. just tell them just fold it a bunch of. times. 42 is. the number of messier object 42 which is. orion and that's you know. one of the most famous. galaxies it's i think also the place. where we can actually see the center of.

our galaxy. uh 42 is the numeric representation of. the star symbol in ascii. which is very useful when searching for. the stars yeah and also a regex for life. the universe and everything so star. [Laughter]. in egyptian mythology the goddess ma'at. which was personifying truth and justice. would ask 42 questions to every dying. person and those answering successfully. would become stars continue to give life. and fuel universal growth.

in judaic tradition goddess scribe is. ascribed a 42-lettered name entrusted. only to the middle age pius meek free. from bad temper. sober and not insistent on his rights. and in christian tradition there's 42. generations from abraham. isaac that we talked about the story of. isaac jacob eventually joseph mary and. jesus. in kabbalistic tradition eloka which is. 42 is the number with which god creates. the universe. starting with 25 letter b and ending.

with 17. good. so 25 plus you know. 17. there's this 42 chapter sutra which is. the first indian religious scripture. which was translated to chinese thus. introducing buddhism to china. from india. the 42 line bible was the first printed. book making the mark marking the age of. printing in the 1450s and the. dissemination of knowledge eventually. leading to the enlightenment. a yeast cell which is uh called a single.

cell eukaryote and the subject of my phd. research has exactly 42 million proteins. anyway so so there's seriously you're on. fire with this these are really good so. i guess what you're saying is just a. random number. yeah basically. so all of these are acronyms so you know. after you have the number you figure out. why that don't work so anyway so uh now. that we've spoken about why 42 uh why do. we search for meaning. and uh you're asking you know will that.

search ultimately lead to our. destruction and my my thinking is. exactly the opposite so basically that. asking. about meaning is something that's so. inherent to human nature it's something. that makes life beautiful that makes it. worth living and that searching for. meaning is actually the point it's not. defining it i think when you found it. you're dead. yeah don't don't ever be satisfied that. you know i've got it so i like to say. that life is lived forward. but it only makes sense backward.

and i don't remember whose quote that is. but. the the the whole search itself. is the meaning. and what i love about it is that. there's a double search going on there's. a search in every one of us through our. own lives to find meaning. and then there's a search which is. happening for humanity itself. to find our meaning. and. we as humans like to look at animals and.

say of course they have a meaning. like a dog has its meaning it's just a. bunch of instincts you know running. around loving everything. um you know remember a joke with a cat. in the dark. no no. so so. um and i i'm noticing the yin yang. symbol right here with this whole panda. black and white and the zero one zero. one five with that 42. some of those are. gold ascii value for uh the star symbol. damn anyway so so basically in my view.

the the search for meaning and the act. of. uh searching for something more. meaningful. is. life's meaning by itself but the fact. that we kind of always hope that yes. maybe for animals that's not the case. but maybe humans have something that we. should be doing and something else and. it's not just about procreation it's not. just about. dominance it's not just about strength. and feeding et cetera like we're the one. species that spends such a tiny little.

minority of its time feeding. that we have this enormous you know huge. cognitive capability. that we can just use for all kinds of. other stuff. and that's where art comes in that's. where you know the healthy mind comes in. with you know exploring all of these. different aspects that are just not. directly tied. to um. to a purpose that's not directly tied to. a function it's really just the the. playing of life the you know.

not not for particular reason. do you think this thing we got this this. mind. is unique in the universe. in terms of how difficult it is to build. so. is it possible that we're the. the most beautiful thing that the. universe has constructed. both the most beautiful the most ugly. but certainly the most complex so look. at evolutionary time uh the dinosaurs. ruled the earth for 135 million years. we've been around for a million years.

so. one versus 135. so dinosaurs were. extinct you know about 60 million years. ago and mammals that had been happily. evolving as tiny little creatures for 30. million years then took over the planet. and then you know dramatically radiated. about 60 million years ago. out of these mammals came the neocortex. formation so basically the the neocortex. which is sort of the outer layer of our. brain. compared to our quote-unquote reptilian. brain which we share the structure of.

with all of the dinosaurs they didn't. have that and yet they ruled the planet. so how many other planets have still you. know mindless dinosaurs where strength. was the only dimension. uh ruling the planet. so. there was something weird that. annihilated the dinosaurs and again you. could look at biblical things of sort of. god coming and wiping out his creatures. and yes to make room for the next ones. so. the mammals basically sort of took off. the planet and then grew.

this cognitive capability of this. general-purpose machine. and primates. push that to extreme and humans among. primates have just exploded that. hardware but that hardware. is selected for. survival. it's selected for procreation. it's initially selected with this very. simple darwinian view of the world.

of random mutation ruthless selection. and then selection for making more of. yourself. if you look at. human cognition. it's gone down a weird evolutionary path. in the sense that. we are expending an enormous amount of. energy on this apparatus between our. ears. that is wasting what 15 of our bodily. energy 20 like some enormous percentage. of our. calories go to function our brain.

no other species makes that big of a. commitment that has basically taken. energetic changes. for efficiency on the metabolic side for. humanity. to basically power that thing. and our brain is both enormously more. efficient than other brains. but also despite this efficiency. enormously more energy consuming. so and if you look at just the sheer. folds that the human brain has.

again our skull could only grow so much. before it could no longer go through the. pelvic opening. and. kill the mother at every birth so. but yet the fault continued effectively. creating just so much more capacity. the evolutionary. uh context in which this was made. is enormously fascinating and it has to. do with. other humans that we have now killed off. or that have gone extinct.

and that has now created this weird. place of humans on the planet as the. only species that has this enormous. hardware. so that can basically make us think that. there's something very weird and unique. that happened in human evolution that. perhaps has not been recreated elsewhere. maybe the asteroid didn't hit you know. sister earth. and the dinosaurs are still ruling and. you know any any kind of proto-human is. squished and eaten for breakfast. basically. however we're not as unique as we like.

to think because there was this enormous. diversity of other human-like forms. and once you make it to that stage where. you have a neocortex-like explosion of. wow we're now competing on intelligence. and we're now competing on social. structures and we're now competing on. larger and larger. groups and being able to. coordinate. and being able to have empathy. the concept of. empathy the concept of an ego the. concept of a self of self-awareness.

comes probably. from. being able to project. another person's intentions. to understand what they mean when you. have these large cognitive groups. large social groups so. me being able to sort of create a mental. model of how you think. may have come before i was able to. create a. personal mental model of how do i think. so this introspection probably came. after. this sort of.

projection and this empathy which. basically means you know passion pathos. suffering. but basically sensing so basically. empathy means feeling what you're. feeling. trying to project your emotional state. onto my cognitive apparatus. and i think that. is. what eventually led to. this enormous cognitive explosion that. happened in humanity so. you know. life itself in my view is.

inevitable on every planet inevitable. inevitable. but the evolution of life to. self-awareness and cognition and all the. incredible things that humans have done. you know that might not be as inevitable. that's your intuition so uh if you were. to sort of uh estimate and bet some. money on it if we. re-ran earth. a million times. would what we got now be the most. special thing and how often would it be.

so. scientifically speaking how repeatable. is this experiment. so this whole cognitive revolution yes. maybe not. maybe not basically. i feel that the longevity of. you know dinosaurs. suggests that it was not quite. inevitable that we uh. that we humans eventually. uh made it. what you're also implying one thing here. you're saying you're implying that.

humans also don't have this longevity. this is the interesting question so with. the fermi paradox the idea that the. basic question is like. if if the universe has a lot of uh alien. life forms in it why haven't we seen. them yeah and one thought is that there. is a great filter or multiple great. filters that basically would destroy. intelligent civilizations like we this. thing that we you know this. multi-folding brain that can keeps. growing may not be such a big feature it.

might be useful for survival. but it like takes us. down a uh side road that is a very short. one with a quick dead end what do you. think about that so. i think the universe is enormous. not just in space but also in time. and. the. the pretense that you know the last. blink of an instant that we've been able. to send radio waves is when somebody. should have been paying attention to our.

planet. he's a little ridiculous. so my you know what i love about star. wars yes is a long long time ago in a. galaxy far far away it's not like some. distant future it's a long long time ago. what i love about it is that basically. says. you know evolution and civilization. are just so recent. in. you know on earth like there's countless. other planets that have probably all. kinds of life forms. multicellular perhaps and so forth.

but. the fact that humanity has only been. listening and emitting for just this. tiny little blink. means that any of these. you know alien civilizations would need. to be paying attention to every single. insignificant planet out there. and you know again i mean the movie. contact and the book is just so. beautiful this whole concept of we don't. need to travel. physically we can travel as light we can. send instructions for people to create.

machines that will allow us to beam down. light and recreate ourselves. and in the book you know the aliens. actually take over. they're not as friendly. but. you know this concept that we have to. eventually go and conquer every planet i. mean i think that yes we will become a. galactic species so you you have um hope. well you said thanks oh of course of. course i mean now that we've made it so. far you we so you think i made it oh. gosh i feel that you know cognition the.

cognition as an evolutionary trait has. won over in our planet there's no doubt. that we've made it so basically humans. have. won the battle for. you know uh dominance it wasn't. necessarily the case with dinosaurs like. i mean. yes you know there's some. claims of. uh intelligence and if you look at. jurassic park yeah sure whatever. but. you know they just don't have the. hardware for it. yeah and humans have the hardware. there's no doubt that mammals have a.

dramatically improved hardware. for cognition over dinosaurs like. basically there's universes where. strength went out and in our planet in. our you know particular version of. whatever happened in this planet. cognition went out and it's kind of cool. i mean it's it's a privilege right but. it's kind of like living in boston. instead of i don't know some. middle uh middle-aged uh place where. everybody's like hitting each other with. with uh you know some.

weapons and sticks back to the lucky one. song. i mean we are the lucky ones. but the flip side of that uh is that. this hardware also allows us to develop. weapons and methods of destroying. ourselves. so you again i want to go back to pinker. yeah and the better angels of our nature. the whole concept that. civilization. and the act of civilizing. has dramatically reduced violence.

dramatically. if you look you know at every scale. as soon as organization comes the state. basically. owns the right to violence. and eventually. the state gives that right. of. governance to the people. but but violence has been eliminated by. that state. so this whole concept of. central governance and people agreeing. to live together. and.

share. responsibilities and duties and you know. all of that. is something that has led. so. much to less violence less death less. suffering less. you know poverty less. um you know war i mean. yes. we have the capability to destroy. ourselves but. the arc of civilization has led to much. much less destruction much much less war. and much more peace and of course.

there's blips back and forth. and you know there are setbacks but. again. the moral arc of the universe. but it seems to just i. probably imagine there were two. dinosaurs back in the day having this. exact conversation and they look up to. the sky and there seems to be something. like an asteroid going towards earth so. it's while it's it's very true that. the the arc of our society of human. civilization seems to be progressing.

towards a better better life for. everybody. in in the many ways that you described. uh. things can change in a moment. and it feels like it's not just us. humans we're living through a pandemic. you could imagine that. a pandemic would be more destructive or. or there could be asteroids that just. appear out of the the darkness of space. which i would recently learned. it's not that easy to uh give you. another number detect them yes so 48.

what happens in 48 years. 2068 apophis. there's an asteroid that's coming. in 48 years it has very high chance of. actually wiping us out completely yes. so we have 48 48 years to get our act. together. it's not like some distant distant. hypothesis yes like yeah sure they're. hard to detect but this one we know. about it's coming. so how do you feel about that why are. you still talking oh gosh i'm so happy. with where we are now this is going to.

be great seriously if you look at. progress. if you look at again the speed with. which. knowledge has been transferred. what what has led to humanity making so. many advances so fast. okay so what has led to humanity making. so many advances is not just the. hardware upgrades. it's also the software upgrades. so by hardware upgrades i basically mean. our neocortex and the expansion and. these layers and you know folds of her. brain and all of that that's the.

hardware the software hasn't uh. you know the the hardware hasn't changed. much in the last what seventy thousand. years. as i mentioned last time if you take a. person from ancient egypt and you bring. them up now they're just as equally fit. so. hardware hasn't changed what has changed. is software what has changed is that. we are. growing up in societies that are much. more complex.

this whole concept of neotimi. basically allows our exponential growth. the concept that our brain has not fully. formed has not fully. stabilized itself until after teenage. years so we basically have a good 16. years 18 years to sort of infuse it with. the latest and greatest in software. if you look at what happened in ancient. greece. why did everything explode at once. my take on this is that it was the shift. from the egyptian and hieroglyphic.

software. to the greek language software. this whole concept of creating abstract. notions. of creating. these um. layers of cognition. and layers of meaning and layers of. abstraction for. words and ideals and beauty and harmony. how do you write harmony in. hieroglyphics there's no such thing as. you know sort of expressing these ideals. of peace and justice and you know these.

concepts of. or even you know uh macabre concepts. of doom etc like you don't. you don't have the language for it your. brain. has trouble getting at that. concept so what i'm trying to say is. that. these software upgrades for. human language human culture. human environment human education.

have basically led to this enormous. explosion of knowledge. and eventually after the enlightenment. and as i was mentioning the 42 line. bible. and the printed press the dissemination. of knowledge you basically now have this. whole horizontal. dispersion of ideas in addition to the. vertical inheritance of genes. so the hardware. improvements happen through vertical. inheritance the software improvements. happen through horizontal inheritance. and the reason why human civilization.

exploded is not a hardware change. anymore it's really a software change. so if you're looking at now where we are. today. look at coronavirus yes sure it could. have killed us a hundred years ago it. would have. but it didn't why because in january. we we published the genome. a month later less than a month later. the first vaccine designs were done and. now less than a year later 10 months. later we already have a working vaccine. that's 90 efficient i mean that is.

ridiculous by any standards and the. reason is sharing. so you know the asteroid yes could wipe. us out in 48 years but 48 years i mean. look at where we were 48 years ago. technologically. i mean how much more we understand the. basic foundations of space. is enormous the technological. revolutions of. digitization the amount of compute power. we can put on any like you know.

by in nail size you know hardware is. enormous so and this is nowhere near. ending. you know we all have our like little you. know problems going back and forth on. the social side yeah and on the. political side on the cognitive and on. the sort of human side and the societal. side but. science has not slowed down science is. moving at a breakneck pace ahead so you. know elon is now putting rockets out.

from the private space i mean that now. democratization of space exploration. is. you know gonna reveal it's gonna explode. continue in the same way that every. technology has exploded this is the. shift to space technology exploding so. 48 years is infinity from now in terms. of space capabilities so i'm not worried. at all are you excited by the. possibility of a human. well one human stepping foot on mars and. to.

possible colonization of not necessarily. mars but other planets and all that kind. of stuff for people living in space. inevitable and never inevitable would. you do it are you kind of like earth. you know how many how many how many. people will you wait when you wait for i. think it was about when um the the. declaration of independence was signs. about two to three million people lived. here so would you move like before would. you be like on the first boat would you. be on the 10th boat would you wait until. the declaration of independence i don't.

think i'll be on the shortlist because. i'll be old by then. they'll probably get a bunch of younger. people but you're it's the. it's the wisdom and the uh. the wait then you are in the classroom. horizontally you i gotta tell you you. are the lucky one so you might be on the. list i don't know yeah i mean. i i kind of feel like i would love to. see earth from above just to watch our. planet i mean just i mean you know you. can watch a live feed of the. space station. watching earth.

is magnificent like this blue tiny. little shield. it's so thin our atmosphere like if you. drive to new york you're basically in. outer space i mean it's ridiculous it's. just so thin. and it's just again such a privilege to. be on this planet such a privilege. but i think our species is. in for. big good things. i think that. you know we will overcome our little. problems and. eventually come together as a species i.

feel that we we we're definitely on the. path to that. and. you know it's just not permeated through. the whole. universe yeah i mean through the whole. world yet through the whole earth yet. but it's definitely permeating. so you've talked about humans as special. how exactly are we special relative to. the dinosaurs. so i mentioned that there's um you know. this dramatic cognitive improvement that.

we've made. but i think it goes much deeper than. that so if you look at a lion attacking. a gazelle. in the middle of the serengeti. the lion is. smelling the molecules in the. environment. it's. uh. hormones and neuroreceptors are sort of. getting it ready for impulse. the target is constantly looking around. and sensing i've actually been in kenya.

and i've kind of seen the hunt yes i've. kind of seen the sort of. game of waiting. and. the mitochondria in the muscles of the. lion are basically ready for. you know. jumping. they're expensing an enormous amount of. energy. the grass as it's flowing. is constantly transforming. solar energy. into. chloroplasts you know through the.

chloroplastin to energy which eventually. feeds the gazelle and eventually feeds. the lions and so forth so. as humans. we experience. all of that. but the lion only experiences. one layer. the mitochondria in its body are only. experiencing one layer the chloroplasts. are only experiencing one layer. the. you know photoreceptors and the smell. receptors the chemical receptors like.

the lion always attacks against the wind. so that it's not smelled. like. all of these things. are. one layer at a time. and we humans somehow perceive the whole. stack. so going back to software infrastructure. and hardware infrastructure if you. design a computer. you basically have a physical layer that. you start with and then on top of that. physical layer you have you know the. electrical layer and on top of the. electrical layer you have basically. gates and logic and an assembly layer.

and on top of the assembly layer you. have your you know. higher order higher level programming. and on top of that you have your deep. learning routine etc and on top of that. you eventually build a cognitive system. that's smart. i want you to now picture. this cognitive system becoming not just. self-aware. but also becoming aware of the hardware. that it's made of. and the atoms that there that it's made. of and so forth so it's as if your ai.

system and there's this beautiful scene. in um. 2001 odyssey of space. where where uh hull. after dave starts disconnecting him yes. he's starting to sing a song about. daisies etc. and. hal is basically saying dave. i'm losing my mind. i can feel i'm losing my mind it's just. so beautiful this concept of. self-awareness of knowing that the.

hardware is no longer there is amazing. and in the same way humans who have had. accidents are aware that they've had. accidents. so there's this self-awareness of ai. that. is you know this beautiful concept about. you know sort of the eventual. cognitive leap to self-awareness. but. imagine now the ai system actually. breaking through these layers and saying. wait a minute i think i can design a.

slightly better hardware to get me. functioning better and that's what. basically humans are doing. so if you if you look at our reasoning. layer it's built on top of a cognitive. layer. and the reasoning layer we share with ai. it's kind of cool like there is another. thing on the planet that can integrate. equations and it's man-made but we share. computation with them. we share this cognitive layer of playing. chess we're not alone anymore we're not. the only thing on the planet that plays. chess now we have. ai that also plays chess but in some.

sense that that particular organism ai. as it is now only operates in that layer. exactly exactly and then most animals. operate in the sort of cognitive layer. that we're all experiencing a bat is. doing this incredible integration of. signals. but it's not aware of it. it's basically constantly sending. echo location waves and it's receiving. them back. and multiple bats in the same cave are. operating at slightly different.

frequencies and with slightly different. pulses. and they're all sensing objects and. they're doing motion planning. in their cognitive hardware but they're. not even aware of all of that all they. know is that they have a 3d view of. space around them. just like any gazelle walking through. you know the desert and any. baby. looking around is aware of things. without doing the math of how am i. processing all of these visual. information et cetera you're just aware. of the layer that you live in.

i think. if you look at this. at humanity we've basically managed. through our cognitive layer through our. perception layer through our senses. layer through our multi-organ layer. through our genetic layer. through our molecular layer. through our. atomic layer through our quantum layer. through even the very fabric of the. space-time continuum. unite all of that cognitively so as.

we're watching that scene in the. serengeti. we as scientists we as educated humans. we as you know anyone who's finished. high school are aware of all of this. beauty of all of these different layers. interplaying together. and i think that's something very unique. in. perhaps not just the galaxy but maybe. even the cosmos. this. species that has managed to in space. cross through these layers from the. enormous. to the infinitely small and that's what.

i love about particle physics the fact. that it actually unites everything. they're very small they're very very. small and they're very big it's only. through the very big that the very small. gets formed like basically every atom of. gold. results from the fusion that happened. of you know increasingly large particles. before that explosion that then. disperses it through the cosmos. and it's only through understanding the. very large that we understand very small. and vice versa. and that's.

in space then there's the time direction. as you are. watching the kilimanjaro mountain you. can kind of look back through time. to when that volcano was exploding and. you know growing out of the tectonic. forces. as you drive through. death valley you see these mountains. on their side and these layers. of history exposed. we are aware of the.

eons that have happened on earth and the. tectonic movements on earth. the same way that we're aware of the big. bang. and the. you know early evolution of the cosmos. and we can also see forward in time as. to where the universe is heading we can. see you know apophis in 2068 coming over. looking ahead in time i mean that would. be magician stuff. you know in ancient times. so what i love about humanity and its.

role in the universe is that. you know if there's a god watching he's. like finally somebody figured it out. i've been building all these beautiful. things and somebody can appreciate it. and figured me out from god's. perspective meaning like become aware of. yeah you know. yeah so it's kind of interesting so to. think of the world in this way as layers. and us humans. are able to convert those layers into. ideas that they you can then. like combine. right so we're doing some kind of.

conversion exactly exactly and last time. you asked me about whether we live in a. simulation for example. i mean. realize that we are. living in a simulation we are the. reality that we're in without any sort. of person programming this is a. simulation like basically what happens. inside your skull. there's this integration of sensory. inputs which are translated into. perceptory signals which are then. translated into a conceptual model of.

the world around you. and that exercise. is happening seamlessly and yet. you know if you if you think about sort. of again this whole simulation and neo. um analogy. you can think of the reality that we. live in as a matrix as the matrix but. we've actually broken through the matrix. we've actually traversed the layers we. didn't have to take a pill like we. didn't nick you know. morpheus didn't have to show up to.

basically give us the blue pill or the. red pill. we were able to. sufficiently evolve cognitively through. the hardware explosion. and sufficiently involve scientifically. through the software explosion. to basically get at breaking through the. matrix realizing that we live in a. matrix and realizing that we are this. thing in there. and yet that thing in there has a. consciousness that lives through all. these layers. and i think we're the only species we're. the only thing that we even can think of.

that has actually done that has. sort of. permeated. space and time. scales. and layers of abstraction. plowing through them. and realizing what we're really really. made of. and the next frontier is of course. cognition. so we understand so much of the cosmos. so much of the stuff around us but the. stuff inside here. finding the basis for the soul finding. the basis for the ego for the self the.

self-awareness. when do when does the spark happen that. basically sort of makes. you you. i mean that's you know really the next. frontier so so in terms of these peeling. off layers of complexity. somewhere between the cognitive layer. and the. reasoning layer or the computational. layer there's still some stuff to be. figured out there and i think that's the. final frontier of sort of completing our. journey through that matrix and maybe. duplicating it in the.

in other versions of ourselves through. ai. which is another very exciting uh. possibility what i love about ai and the. way that it operates right now is the. fact that it is unpredictable. there's emergent behavior. in our cognitively capable artificial. systems. that. we can certainly model but we don't. encode directly. and that's a key difference.

so. we like to say oh of course this is not. really intelligent because we coded it. up. and we just put in these little. parameters there and there's like you. know. six billion parameters and once you've. learned them you know we kind of. understand the layers. but that's an oversimplification. it's it's like saying oh of course. humans we understand humans they're just. made out of neurons and you know layers. of cortex and there's a visual. area and there's a but but every human.

is encoded. by a ridiculously small number of genes. compared to the complexity of our. cognitive apparatus. 20 000 genes is really not that much out. of which a tiny little fraction are in. fact encoding all of our cognitive. functions. the rest. is emergent behavior. the rest is. the. you know. the the the cortical layers. doing their thing. in the same way that when we build you. know. these conversational systems or these.

cognitive systems or these deep learning. systems. we put the architecture in place but. then they do their thing. and in some ways that's creating. something that has its own identity. that's creating something that's not. just oh yeah it's not the early ai where. if you hadn't programmed what happens in. the grocery bags when you have both cold. and hot and hard and. soft. you know the system wouldn't know what. to do no no you basically now just. program the primitives and then he. learns from that so even though the. origins are humble just like it is for.

our genetic code for ai even though the. origins are humble the. the uh. the result of it being deployed into the. world is infinitely complex. and. that's. and yet there's not uh it's not yet able. to be cognizant of all the other layers. in uh. of its you know it's not. it's not able to.

think about. space and time. it's not able to think about the. hardware in which it runs the. electricity on which it runs yet. so so if you look at humans. we basically have the same cognitive. architecture as monkeys as the great. apes it's. just a ton more of it. if you look at um gpt3 versus gpd2. again it's the same architecture just. more of it. and yet it's able to do so much more. yeah so if you start thinking about sort.

of what's the future of that gpt 455 do. you really need fundamentally different. architectures or do you just need a ton. more hardware and we do have a ton more. hardware like these systems are nowhere. near what humans have between our ears. so. you know there's something to be said. about stay tuned for emergent behavior. we keep thinking that general. intelligence might just be. forever away. but it could just simply be that we just.

need a ton more hardware. and that humans are just not that. different from the great apes except for. just a ton more of it yeah it's. interesting that in the ai community. maybe it is a human-centric fear but the. notion that gpt. 10 will be. will achieve general intelligence is. something that people shy away from that. there has to be something totally. different and new added to this. and yet. it's not seriously considered that um.

this this very simple. thing this very simple architecture when. scaled might be the thing that achieves. super intelligence and people think the. same way about humanity and human. consciousness they're like oh. consciousness might be quantum or it. might be you know some some non-physical. thing and it's like. or it could just be a lot more of the. same hardware that now is sufficiently. capable of self-awareness just because. it has the neurons to do it. so maybe the consciousness that is so.

elusive. is an emergent behavior. of you basically string together all. these cognitive capabilities that come. from running from seeing for reacting. from predicting the movement of the fly. as you're catching it through the air. all of these things are just like great. lookup tables encoded in a giant neural. network i mean i'm oversimplifying of. course the complexity and the diversity. of the different types of excitatory. inhibitory neurons the waveforms that. sort of shine through.

the. you know the the connections across all. these different layers the amalgamation. of signals etc the brain is enormously. complex i mean of course but again it's. a small number of primitives encoded by. a tiny number of genes. which are. self-organized and shaped by their. environment. babies that are growing up today are. listening to language. from. conception basically as soon as the. auditory apparatus forms.

it's already getting shaped to the types. of signals that are out in the real. world today. so it's not just like oh have an. egyptian be born and then ship them over. it's like no that egyptian would be. listening in to the complex of the world. and then getting born and sort of seeing. just how much more complex the world is. so it's a combination of the underlying. hardware. which if you think about as a geneticist. in my view the hardware gives you an. upper bound of cognitive capabilities.

but it's the environment that makes. those capabilities shine and reach their. maxima so we're a combination of nature. and nurture. the nature is our genes and our. cognitive apparatus and the nurture is. the richness of the environment that. makes that cognitive apparatus reach its. potential. and we are so far from reaching our full. potential. so far. i think that kids being born 100 years.

from now they'll be looking at us now. and saying what primitive educational. systems they had. i can't believe people were not wired. into this you know virtual reality from. birth. as we are now because like they're. clearly inferior. and so forth so i basically think that. our environment will continue. exploding. and our cognitive capabilities it's not. like oh we're only using two percent of. our brain that's ridiculous of course. we're using 100 of our brain but it's. still constrained by how complex our.

environment is. so the hardware will remain the same but. the software. in a quickly advancing environment the. software will make a huge difference in. the nature of. like the human experience the human. condition it's fascinating to think that. humans will look very different 100. years from now just because the. environment changed even though we're. still the same great apes the the. descendant of apes. at the core of this is kind of a notion. of ideas. that uh i don't know if you're.

there's a lot of people that's including. you eloquently about this topic but. richard dawkins talks about. the notion of memes. and let's say this. notion of ideas. you know multiplying selecting. in the minds of humans do you ever think. from about ideas from the from that. perspective ideas as organisms. themselves that are breeding in the. minds of humans. i love the concept of memes i love the.

concept of this horizontal transfer of. ideas and sort of permeating through. through. you know our. layer of interconnected neural networks. so you can think of sort of the. cognitive. space. that has now connected all of humanity. where we are now one giant. information and idea sharing network. well beyond what was thought to be ever. capable when the concept of a meme was.

created by richard dawkins so but i want. to take that concept just. you know into another twist. which is the horizontal transfer of. humans. with fellowships. and the fact that. as people apply to mit from around the. world. there's a selection that happens. not just for their ideas. but also for the cognitive hardware.

that came up with those ideas. so we don't just ship ideas around. anymore they don't evolve in a vacuum. the ideas themselves influence. the distribution of cognitive systems. i.e humans and brains. around the planet yeah we ship them to. different locations based on their. properties that's exactly right. so so those cognitive systems that think. of you know physics for example might go. to cern and those that think of genomics. might go to the broad institute.

and those that think of computer science. might go to i don't know stanford or cmu. or mit. and you basically have this co-evolution. now of memes and ideas and the cognitive. conversational systems that. love these ideas and feed on these ideas. and understand these ideas and. appreciate these ideas. now coming together. so you basically have. students coming to boston to study. because that's the place where these. type of cognitive systems thrive.

and they're selected. based on their cognitive output and. their. idea output. but once they get into that place. the. boiling and interbreeding of these memes. becomes so much more frequent. that what comes out of it. is so far beyond if ideas were evolving. in a vacuum of an already established. hardware cognitive interconnection. system of the planet. where now you basically have.

the ideas shaping the distribution of. these systems and then the genetics kick. in as well you basically have now. these people who came to be a student. kind of like myself who now stuck around. and are now professors. bringing up our own. genetically encoded and genetically. related cognitive systems mine are eight. six and three years old. who are now growing up in an environment. surrounded by other.

cognitive systems of a similar age. with parents who love these types of. thinking and ideas and you basically. have a whole interbreeding now. of. genetically. selected. transfer of cognitive systems. where the genes and the memes. are. co-evolving the same soup. of ever improving knowledge and societal. inter-fertilization cross-virtualization.

of these ideas so that this beautiful. image. so these are shipping these actual. meat cognitive systems to physical. locations they they tend to uh cluster. in uh the biology ones cluster in a. certain building too so like within that. there's there's uh there's clusters on. top of clusters type of clusters what. about in the online world. is that. do you also see that kind of because. people now. form groups on the internet that they. stick together so they.

they can sort of uh. these cognitive systems can. collect themselves and uh. breed together uh on in in different. layers of spaces it doesn't just have to. be physical space absolutely absolutely. so basically there's the physical. rearrangement but there's also the. conglomeration of. the same cognitive system doesn't need. to be a human. it doesn't need to belong to only one. community yeah so yes you might be a. member of the computer science.

department but you can also hang out in. the biology department but you might. also go online online into i don't know. poetry department uh readings and so. forth or you might be. part of a group that only has 12 people. in the world. but that are connected through their. ideas and are now interbreeding these. ideas in a whole other way. so this um. this coevolution of genes and memes is. not just physically instantiated it's. also sort of rearranged. you know in this cognitive uh space as.

well. and uh and sometimes these cognitive. systems hold conferences and they all. get gather around and there's like one. of them is like talking and they're all. like listening and then you discuss and. then they have free lunch and so on no. but but then that's where you find. students where you know when when i go. to a conference i go through the posters. where i'm on a mission basically my. mission is to read and understand what. every poster is about and for a few of. them i'll dive deeply and understand. everything but i make it a point to just. go post after posting in order to read.

all of them and i find some gems and. students that i speak to that sometimes. eventually join my lab. and then sort of you're you're sort of. creating this permeation of you know the. transfer. of ideas. of ways of thinking and very often of. moral values. of social structures. of. you know just more. imperceptible. properties of these cognitive systems.

that simply just cling together. basically you know there's. i have the luxury at mit of not just. choosing smart people but choosing smart. people who i get along with. who. are generous and friendly and creative. and smart and you know. excited and. childish in their. in you know uninhibited behaviors and so. forth so you basically can choose. yourself to surround. you can choose to surround yourself with.

people who are not only cognitively. compatible. but also. you know imperceptibly through the meta. cognitive systems compatible and again. when i say compatible. not all the same. sometimes. you know. sometimes all the time. the teams are made out of complementary. components not just compatible but very. often complementary so in my own team i. have a diversity of students who come. from very different backgrounds there's.

a whole spectrum of biology to. computation of course but within biology. there's a lot of realms within. computation there's a lot of rounds and. what makes us. click so well together. is the fact that not only do we have a. common mission a common passion and a. common. you know. view of the world. but. that were complementary in our skills in. our angles with which we accommodate and. so so forth and that's sort of what. makes it click yeah it's fascinating.

that the the. the stickiness of. multiple cognitive systems together. includes both the commonality so you. meet because you're there's some common. thing but you stick together. because you're dif different. in all the useful ways yeah yeah and my. wife and i i mean we adore each other. like to pieces but we're also extremely. different in many ways and that's. beautiful. but i love that about about us i love. the fact that you know i'm like living.

out there in the you know world of ideas. and i forget what day it is and she's. like well at 8 am the kids better be to. school. and uh you know yeah i do get yelled at. but but i need it basically i need her. as much as she needs me and she loves. interacting with me and talking i mean. you know last night we were talking. about this and i showed her the. questions and we were bouncing ideas of. each other and it was just beautiful. like we basically have these you know.

basically. cognitive. you know let it all loose kind of dates. where you know we just bring papers and. we're like you know bouncing ideas etc. so you know we have extremely different. perspectives but very common you know. goals and interests and. anyway what do you make of the. communication mechanism that we humans. use to share those ideas because like. one essential element of all of this is. not just that we're able to.

have these ideas but we're also able to. share them we tend to maybe you can. correct me but we seem to use. language to share the ideas maybe we. share them in some much deeper way than. language i don't know but what do you. make of this whole mechanism and how. fundamental it is to. the human condition so some people will. tell you that your language. dictates your thoughts and your thoughts. cannot form outside language. i tend to disagree. i see. uh thoughts as.

much more abstract as you know basically. when i dream i don't dream in words i. dream in shapes and forms and you know. three-dimensional space with extreme. detail i was describing so when i wake. up in the middle of the night i actually. record my dreams. sometimes i write them down in a dropbox. file uh other times i'll just dictate. them in you know audio. and um. my wife was giving me a massage the. other day because like my left side was. frozen. and i started playing the recording and.

as i was listening to it i was like i. don't remember any of that and i was. like of course and then the entire thing. came back but then there's no way any. other person could have recreated that. entire sort of you know. three-dimensional. uh shape and dream and concept and in. the same way when i'm thinking of ideas. there's so many ideas i can't put two. words. i mean i will describe him with a. thousand words but the idea itself is. much more precise or much more sort of.

abstract or much more something you know. difference either less abstract or more. abstract and it's either you know. basically the. there's just a projection that happens. from the three-dimensional ideas into. let's say a one-dimensional language. and the language certainly gives you the. apparatus to think about concepts that. you didn't realize existed before. and with my team we often create new. words i'm like well now we're going to. call this the regulatory plexus of a.

gene. and that gives us now the language to. sort of build on that as one concept. that you then build upon with all kinds. of other other things so there's this. co-evolution again of ideas and language. but they're not one-to-one uh with each. other now let's talk about language. itself. words. sentences. this is. a very. distant construct from where language. actually begun. so if you look at how we communicate.

as i'm speaking my eyes are shining. and my face is changing through all. kinds of emotions. and my entire body composition posture. is reshaped. and my intonation the pauses that i make. the softer and the louder and this and. that are. conveying so much more information. and. if you look at early human language. and if you look at how. you know the great apes communicate with. each other there's a lot of granting.

there's a lot of postering there's a lot. of emotions there's a lot of sort of. shrieking etc. they have. a lot of components of our. human language. just not the words. so. i think of human communication. as combining. the ape component but also of course the. you know gpt3 component so basically. there's the cognitive layer and the. reasoning layer that we share with.

different parts of our relatives there's. the ai relatives but there's also the. grunting relatives. and. what i love about humanity is that we. have both we're not just a. conversational system. we're a grunting emotionally charged you. know. weirdly intercon connected system that. also has the ability to reason. and. when when we communicate with each other. there's so much more than just language. there's so much more than just words.

it does seem like we're able to somehow. transfer. even more than the the body language it. seems that in the room with us is always. a giant knowledge base. of like. shared experiences different. perspectives on those experiences but. i don't know the knowledge of who the. last three four presidents in the united. states was and just all the you know 911. the tragedies in 911 all the all the. beautiful and uh terrible things that. happen in the world they're somehow both.

in our minds. and somehow enrich the ability to. transfer information. and what i love about it is i can i can. talk to you about 2001 audience of space. and mention a very specific scene and. that evokes. all these feelings that you had when you. first watched it we're both visualizing. that maybe in different ways exactly but. in that yeah and not only that but the. feeling. uh is brought back up just like you said. with the dreams. we both have that feeling arise in some.

form exactly as you bring up the exact. you know uh facing his own mortality. yeah it's fascinating that we're able to. do that but i don't know. now let's let's talk about neural link. for a second so what's the concept of. generally the concept of neural link is. that i'm going to take. whatever knowledge is encoded in my. brain. directly transfer it into your brain. so. this is a beautiful fascinating and. extremely sort of you know appealing. concept but i see a lot of challenges.

surrounding that. the first one is we have no idea how to. even begin to understand how knowledge. is encoded. in a person's brain. i mean i told you about this paper that. we had recently with liquitai and. asaf marco. that basically was looking at these. engrams that are formed with. combinations of neurons that co-fire. when a stimulus happens where we can go. into a mouse and select those neurons. that fire by marking them and then see. what happens when they first fire and. then select the neurons that fire again.

when the experience is repeated these. are the recall neurons and then there's. the the memory consolidation neurons so. we're starting to understand a little. bit of sort of the distributed nature of. knowledge and coding and experience in. coding in the human brain and in the. mouse brain. and. the concept that we'll understand that. sufficiently one day. to. be able to take a snapshot of. what does that seem. from.

dave losing his mind of how losing his. mind and talking to dave um. how is that seen encoded in your mind. imagine the complexity of that but now. imagine. suppose that we solve this problem. and. the next enormous challenge is how do i. go and modify the next person's brain to. now create the same exact neural. connections. so that's an enormous challenge right. there so basically it's not just reading. it's not writing.

and again what if something goes wrong i. don't want to even think about that. that's number two and number three. who says that the way that you encode. dave i'm losing my mind. and i encode dave i'm losing my mind. is anywhere near each other. basically maybe the way that i'm. encoding it. is twisted with my childhood memories of. running through you know the. pebbles in greece and yours is twisted. with your childhood memories growing up. in russia.

and. there's no way that i can take my. encoding and put it into your brain. because it'll a mess things up. and b be incompatible with your own. unique experiences so that's telepathic. communication from human to humor it's. fascinating you're you're reminding. us that uh there's there's uh two. biological systems on both ends of that. communication and the one the easier i. guess. may be half as difficult. a thing to do and the hope with neural.

link is that. we can communicate with an ai system so. yeah where one side of that is a little. bit yeah more controllable but. but even just that is is exceptionally. difficult let's talk about two two new. neuronal systems talking to each other. suppose that gpt4 tells gpd3 hey give me. all your knowledge. right it's ready that's hilarious i have. ten times more hardware i'm ready just. feed me what's gbt3 going to do is it. going to say oh here's my 10 billion. parameters.

no no way. the simplest way and perhaps the fastest. way for gpd3 to transfer all this. knowledge to its older body that has a. lot more hardware. is to. regenerate every single possible human. sentence that he can possibly yes create. keep talking. keep talking and just re-encode it all. together so maybe what language does is. exactly that it's taking one generative. cognitive model. it's running it forward to emit. utterances that kind of make sense in my.

cognitive frame and it's re-encoding. them into yours. through the parsing of that same. language and i think the conversation. might might actually be the most. efficient way to do it so not just. talking but uh interactive so talking. back and forth yeah asking questions. interrupting. so gpth4 will constantly be interrupted. is also that as we're interrupting each. other. there's all kinds of misinterpretations.

that happen. that you know as. basically when my students speak i will. often know that i'm misunderstanding. what they're saying. and i'll be like. hold that thought for a second let me. tell you what i think i understood which. i know is different what you said then. i'll say that and then someone else in. the same zoom meeting will basically say. well. you know here's another way to think. about what you just said and then by the. third iteration we're somewhere. completely different that.

if we could actually communicate with. full. you know neural network parameters back. and forth of that knowledge and idea and. coding. would be. far inferior because. the re-encoding with our own as we said. last time emotional baggage and. cognitive baggage from our unique. experiences. through. our shared. experiences distinct encodings. in the context of all our unique. experiences. is.

leading to so much more. diversity of perspectives and again. going back to this whole concept of this. entire network of all of human cognitive. systems connected to each other. and sort of how ideas and memes permeate. through that. that's sort of what really creates a. whole new level of human experience. through. this. reasoning layer and this computational.

layer that. obviously lives on top of our cognitive. layer. so you're one. of these. aforementioned cognitive systems. mortal. but uh. thoughtful and you're connected to a. bunch like you said students uh your. wife your kids. what do you. in your brief time here on earth this is. a meaning of life episode. so uh what do you hope.

this world will remember you as. what do you hope your legacy will be. i don't think of legacy. as much as. maybe most people things. legacy oh it's kind of funny i'm. consciously living the present yes many. students tell me you know oh give us. some career advice i'm like i'm the. wrong person i've never made a career. plan i still have to make one. i um. it's funny to be both experiencing the.

past and the present and the future. but also consciously living in the. present and. just you know there's a conscious. decision we can make to not worry about. all that. which again goes back to the i'm the. lucky one kind of thing. [Laughter]. of living in the present and being happy. winning and being happy losing and um. there's a certain freedom that comes. with that but again a certain.

um sort of. i don't know ephemerity. of. living for the present. but if you if you step back from all of. that where basically my. my. current modus operandis is live for the. present make you know every day. the best you can make and just. make the. local. blip of local maxima of the universe of. the awesomeness of the planet and the. town and the family that we live in.

both academic family and. you know biological family um. make it a little more awesome by being. generous to your friends being generous. to the people around you being you know. kind to your enemies and uh you know. just. showing level around you can't be upset. at people if you truly love them. if somebody yells at you and insults you. every time you say the slightest thing. and yet when you see them you just see. them with love.

it's a beautiful feeling it's like you. know i'm feeling. exactly like when i look at my. three-year-old who's like screaming. even though i love her and i want her. good she's still screaming and saying no. no no no no and i'm like i love you i. genuinely love you. but i can i can sort of kind of see that. your brain is kind of stuck. in that little you know mode of anger. and. you know there's plenty of people out. there who don't like me and i see them. with love.

as the child that is stuck in a. cognitive state. that they're eventually going to snap. out of or maybe not and that's okay. so there's that aspect of sort of. you know experiencing. you know life with the best intentions. and. you know i love when i'm wrong. i i had a friend who was like one of the. smartest people i've ever met who would. basically say oh i love it when i'm. wrong because it makes me feel human. [Laughter]. and it's so beautiful i mean she's.

really one of the smartest people i've. ever met and she was like oh it's such a. good feeling. and i love being wrong. but. there's. you know there's something about. self-improvement there's something about. sort of how do i. not make the most mistakes but attempt. the most rights. and do the fewest wrongs. but with the full knowledge that this. will happen that's one aspect. so so so through this life in the. present.

what's really funny is and that's. something that i've experienced more and. more. really thanks to you. and through this podcast. is this enormous number of people who. will basically comment wow i've been. following this guy for so many years now. or wow this guy has inspired so many of. us in computational biology and so forth. i'm like i don't know any of that. but i'm only discovering this now. through this sort of sharing. our emotional states and our cognitive. states with a wider.

audience. where suddenly. i'm sort of realizing that wow maybe. i've had a legacy. yes like basically i've trained. generations of students from mit. and i've put all of my courses freely. online since 2001. so basically all of my video recordings. of my lectures have been online since. 2001. so countless generations of people from. across the world. will meet me at a conference and say. like i was at this conference where.

somebody heard my voice it's like i know. this voice i've been listening to your. lectures yes and it's just such a. beautiful thing where. like we're sharing. widely and who knows. which students will get where. from whatever they catch out of these. lectures even if what they catch is just. inspiration and passion and drive. so. there's this intangible. you know legacy quote-unquote that every. one of us has through the people we. touch. one of my friends from undergrad.

basically told me oh my mom remembers. you vividly from when she came to campus. i'm like i didn't even meet her she's. like no but. she she sort of saw you interacting with. people and said wow he's exuding this. positive energy. and. there's there's that aspect of sort of. just motivating people with your. kindness with your passion with your. generosity. and with your you know just selflessness. uh of of you know just just just give. doesn't matter where it goes. i i've been to conferences where.

basically people you know i'll ask them. a question and then they'll come back or. like there was a company where i asked. somebody question they said oh in fact. this entire project was inspired by your. question three years ago at the same. conference yes i'm like wow. and then on top of that there's also the. ripple effects of the years speaking to. the direct influence of inspiration or. education but there's also like. the follow-on things that happened to. that and there's this ripple that. through from you just this one. individual and from every one of us from. everyone that's what i love about. humanity the fact that.

every one of us. shares genes. and genetic variants with very recent. ancestors with everyone else. so even if i die tomorrow. my genes are still shared through my. cousins and through my uncles and. through my you know. immediate family and of course i'm lucky. enough to have my own children but even. if you don't your genes are still. permeating through all of the layers of. your family so your genes will have the. legacy there yeah or every one of us.

yeah number two our ideas are constantly. intermingling with each other so there's. no person living in the planet. 100 years from now who will not be. directly impacted by everyone on the. planet living here today yeah through. genetic inheritance and through meme. inheritance that's cool to think that. your ideas manolas callus would touch. would. uh touch every single person on this. planet it's interesting but not just. mine joe smith who's looking at this.

right now his ideas will also touch. everybody. so there's this interconnectedness of. humanity. and and then i'm also a professor so my. day job is legacy my day job is training. not just. the thousands of people who watch my. videos on the web but the people who are. actually in my class who basically come. to mit to learn. from. a bunch of us like the cognitive systems. that were shipped to this particular. location and who will then disperse back.

into all of their home countries yeah. that's that's what makes america the. beacon of the world. we don't just export. you know goods we export people. cognitive systems we we export. people who are born here and we also. export training. that people born elsewhere will come. here to get and will then disseminate. not just whatever knowledge they got but. whatever ideals they learned. and i think that's something that's a. legacy of the us that you cannot stop.

with political isolation you cannot stop. with economic isolation that's something. that will continue to happen through all. the people we've touched through our. universities so there's the students who. took my classes who are basically now. going off and teaching their classes and. i've trained generations of. computational biologists no one in. genomics who's gone through mit hasn't. taken my class so basically there's this. impact through. i mean there's so many people in biotech. who are like hey i took your class. that's what got me into the field like. 15 years ago it's just so beautiful yes.

and then there's the. academic family that i have so the. students who are actually studying with. me who are my trainees so this sort of. mentorship of ancient greece these. so i basically have an academic family. and. we are a family there's this. such strong connection this bond of. you're part of the kelly's family so i. have a biological family at home and i.

have an academic family on campus and. that academic family has given me great. grandchildren already yes. so i've trained people who are now. professors at stanford tmu harvard you. know what you i mean everywhere in the. uh. on the world. and these people have now trained people. who are now. having their own faculty jobs. so there's basically people who see me. as their academic grandfather. and it's just so beautiful because you. don't have to wait for the 18 years of.

cognitive you know hardware development. to to sort of. have amazing conversation with people. these are fully grown humans fully grown. adult who are you know. cognitively super ready. and who are shaped by and you know i see. some of these beautiful papers i'm like. i can see the touch of our lab in those. favors it's just so beautiful because. you're like i've spent hours with these. people teaching them not just how to do. a paper but how to think. and this whole concept of.

you know the first paper that we write. together. is an experience with every one of these. students. so you know i always tell them to write. the whole first draft and they know that. i will rewrite every word. but but the act of them writing it and. what i do is these like joint editing. sessions where i'm like let's co-edit. and with this co-editing we basically. have um creative destruction. so i share my zoom screen and i'm just. thinking out loud as i'm doing this and. they're learning from that process as.

opposed to like come back two days later. and they see a bunch of red on a page. i'm sort of well that's not how you. write this that's not how you think. about this that's not you know what's. the point like this morning i was having. a i yes this morning between six and. eight a.m i had a two-hour meeting. going through one of these papers and. then saying what's the point here why. why do you even show that it's just a. bunch of points on a graph no what you. have to do is extract the meaning do the. homework for them. and there's this.

nurturing this mentorship. that sort of creates now a legacy which. is. infinite because they've now gone off on. the you know and all of that is just. humanity. then of course it's the papers i write. because yes my day job is training. students but it's a research university. the way that they learn is through the. men's and manus. mind and hand. it's the practical training of actually. doing research. and that research.

is a beneficial side effect. of having these awesome papers. that will now. tell other people how to think. there's this paper we just posted. recently on med archive and one of the. most generous and eloquent comments. about it was like wow this is a master. class. in scientific writing. in analysis in biological interpretation. and so so forth it's just so fulfilling. from a person i've never met or first. say the title of the paper branch.

i don't remember the title but it's. single cell dissection of schizophrenia. reveals. and so the two the two points that we. found was this whole transcriptional. resilience like there's some individuals. who are schizophrenic. but whose. they have an additional cell type or. initial cell state which we believe is. protective. and that cell state when they have it. will cause other cells to have normal. gene expression patterns it's beautiful. yeah and then that's that cell is.

connected with some of the pv. interneurons that are basically sending. these inhibitory brain waves through the. brain. and there basically there's a there's. another component of. there's a set of master regulators that. we discovered. who are controlling many of the genes. that are differentially expressed and. these master regulators are themselves. genetic targets of schizophrenia. and they are themselves involved in both. synaptic connectivity.

and also in early brain development. so there's this sort of. interconnectedness between synaptic. development axes and also this. transcription resilience so i mean we. basically made up a title that combines. all these concepts. you have all these concepts all these. people working together and ultimately. these minds condense it down into a. beautifully exactly little document that. lives on and that document now has its. own life yeah our work has a hundred and. a hundred and twenty thousand. citations i mean that's not just people.

who read it these are people who used it. to write something based on it yeah i. mean that to me is. is just so fulfilling to basically say. wow i've touched people. so. i i don't think of my legacy as i live. every day i just think of the beauty of. the present. and the power of interconnectedness and. just i feel like a kid in a candy shop. where i'm just like constantly you know. where do i what what package do i open.

first. and um you know the lucky one. a jack of all trades a master of none. i think uh for a meaning of life episode. we would be amiss if we did not have at. least a poem or two do you mind if we. uh end in a couple of poems. maybe a happy maybe a sad one i would. love i would love that so thank you for. the luxury. the first one is kind of um. i remember uh.

when you were talking with eric. weinstein about um. this comment of leonard cohen yes that. says but you don't really care for music. do ya yeah in hallelujah that's. basically kind of like mocking its. reader yeah so one of my poems is a. little like that. so. i had just broken up with. you know my girlfriend and there's this. other friend who was coming to visit me. and she said. i will not come unless you write me a. poem. [Laughter].

and uh. i was like. writing a form on demand. so this this poem is called write me a. poem. it goes write me a poem she said with a. smile make sure it's pretty romantic and. rhymes make sure it's worthy of that. bold flame that love uniting us beyond a. mere game. and she took off without more words. rushed for the bus and travelled the. world. a poem i thought this is sublime what.

better way for passing the time. what better way to count up the hours. before she comes back to my lonely tower. waiting for joy to fill up my heart. let's write a poem for when we're apart. how does a poem start i inquired give me. a topic hook up a style throw in some. cute words oh here and there throw in. some passion love and despair. love. three eggs one pound of flour three cups. of water and bake for an hour. love is no recipe as i understand you.

can't just cook up a poem on demand. and as i was twisting all this in my. mind i looked at the page by golly it. rhymed. three roses white chocolate vanilla. powder some beautiful rhymes and maybe a. flower. no be romantic the young girl insisted. do this do that don't be so silly you. must believe it straight from your heart. if you don't feel it we're better apart. oh my sweet thing what can i say you. bring me the sun all night and all day.

you're the stars and the moon and the. birds way up high you're my evening. sweet song my morning blue sky. you are my muse your spell has me caught. you bring me my voice and scatter my. thoughts. to put love in writing in vain i can try. but when i'm with you my wings want to. fly. so i put down the pen and drop my. defenses. give myself to you and fill up my senses.

the baffle king composing. that was beautiful. what i love about it is that i did not. bring up a dictionary of rhymes i did. not sort of. work hard so basically when i write. poems i just type i never go back i just. so when my brain gets into that mode. it actually happens like i wrote it oh. wow so the rhymes just kind of becomes. it's an emergent phenomenon phenomenon i. just get into that mode. and then it comes out that's a beautiful.

one and it's it's basically um. you know. as you as you got it it's basically. saying it's no recipe and then i'm. starting throwing the recipes and as i'm. writing it i'm like you know so it's. it's very introspective in this whole uh. concert. so anyway. there's another one many years earlier. that um. is. you know darker it's basically this. whole concept of let's be friends i was. like ugh. no let's be friends just like you know.

so the last words are shout out i love. you or send me to hell. so uh the the title is burn me tonight. lie to me baby. lie to me now. tell me you love me break me a vow give. me a sweet word i promise a kiss. give me the world a sweet taste to miss. don't let me lay here inert ugly cold. with nothing sweet felt and nothing. harsh told. give me some hope false foolish yet kind.

make me regret i'll leave you behind. don't pity my soul or torture it right. treat it with hatred start up a fight. for it's from mildness that my soul dies. when you cover your passion in a bland. friend's disguise. kiss me now baby show me your passion. turn off the light and rip off your. fashion. give me my life's joy this one night. burn all my matches for one blazing. light.

don't think of tomorrow and let today. fade don't try and protect me from. love's cutting blade. your razor will always rip off my veins. don't spare me the passion to spare me. the pains. kiss me now honey or spit in my face. throw me an insult i'll gladly embrace. tell me now clearly that you never cared. say it now loudly like you never dared. i'm ready to hear it i'm ready to die. i'm ready to burn and start a new life. i'm ready to face the rough burning.

truth. rather than waste the rest of my youth. so tell me my lover should i stay or go. the answer to love is one yes or no. there's no i like you no let's be. friends. shout out i love you or send me to hell. i don't think there's a better way to. end. a discussion of the meaning of life. whatever the heck the meaning is uh go. all in as that poem. says manolas thank you so much for. talking today thanks i look forward to.

next time. thanks for listening to this. conversation with manolas kellis and. thank you to our sponsors grammarly. which is a service for checking spelling. grammar sentence structure and. readability. athletic greens the all-in-one drink. that i start every day with to cover all. my nutritional bases. cash app the app i use to send money to. friends. please check out the sponsors in the. description to get a discount and to. support this podcast if you enjoy this. thing subscribe on youtube review it.

with five stars and have a podcast. follow on spotify support on patreon or. connect with me on twitter at lex. friedman and now let me leave you with. some words from douglas adams in his. book hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. on the planet earth man had always. assumed that he was more intelligent. than dolphins because he had achieved so. much. the wheel new york. wars and so on. whilst all the dolphins had ever done.

was muck about in the water having a. good time. but conversely the dolphins had always. believed that they were far more. intelligent than man. for precisely the same reasons. thank you for listening and hope to see. you next time.