back to indexManolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness | Lex Fridman Podcast #123
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The following is a conversation with Manolis Kellis, his second time on the podcast.
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He's a professor at MIT and head of the MIT Computational Biology Group.
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He's one of the most brilliant, productive, and kind people I've had the fortune of talking to.
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A lot of my colleagues at MIT and former MIT faculty and students
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wrote to me after our first conversation with some version of,
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Manolis is awesome, isn't he? I'm glad you guys are now friends. I am too. And I'm happy that
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he makes time in his insanely busy schedule to sit down and have a chat with me.
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Quick summary of the sponsors, Public Goods, Magic Spoon, and ExpressVPN.
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Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that I just got back from talking to Joe Rogan on his podcast,
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my fifth time on there. I also got a chance to record a separate conversation with Joe
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on this podcast. We talked on both quite a bit about his journey and his advice for mine.
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One of the things that I think made his show special is that he just had fun and made choices
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that didn't get in the way of him having fun and loving life. I'm learning to do just that.
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It's tough since I'm naturally full of self doubt and anxiety,
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but I'm learning to let go and have fun, even if my monotone robotic voice sometimes sounds otherwise.
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For Joe, that involved talking to his friends, comedians, especially ones that brought out the
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best in him. Duncan Trussell and the five hour first episode on Spotify comes to mind as an
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example of that. Duncan has been a guest probably close to if not more than 50 times on Joe's
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podcast. My hope with amazing people like Manolis is to find my Duncan Trussell, my Joey Diaz,
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and yes, even my Eddie Bravo. Obviously Joe and I are very different people but ultimately both
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love life when we can interact often with people we love and who inspire us, make us smile,
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make us think, and make us have fun when we get behind the mic of a podcast,
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whether anyone is listening or not. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
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review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect
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like to, but if you like to join an inner circle of people that help guide the direction of this
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As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I try to make these
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interesting, but I give you timestamps so you can skip, but still please do check out the sponsors
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by clicking the links in the description. It's the best way honestly to support this podcast.
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This show is sponsored by Public Goods, an online store for basic health and household stuff.
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Their products have a minimalist black and white design that I find to be just clean,
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elegant, and beautiful. It goes nicely, at least I think so, with the design of Crew Dragon and
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the recent SpaceX NASA mission that sent two humans into space. To me, very few things are
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as inspiring as us humans reaching out into the unknown, the harsh challenges of space.
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Colonizing Mars may not have obvious near term benefits, but I believe it will challenge our
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scientists and our engineers to create technologies whose impact will be immeasurable for us humans
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big fan of this planet. Anyway, visit publicgoods.com slash Lex and use code Lex at checkout to get 15
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Also, they're a sponsor of episode 100 with my dad, and got my dad to buy this cereal and he now
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conversation and the silliness of the cereal captures my dad perfectly. Much of the hardship
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because they chose to sponsor the episode he's on. Anyway, click the magicspoon.com slash Lex
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link in the description and use code Lex at checkout for free shipping to let them know
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I sent you and also indirectly to make my dad happy. This show is also sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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Get it at expressvpn.com slash Lex pod. They gave me a suggested opening line of using the internet
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if I ever do shady things on the internet, which of course I never do and never will.
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So secure your online activity by going to expressvpn.com slash Lex pod to get an extra
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three months free and to support this podcast. And now here's my conversation with Manolis Kallis.
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What is beautiful about the human epigenome? Don't get me started. So first of all,
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as an engineering feat, the human epigenome manages the most compact, the most incredible
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compaction you could imagine. So every single one of your cells contains two meters worth of DNA.
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And this is compacted in a radius, which is one thousandth of a millimeter. That's six orders of
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magnitude. To give you a sense of scale, it's as if a string as tall as the Burj Al Khalifa,
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which is about a kilometer tall, was compacted into a tiny little ball the size of a millimeter.
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And if you put it all together, if you stretch the trillions of cells that we have, we have about
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30 trillion cells in your body. If you stretch the DNA, the two meters worth of DNA in every one of
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your trillion cells, you would basically reach all the way to Jupiter a hundred times.
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A hundred times. Yeah, it's all curled up in there. It's 30 trillion cells.
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30 trillion cells, every one of them two meters worth of DNA. So all of that is compacted through
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the epigenome. The epigenome basically has the ability to compact this massive amount of DNA
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from here to Jupiter 10 times into one human body, into just the nuclei of one human body,
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and the vast majority of the human body is not even these nuclei.
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And that's sort of the structural part. So that's the boring part. That's the structural part.
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The functional part is way more interesting. So functionally, what the human epigenome allows
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you to do is basically control the activity patterns of thousands of genes. So 20,000 genes
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in your human body, every one of your cells only needs a few thousand of those, but a different
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few thousand of those. And the way that your cells remember what their identity is, is basically
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driven by the epigenome. So the epigenome is both structural in sort of making this dramatic
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compaction, and it's also functional in being able to actually control the activity patterns
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of all your cells. Now, can we draw a definition distinction between the genome and the epigenome?
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Again, being Greek, epi means on top of. So the genome is the DNA, and the epigenome is anything
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on top of the DNA. And there's three types of things on top of the DNA. The first is chemical
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modifications on the DNA itself. So we like to think of four bases of the DNA, A, C, G, T. C
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has a methyl form, which is sometimes referred to as the fifth base. So methyl C takes a different
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meaning. So in the same way that you have annotations in a orchestra score that basically
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say whether you should play something softly or loudly or space it out or interpret basically
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the score, the human epigenome allows you to modify that primary score. So a modified C
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basically says, play this one softly. It's basically a sign of repression in a gene
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regulatory region. I love how you're talking about the function that emerges from the epigenome as a
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musical score. It is in many ways. And every single cell plays a different part of that score.
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It's like having all of human knowledge in 23 volumes, like 23 giant books, which are your
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chromosomes. And every single cell has a different profession, a different role. Some cells play the
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piano and they're looking at chapter seven from chromosome 23 and chapter four from chromosome
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two and so on and so forth. And each of those pieces are all encoded in the same DNA. But
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what the epigenome allows you to do is effectively conduct the orchestra and sort of coordinate the
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pieces so that every instrument plays only the things that it needs to play. One thing that kind
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of blows my mind, maybe you can tell me your thoughts about it, is the way evolution works
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with natural selection is based on the final sort of the entirety of the orchestra musical
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performance, right? But there's these incredibly rich structural things, like each one of them
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doing their own little job that somehow work together. The evolution selects based on the
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final result and yet all the individual pieces are doing like infinitely minuscule specific things.
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How the heck does that work? It's a very good insight. And you can even go beyond that and
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basically say evolution doesn't select at the level of an organism. It actually selects at
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the level of whole environments, whole ecosystems. So let me break this down. So you basically have
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at the very bottom every single nucleotide being selected. But then that nucleotide function is
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selected at the level of each gene and every, not even each gene, each gene regulatory control
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element. And then those control elements are basically converging onto the function of the gene
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and many genes are converging onto the function of one cell and many cells are converging into
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the function of one tissue or organ. And all of these organs are converging onto the level of
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an organism. But now that organism is not in isolation. So if you basically think about why
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is altruism, for example, a thing, why are people being nice to each other? It was probably selected
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and it was probably selected because those species that were just nasty to each other didn't survive
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as a species. And now if you think about symbiosis of, you know, there's plants, for example, that
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love CO2 and there's humans that love O2 and we're sort of, you know, trading different types of gases
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to each other. If you look at ecosystems where one organism was just really nasty, that organism
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actually died because everyone they were being nasty to was killed off. And then that kind of,
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you know, universe of life is gone. So basically what emerges is selection at so many different
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layers of benefit, including, you know, all of these nucleotides within a body interacting for
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the emergent functions at the body level. Yeah. I wonder if it's possible to break it down into
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levels that's selection even beyond humans. Like you said, environment, but there's environments
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at all different levels too, right? At the minuscule, at the organ level, at the tissue level,
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like you said, maybe at the microscopic level. It would be fascinating if like there's a kind of
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selection going on, like both the quantum level and like the, the galaxy level. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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So, so yeah, let's again, sort of break down these different layers. So basically if you think about
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the environment in which a gene operates, that gene, of course, the first definition of environment
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that we think of is pollution or sunlight or heat or cold and so on and so forth. That's the external
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environment. But every gene also operates at the level of the internal cellular environment that
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it's in. If I take a gene from say an African individual and I put it in a European context,
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will it perform the same way? Probably not because there's a cellular context of thousands of other
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genes that that gene has co evolved with, you know, in the out of Africa event and, you know,
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all of this sort of human history of evolution. So basically if you look at Neanderthal genes,
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for example, which again happened long after that out of Africa event, there's incompatibilities
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between Neanderthal genes and modern human genes that can lead to diseases. So in the context of
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the Neanderthal genome, that gene version, that allele was fine, but in the context of the modern
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human genome, that Neanderthal gene version is actually detrimental. So it's, it's, you know,
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that cellular environment constitutes the genetics of that gene, but also of course,
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all of the epigenomics of that gene. It's fascinating that the gene has a history.
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I mean, we talked about this a little bit last time, but just, and then some of your research
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goes into that, but the genes as they are today have, have a story from the beginning of time.
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And then some, sometimes their story was like their path was useful for survival for the
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particular organisms and sometimes not. That's fascinating. Let me ask as a tangent. We kind
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of started talking offline about Neanderthals. Do you have something interesting genetically,
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biologically in terms of difference between Neanderthal and like the different branches
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of human evolution that you find fascinating? Neanderthals are only one of about five branches
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that we are pretty confident about. Branches of? Of out of Africa events. So basically there's
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Neanderthals, there's Denisovans. What is the evidence for Denisovans? One tiny little fragment
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of one pinky from one cave in Siberia. Recent, relatively recently discovered, right? Less than
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10 years ago. Yeah. And those are like little folks, right? No, no, no, no, no. That's yet
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another one though. Homo florensis. It had the little folks instead of Indonesia. But then the
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Denisovans are basically another branch that we only know about genetically from that one bone.
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And eventually we realized that it's one of the three major branches along with Neanderthal,
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modern human and Denisovan. And then that one branch has now resurfaced in many different areas.
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And we kind of know about the gene flow that happened in between them. So when I was reading
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my Greek mythology, it was talking about the age of the heroes, these eras of human like,
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you know, precursors that were wiped out by Zeus or by all kinds of wars and so on and so forth,
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like the Titans and the, you know, it's ridiculous to sort of read these stories as a kid because
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you're like, oh yeah, whatever. And then you're growing up and you're like, whoa, layers and
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layers of human like ancestors. And who knows if those stories were inspired by bones that they
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found that kind of looked human like, but were not quite human like. Who knows if stories of dragons
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were inspired by bones of dinosaurs. And basically this archeological evidence has been there and has
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probably entered the folk imagination, migrated into those stories, but it's not that far removed
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from what actually happened of massive wars of wiping out Neanderthals as humans are, modern
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humans are populating, you know, Europe. Do you think, do you think what killed the Neanderthals
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and all those other branches is human conflict or is it genetic conflict? So is it us humans being
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the opposite of altruistic towards each other? Or is it some other competition at some other level,
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like as we're discussing? Yeah. So if you look at a lot of human traits today, they're probably not
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that far removed from the human traits that got us where we are now. So, you know, this whole
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tribalism, you know, you're my sports team or you're my, you know, political party or you're my,
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you know, tiny little village. And therefore, you know, if you're from that other village,
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I hate you. But as soon as we're both in the major city, I can't believe we're from the same region,
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my friend, my family and like two neighboring countries fighting. And as soon as they're off
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in another country, you're like, oh, I can't believe that. So it's, it's kind of funny,
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like this tribalism is nonsensical in many ways. It's like cognitive incongruent that basically
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we like kin and selection for, for sort of liking kin is hugely advantageous genetically.
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Probably across all kinds of organisms, across all kinds of life. Yeah. So, so basically if you
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now transport that to the sort of humans arriving in Europe and Neanderthals are everywhere,
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what are you going to do? You're going to kill them off. You know, there's this battle for territory
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and this battle for, they're not like us. We have to get rid of them. So basically there's a, you
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know, very interesting mix there, but, and yet, and yet when you look at the genetics, there's
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tons of gene flow between them. So basically, you know, love romance between, you know, tribes,
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but love spans the gap between the different tribes. It's Romeo and Juliet across species
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boundaries. Sneaks away from the village. Even before the out of Africa, there's, you know,
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within Africa selection, which was probably massive battles of larger and larger tribes
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selecting for our social networking and savviness and, you know, probably all our conspiracy theory
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genes are, you know, dating back from then. And, you know, so there's a lot of this mischievousness
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in the history of human evolution that unfortunately is still present in, you know, many ugly forms
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today, but probably contributed to our success as a species in wiping out other species.
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It just sucks that we don't have neighboring species that are, you know, intelligent like us
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that, but yet very different than us. So we have like, you know, dogs or wolves, I guess,
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co evolved. They, they figured out how to neighbor up with humans in a friendly way and collaborate
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and develop in time. You're describing this as if the wolves made a choice.
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It's possible that the wolves never had a say, that basically humans were just so overpowering
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that they had captive wolves. And then at every generation killed off eight of the nine pups and
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only kept the one that was milder. And it only takes a few generations to then sort of have pups
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that are really mild. And so the Neanderthals weren't useful in the same way that wolves were.
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I don't know if it's a question of useful. They were probably super useful. My thinking is that
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they were scary, that basically something that almost resembles you is something that you try
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to eliminate first. It's too close. Yeah. And speaking of, you know, species that are intelligent
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and sort of what's left of evolution, it is a shame, exactly like you say, that so many different,
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amazing life forms were extinct and the kind of boring ones remained. So if you look at the
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dinosaurs, I mean, the diversity that they had, if you look at sub, you know, like there's just so
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many different lineages of life that were just abruptly killed. And yet out of that death emerged,
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you know, many new kinds of really awesome lineages. Do you think there was in the history of
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life on earth species that may be still alive today that are more intelligent than humans?
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And we just don't know. So there's a case to be made for dolphins. Like if you look at their brains,
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if you look at the way that they play, if you look at the way that they learn, you know, I mean,
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they don't have opposable thumbs and we do. So, you know, that probably made a big difference.
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It's terrifying to think that like, not terrifying, I don't know how to feel about it,
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that they're more intelligent than us. It's like the hitchhiker's guide.
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I know. But how do you define intelligence? Basically, like I was saying last time,
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you know, stupid is a stupid does and smart is a smart does. So if the dolphins are basically
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super smart, figured out the meaning of life and just go around playing with water all day,
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which is probably the meaning of life, then we wouldn't know because all they're doing is kicking
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water just like sharks are and sharks are probably pretty stupid. So basically it's very difficult to
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sort of judge a species intelligence unless they kind of go out of their way to demonstrate it.
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Yeah, and that's instructive for our understanding of any kind of life form.
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You know, I recently talked to Sara Seager looking for life out there on other planets.
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It'd be fascinating to think if we discover a habitable planet outside of Earth in one day,
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maybe many centuries away, or be able to travel with like a robot there, how would we actually
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know that this species would probably be able to detect that it's a living being? But how would we
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know if it's an intelligent being? I mean, it's both exciting and terrifying to sort of come face
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to face with a life form that's of another world. Like something that clearly is moving in a,
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how would you say, like a deliberate way, and to then like ask, well, how do I ask that thing,
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whether it's intelligent?
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No, but the question that you're asking is applicable to every species on the Earth now.
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On Earth now, yeah.
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Yeah. So basically, you know, dolphins are a great example. We know that they're,
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you know, clearly capable hardware wise and behavior wise of intelligence.
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You know, how do we communicate? So basically, if your question is about crossing species
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boundaries of communication, the way that I want to put it is that humans have achieved
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a level of sophistication in our behaviors, in our communication, in our language, in our ways
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of expressing ourselves, that I have no doubt that if we encountered a human like form of
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intelligence, we'd figure out their language in a few weeks. Like, it'd be just fine. As long as,
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you know, of course, they're both trusting each other, not annihilating each other, and not sort
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of fearing each other and attacking each other.
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What about, let me ask, just out of curiosity into science fiction land a little bit.
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So clearly, you're one of the top scientists in the world. So if we were to discover,
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an alien life form, you would be brought in to study its genetics. Do you think the epigenome
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that we talked about, the genome, the code, the digital code that underlies that alien life form
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would be similar to ours? Like the, in fundamental ways, maybe not exactly, but in fundamental ways,
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of how it's structured?
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Yeah. So you're getting to the very definition of what we're talking about.
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Of how it's structured. Yeah. So you're getting to the very definition of life. You're getting to
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the very definition of what makes life, life, and how do we decode that life? And it's so easy to
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think that every life form would basically have to, you know, like oxygen, have to like heat from
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the sun and rely on sort of being in the habitable zone of, you know, its solar system and so on and
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so forth. But I think we have to sort of go beyond this sort of, oh, life on another planet must be
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exactly like life is on earth. Because of course, life on earth happens to rely on the proximity to
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the sun and benefit from that amount of energy. But we're talking at timescales of human life,
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where we kind of live, I don't know, between, and I'm going to be super wide here. We're going to
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live between six earth months and, you know, 200 earth months or 200 earth years. So basically,
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if you look at the timescale that we inhabit on earth, it is very much dictated by the amount of
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energy that we receive from the sun. If you look at, I don't know, Europa, you know, the smallest,
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the fourth smallest moon of Jupiter, the smallest of the Galilean moons, and also the smallest
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in its distance from Jupiter. It has an iron core, it has a rock exterior, it has ice all around it,
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and it has probably massive liquid oceans underneath. And the gravitational pull of
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Jupiter is probably creating all kinds of movement under that ice. How did life evolve on earth?
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Yes, sure. Life now, most of life that we above the surface look at, has to do with exploiting
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the solar energy for, you know, our daily behavior. But that's not the case everywhere
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on the planet. If you look at the bottom of the ocean, there are hydrothermal vents.
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There's both black smokers and white smokers, and they are near these volcanic, you know, ducts
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that basically emanate a massive amount of energy from the core of our planet. What does life need?
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It needs energy. Does it need energy from the sun? It couldn't care less. Does it need energy from,
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you know, the earth itself? Yeah, possibly. It could use that. And if you look at how did life
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evolve on, you know, on earth, there are many theories. I mean, a kind of silly theory is that
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it came from outer space, that basically there's a meteorite out there that sort of landed on earth
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and brought with it DNA material. I think it's a little silly because it kind of pushes the buck
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down the road. Basically the next question is how did it evolve over there? Whereas our planet has
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basically all of the right ingredients, why wouldn't evolve here? So basically let's kind
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of ignore that one. And now the two other competing hypotheses are from the outside in
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or from the inside out. What's that mean? From the outside in means from the surface to the
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bottom of the ocean. From the inside out means from the bottom of the ocean to the surface.
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So life on the surface is pretty brutal.
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Life obviously evolved in the water and then there was an out of water event.
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But basically before it exited, it was clearly in the water, which is a much nicer and shielded
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environment. So just to be clear, on the surface, are you referring to the surface of the sea or
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the bottom of the sea? Versus the bottom of the sea. And you're saying life on the surface is
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harsh. Life outside the water is horrible. It takes huge amounts of evolutionary innovations
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to sustain living outside the water. That's so interesting. Why is that? So it's easier to,
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life is easier in the water. Maybe, see, I'm telling dolphins are onto something.
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We are 70% water. No, dolphins went back into the water.
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Really? Oh, because dolphins are mammals.
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Interesting. Well, again, they might be smarter. They went back. They're like, screw this.
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So if you basically think about the fact that we are 70% water,
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we're basically transporting the sea with us outside the sea. If we don't have water for about
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24 hours, we're dry. And if you look at life under the sea, I mean, I don't know if you're a diver,
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but when you go diving, your brain explodes. Again, when I say the boring life forms is what
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we see all the time, like tetrapods. I mean, what a stupid boring body plan. Seriously. Just go dive
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and you'll see that a tiny little minority of the stuff under the sea, under the surface of the sea
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is actually tetrapods. It's like snails with all kinds of crazy appendages and colors and round
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things and five way symmetric things and eight way symmetric things, all kinds of crazy body plans.
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And only the tetrapod fish managed to get out. And then they gave rise to all the boring plans we
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kind of see today of basically, you know, humans with four limbs, birds with four limbs, lizards
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with four limbs, and you know, right? It's kind of boring. If you look at, by comparison, life
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underwater is teeming with diversity. So now let's roll back the clock and basically say,
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where did life in the ocean come from, from the surface or from the bottom?
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Exactly. Those two options that you were mentioning.
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Yeah, exactly. So basically life on the surface is one option. And then the idea there is that
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there's tides with the moon and the sun sort of causing all this movement. And this movement is
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basically causing nutrients to sort of, you know, coalesce and, you know, bounce around,
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et cetera. That's one option. The second option, massive amount of energy from the core of our
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the core of our planet basically exploited, leading to these basic ingredients of life forms.
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And what are these basic ingredients? Metabolism, being able to take energy from the environment
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and put it as part of yourself. Metabolism, it basically means transformation. Again, in the
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Greek, it basically means taking stuff from, you know, like nutrients or energy source or anything,
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and then making it your own. The second one is compartmentalization. If there's no notion of self,
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there can't be evolution. You have to know where your own boundaries end and where the non self
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boundaries begin. And that's basically the lipid bilayer nowadays, which is extremely simple to
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form. It's basically just a bunch of lipids and then they eventually just self organize into a
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membrane. So that's a very natural way of forming a self. And then the third component is replication.
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Replication doesn't need to be self replication. It could be A helps make more of B, B helps make
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more of C and C helps make more of A. Any kind of self reinforcement is what you need to ignite
link |
the process of evolution. After you've ignited that process, you know, I don't want to say all
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hell breaks loose, but all paradise breaks loose. So basically you then boom, you know, have life
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going. And the moment you have A, B, C, some kind of thing looping back onto A, you can make
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modifications and you can improve. And then you let natural selection work. Is there some element
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of that that's like some state representation that stores information? Like maybe I should say
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information. Absolutely. We like to think of life as the information propagation, which is DNA,
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the messenger, which is RNA, and then the action, which is protein. So basically DNA,
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we think is an essential part of life. That's where the storage is. And therefore that early
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life forms must have had some kind of storage medium DNA. If you look at how life actually
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evolved, DNA was invented much later. Proteins were invented later. And RNA was fine by itself,
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thank you very much, in an RNA world. So the early version of life as we know it today was in fact
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RNA molecules performing all of the functions. The RNA molecule itself was the protein actuator
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here by creating three dimensional folds through self hybridization. Self what? Self hybridization.
link |
So basically the same way that DNA molecules can hybridize with themselves and basically
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form this double helix. The single stranded RNA molecule can form partial double helices
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in various places, creating structure as if you had a long string with complimentary parts,
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and you could then sort of design kind of like origami like structures that will fold onto
link |
themselves. And then you can make any shape from that. That early RNA world eventually got to
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replication, where enzymes encoded in RNA would replicate RNA itself. And then that process
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basically kicked off evolution. And that process of evolution then led to major innovations.
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The first innovation was translation. So you start with an RNA molecule and you translate it
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into another kind of form. And that's the first kind of encoding. You're like, well,
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do you need some kind of code? Yeah, but the code was in fact one thing. It was conflated
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with the actuators. The actuators were separated from the code only later on. So you first had
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the self replicating code, which was also the actuator. And then you kind of have a functionalization,
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partitioning of the functionalization, a sub functionalization of the proteins that are now
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going to be the workhorse of life, but they're not self replicating. The code remains the RNA.
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So the most beautiful and most complex RNA machine known to man is the ribosome.
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The ribosome is this massive factory that is able to translate RNA into protein.
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The ribosome, I mean, if you want, I don't know, divine intervention in the history of life,
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the ribosome is it. That's one of the great invention in the history of life.
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It's yeah. But again, you can't think of great inventions as one time steps. They're basically,
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you know, the culmination of probably many competing software infrastructures for life
link |
preservation that won out. And then when the ribosome was so efficient at making proteins,
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all the other ones basically died out. And then the life forms that were using the modern ribosome
link |
were basically the more successful ones because it could make proteins. And now those proteins
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are much more versatile because RNA only has four bases. Proteins eventually have 20 amino acids,
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not initially, but eventually. And then they can form in much more complex shapes and they can
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create all kinds of additional machines. One of which is reverse transcriptase. So you basically
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now have RNA. Again, we like to think of transcription as the normal, reverse transcription
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as the oddball. Well, RNA preceded DNA. So reverse transcription actually was the first invention
link |
before transcription itself. So basically RNA invents proteins, RNA and proteins together
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invent DNA. So you now have a more stable medium and more stable backbone with two helices instead
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of one, two strands instead of one, the double helix. And RNA basically says, listen, I'm tired.
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I'm going to delegate all information storage to DNA and I'm going to delegate most actuation
link |
to proteins. But that's to you is not like a, that's just an efficiency thing. It's not a
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fundamentally new innovation. That's why when you're asking is a separate information storage
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medium a definition of life? I'm like, no, any kind of self preservation, self reinforcement.
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And it didn't need to be RNA based initially. It didn't need to be self replication initially.
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You just need to have enough RNA molecules randomly arising that reinforce each other
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that ultimately lead to the, you know, the closing of that loop and the ignition of the evolutionary
link |
process. Can we just rewind a little bit? Like if you were to bet all your money on the two options
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in terms of where life started at the bottom of the ocean. I don't know if this is answerable, but
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how hard is the first step or if there's something interesting you can say about that first leap
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about from not life to life. Yeah. I think it's inevitable on earth or just in the universe.
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I think it's inevitable. If you look at Europa, you know, going back the moon of Jupiter. It's
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also a really nice song by Santana. Europa basically has all the ingredients. It has,
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you know, the core that can emit energy. It has the shielding through the ice sheet,
link |
protecting it just like an atmosphere would. It even has a layer of oxygen,
link |
probably sufficiently dense to sustain life. So my guess is that there's probably
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independently a reason life form already teeming in Europa because as soon as it today.
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Is that exciting or terrifying to you?
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It's, I mean, as a scientist, I can't wait to see non DNA based life forms. I can't wait
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because we are so born in, you know, sort of, as I would say in French, but basically we're sort of,
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you know, we are so narrow minded in our thinking of what life should look like that I can't wait
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for all that to just be blown away by the discovery of life elsewhere.
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Let me bring you into another science fiction scenario. So on that point, if we discovered
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life on Europa and you were brought in, you seem very excited, but how would you start looking at
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that life in a way that's useful to you as a scientist, but also not going to kill all of us?
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So like to me, it's a little bit scary because not, not because it's a malevolent life. Like
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it's a dictator petting like a cat, it's evil, but just the way life is, it seems to be very good at
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conquering other life. So there's a lot of science fiction movies based on that principle.
link |
Yeah. And that's sort of what causes the public to be so scared. But if you think about sort of,
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would Europa life be scared of humans coming over and taking over? Chances are no, not even like
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earth bacteria because earth bacteria would be wiped out in an instant in this foreign world
link |
because they don't know how to metabolize energy that doesn't come from the types of energy sources
link |
that are here. The levels of acidity may just kill us all off. And at the same way, in the converse
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way, if you bring life from Europa on earth, it'll die instantly because it's too hot or because it
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doesn't need to know how to cope with, I don't know, the sun's radiation so close to these
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completely inhabitable zone by their standards. So what we call the habitable zone might actually be
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the inhabitable zone. Inhabitable for them. So the difference, if the environments are sufficiently
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different, you think we'll just not be able to even attack each other and the basic. It'll take
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massive amounts of engineering to create machines that will go there and sample the oceans,
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basically drill through the layers of ice to basically sample and see what life is like
link |
there and detecting it will probably be trivial. It definitely won't be DNA based. It's not like
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we're going to send a sequencer, but it'll be some other kind of combination of chemicals
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that will look nonrandom. So if you had to bet, if I took that life form we find in Europa and
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like put it on a sandwich that you're eating and like eat that sandwich. It'll taste just fine.
link |
Well, I know about that. Will it taste fine? That's interesting. So the other question is,
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do we have taste receptors for this? So where does our taste come from? It's basically
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adaptations to chemical molecules that we are used to seeing. We don't have taste buds for
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things we don't even know about. So we won't be able to know that this chemical tastes funny.
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But you think it won't be, it's likely not to be dangerous. Like it won't know how to even
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interact. Do you think our immune system will even detect that something weird is going on?
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Probably. And it'll be very easy to detect because it'll be very different from us.
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But it won't be able to sort of attack. I mean, the scene from, I don't know,
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Independence Day where like they're communicating with the alien computer and they're like,
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ooh, I'm in. I mean, it's hilarious because like Macs and PCs have trouble communicating.
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I mean, let alone an alien technology or even alien DNA.
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So, okay. Now I was talking about you being a scientist on earth, but say you were a scientist
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that was shipped over to Europa to investigate if there's life,
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what would you look for in terms of signs of life?
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Life is unmistakable, I would say. The way that life transforms a planet surrounding it
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is not the kind of thing that you would expect from the physical laws alone.
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So it's, I would say that as soon as life arises, it creates this compartmentalization.
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It starts pushing things away. It starts sort of keeping things inside that are self.
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And there's a whole signature that you can see from that. So when I was organizing my meaning
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of life symposium, my friend who's an astrophysicist, basically we were deciding on what
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would be the themes for the symposium. And then I said, well, we're going to have biology,
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we're going to have physics. And she's like, oh, come on. Biology is just a small part of physics.
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Everything's a small part of physics.
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And I mean, in many ways it is, but my immediate answer was, no, no, no, no, wait.
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Life challenges physics. It supersedes physics. It sort of fights against physics.
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And that's what I would look for in Europe. I would basically look for this fight against physics
link |
for anything that sort of signatures of not just entropy at work, not just things diffusing away,
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not just gravitational pools, but clear signatures of, you remember when I was talking earlier about
link |
this whole selection for environments, selection for biospheres, for ecosystems, for these multi
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organism form of life. And I think that's sort of the first thing that you can look for, you know,
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chemical signatures that are not simply predicted from the reactions you would get randomly.
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Such a beautiful way to look at life. So you're basically leveraging some energy source to enable
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you to resist the physics of the universe.
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Fighting against physics. But that's the first transformation. If you look at humans,
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we're way past that.
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What do you mean by transformation?
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So basically there's layers. I sort of see life, you know, when we talk about the meaning of life,
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life can be construed at many levels. We talked about life in the simplest form of sort of the
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ignition of evolution. And that's sort of the basic definition that you can check off. Yes,
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it's alive. But when Alexander the Great was asked to whom do you owe your life to your teachers
link |
or to your parents? And Alexander the Great answered, I owe to my parents the zin, the life
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itself. And I owe to my teachers the f zin, like euphony. F means good, the opposite of cacophony,
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which means, you know, bad. So f zin, in his words, was basically living a human life.
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A proper life. So basically we can go from the zin to the f zin. And that transformation has taken
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several additional leaps. So basically, you know, life on Europa, I'm pretty sure has gotten to the
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stage of A makes B makes C makes A again. But getting to the f zin is a whole other level. And
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that level requires cooperation. That level requires altruism. That level requires specialization.
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Remember how we were talking about the RNA specializing into DNA for storage, proteins,
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and then compartmentalizations. And if you look at prokaryotic life, there's no nucleus. It's all
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one soup of things intermingling. If you look at eukaryotic life, there's no nucleus. There's no
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eukaryotic life. Again, U for true, good, you know. So a eukaryote basically has a nucleus,
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and that's where you compartmentalize further the organization of the information storage
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from all of the daily activities. If you look at a human body plan or any animal,
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you have a compartmentalization of the germline. You basically have one lineage that will basically
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be saved for the future generations. And everything outside that lineage is almost superfluous. If you
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think about it, the rest of your body, all it does is ensure that that lineage will make it
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to the next generation, that these germlines will make it to the next generation. The rest is
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packaging. I'm starting to be so blunt. And if you look at nutrition, you know, we're deuterostomes.
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What does deuterostome mean? Deutero means second, where this is the second mouth. The first mouth
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is actually down here, it's the oesophagus. So deuterostomes have evolved a second layer of
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eating, kind of like alien with the two mouths. So you can think of us as alien where the first
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mouth is up here and then the second mouth is down there. Is the first mouth just the
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physical manipulation of the food to make it more consumable? Correct. And basically, again,
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you know, if you look at a worm, it's an extremely simple life form. It basically has a mouth,
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it has an anus and it has, you know, just some organs in between that consume the food and just
link |
spit out poo. Humans are basically a fancy form of that. So you basically have the mouth,
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you have the digestive tract, and then you have limbs to get better at getting food.
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You have eyesight, hearing, et cetera, to get better at getting food. And then you have,
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of course, the germline and all of this food part, it's just auxiliary to the germline.
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So you basically have layers of addition, of compartmentalization, of specialization
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on top of this zine to get all the way to the Earth zine.
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Yeah. So like the worm is like Windows 95, very few features, very basic. And then
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us humans are like Windows Vista, Windows 10, whatever it is.
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Well, a few innovations beyond that.
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Beyond that, all right. I don't know.
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We're Windows 2000, at least we're that way.
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So, okay. That's such a fascinating way to look at life as a set of transformations.
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So like, is there some interesting transformations to our
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history here on Earth that like appeal to you?
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And what are the most brilliant innovations and transformations?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is such a fascinating question. Of course, like,
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you know, we're talking about basic, basic life forms and we're talking about eukaryotic life
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forms. And then the next big transformation is multicellular life forms, where the specialization
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separates the germ line from everything else that accompanies it and sort of carries it.
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And then that specialization then sort of has this massive new innovation, like above the second
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mouth, which is this massive brain. And this massive brain is basically something that arises
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much, much later on. Basically, you know, notochords, like having the first spinal cord,
link |
this whole concept that along with these very simple layers, you basically now have
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a coordinating agent and this coordinating agent is starting to make decisions.
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And remember when we were talking about free will, I mean, you know, as a worm is hunting for food,
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oh, it has plenty of free will. It can choose to, you know, follow chemotaxis to the left or
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chemotaxis to the right. And maybe that's free will because it's unpredictable beyond a certain level.
link |
So you basically now have more and more decision making and coordination of all of these different
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body parts and organs by a central operating system, a central machine that basically will
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control the rest of the body. And the other thing that I love talking about is the different
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timescales at which things happen. You know, we're talking about the human epigenome before.
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The human epigenome is basically able to find what genes should be expressed in response to
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environmental stimuli in the order of minutes and basically receive a stimulus, transfer all that
link |
data through these humongously long string of searching and then sort of find what genes to
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turn on and then create all that. All of that is happening in the timescale of minutes. Basically,
link |
you know, three minutes to half an hour. That's the expression response. But our daily life
link |
doesn't happen on the order of three minutes to half an hour. It happens on the order of
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milliseconds. Like I throw a ball at you, you catch it right away. No gene expression changes
link |
there. You just don't have time to do that. So you basically have a layer of control built on
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a hardware that supports it, but that hardware itself lives in a different timescale than the
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controlling machine on top of that. Is that an accident, by the way? Is that like a feature?
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Is it, was it possible for life to have evolved where the hour, the daily life of the organism
link |
as it interacts with its environment was on a timescale similar to the way our internals work?
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If you look at trees, they look kind of boring and stupid. You're like looking at the tree like
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stupid. If you speed up the movie of a tree from spring until October, you'll be like, oh my God,
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it's intelligent. And the reason for that is that at that timescale, the tree is basically saying,
link |
Oh, I'm looking for a, you know, a thing to catch onto. Ooh, I just caught onto that. I'm going to
link |
grow more here. I'm going to spoil out there, et cetera. Like I can see the trees in my garden,
link |
just growing and sort of, you know, looping around. And it's all a matter of timescale.
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It's all a matter of timescale. And if you look at the human timescale, remember we were talking
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about neoteny the last time around. The whole fact that our young are pretty useless until,
link |
you know, maybe, you know, a few months of age, if not a few years of age, if not, I don't know,
link |
getting out of college. And then we, we basically hold them enabling their brain to continue being
link |
malleable and infusing it with knowledge and thoughts as, you know, that period of neoteny
link |
increases and expands. If you fast forward, I don't know, another million years.
link |
So humans have only been around, you know, different from apes for about that long.
link |
Jump another unit of that, another human chimp divergence. What could happen
link |
from an evolutionary timescale? A lot. One of the things that's happening already is expansion of
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human lifespan. We have longer and longer periods before we mature. And we have longer and longer
link |
periods before we have babies. So intergenerational distance is, you know, grown from, I don't know,
link |
16 years to 40 years. You're saying that's in the genetics. No, no, not necessarily. But it's,
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it's sort of an environmental tendency that's happening. But as we medically expand human
link |
lifespan, the generations might actually be pushed instead of 40 years to 60 years, to 100 years.
link |
Like if we look at the long arc of the evolutionary history. Exactly. So as we start thinking about
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intergalactic travel now, sorry, that's a heck of a transition. Yeah. So let's talk about it.
link |
No, no, no, no, no. As we, as a species start thinking about, I'm talking about these transitions
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that are happening, right? And that's, that's awesome. Continue along these transitions.
link |
What does the future hold in the next million years? So the concept of us going to another planet
link |
and that taking three human lifetimes might be a joke if the human lifetime starts being 400 years
link |
or 800 years. So imagine, it's all time scale. It's all time scale. It's just different time scales.
link |
You asked me offline whether I would like to live forever. I mean, my answer is absolutely.
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And there's many different types of forevers. One forever is, do I want to live today forever?
link |
Kind of like Groundhog Day. And the answer is absolutely. The stuff that I want to learn today
link |
will probably take a lifetime just to learn, you know, basically to clear my to do list for the day.
link |
You mean like relive the day and then, and then pick up different things from the richness of
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the experiences that are all in today. There's just so much happening in the world every single
link |
day. So much knowledge that has happened already that just to catch up on that will probably take
link |
me around forever. On that, on that point, I just, I would just love to see you in the Groundhog movie
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just because you're so naturally as a scientist, but just the way your mind works beautifully,
link |
just all the richness of the experiences that you will pick up from that.
link |
That's a beautiful visual. I try to live each day as if it was Groundhog. I'm basically every
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single day waking up and saying, all right, how would Bill Murray get out of that one?
link |
Well, you know what, on a funny tangent, I got a chance to go to a Neuralink demonstration event.
link |
I'm not usually familiar with Neuralink. And I talked to Elon for a while. And one of the
link |
funny things he said on his Groundhog Day thing is, you know, it's a beautiful dream to eventually
link |
be able to replay our memories. So we're kind of these recording machines. Our brain is kind of,
link |
maybe a noisy recording machine of memories. And it would be beautiful if we can someday in the
link |
future, maybe far into the future, be able to, like in the Groundhog Day situation, replay that.
link |
And the funny comment that stuck with me is he said that maybe this, our conversation now,
link |
is a replay of a previous memory. And that stuck with me because it would probably be my replay.
link |
You know, who the hell am I? I'm just an idiot guy. But like Elon Musk is, you know, probably
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because of SpaceX and so on, is probably going to be remembered as a special person,
link |
one of our special apes in history. So if I wanted to replay a memory, probably be that one. You know,
link |
talking to Elon for a while. That's an interesting possibility from, if we think about time scales,
link |
if we think about the richness of the experience through time that we humans take and be able to
link |
replay some aspects of that, of that biology, that's super interesting. But anyway, sorry for
link |
the tangents. Let's, yeah, you were talking about time scales and the expansion of the human lifetime
link |
and the idea of intergalactic travel. Yeah. No, but you're laughing about this. I can't believe
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you're laughing about this. You're talking about this. You're talking about exploring alien worlds
link |
and going to other planets. I mean, you know, when Sarah was here, she was talking about sort of going
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to other planets when we find these life. I mean, I'm just very naturally, given the topics that
link |
we've approached, talking about the timescale at which this will happen. So you think eventually
link |
we will human or life, life will expand out into the universe. The point that I'm trying to make
link |
is that an intergalactic species will probably find ways to engineer its biology in order to
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expand the way that we experience time, expand the timescale that we experience. And going back to
link |
this whole concept of, you know, would I like to live forever? Yes, I'd like to live forever. Even
link |
if it was, even if it was stuck on the same day, I'd love to live forever because I would finally
link |
have time to do all these things that I want to do. But if living forever actually comes with a perk
link |
of watching the whole world evolve forever, I mean, that's a huge perk. And I would, you know, just,
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it'll never get boring, just a never changing world. And then the mind, you know, sort of
link |
the experiment that I want you to do is to also ask, what if I wanted to live forever
link |
one day at a time every year or one day at a time every decade, would you choose that?
link |
Or you would wake up and the world would be 10 years later every single day you wake up.
link |
It's the opposite of Groundhog Day where basically you always wake up and it's always 10 years later.
link |
So you're saying that's such a powerful, interesting concept that life is more
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interesting if you're, of all the life forms on earth, that you're the slowest one.
link |
Like trees have it right.
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Like trees have it right. Olive trees. Like, you know, they've been there since the Minoan
link |
civilization. And you know, that takes us back to the question you asked about sort of
link |
the transformations that have happened in humanity. The Minoan civilization is one of them.
link |
You know, there's this paper that was published just a couple of years ago by one of my friends
link |
that basically looked at the genetic makeup of the Minoans and the Mycenaeans in ancient
link |
Greece and how they relate to modern Greeks. And they found that indeed there was very little gene
link |
flow from, you know, the outside. And, you know, it's fantastic to sort of think about these
link |
amazing civilizations that transformed the way that human thought happens, that basically
link |
looked for rules in nature, that looked for principles, that looked for the standard of beauty,
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not human beauty, but beauty in the natural world. This whole concept that the world must
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be elegant and there must be deeper ways of understanding that world. To me, that's a massive
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transformation of our species, similar to, you know, the earlier transformation that we're talking
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about of even involving a brain, of, you know, learning how to communicate language or the
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evolution of eyesight. If you look at sort of, you know, we're talking about these worms crawling
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around and then sensing which direction are the chemicals more abundant, you know, chemotaxis. So
link |
eventually they grow a nose. Eventually they grow, I mean, when I say nose, I mean, ways of sensing
link |
chemicals. That's probably one of the earliest senses. You know, we always talk about how deep
link |
rooted it is in our brain. That's one of the early senses. If you look at hearing, that's a much later
link |
sense. If you look at eyesight, that's an intermediate sense where you're basically sensing
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where the light direction comes from. That's probably something that life didn't need until
link |
it got, you know, into the surface and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of, you know, milestones.
link |
And I was talking about the latest milestone, which is LIGO, last time of being able to detect
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gravitational waves and sort of being able to sort of have a sense that humans haven't had before.
link |
So you see that as a yet another transformation. It gives us an extra little sense.
link |
Of course. And now if you go back to this history of ancient Greece, I mean, this transformation
link |
that happened, I mean, of course, the Egyptians had this incredible, you know, civilization for
link |
thousands of years. But what happened in Greece was this whole concept of let's break things down
link |
and understand the natural world. Let's break things down and understand physics. Let's basically
link |
build rules around architecture, about around elegance, around, you know, statues and tragedy.
link |
I mean, another question that you asked me in passing was this whole concept of embracing the
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good and the bad, embracing the full range of human emotions. And if you look at Greek tragedy,
link |
it's the definition of that. It's, I mean, drama. I mean, again, it's a Greek word,
link |
but the whole concept of some problems that are just so vast and large that dying is the easy way
link |
out. That death, oh, that's the easy solution. You know, so I want to touch a little bit on that
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point and sort of talk about this concept that life supersedes physics and that the brain supersedes
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life. That basically we have a brain that can decide to not follow evolution's path. We can
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decide to not have children. We can decide to not eat. We can decide to suicide. We can decide to
link |
sort of abolish communication with the outside world. I mean, all the things that make us human,
link |
we can basically decide not to do that. And that is basically when the brain itself is basically
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is basically superseding what evolution program is for. Okay. So one of the, it's okay. My mind
link |
was already blown at the beautiful formulation of the idea that life is a system that resists
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physics and our brain, or perhaps the content of it, or however it may be functionally, our brain
link |
is a thing that resists life. Yes. Yes. You're, you're so, you're so brilliant.
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But, but, but, but, but I want you to see all of that as continuum. Basically, you're sort of
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talking about the sort of individual transformations, but it's a path that, that humanity has been
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taking. It's a transformation. It's a path of transformation. And then I want us to think about
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what it truly means to become human, like the F zine. And you asked me about what motivated
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my meaning of life symposium. What motivated it in part, I mean, of course it was an inside joke
link |
of turning 42, but what motivated it in part was actually a midlife crisis. So the joke that I
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always like to say is Christos Papadimitriou, a famous Greek professor who was previously at
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MIT, at Harvard, at Stanford, at Berkeley, everywhere. A brilliant, brilliant person. That's
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actually Costis's advisor. So Christos Papadimitriou likes to say that when you're an undergrad,
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you work like a rat to get into grad school. And where you're a grad student, you work like a rat
link |
to get your PhD. And where you're a postdoc, you work like a rat to get your assistant professor
link |
position. And where you're an assistant professor, you work like a rat to become a full professor.
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And then when you're a full professor, well, by then you're basically a rat.
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Oh, that's brilliant.
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So basically what happened to me is that I arrived at the end of the rat race.
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You know, life is a rat race. You constantly have hurdles to jump over. You constantly have
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tunnels and secret pathways. And I figured it all out. And eventually as I was turning 42,
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I looked back and I was like, wow, that was an awesome rat race. But I'm not a rat.
link |
I basically got out of the labyrinth and I was like, I'm not a rat, turns out.
link |
Is that the first moment where you saw that you were in a rat race?
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No, no, no. I've known that I'm in a rat race for a long time. It's so easy to be in a rat race.
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It's so easy to be an undergrad. But you have problem sets. And you know, we're all smart
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people. You know, problem set, it has a solution. Somebody made it for you. You can just solve it.
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Everything was made as a test. And you keep passing those tests and tests and tests and tests.
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And you have tasks that are well defined. The PhD is a little different because it's
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more open ended, but yet you have an advisor who's guiding you. And then you become a professor
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and tenure is a well set defined set of tasks. And you do all that.
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And at 42, I basically had bought a house, three kids, beautiful wife, tenure, awesome students,
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tons of grants. Life was basically laid out for me. And that's when I had my main life crisis.
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That's when people usually buy a Harley Davidson. And they basically say, I need something new. I
link |
need something different and to be young myself, et cetera. But basically that was my realization
link |
that it's not a rat race, that there's no rat race. It's over. That I have to basically think,
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how do I fully instantiate myself? How do I complete my transformation into an actual human
link |
being? Because it's very easy to sort of forget all the intangibles of life. It's very hard to
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just sort of think about the next task and the next task and it's all metrics. And you know,
link |
what is the number of viewers I have? What is the number of publications I have? What is the number
link |
of citations, the number of talks, the number of grants? It's very easy to quantify everything.
link |
And then at some point you're like, this is real life. It's not a test anymore. And that's something
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that I told my wife early on. I was like, no, no, no, our life is not going to be let's put the kids
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through college. And that, you know, maybe that's when I escaped the rat race. Maybe it continued
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being a rat race. Maybe the next step would have been, all right, how do I make sure that my kid is
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first in class? How do I make sure that they're, you know, into the greatest college? And then,
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you know, they're into college. And then you're like 60.
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So how do you, how do you escape? What is the, is there a light at the end of the tunnel of a
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midlife crisis? So, so you should watch that symposium because the videos were transformative
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to me and to many others. So basically the advice that I received from all of my friends was so
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meaningful. This, you know, there's some, some advice that basically says you have to constantly
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maintain unachievable goals. Goals that you can make progress towards, but you can never be fully
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done with. And I think that's almost playing into the sort of rat race thing. Like basically make
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sure that there's more obstacles for your little rat persona to jump through. So that's one
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possibility. So first of all, watch, is it available somewhere? It's on YouTube, just Google,
link |
Google meaning of life symposium. I should have known this. I mean, you should have told me this.
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This is awesome. Okay. This is great. But, and also like, you know, saying rat race is, you know,
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if we look at ratatouille, it's not, I mean, that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful thing of,
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of, of challenges and overcoming challenges. That could be fundamentally the meaning of life is,
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to see life as a set of challenges and to fully engage in the overcoming of those challenges.
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I would say that that's embracing the rat race view of life. So, so a joke that we like to have
link |
with my wife all the time is, we basically say, we, we, we pretend that we're in this
link |
all inclusive resort that we basically hired all these people to go on the Esplanade and play games
link |
because we enjoy watching people playing on the Esplanade and we enjoy sort of laying and looking
link |
at life and all the people biking and rollerblading and all of that. And then we've paid all these
link |
people in this all inclusive resort that we live in. And then what are we going to do today? I'm
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like, Oh, I've signed up for professor activities. It's going to be awesome. They, they, they lined
link |
up a bunch of super smart MIT students for me to meet with. I'm going to have a grant writing
link |
meeting afterwards. It's going to be awesome. And then she signed up for a bunch of consulting
link |
activities. It's going to be great. And then in the evening we just get back together and say,
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Hey, how was your consulting today? So in a way, that's another view of life of basically,
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wait a minute. If I was a gazillionaire, what would I choose to do? I would probably pay an
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awesome university to give me an office there and just pay a bunch of super smart people to work
link |
with me, even though they don't really want to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, I would
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have exactly the life that I have now working my butt off every single day because it's so freaking
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fulfilling. So let's clarify. It's just a beautiful way. It's almost like a video game view of life
link |
that it's a set of, I mean, again, game is not perhaps a positive term, but it's a, it's a,
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it is a beautiful term. So do you, or do you not like the rat race view of life?
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Because it is fulfilling in some fundamental way.
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The rat race is about the goal. My view of life is about the path. So again, quoting Greece.
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Those folks have come up with some good stuff.
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So this Odysseus Elites basically wrote this beautiful poem about sort of going through life
link |
saying, as you go through your journey, impersonating Ulysses of his voyage,
link |
he says, wish that the path is long and arduous because when you get to Ithaca,
link |
Ithaca, you might realize that it was all about the path, not the destination.
link |
So the rat race view of life makes it all about the destination. It's like,
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how do I get through the maze to get there? But the all inclusive resort view of life
link |
is about the path. It's about, wow, today I couldn't wish for a better set of activities
link |
all programmed for me to enjoy having my brain, having my body, having my senses and, you know,
link |
the life that I have. So it's a very different kind of view. It's focused on the journey,
link |
not on the destination.
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So you mentioned kind of the ups and downs of life and the midlife crisis.
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And right now you said focusing kind of on the journey,
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but what the journey involves is ups and downs. Is there advice or any kind of thoughts
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that you can elucidate about the downs in your life, the hard parts of your life and
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how you got out or maybe not, or is there, how do you see the dark parts of life?
link |
So I'm so glad you're asking this question because it's something that our society does
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a terrible job at preparing us for. Every Hollywood movie has to have a happy ending.
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It is ridiculous. You can count on your 10 fingers the number of bad ending movies that
link |
you've ever watched. And you probably wouldn't need all 10 fingers. We strive to tell everyone,
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yes, you can succeed. Yes, you're a millionaire, just temporarily disabled. And yes, you know,
link |
the prince will eventually figure out his princess and they will have a happily ever after ending.
link |
And yes, the hero will be beaten and beaten and beaten, but you know that at the end of the movie,
link |
the good guys will win. We need more movies where the bad guys win. We need more movies
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where just everybody dies. Where just, you know, MacGyver doesn't figure out how to disable the
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bomb and just explodes. You just need more movies that are more realistic about the fact that life
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kind of sucks sometimes and it's okay. So again, growing up in Greece, I have been exposed to songs
link |
that are not just sad, but they're miserable. So one of them comes to mind and it's basically
link |
talking about this woman who's lamenting in the early morning about losing the joyful kid,
link |
the joyful young man who basically died in the civil war in the arms of our own fellow citizens.
link |
And she's like, if only he had died fighting the foreign forces, if only he had died at the,
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you know, sides of the, you know, general, if only he had died with honor, I would be proud to have
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lost the joyful kid. I mean, it's devastating, right? It's like, he didn't just die. He died
link |
without honor. And my friend who was with me was listening to the song and she's like, this is
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depressing. I'm like, whoa, you have to listen to another one. It's not as sad. And she's like, what,
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this one died with honor? So that's one example. It's a kind of a celebration of misery. No, no,
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no, no, no, no, no. So let me give you a couple more examples and then I'll answer that question.
link |
So another example is I picked up this book that I had from my childhood and I started reading
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stories to my kids. And the first story is about these two children. One is really poor living on
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the street and the other one is really rich, really living in the house in the bright light
link |
above. And the poor one is wishing, looking at that window and wishing that he could have that
link |
house. And the other one is at the window wishing that he was free, that he wasn't sick all the time,
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that he could escape outside. It's only four pages long. And at the end, both children die.
link |
One of them dies from cold, the other one dies from illness. And you're like, how is that even
link |
a children's story? The next story, I'm like, okay, that's fine. Let's skip this one. So I read
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this to my kids and then I read the next one. And the next one is about this woman whose brother is
link |
at war against the Turks and he is going to die. And she prays to the Virgin, please don't let him
link |
die. And the Virgin appears and she's like, no problem. Tell me who to kill instead. And she's
link |
like, anyone, anyone. No, no, no, no. Choose one. How about this Turk? This one has two kids,
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a beautiful family waiting for him at home. She's like, no, not this one, choose another one.
link |
And then she goes through all the life stories of the others. She's like, no, no, just don't take
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anyone. She's like, I can't do that. You can choose to bring your brother back. And he will be
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depressed for the rest of his life because he didn't fight at war, because he didn't go to that
link |
battle. And he will live without honor. And in the end, the woman decides to have her brother killed
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instead because he dies with her. I mean, this is insane. So why am I giving you these examples?
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It's not a glorification of misery. It's expanding your emotional range. It's teaching you that,
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and when I read these stories, I'm not a jerk. I'm crying out loud. I have tears. And my face
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becomes red from the pain that I'm experiencing through these stories. It's just so deeply
link |
touching to embrace the suffering, not because of an accident, but because of a choice, the sacrifice
link |
to embrace the fact that not everything is cute and rosy and always ending well. And I think that
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we don't do a good enough job of teaching our kids that just life sucks and life is unfair sometimes.
link |
And that's okay. And sometimes I read a story to my kids. I read a story every night. And sometimes
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the story is horrible. And sometimes the story is good and sort of friendly and happy. And my kids
link |
always ask, what's the moral of the story? And sometimes there's a moral and it's like, oh,
link |
you should be good or you should be nice. You should be helping each other, et cetera. And
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sometimes there's just no moral. And I tell my kids, you know what? Sometimes just life doesn't
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make sense and it's okay. And you can't comprehend everything. And I think this concept of how do you
link |
deal with the bad days comes from the fact that we're taught, we're brainwashed into thinking that
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every day should be a happy day. And we're not ready to cope with misery. And the other thing
link |
that crying through these stories teaches you is that you don't have it nearly half as bad as you
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think. Do you see what I mean? Basically, it tells you that, I mean, my mom would always tell me about
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how she was transformed as a teenager when she volunteered in the hospital. And she saw all these
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people at the brink of death, clinging for life and helping them out to best she could and crying
link |
her heart out when they were dying. And sort of how that taught her the appreciation for what we
link |
have every day. Waking up every morning and saying, my life doesn't suck. My life is not nearly half
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as bad as it could be. And sort of embracing the joy that we have of living where we live in the
link |
moment we live. And I'm going to go further. If you look at the arc of human life, human existence
link |
through the centuries, there's no better way to be alive than now. I mean, we're complaining about
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every single little thing. But life expectancy is at an all time high. Sickness, all time low.
link |
Pornness, misery, all time low. There's no better time to be alive globally across all of human
link |
existence. Number one. Number two, here in Boston, there's no better place to be alive.
link |
If you think about the amalgamation of science, engineering, technology, the ridiculously awesome
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people you're bringing every week to your podcast. I mean, this is the ancient Greece of modern
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society. But the weather still sucks. No, let me put it this way. The weather gives us a range
link |
of emotion. The full range. The full scenic range. That's such a fascinating thing about human
link |
psychology. I often reread this book. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. It's Man's Search
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for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And he talks about his living through the Holocaust and the
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concentration camps. And even there where there's human misery is at its highest, even there he
link |
discovers these moments by observing the suffering, by accepting the suffering. He observes moments
link |
of true joy of how great his life is relative to others at the camp who have it worse.
link |
Yeah. So it's a dangerous slippery slope to think that way because it's basically being better than
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Jones's. And if, you know, if the house next door has a giant car, then you want to get a bigger
link |
car or something like that. It's not comparative misery. I think the way that I see it is slightly
link |
different. It's, and it's not even thinking about all the worst possible outcomes that could have
link |
happened, but didn't. The example, as you were talking about the concentration camps, the most
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horrible, I mean, one of the most horrible moments of human existence, is that the concentration
link |
camps, I was thinking about pictures that I was seeing of kids in Syria in war torn zones. And
link |
you're looking at these kids. And again, I cried out loud, imagining my own son in the van after a
link |
bomb explosion, watching his father die or his siblings die or losing his friends. It's something
link |
that we are not capable of fathoming. But if you actually put a seven year old in that situation,
link |
the look that I saw in these kids eyes basically said, it is what it is. It was, and I've
link |
experienced that with my own kid when he gets, like my three year old last, like two years ago,
link |
who's now my five year old, she was burned really badly with like hot chocolate and coffee that just
link |
peeled off her skin. So you could actually see just her fragile skin had just peeled off.
link |
And she was the happiest little kid. She was just going along with the punches.
link |
It is what it is. She accepted it.
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So it's quite dramatic to sort of realize that children don't say, oh, I could have it better.
link |
They sort of embrace the moment, not embrace, but sort of accept the moment. And then
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they can have moments of pure joy in a horrendous war torn country. And like so many people from
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these war torn countries basically say, oh, you think you Americans are going to just come and
link |
just send us a bunch of aid and food, et cetera? Yeah, sure. That's helpful. But what do we dream
link |
of? What do we struggle for? We struggle for love. We struggle for meaning. We struggle for,
link |
you know, emotions and friendships. We struggle for the same things you guys struggle for.
link |
We're not just like every day waking up and saying, oh, I wish I had more food.
link |
No, that's just the given. I just don't have enough food. But what we struggle with
link |
are basically everything else. And that sort of gives you some perspective on life. It basically
link |
says, you know, and another story that my mom told me when I was a kid is this story about sort of
link |
this man who's basically, you know, he sees the Christ appear in front of him and he says,
link |
oh, Christ, I'm carrying all these problems. I'm carrying this big bag. Can you please take it from
link |
me? And he's like, sure. Let me just give you any other bag. And of course the person in Vienna
link |
accepts his own bag. So acceptance, ultimately the path you recommend is acceptance. Every single
link |
other bag is probably worse. It's the evil you don't know versus the evil you know. Like we all
link |
struggle with our own problems. But if you look at the bigger picture, it's just your path through
link |
life. And if you embrace it, the good and the bad, every single day, it's just joy, elation,
link |
sadness, misery. If you don't have both, you're not a complete human being. You know, you can't,
link |
I mean, the last example I'm going to give is the movie Inside Out by Pixar. Beautiful movie.
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Which one is that?
link |
The one with the little characters controlling highly trained. So you basically have joy and
link |
sadness and fear and disgust, et cetera. And the moral of the story, if you remember the movie,
link |
the moral of the story is that in the end, joy is basically trying to fix everything,
link |
to make everything happy. And she's failing miserably and everything else is like crumbling
link |
and falling apart. And the little girl basically becomes emotionless because all she knows how to
link |
do is fake happiness. And I think it's a very good analogy for our everyday society where we're always
link |
saying, are you happy? Are you happy? My mom calls me and she's like, Manolis, are you happy? I'm
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like, mom, stop asking this stupid question. No, I'm not happy. What you should be asking is if
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I'm fulfilled. And that's a very different thing. I don't go around being happy.
link |
I would love it if your mom called and said, Manolis, are you suffering beautifully or something
link |
like that? That's exactly right. That's what she should be asking. Are you struggling to achieve
link |
something great? That's the question that mom should be asking. Hear that mom call me about
link |
the suffering, not about how good are you doing? So what I tell her is that life is not about
link |
maximizing happiness. Life is about accomplishing something meaningful. And accomplishing that
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meaningful thing cannot come from a series of joyful moments. It comes from a series of struggles,
link |
of successes and failures, of people being nasty to you and people being nice to you and embracing
link |
the full thing. And if you supersede that constant need for gratification, if you supersede that
link |
constant need for kindness, you suddenly know who you are. And what I like to say to my kid,
link |
my son the other day was telling me, oh, so and so called me such and such. And I'm like,
link |
are you such and such? He's like, no. I'm like, ha ha, see, they were wrong. And what I tell him
link |
is if you know who you are, what other people say about you only teaches you about them.
link |
So it has no influence on your self esteem. If you know where you stand, you embrace the good,
link |
but you also embrace the bad. I have plenty of bad and I'm embracing it. I'm a procrastinator.
link |
I'm a procrastinator. How do I deal with that? I trick myself into procrastinating about mindless,
link |
stupid little day to day things. And in that procrastination time doing important things
link |
for the future. So accepting who you are, accepting your flaws, accepting the whole of it,
link |
accepting the struggle, accepting the sleeplessness, accepting the fact that the journey
link |
matters, hoping that your path to Ithaka is full of troubles because those troubles are the life
link |
you will lead. Accepting that life will not start after the next milestone, that life has already
link |
started a long time ago. And what you're experiencing now is the life. This is it.
link |
It's not some kind of future thing that you work yourself hard to get to. And then after that,
link |
you live happily ever after. To me, the happily ever after, that's the end of the story. Nothing
link |
happens after that. The struggle and the struggle and the struggle is much more interesting story
link |
than they lived happily ever after. So I think we have to embrace that as a society that it's
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not just about the happy ending, that our kids are brainwashed into expecting that things will
link |
be happy and rosy and it's okay if they're not. And they should keep struggling because the
link |
struggle is the journey and the journey is the meaning of life. It's not the end, it's this
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journey. What about accepting one of the harder things? We talked a little bit about immortality.
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What about accepting that life ends? So do you, Manolis, think about your own mortality?
link |
How, we talked about accepting that there's ups and downs to life. What about the ultimate down,
link |
which is the finality of it? Do you think about that? Do you fear it?
link |
You also asked me if I'm afraid of getting older.
link |
And that's on the path to mortality. So let me talk about that first step and then the last step.
link |
Literally the last step. So getting older, what does that mean? When I was 18, when I was 20,
link |
my brain, I felt was at my maximum. I was like, nothing is impossible. I can solve anything.
link |
I could take any math puzzle, any logic puzzle, any programming puzzle and just solve it in
link |
milliseconds. I just saw the answer through problems. I was like feeling invincible.
link |
I would show up at lecture with my newspaper, lift up my head every now and then, point to errors,
link |
just brat, complete brat. I would raise my hand and correct my professor from the whole classroom.
link |
Total brat. I have some of those in my class now and it's awesome. It's like very...
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It teaches you humility.
link |
So I felt invincible and I was like, this is it. This is awesome. I'm living the life.
link |
10 years later, my brain didn't work the same way. I wasn't as good at the tiny little puzzles,
link |
but it worked in different ways. And right now, 20 years later, it works in yet different ways.
link |
And oh gosh, I love the journey.
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Can you maybe give some hints of the interesting different ways that your brain works as it aged?
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Yeah. I went from the phase of sheer speed and hardcore quantitative thinking to sort of stepping
link |
back, being able to sort of make more connections, being able to sort of say, yeah, but let's use
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that thing. Sort of a huge new creativity being unleashed. Basically, when you're young, you're
link |
sort of thinking about that one problem. You can sort of reconfigure all the variables
link |
combinatorially in your head and just wipe it all out. When you're just a little older,
link |
you start getting more creative. You start bringing in things from different fields and different
link |
contexts and sort of stepping outside the box. Basically, it's like being in the rat race and
link |
saying, there's a ceiling. Why are we trying to get through that? So it's sort of thinking outside
link |
the box. And then at 40, what I'm going through now is this whole sort of embracing the path of
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life. And when I say life has started already, it's not a test anymore. This is basically
link |
embracing the finality. Embracing that the journey is what it's at. So what I like to say is live
link |
every day as if it's your last one and make plans as if you'll never die. I always have the long term
link |
that I'm sort of planning out for that will eventually become the short term. And I always have
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the sort of short term. And I think this ability to sort of look at life in the past and look at
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life in the future jointly and sort of embrace the continuity both of life in the universe and
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on our planet, as well as life as a human being from the beginning to the end, just as a path,
link |
as a journey, and just embracing every aspect of that. I mean, I was talking about parenthood the
link |
other day and how amazingly fulfilling it is to sort of relive childhood through the eyes of my
link |
kid, but with the perspective of a parent. So the sheer arrogance of youth watching this in my kid,
link |
I can see myself when I was 18 correcting my professor. I felt so proud. Little did I know that
link |
my professor was working on so much more interesting things than the three little
link |
things he was putting on the board that day. And I was like, I'm invincible. But in fact, no,
link |
just a little brat. And basically right now, I sort of can see the sort of journey with a little
link |
more humility. I can sort of look at my own students with their unbelievable abilities,
link |
being able to do things that I'm no longer able to do better than I probably was ever able to do.
link |
But yet being able to guide them and shape their thinking and blow their minds with new ideas and
link |
new directions through my perspective. And I know when something is solvable because I've been there,
link |
but I'm not going to even bother. It's not that I can't do it. I'm sure I could if I tried,
link |
but just I'm not interested in that anymore. So what I'm embracing this journey of aging
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is how my brain is changing and how I'm constantly trying to figure out the niches,
link |
the evolutionary niches that I'm best adapted for, for the tasks that I'm best at,
link |
while hiring and recruiting both assistants and research scientists and students and postdocs,
link |
and that will be the best at those tasks. But someone still has to see the big picture.
link |
And I love being in that role. So at the timescale of a human lifespan,
link |
you're doing the same thing that the worm did at the evolutionary timescale of Growing Arms,
link |
the specialization, the carp compartmentalization. I mean, it's fascinating to think of what
link |
80 year old Manolis would look back at the man that's sitting here today
link |
and laugh at the silliness, at the arrogance.
link |
He finally figured out something.
link |
I was like, no little thing. You didn't figure out anything.
link |
I mean, ultimately, it seems that if you're introspective about life, it leads to a kind
link |
of acceptance, a deeper and deeper acceptance of the whole of it.
link |
Again, I want to be cautious about acceptance because it almost says that you can't change it.
link |
It's sort of embracing the struggle and embracing the journey is the way that I would put it.
link |
So you ultimately feel the journey isn't just something that happens to you.
link |
You shape it. You shape it. Remember how I was saying that Boston is the best place and the
link |
best time to live in right now, in the history of humanity? I'm exaggerating a little bit.
link |
But the way that I think about this is that if you look at the whole of cosmos,
link |
where would you rather be if you're just a bunch of molecules, roughly your biomass?
link |
Where would you rather be? Would you rather be a rock on Mars?
link |
Yeah, probably not. Would you rather be in a black hole? Probably not.
link |
Would you rather be in an exploding supernova? Maybe that might be interesting.
link |
But being on Earth is an awesome solar system, an awesome planetary system, an awesome,
link |
you know, place to be in across all of space time.
link |
It's a pretty good place to be in as a bunch of molecules.
link |
If you are a bunch of molecules on Earth today, being an animal with, you know, some kind of
link |
awareness of the stuff around you is wonderful. Being a human among all animals is amazing
link |
because you have all this introspection. And being a human who's young, fit, athletic,
link |
smart, et cetera, I mean, you know, you have so much to be happy for.
link |
Beyond that, being surrounded by a bunch of awesome people that you interact with all the time.
link |
I mean, I feel blessed to interact with the people I know, with the friends I have,
link |
the dinners that I have, all of this. Students that I interact with, I'm so blessed.
link |
And the last little blip in this awesomeness of local maximum, the last little blip comes from
link |
being kind, being grateful, and being kind. I don't know if you remember that little prayer
link |
that I described last time of, thank you for all the good you've given me and give me strength
link |
to give unto others with the same love that you've given to me. And the whole point of that is being
link |
grateful and being kind. What does that do? From a purely egoistic perspective, it makes the people
link |
around you happier. And it takes that little maximum a little bit further.
link |
Because you'll be surrounded by happy people, by being kind. That's the purely egoistic view.
link |
And the purely altruistic view, or maybe it's egoistic as well, is that it's just good to give.
link |
It feels good to give. Like basically watching somebody who's touched by what you said, watching
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somebody who's like appreciating a rapid response or a generous offer or just random acts of kindness.
link |
It is so fulfilling. So evolutionarily, we were selected for that. There's just such a good feeling
link |
that comes from that. You know, it's fascinating to think you said Boston is the best place,
link |
and talking about kindness, that the very thought that Boston is the best place in the universe
link |
is almost, it's a kind of a gravitational field. Your thought and your very life in itself is a
link |
kind of field that makes that real. Yeah, the self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. By claiming it's the
link |
best and thinking it's the best, it becomes the best. And you make others, it's not a force that
link |
just applies to your own cognition. It applies to the others around you. And then suddenly you live
link |
in an even better place. Yeah. And it creates the reality, the actual reality, the social reality,
link |
then it molds the environment. Exactly. One of the coolest things about you, I think, is you represent
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the best of MIT, the spirit of MIT. I'm so glad that I'm fortunate enough to be able to talk to
link |
you, because there's a kind of cynicism about academia in parts that I think is undeserved,
link |
and that there's this, MIT, of course, but academic institutions is a sacred place where
link |
ideas can flourish. And just in the same very way that you're talking about is both kindness
link |
and curiosity and that weird thing that happens when a bunch of curious descendants of apes get
link |
together and just get excited in this ripple effect that happens. I mean, that's the most
link |
beautiful aspect of MIT. People might think competition and grants and position, like you
link |
said, the rat race, but underneath it all is these curious human beings inspiring younger human
link |
beings. And there's this ripple effect that happens. And I'm so glad that, I mean, I'm glad that I get
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a chance to record this because it inspires so many other students and so many other people to
link |
do the same, to embrace the inner curious creature that it's not about the race. So let's talk about
link |
the negatives. Let's talk about, no, no, no, I'm serious. I'm serious. You have to embrace the good
link |
and the bad. So let's talk about the negative. Let's address it. So why do people want positions
link |
of power? Why do people want more money, more power, more this, more that? Remember the part
link |
where I was saying, if you know who you are, what other people think about you, it makes no
link |
difference to you. It only teaches you about them. Many people feel defunct about what they're doing
link |
and define themselves. They feel instantiated through the eyes of others. So being in a position
link |
of power makes them feel better about themselves. Who knows what other kind of struggles they might
link |
have that creates that need to feel better about themselves. But they have a bunch of struggles and
link |
everybody has a bunch of struggles. And every time I see somebody behaving poorly, I'm basically
link |
thinking, well, they're in a tough spot right now. And it's okay. I can kind of see how I would
link |
behave badly in other circumstances as well. So I think if you take away that sort of having to
link |
prove yourself in the eyes of others, life becomes so much easier. So when I first became a professor
link |
at MIT, I started wearing adult clothes. It became a serious person, quote, unquote.
link |
I basically had, I would always go around in my rollerblades and my shorts and a t shirt,
link |
and eventually I was a professional. I bought all these khaki pants and these nice
link |
shirts with, what do they call it, the patterns. And I was dressing with my nice belt every day,
link |
showing up. And then a few months later, I was like, I can't stand it. And I just went back to
link |
my rollerblades and my t shirts and my shorts. And it was this struggle of sort of not feeling that
link |
I fit in. I was so intimidated by all of my colleagues, just watching their incredible
link |
achievements. The person's next to me and the person on the floor below me, I was like, oh my
link |
God, they clearly made a mistake. What the heck am I doing here? How will I ever live up to these
link |
people's standards? And eventually you grow up to realize that the way that I grew up to realize
link |
that the way that other people perceived my work was very similar to the way that I perceived
link |
other people's work as flawless. I knew all of the flaws in my work. I knew the limitations. I knew
link |
what I hadn't managed to achieve. And what I saw was maybe a third of the way of what I was trying
link |
to achieve. And I saw everything as flawed. What they saw, what I had achieved, they didn't see
link |
what I hadn't achieved. They only saw the one third down, which was pretty good in their eyes.
link |
So they all respected me and I was feeling miserable about myself. I was like, I'm not worthy.
link |
And I think that this is a cognitive problem that we have. We kind of, it's kind of like when we're
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talking about artificial general intelligence, AGI, of sort of, we kind of have this definition
link |
that anything that machines can do is not intelligent and anything that they can't do
link |
is intelligent. Therefore, we narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow the field of what intelligence
link |
truly means. And as soon as machines achieve self, I mean, it's not intelligent anymore.
link |
I feel like I was doing the same thing with myself. As soon as I could solve something,
link |
it was the kind of thing that a kid like me could solve. And therefore it was kind of easy.
link |
But to the others, it seemed hard. But to me, it seemed easy. So it was this kind of thing that
link |
everything that my colleagues were doing seemed impossible to me. But everything that I was doing
link |
seemed impossible to them. So it was that realization that sort of made me mature into
link |
sort of a, not more confident, but more comfortable human being.
link |
Can you actually linger on that a little bit? I mean, you mentioned Minsky. I remember he said
link |
something in an interview where he said the secret to his, like the way he approached life was
link |
to never be happy with anything he did. So there's something powerful as a motivator
link |
to doing exactly what you're saying, which is everything you've achieved to see that as easy
link |
and unimpressive. What do you do with that? Because clearly that's a useful thing.
link |
I think I've kind of matured past that. And I think the maturity past that is to sort of accept
link |
what it is and accept that it has helped others build onto it and therefore advance human knowledge.
link |
So it's very easy to sort of fall into the trap of, oh, everything I've done is crap.
link |
What I told you last time is that I always tell my students that our best work is ahead of us.
link |
And I think that's more of my mindset. That's a beautiful way to put it.
link |
Exactly. What we've done is strong. It's great. It's great for the time. And it'll become obsolete
link |
in 30 years. Not we can, we are doing even better. Exactly. So basically our next work
link |
will just strive. And again, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
link |
At some point you have to wrap. I was having a meeting with my student yesterday and it was like,
link |
listen, we know this is not perfect, but it's way better than anything that's ever been done before.
link |
You know how to improve it. But if you try to, your paper is never going to get published.
link |
So there's this balance of we're already at the top of the field, get it out. And then you work
link |
on the next improvement. And in my experience, this has never happened. We've never actually
link |
worked on the next improvement. And that's okay. It didn't make a difference because you're
link |
basically putting a new stepping stone that others will be able to step on and surpass you.
link |
My advisor in grad school would basically tell me, Manolis, let others write the second paper
link |
in that field. Just write the first one, move on, move on to the next field. You don't want to be
link |
writing the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth paper in the same field. Just,
link |
it's very shocking to a student to hear that. Cause I was like, I was at the top of my game.
link |
I was owning that field. I was doing it. I was doing it. I was doing it. I was doing it.
link |
Owning that field. And I published the first paper. I'm like, I'm ready for two and three
link |
and four. He's like, move on. Just let it be. And I was like, Whoa. And it's so liberating
link |
to sort of not have to surpass everyone, but just put your little stepping stone out there
link |
and others will step on it and put their own stones further and eventually cross a bigger
link |
river than if you try to sort of make a giant leap all at once. So you need both.
link |
SL. Beautifully put. So the funny thing is I've, I believe I closed the previous episode
link |
with a Darwin quote about the power of poetry and music and life.
link |
SL. I think your quote, and again, I only heard it once, was Darwin basically saying,
link |
if I were to live life again, next time I would read more poetry and something about art every
link |
week or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting for somebody who studied life
link |
at a very cold, I would say, genetic level to say that, yeah, the highest form of living
link |
is the art. But like on that, which made me realize that you write poetry and I
link |
forced you or maybe convinced you somehow to maybe share if it's possible, if it's okay,
link |
some of the poetry you've written yourself in your life.
link |
SL. So again, being Greek, a lot of my poems have been pretty miserable.
link |
And I always like to say that it's very hard for me to write a poem when I'm happy.
link |
And I just have to be in a state of deep despair in order to write poems. But the first poem I ever
link |
wrote was in English class. I was, I'm Greek, I grew up in Greece, but I was in a French high
link |
school and I was taking English as a foreign language. So the English teacher basically
link |
asked us to write a poem in English. So this is basically what I'm going to embarrass myself and
link |
read from my 16 year old self many, many years ago.
link |
SL. Can you give a little bit more context about who you were in this moment? So like just...
link |
SL. So here's what's really interesting. In terms of growing up, how do we grow up?
link |
SL. It's very difficult to grow up if you're in the same school, going from one class to the other,
link |
and all your friends know you inside out. It's very difficult to change. It's very difficult to
link |
grow up because they have a certain set of expectations for who you are and for how you're
link |
going to behave. So in many ways we kind of tend to get set in our ways and not change very much.
link |
I think something that helped me grow up is that when I was 11 years old, I was a
link |
kid in Greece in primary school. When I was 12 years old, I was a kid in Greece in a first year
link |
of high school. When I was 13, I was in France, so basically moved countries and schools. The next
link |
year, I moved schools again because it was a transition in the French educational system
link |
from one school to the next. The next year after that, my family moved to New York in a French high
link |
school there, and the next year after that, I'm moving to MIT. So basically between 11 and 19,
link |
every single year, I actually had the opportunity to grow. I was not held by people who knew me,
link |
and I could reinvent myself or reshape myself or reshape my personality, my emotions, as I was
link |
growing up, especially in such a transformative time of a kid's life from 11 to 17. I was
link |
11 to 17. Okay, first of all, it's so powerful that you think of it that way. Did you think of
link |
it that way at the moment? Because it's kind of a source. You said an opportunity to grow,
link |
but it's kind of suffering. I mean, you're being torn away from the thing you know into a thing
link |
you don't know. So when we moved from South France to New York, I was pissed. I was pissed. I was
link |
taking these long bike rides in the countryside, jumping in French swimming pools, and I had all
link |
these wonderful friendships, going downtown and just staying by the fountains in the dim lit
link |
streets of Aix en Provence in the South of France. It was magical. And suddenly, I moved to New York
link |
City, a city of cement, of ugliness, like trash in the streets at every corner. It's horrible.
link |
Snow everywhere. Having never seen snow or like real snow in my life, I moved from Athens to South
link |
France to suddenly New York. So I was pissed. But whether I saw it as an opportunity for growth,
link |
I don't think so. I don't think that I was that self reflective. It was just how it happened.
link |
Only now do you see it this way.
link |
I saw it like that probably pretty early on, but not during those transitions. So basically,
link |
during those transitions, I was just a kid being a kid. And maybe the time that I started seeing it
link |
that way was maybe when I decided to stay at MIT as a professor after having been there as a student.
link |
And I kind of saw the struggle of getting professors to not see you as a kid when they're
link |
your peers. And I was very flattered when one of my friends basically told me, oh, I remember you
link |
in recitation when you first asked me a question. I said, wow, this kid. I'll pay attention.
link |
One day I'll be a peer.
link |
So it's, you know, certainly my perception was that many of them could not see me as anything
link |
but a kid. But it turns out that some of them saw me as something different than a kid even
link |
before I was actually their colleague. So it's kind of an interesting place because
link |
what I like to say about MIT is that people treat you as equal no matter what stage.
link |
And they respect you for what you say, not for who you are when you're saying it.
link |
And if I'm wrong, my students will tell me. They will have no reservation to just be bluntly,
link |
you know, sorry. I don't agree with that.
link |
Yeah. I mean, the beautiful thing about you, sorry to put it this way, is, you know,
link |
maybe people who weren't familiar with your work beforehand might think, like,
link |
might not realize that you're a world class scientist who leads a large group and so on.
link |
Because there's a youthful nature to you that it's, I mean, you talk like a first,
link |
like an undergrad, you know, with the excitement and the fresh eyes and the sort of excitement
link |
about the world. And that's, first of all, super contagious and beautiful. You know,
link |
it's easy to sort of fall into behaving seriously because then people kind of start putting
link |
you on a pedestal more into a position of power. You want to sort of act like you're
link |
in a position of power as opposed to allowing yourself to be lost in the just the curiosity,
link |
the childish view of the world, which is just this open eyed love of knowledge.
link |
And that was the transition that I was describing when I decided to go back to my rollerblades
link |
and t shirt and baseball cap. Basically, you know, when I met my first postdoc,
link |
it was basically, you know, he was interviewing for postdocs at MIT. He already had several
link |
first author papers to his name in top journals. And my friend Yulia basically introduced me to
link |
Alex Stark, who basically was interviewing at the time with Rick Young and with Eric Lander,
link |
just like these massive names in the field. And I was just a first year faculty person with,
link |
you know, zero credibility. And she basically says, Oh, there's this friend of mine, Alex,
link |
who's visiting. He's also German. You know, he wanted to meet you. I'm like, Oh, sounds great.
link |
I'd love to talk science. I show up. We sit at the amphitheater in Stata. You know, I basically
link |
arrive in my rollerblades, you know, jump a few steps, sit down wearing my blades. We're having
link |
this awesome conversation about science and about gene regulation and how the whole thing works and
link |
sort of, you know, my perspective and his perspective. We're just bouncing ideas for 30
link |
minutes. And then I just dash off to my next meeting. And he basically emails me afterwards.
link |
And I was giving him advice about how to interview with Eric Lander, how to interview with Rick Young
link |
and how to sort of get a position with them. And then after a while, he emails me saying,
link |
I would love to become a postdoc in your group. I'm like, what are you kidding me?
link |
Like, so, so he basically didn't care that I wear rollerblades and T shirt. All he cared
link |
about was my ideas and sort of embracing the me with the childhood excitement about science
link |
was basically what attracted him. It wasn't the, wow, this guy runs a big lab or this and that.
link |
He was just like, I like his ideas. I want to work with him. That, by the way, folks is the best of
link |
MIT. That's what MIT stands for. So that's a beautiful story. But take me back to the poem
link |
and where did this poem come from? Where's your mindset? So who is the 17, 16 year old kid Manolis?
link |
So again, I've just seen snow for the first time and I'm in New York. So I'm, you know,
link |
maybe that's where the sadness in the poem comes from. But anyway, we're asked in class to write
link |
an assignment. This is my third language. I'm not very good at it. So pardon me, but here's what I
link |
wrote. Children dance now all in row, children laughing at the snow. But in time's endless flow,
link |
children sooner or later grow. Men are mortal. We go by. If we know it, we may cry. But I thought
link |
a love so sweet was immortal, was so deep. There I told you, darling sweet, that forever love would
link |
keep. Blossomed spring and summer shined. Then blue autumn, winter died. One year passed, but the
link |
clouds still remember all our vows. Never faked and never lied. All we did was stare and smile.
link |
All alone, sitting down, to the snow we made our vow. But you told me you were right. Birds who
link |
love are birds who cry. Now with laughter children play, yet the sky is so gray. Even if the snow
link |
seems bright, without you have lost their light. Sun that sang and moon that smiled, all the stars
link |
have ceased to shine. All of nature drew its grace, found its light within your face. Now you're gone
link |
and won't return. Let the snow in my heart burn. There's a Greek in there. That's beautiful. That's
link |
beautiful, by the way. And the rhyming, the musicality, there's both a simplicity and a
link |
musicality to it. I'm 16. It's my third language. No, no, no. So I really enjoy like Robert Frost
link |
poems. I don't mean simplicity in a bad way, in a negative way at all. Again, it's very weird to
link |
analyze your own poem, but I think it captures the simplicity of youth and the way that it kind of
link |
starts with Children Dance Like Only Low. It basically, and it kind of shows that snow can be
link |
interpreted first in the first verse as a happy thing, ta da da da da snow. And then in the end,
link |
you know, now with laughter children play, I'm like, now I've grown basically. It's this
link |
transformation that we're actually talking about, this whole men are mortal, we go by.
link |
I'm sort of, you know, you're saying, are you comfortable with growing old? I'm like,
link |
duh. I was, I was since I was 16. And what's really interesting is that, you know, again,
link |
when I was 12 years old in our summer house in Greece, I remember sort of telling my sister
link |
my outlook that I would have as a father for how to bring up my own kids. So it's very weird that
link |
I've always sort of seen the full path from, you know, a kid. From when you were young. Yeah. I
link |
don't know if you like this Joni Mitchell song. I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
link |
from up and down and still somehow it snows illusions I recall. It's clouds illusions I
link |
recall. I really don't know clouds at all. So it's really beautiful. So I think the Joni Mitchell
link |
song, which again, I heard for the first time much, much after this, and I wouldn't even compare
link |
this to that. But what Joni Mitchell is saying that song is that you can see life from two
link |
perspectives. You can see the good or the bad in both, you know, in everything you see. And I think
link |
that's the allegory of snow right now. You can see snow as this bright, white, wonderful thing,
link |
or you can see snow as this miserable, you know, gray thing. So that's sort of, and what I like
link |
about the last verse now with laughter children play is that it's a recall to the first one
link |
where I was the kid enjoying careless life, and eventually was making promises that something
link |
would be forever. And I think part of that is also the loss of my friendships in France,
link |
of being in New York now and sort of everything's gray. And, you know, even though the snow seems
link |
bright, without you have lost their light, sun that sang and moon that smiled. So it's this
link |
concept that if you lose your love, the same thing can be perceived in a very different way.
link |
Let me ask you this, because somebody wrote me this long email,
link |
and I think you're the perfect person to ask this. You mentioned love.
link |
From a genetic perspective, what is it? What do you make of love? Why do we humans fall in love?
link |
In your own life, why did you fall in love? You know, the email that was written to me was,
link |
you always talk about mortality and fear of mortality, but you don't ask about love. So I
link |
don't know if there's some thoughts you could give about the role of love in your own life,
link |
or the role of love in human life in general. I think love in many ways defines my life.
link |
It's basically, I like to say that I'm a human first and a professor second. And I think this
link |
passion for life, this passion for, you know, everything around us. I mean, the only way to
link |
describe that is love. It's basically, you know, embracing your, you know, emotional self,
link |
embracing the, you know, the non brainiac in you, embracing the sort of intangible, the
link |
not very well defined. And even in my own research, I'm just very passionate about
link |
everything I do. You know, there's a certain passion that comes through. And what, I'm sorry,
link |
again, being Greek, the etymology of the word passion. What was passion? Passion is suffering.
link |
The etymology, when we talk about the passion of the Christ, it's a suffering.
link |
And in the Greek version of that word, pathos, like pathology, pathos is deep suffering. It's
link |
the concept of someone who's sympathetic. Sympathetic means suffering together,
link |
experiencing emotions together. So it's funny that you ask me about love and I respond with passion,
link |
passion for life, passion for research, passion for my family, for my children, for, you know.
link |
So there's a certain passion that defines me and everything else follows rather than the other way
link |
around. I'm not first thinking with my brain, what is the most impactful paper we could write? And
link |
then going after that, I'm thinking with my heart, what am I passionate about? What drives me? What
link |
just like, you know, makes me take. And that's a beautiful way to live, but I love it how the Greek
link |
part of you just kind of connects it to the suffering. So if you could remove the suffering.
link |
No, no, no, no, no, no. When I say suffering, I don't mean suffering as in being miserable. I mean
link |
suffering as in being emotionally invested in something. Remember, I mean, again, if you look
link |
at this poem, what is it saying? It's saying birds who love are birds who cry. Right? That's the very
link |
definition of love. Exposing your fragility. If you're not afraid of suffering, you don't fall
link |
in love. As soon as you hold back, you protect, you shield your heart, no love can enter. So there's
link |
this Simon and Garfunkel song. I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island
link |
never cries. So again, there's some aspect of that into this poem. The fact that, you know,
link |
but you told me, you know, there I told you, darling sweet, that forever love would keep,
link |
is this intermediate thing. And then there's a recall, but you told me you were right. Birds
link |
who love are birds who cry. So it basically says that love is the fragility that you're
link |
willing to give to another person. It's opening up your vulnerable spots. It's sort of accepting
link |
that there's no safety net. You're just giving yourself fully and you're ready to be hurt.
link |
So you've already been way too kind with your time, but I'm going to force you to stay here
link |
just a few minutes longer as we're talking about goodbyes. You have a really nice other poem here
link |
about goodbyes. Can I force you to read it as well? Oh, twist my arm, twist my arm. So the next
link |
poem was written specifically for our high school yearbook. So another poem written on demand,
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the rest of them are just so miserable, written by pure, you know, sadness and melancholy.
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But this one was also written on demand and it was basically saying goodbye, as is appropriate
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right now, to my friends and sort of, again, reflecting this whole journey and transformation
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through life. And also I think showing a little bit of introspection about how we kind of had it
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easy in high school and we're about to go into rougher waters. So the title is actually The Tide
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Waters and it's an analogy on that. So here it goes. All this was another lake, where some rest
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we sailors take, waters calm and full of fish, we'll find there what we wish, some seek fruit
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and others feast, some of us just look for peace, some find fresh ships, other love, some seek both
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and neither have. We were different when we came, each his own story and fame, different people had
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we been, different cultures had we seen, different nature, different face, each unlike all in this
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place. We had faced success, defeat, then in one lake came to meet. There, the orders that we
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followed and the pride that we swallowed, made us one but not the same, joined us strangers who
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there came. Sooner later, groups were made, tribes where differences will fade, some attached more
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or less, others fought and made a mess. But again we have to go, what for, where to, we don't know,
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still we know it, we will try, there to rush, to flee, to fly. There'll be some who wish to stay
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but they'll carry on away, we'll continue on our journey as we came here, strong yet lonely.
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From the lake a river flows, from the river many goals, on that river we will race, each will try
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to find his pace, in that scene the sailors face, their first fear, defeat, disgrace,
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defeat, disgrace, here and there comes out a face that the waters soon embrace. Some get lucky,
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find their way, others sink beneath the waves, in this race we will part, some will settle near the
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start, some set goals beyond the stars because the river carries far. You should know in what we've
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done, the hard part is still to come. So I'll have to say goodbye, don't you worry, I won't cry,
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neither will they those who try, till the end, to keep their pride. But please know dearest friends
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who are always there to mend, I will always need your hand, I will miss you till the end.
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I don't think there's a better way to end it. Manolis, like I said last time, you're one of
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the most special people at MIT, one of the most special people in Boston, and whatever mental
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force field that you're applying in saying that Boston is the best city in the world,
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MIT the best university in the world, you're actually making it happen. So thank you so much
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for talking to us, huge honor. Thank you so much, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for listening to
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this conversation with Manolis Kellis, and thank you to our sponsors, Public Goods, Magic Spoon,
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and ExpressVPN. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to
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support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 Stars
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on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter
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at Lex Friedman. And now, let me leave you with some words from another well known Greek,
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Alexander III of Macedonia, commonly known as Alexander the Great.
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There is nothing impossible to him who will try. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.