back to indexManolis Kellis: Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything | Lex Fridman Podcast #142
link |
The following is a conversation with Manolis Kellis,
link |
his fourth time on the podcast.
link |
He's a professor at MIT
link |
and head of the MIT Computational Biology Group.
link |
Since this is episode number 142,
link |
and 42, as we all know,
link |
is the answer to the ultimate question of life,
link |
the universe, and everything,
link |
according to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
link |
we decided to talk about this unanswerable question
link |
of the meaning of life
link |
in whatever way we two descendants of apes could muster,
link |
from biology, psychology, to metaphysics, and to music.
link |
Quick mention of each sponsor,
link |
followed by some thoughts related to the episode.
link |
Thanks to Grammarly,
link |
which is a service for checking spelling, grammar,
link |
sentence structure, and readability,
link |
Athletic Greens, the all in one drink
link |
that I start every day with
link |
to cover all my nutritional bases,
link |
and Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends.
link |
Please check out these sponsors in the description
link |
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
link |
let me say that the opening 40 minutes of the conversation
link |
are all about the many songs
link |
that formed the soundtrack to the journey
link |
of Manolis's life.
link |
It was a happy accident for me to discover
link |
yet another dimension of depth
link |
to the fascinating mind of Manolis.
link |
I include links to YouTube versions
link |
of many of the songs we mentioned in the description,
link |
and overlay lyrics on occasion.
link |
But if you're just listening to this
link |
without listening to the songs or watching the video,
link |
I hope you still might enjoy, as I did,
link |
the passion that Manolis has for music,
link |
his singing of the little excerpts from the songs,
link |
and in general, the meaning we discuss
link |
that we pull from the different songs.
link |
If music is not your thing,
link |
I do give timestamps to the less musical
link |
and more philosophical parts of the conversation.
link |
I hope you enjoy this little experiment
link |
and conversation about music and life.
link |
If you do, please subscribe on YouTube,
link |
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
link |
follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,
link |
or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
link |
And now, here's my conversation with Manolis Callas.
link |
You mentioned Leonard Cohen and the song Hallelujah
link |
as a beautiful song.
link |
So what are the three songs
link |
you draw the most meaning from about life?
link |
Don't get me started.
link |
So there's really countless songs that have marked me,
link |
that have sort of shaped me in periods of joy
link |
and in periods of sadness.
link |
My son likes to joke that I have a song
link |
for every sentence he will say,
link |
because very often I will break into a song
link |
with a sentence he'll say.
link |
My wife calls me the radio
link |
because I can sort of recite hundreds of songs
link |
that have really shaped me.
link |
So it's gonna be very hard to just pick a few.
link |
So I'm just gonna tell you a little bit
link |
about my song transition as I've grown up.
link |
In Greece, it was very much about,
link |
as I told you before, the misery, the poverty,
link |
but also overcoming adversity.
link |
So some of the songs that have really shaped me
link |
are Charis Alexiou, for example,
link |
is one of my favorite singers in Greece.
link |
And then there's also really just old traditional songs
link |
that my parents used to listen to.
link |
Like one of them is Ani Moun Plousios,
link |
which is basically, oh, if I was rich.
link |
And the song is painting this beautiful picture
link |
about all the noises that you hear in the neighborhood,
link |
his poor neighborhood, the train going by,
link |
the priest walking to the church
link |
and the kids crying next door and all of that.
link |
And he says, with all of that,
link |
I'm having trouble falling asleep and dreaming.
link |
If I was rich, and then he was breaking to that.
link |
So it's this juxtaposition between the spirit
link |
and the sublime and then the physical and the harsh reality.
link |
It's just not having troubles, not being miserable.
link |
So basically rich to him just means
link |
out of my misery, basically.
link |
And then also being able to travel,
link |
being able to sort of be the captain of a ship
link |
and see the world and stuff like that.
link |
So it's just such beautiful imagery.
link |
So many of the Greek songs, just like the poetry
link |
we talked about, they acknowledge the cruelty,
link |
the difficulty of life, but are longing for a better life.
link |
That's exactly right.
link |
And another one is Ftokhologia.
link |
And this is one of those songs that has like a fast
link |
and joyful half and a slow and sad half.
link |
And it goes back and forth between them.
link |
Ftokhologia, jefse na kathemou dragoouzi.
link |
So poor, you know, basically it's the state of being poor.
link |
I don't even know if there's a word for that in English.
link |
And then fast part is ta kerya sou megalosan
link |
ke ponesan ke matosan.
link |
So, and then it's like, oh, you know,
link |
basically like the state of being poor and misery,
link |
you know, for you, I write all my songs, et cetera.
link |
And then the fast part is in your arms,
link |
grew up and suffered and, you know, stood up and,
link |
you know, rose, men with clear vision.
link |
This whole concept of taking on the world
link |
with nothing to lose because you've seen the worst of it.
link |
This imagery of psilaki parizopoula harastakorizopoula.
link |
So it's describing the young men as cypress trees.
link |
And that's probably one of my earliest exposure
link |
to a metaphor, to sort of, you know,
link |
this very rich imagery.
link |
And I love about the fact that I was reading a story
link |
to my kids the other day and it was dark.
link |
And my daughter who's six is like,
link |
oh, can I please see the pictures?
link |
And Jonathan, who's eight, so my daughter Cleo is like,
link |
oh, let's look at the pictures.
link |
And my son Jonathan, he's like, but Cleo,
link |
if you look at the pictures, it's just an image.
link |
If you just close your eyes and listen, it's a video.
link |
And he's basically showing just how much more
link |
the human imagination has besides just a few images
link |
that, you know, the book will give you.
link |
And then another one, oh gosh,
link |
this one is really like miserable.
link |
It's called Sto Perigiali, To Krifo.
link |
And it's basically describing how vigorously
link |
we took on our life and we pushed hard
link |
towards a direction that we then realized
link |
was the wrong one.
link |
And again, these songs give you so much perspective.
link |
There's no songs like that in English
link |
that will basically sort of just smack you in the face
link |
about sort of the passion and the force and the drive.
link |
And then it turns out, we just followed the wrong life.
link |
And it's like, wow.
link |
Okay, so that was you.
link |
All right, so that's like before 12.
link |
So growing up in sort of this horrendously miserable
link |
sort of view of romanticism, of suffering.
link |
So then my preteen years is like, you know,
link |
learning English through songs.
link |
So basically, you know,
link |
listening to all the American pop songs
link |
and then memorizing them vocally
link |
before I even knew what they meant.
link |
So, you know, Madonna and Michael Jackson
link |
and all of these sort of really popular songs
link |
and, you know, George Michael and just songs
link |
that I would just listen to the radio and repeat vocally.
link |
And eventually as I started learning English,
link |
I was like, oh wow, this thing I've been repeating,
link |
I now understand what it means.
link |
Without relistening it to it,
link |
but just with re repeating it, it was like, oh.
link |
Again, Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror
link |
is teaching you that it's your responsibility
link |
to just improve yourself.
link |
You know, if you wanna make the world a better place,
link |
take a look at yourself and make the change.
link |
This whole concept of, again, I mean,
link |
all of these songs, you can listen to them shallowly
link |
or you can just listen to them and say,
link |
oh, there's deeper meaning here.
link |
And I think there's a certain philosophy of song
link |
as a way of touching the psyche.
link |
So if you look at regions of the brain,
link |
people have lost their language ability
link |
because they have an accident in that region of the brain
link |
can actually sing because it's exactly
link |
the symmetric region of the brain.
link |
And that again, teaches you so much
link |
about language evolution and sort of the duality
link |
of musicality and, you know, rhythmic patterns
link |
and eventually language.
link |
Do you have a sense of why songs developed?
link |
You're kind of suggesting that it's possible
link |
that there is something important
link |
about our connection with song and with music
link |
on the level of the importance of language.
link |
It's not just possible.
link |
In my view, language comes after music.
link |
Language comes after song.
link |
Like basically, my view of human cognitive evolution
link |
If you look at many early cultures,
link |
there's rituals around every stage of life.
link |
There's organized dance performances around mating.
link |
And if you look at mate selection,
link |
I mean, that's an evolutionary drive right there.
link |
So basically, if you're not able to string together
link |
a complex dance as a bird, you don't get a mate.
link |
And that actually forms this development
link |
for many song learning birds.
link |
Not every bird knows how to sing.
link |
And not every bird knows how to learn a complicated song.
link |
So basically, there's birds that simply have
link |
the same few tunes that they know how to play.
link |
And a lot of that is inherent and genetically encoded.
link |
And others are birds that learn how to sing.
link |
And if you look at a lot of these exotic birds of paradise
link |
and stuff like that,
link |
the mating rituals that they have are enormously amazing.
link |
And I think human mating rituals of ancient tribes
link |
are not very far off from that.
link |
And in my view, the sequential formation of these movements
link |
is a prelude to the cognitive capabilities
link |
that ultimately enable language.
link |
It is fascinating to think that that's
link |
not just an accidental precursor to intelligence.
link |
Yeah, sexually selected.
link |
Well, it's sexually selected and it's a prerequisite.
link |
It's like, it's required for intelligence.
link |
And even as language has now developed,
link |
I think the artistic expression is needed,
link |
like badly needed by our brain.
link |
So it's not just that, oh, our brain can kind of,
link |
you know, take a break and go do that stuff.
link |
No, I mean, you know, I don't know if you remember
link |
that scene from, oh gosh,
link |
where's that Jack Nicholson movie in New Hampshire.
link |
All work and no play, make Jack a dull boy.
link |
So there's this amazing scene where he's constantly
link |
trying to concentrate and what's coming out
link |
of the typewriter is just gibberish.
link |
And I have that image as well when I'm working.
link |
And I'm like, no, basically all of these crazy,
link |
you know, huge number of hobbies that I have,
link |
they're not just tolerated by my work.
link |
They're required by my work.
link |
This ability of sort of stretching your brain
link |
in all these different directions
link |
is connecting your emotional self and your cognitive self.
link |
And that's a prerequisite to being able
link |
to be cognitively capable.
link |
At least in my view.
link |
Yeah, I wonder if the world without art and music,
link |
you're just making me realize that perhaps
link |
that world would be not just devoid of fun things
link |
to look at or listen to, but devoid of all the other stuff.
link |
All the bridges and rockets and science.
link |
Creativity is not disconnected from art.
link |
And you know, my kids, I mean, you know,
link |
I could be doing the full math treatment to them.
link |
No, they play the piano and they play the violin
link |
and they play sports.
link |
I mean, this whole, you know, sort of movement
link |
and going through mazes and playing tennis
link |
and, you know, playing soccer and avoiding obstacles
link |
that forms your three dimensional view of the world.
link |
Being able to actually move and run and play
link |
in three dimensions is extremely important for math,
link |
for, you know, stringing together complicated concepts.
link |
It's the same underlying cognitive machinery
link |
that is used for navigating mazes and for navigating theorems
link |
and sort of solving equations.
link |
So I can't, you know, I can't have a conversation
link |
with my students without, you know,
link |
sort of either using my hands
link |
or opening the whiteboard in Zoom
link |
and just constantly drawing.
link |
Or, you know, back when we had in person meetings,
link |
just the whiteboard on my own.
link |
The whiteboard, yeah, that's fascinating to think about.
link |
So that's Michael Jackson, man,
link |
Mirror, Careless Whisper with George Michael,
link |
which is a song I like.
link |
You can say Careless Whisper.
link |
I mean, I didn't say that.
link |
That's too popular for you.
link |
I had recorded, no, no, no,
link |
that it's an amazing song for me.
link |
I had recorded a small part of it
link |
as it's played at the tail end of the radio.
link |
And I had a tape where I only had part of that song
link |
and I just played it over and over and over again,
link |
just so beautiful.
link |
It's so heartbreaking.
link |
That song is almost Greek.
link |
It's so heartbreaking.
link |
I know, and George Michael is Greek.
link |
He's Greek, of course.
link |
George Michaelides, I mean, he's Greek.
link |
I did not know this.
link |
I'm so sorry to offend you so deeply not knowing this.
link |
So, okay, so what's...
link |
So anyway, so we're moving to France
link |
when I'm 12 years old.
link |
And now I'm getting into the songs of Gainsbourg.
link |
So Gainsbourg is this incredible French composer.
link |
He is always seen on stage,
link |
like not even pretending to try to please,
link |
just like with his cigarette,
link |
just like rrrr mumbling his songs.
link |
But the lyrics are unbelievable.
link |
Like basically entire sentences will rhyme.
link |
He will say the same thing twice and you're like, whoa.
link |
And in fact, another, speaking of Greek,
link |
a French Greek, George Mustaky,
link |
this song is just magnificent.
link |
Avec ma gueule de métèque, de juif errant, de patre grecque.
link |
So with my face of métèque is actually a Greek word.
link |
A Greek word, it's a French word for a Greek word.
link |
But met comes from meta,
link |
and then ec from Ikea, from ecology, which means home.
link |
So métèque is someone who has changed homes for a migrant.
link |
So with my face of a migrant, and you'll love this one.
link |
De juif errant, de patre grecque,
link |
of a meandering Jew, of Greek pastor.
link |
So again, the Russian Greek,
link |
the Jewish Orthodox connection, so.
link |
Aime mes cheveux au quatre vents,
link |
with my hair in the four wings.
link |
Avec mes yeux tous délavés qui me donnent léreux de rêver.
link |
Avec, with my eyes that are all washed out,
link |
who give me the pretense of dreaming,
link |
but who don't dream that much anymore.
link |
With my hands of thief, of musician,
link |
and who have stolen so many gardens.
link |
With my mouth that has drunk,
link |
that has kissed, and that has bitten,
link |
without ever pleasing its hunger.
link |
With my skin that has been rubbed
link |
in the sun of all the summers,
link |
and anything that was wearing a skirt.
link |
With my heart, and then you have to listen to this verse,
link |
it's so beautiful.
link |
Avec mon coeur qui a su faire souffrir autant qu il a souffert.
link |
With my heart that knew how to make suffer
link |
as much as it suffered,
link |
but was able to, that knew how to make,
link |
in French it's actually su faire,
link |
that knew how to make.
link |
Qui a su faire souffrir autant qu il a souffert.
link |
Verses that span the whole thing.
link |
It's just beautiful.
link |
Do you know, on a small tangent,
link |
do you know Jacques Brel?
link |
Of course, of course.
link |
And then Ne Me Kite Pas, those songs.
link |
That song gets me every time.
link |
So there's a cover of that song
link |
by one of my favorite female artists.
link |
No, no, no, no, no.
link |
She's from Amsterdam.
link |
And she has a version of Ne Me Kite Pas
link |
where she's actually added some English lyrics.
link |
And it's really beautiful.
link |
But again, Ne Me Kite Pas is just so,
link |
I mean it's, you know, the promises,
link |
the volcanoes that will restart.
link |
It's just so beautiful.
link |
I love, there's not many songs
link |
that show such depth of desperation
link |
for another human being.
link |
That's so powerful.
link |
Je t offrirai des perles de pluie
link |
venant de pays où il ne pleut pas.
link |
And then high school.
link |
Now I'm starting to learn English.
link |
So I moved to New York.
link |
So Sting's Englishman in New York.
link |
And again, there's if manners maggoth manners someone said
link |
then he's the hero of the day.
link |
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile.
link |
Be yourself no matter what they say.
link |
And then takes more than combat gear to make a man.
link |
Takes more than a license for a gun.
link |
Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can.
link |
A gentleman will walk but never run.
link |
It's again, you're talking about songs
link |
that teach you how to live.
link |
I mean, this is one of them.
link |
Basically says, it's not the combat gear that makes a man.
link |
Where's the part where he says, there you go.
link |
Gentleness so brighty are rare in this society.
link |
At night a candle's brighter than the sun.
link |
He basically says, well, you just might be the only one.
link |
Modesty propriety can lead to notoriety.
link |
You could end up as the only one.
link |
It's, it basically tells you,
link |
you don't have to be like the others.
link |
Be yourself, show kindness, show generosity.
link |
Don't, you know, don't let that anger get to you.
link |
You know, the song Fragile.
link |
How fragile we are, how fragile we are.
link |
So again, as in Greece, I didn't even know what that meant.
link |
How fragile we are, but the song was so beautiful.
link |
And then eventually I learned English
link |
and I actually understand the lyrics.
link |
And the song is actually written after the Contras
link |
murdered Ben Linder in 1987.
link |
And the US eventually turned against supporting
link |
And it was just a political song,
link |
but so such a realization that you can't win
link |
with violence basically.
link |
And that song starts with the most beautiful poetry.
link |
So if blood will flow when flesh and steel are one,
link |
drying in the color of the evening sun,
link |
tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away,
link |
but something in our minds will always stain.
link |
Perhaps this final act was meant
link |
to clinch a lifetime's argument
link |
that nothing comes through violence
link |
and nothing ever could.
link |
For all those born beneath an angry star,
link |
lest we forget how fragile we are.
link |
I mean, that's poetry.
link |
And he's using the English language
link |
is just such a refined way with deep meanings,
link |
but also words that rhyme just so beautifully
link |
and evocations of when flesh and steel are one.
link |
I mean, it's just mind boggling.
link |
And then of course the refrain that everybody remembers
link |
is on and on the rain will fall, et cetera.
link |
But like this beginning.
link |
Tears from a star, wow.
link |
And again, tears from a star, how fragile we are.
link |
I mean, just these rhymes are just flowing so naturally.
link |
Something, it seems that more meaning comes
link |
when there's a rhythm that, I don't know what that is.
link |
That probably connects to exactly what you were saying.
link |
And if you pay close attention,
link |
you will notice that the more obvious words
link |
sometimes are the second verse
link |
and the less obvious are often the first verse
link |
because it makes the second verse flow much more naturally
link |
because otherwise it feels contrived.
link |
Oh, you went and found this like unusual word.
link |
In Dark Moments, the whole album of Pink Floyd
link |
and the movie just marked me enormously
link |
as a teenager, just the wall.
link |
And there's one song that never actually made it
link |
into the album that's only there in the movie
link |
about when the tigers broke free
link |
and the tigers are the tanks of the Germans.
link |
And it just describes, again, this vivid imagery.
link |
It was just before dawn, one miserable morning in Black 44
link |
when the forward commander was told to sit tight
link |
when he asked that his men be withdrawn.
link |
And the generals gave thanks
link |
as the other ranks held back the enemy tanks for a while.
link |
And the Anzio bridgehead was held
link |
for the price of a few hundred ordinary lives.
link |
So that's a theme that keeps coming back in Pink Floyd
link |
with Us Versus Them.
link |
Us and them, God only knows
link |
that's not what we would choose to do.
link |
For work he cried from the rear
link |
and the front rows died from another song.
link |
It's like this whole concept of Us Versus Them.
link |
And there's that theme of Us Versus Them again
link |
where the child is discovering how his father died
link |
when he finds an old and a found it one day
link |
in a drawer of old photographs hidden away.
link |
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
link |
his majesty's sign with his own rubber stamp.
link |
So it's so ironic because it seems the way
link |
that he's writing it that he's not crying
link |
because his father was lost.
link |
He's crying because kind old King George
link |
took the time to actually write mother a note
link |
about the fact that his father died.
link |
It's so ironic because it basically says
link |
we are just ordinary men and of course we're disposable.
link |
So I don't know if you know the root of the word pioneers
link |
but you had a chess board here earlier, a pawn.
link |
In French, it's a pigeon.
link |
They are the ones that you send to the front
link |
to get murdered, slaughtered.
link |
This whole concept of pioneers
link |
having taken this whole disposable ordinary men
link |
to actually be the ones that we're now treating as heroes.
link |
So anyway, there's this juxtaposition of that.
link |
And then the part that always just strikes me
link |
is the music and the tonality totally changes.
link |
And now he describes the attack.
link |
It was dark all around.
link |
There was frost in the ground.
link |
When the tigers broke free
link |
and no one survived from the Royal Fusiliers company.
link |
They were all left behind.
link |
Most of them dead.
link |
The rest of them dying.
link |
And that's how the high command took my daddy from me.
link |
And that song, even though it's not in the album,
link |
explains the whole movie.
link |
Cause it's this movie of misery.
link |
It's this movie of someone being stuck in their head
link |
and not being able to get out of it.
link |
There's no other movie that I think has captured so well
link |
this prison that is someone's own mind.
link |
And this wall that you're stuck inside
link |
and this feeling of loneliness.
link |
And sort of, is there anybody out there?
link |
And you know, sort of, hello, hello.
link |
Is there anybody in there?
link |
Just nod if you can hear me.
link |
Is there anyone home?
link |
I hear you're feeling down.
link |
Just one minute, I hear you nodding in again.
link |
Yeah, the prison of your mind.
link |
So those are the darker moments.
link |
Exactly, these are the darker moments.
link |
Yeah, in the darker moments, the mind does feel
link |
like you're trapped alone in a room with it.
link |
Yeah, and there's this scene in the movie
link |
which like, where he just breaks out with his guitar
link |
and there's this prostitute in the room.
link |
She starts throwing stuff and then he like, you know
link |
breaks the window, he throws the chair outside.
link |
And then you see him laying in the pool
link |
with his own blood, like, you know, everywhere.
link |
And then there's these endless hours spent
link |
fixing every little thing and lining it up.
link |
And it's this whole sort of mania versus, you know
link |
you can spend hours building up something
link |
and just destroy it in a few seconds.
link |
One of my turns is that song.
link |
And it's like, I feel cold as a tourniquet
link |
Dry as a funeral drum.
link |
And then the music also is like, run to the bedroom.
link |
There's a suitcase on the left.
link |
There you find my favorite acts.
link |
Don't look so frightened.
link |
This is just a passing phase.
link |
One of my bad days.
link |
It's just so beautiful.
link |
I need to rewatch it.
link |
That's so, you're making me realize.
link |
But imagine watching this as a teenager.
link |
It like ruins your mind.
link |
It's like so many, it's such harsh imagery.
link |
And then, you know, anyway, so there's the dark moment.
link |
And then again, going back to Sting
link |
now it's the political songs, Russians.
link |
And I think that song should be a new national anthem
link |
for the US, not for Russians, but for red versus blue.
link |
Mr. Khrushchev says we will bury you.
link |
I don't subscribe to this point of view.
link |
It'd be such an ignorant thing to do
link |
if the Russians love their children too.
link |
It's basically saying the Russians
link |
are just as humans as we are.
link |
There's no way that they're gonna let their children die.
link |
And then it's just so beautiful.
link |
How can I save my innocent boy
link |
from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?
link |
And now that's the new national anthem, are you reading?
link |
There is no monopoly of common sense
link |
on either side of the political fence.
link |
We share the same biology
link |
regardless of ideology.
link |
Believe me when I say to you,
link |
I hope the Russians love their children too.
link |
There's no such thing as a winnable war.
link |
It's a lie we don't believe anymore.
link |
I mean, it's beautiful, right?
link |
And for God's sake, America, wake up.
link |
These are your fellow Americans.
link |
They're your fellow biology.
link |
There is no monopoly of common sense
link |
on either side of the political fence.
link |
It's just so beautiful.
link |
There's no crisper, simpler way to say
link |
Russians love their children too, the common humanity.
link |
And remember what I was telling you,
link |
I think in one of our first podcasts
link |
about the daughter who's crying for her brother
link |
to come back for more.
link |
And then the Virgin Mary appears and says,
link |
who should I take instead?
link |
This Turk, here's his family, here's his children.
link |
This other one, he just got married, et cetera.
link |
And that basically says, no.
link |
I mean, if you look at the Lord of the Rings,
link |
the enemies are these monsters, they're not human.
link |
And that's what we always do.
link |
We always say, they're not like us, they're different.
link |
They're not humans, et cetera.
link |
So there's this dehumanization that has to happen
link |
for people to go to war.
link |
If you realize just how close we are genetically,
link |
one with the other, this whole 99.9% identical,
link |
you can't bear weapons against someone who's like that.
link |
And the things that are the most meaningful to us
link |
in our lives at every level is the same on all sides,
link |
So it's not just that we're genetically the same.
link |
Yeah, we're ideologically the same.
link |
We love our children, we love our country.
link |
We will fight for our family.
link |
So, and the last one I mentioned last time we spoke,
link |
which is Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now.
link |
So she has three rounds, one on clouds, one on love,
link |
And on clouds she says,
link |
Rows and flows of angel hair
link |
And ice cream castles in the air
link |
And feather canyons everywhere
link |
I've looked at clouds that way
link |
But now they only block the sun
link |
They rain and snow on everyone
link |
So many things I would have done
link |
But clouds got in my way
link |
And then I've looked at clouds from both sides now
link |
And still somehow it's
link |
Clouds illusions I recall
link |
I really don't know clouds at all
link |
And then she goes on about love,
link |
how it's super, super happy,
link |
or it's about misery and loss and about life,
link |
how it's about winning and losing and so on and so forth.
link |
But now old friends are acting strange
link |
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
link |
Well, something's lost and something's gained
link |
In living every day
link |
So again, that's growing up and realizing that,
link |
well, the view that you had as a kid
link |
is not necessarily that you have as an adult.
link |
Remember my poem from when I was 16 years old
link |
of this whole, you know,
link |
children dance now all in row and then in the end,
link |
even though the snow seems bright,
link |
without you have lost their light,
link |
sun that sang and moon that smiled.
link |
So this whole concept of, if you have love
link |
and if you have passion,
link |
you see the exact same thing from a different way.
link |
You can go out running in the rain
link |
or you could just stay in and say,
link |
ah, sucks, I won't be able to go outside now.
link |
Anyway, and the last one is,
link |
last, last one I promise, Leonard Cohen.
link |
This is amazing by the way.
link |
I'm so glad we stumbled on how much joy you have
link |
in so many avenues of life and music is just one of them.
link |
But yes, Leonard Cohen.
link |
Going back to Leonard Cohen,
link |
since that's where you started.
link |
So Leonard Cohen's Dance Me to the End of Love.
link |
That was our opening song in our wedding with my wife.
link |
Oh no, that's good.
link |
As we came out to greet the guests,
link |
it was Dance Me to the End of Love.
link |
And then another one, which is just so passionate always
link |
and we always keep referring back to it is I'm Your Man.
link |
And it goes on and on about sort of,
link |
I can be every type of lover for you.
link |
And what's really beautiful in marriage
link |
is that we live that with my wife every day.
link |
You can have the passion, you can have the anger,
link |
you can have the love, you can have the tenderness.
link |
There's just so many gems in that song.
link |
If you want a partner, take my hand.
link |
Or if you want to strike me down in anger,
link |
here I stand, I'm your man.
link |
Then if you want a boxer, I will step into the ring for you.
link |
If you want a driver, climb inside.
link |
Or if you want to take me for a ride, you know you can.
link |
So this whole concept of you want to drive, I'll follow.
link |
You want me to drive, I'll drive.
link |
And the difference I would say between like that
link |
and Nemaki Tapa is this song, he's got an attitude.
link |
He's like, he's proud of his ability
link |
to basically be any kind of man for as long as opposed
link |
to the Jacques Brel like desperation of what do I have to be
link |
for you to love me, that kind of desperation.
link |
But notice there's a parallel here.
link |
There's a verse that is perhaps not paid attention
link |
to as much which says, ah, but a man never got a woman back,
link |
not by begging on his knees.
link |
So it seems that the I'm your man
link |
is actually an apology song in the same way
link |
that Nemaki Tapa is an apology song.
link |
Nemaki Tapa basically says I've screwed up.
link |
And in the same way that the Careless Whisper
link |
is I'm screwed up.
link |
Yes, that's right.
link |
I'm never gonna dance again.
link |
Guilty feet have got no rhythm.
link |
So this is an apology song, not by begging on his knees
link |
or I'd crawl to you, baby, and I'd fall at your feet
link |
and I'd howl at your beauty like a dog in heat
link |
and I'd claw at your heart and I'd tear at your sheet.
link |
And then the last one is so beautiful.
link |
If you want a father for your child
link |
or only want to walk with me a while across the sand,
link |
That's the last verses which basically says
link |
you want me for a day?
link |
Do you want me to just walk?
link |
You want me for life?
link |
Do you want a father for your child?
link |
I'll be there too.
link |
It's just so beautiful.
link |
Remember how I told you I was gonna finish
link |
with a lighthearted song?
link |
So Alison Krauss and Union Station,
link |
country song, believe it or not, the lucky one.
link |
So I've never identified as much
link |
with the lyrics of a song as this one.
link |
And it's hilarious.
link |
My friend, Serafim Batoglou,
link |
is the guy who got me to genomics in the first place.
link |
I owe enormously to him.
link |
And he's another Greek.
link |
We actually met dancing, believe it or not.
link |
So we used to perform Greek dances.
link |
I was the president of the International Students Association.
link |
So we put on these big performances
link |
for 500 people at MIT.
link |
And there's a picture on the MIT Tech
link |
where Serafim, who's like a bodybuilder,
link |
was holding me on his shoulder.
link |
And I was like doing maneuvers in the air, basically.
link |
So anyway, this guy, Serafim,
link |
we were driving back from a conference.
link |
And there's this Russian girl
link |
who was describing how every member of her family
link |
had been either killed by the communists
link |
or killed by the Germans or killed by the,
link |
like, she had just like, you know, misery,
link |
like death and, you know, sickness and everything.
link |
Everyone was decimated in her family.
link |
She was the last standing member.
link |
And we stopped at a, Serafim was driving
link |
and we stopped at a rest area.
link |
And he takes me aside and he's like,
link |
Manolis, we're gonna crash.
link |
Get her out of my car.
link |
And then he basically says,
link |
but I'm only reassured because you're here with me.
link |
And I'm like, what do you mean?
link |
He's like, you know, he's like, from your smile,
link |
I know you're the luckiest man on the planet.
link |
So there's this really funny thing
link |
where I just feel freaking lucky all the time.
link |
And it's a question of attitude.
link |
Of course, I'm not any luckier than any other person,
link |
but every time something horrible happens to me,
link |
I'm like, and in fact, even in that song,
link |
the song about sort of, you know,
link |
walking on the beach and this, you know,
link |
sort of taking our life the wrong way
link |
and then, you know, having to turn around.
link |
At some point he's like, you know,
link |
in the fresh sand, we wrote her name.
link |
So how nicely that the wind blew and the writing was erased.
link |
So again, it's this whole sort of,
link |
not just saying, oh, bummer, but, oh, great.
link |
This must mean something, right?
link |
This horrible thing happened,
link |
it must open the door to a beautiful chapter.
link |
So, so Allison Krauss is talking about the lucky one.
link |
So I was like, oh my God, she wrote a song for me.
link |
And she goes, you're the lucky one, I know that now,
link |
as free as the wind blowing down the road,
link |
loved by many, hated by none, I'd say,
link |
you were lucky because you know what you've done,
link |
not the care in the world, not the worry inside.
link |
Everything's going to be all right
link |
because you're the lucky one.
link |
And then she goes, you're the lucky one,
link |
always having fun, a jack of all trades,
link |
You look at the world with the smiling eyes
link |
and laugh at the devil as his train rolls by.
link |
I'll give you a song and a one night stand.
link |
You'll be looking at a happy man
link |
because you're the lucky one.
link |
It basically says, if you just don't worry too much,
link |
if you don't try to be a one trick pony,
link |
if you just embrace the fact
link |
that you might suck at a bunch of things,
link |
but you're just gonna try a lot of things.
link |
And then there's another verse that says,
link |
well, you're blessed I guess,
link |
but never knowing which road you're choosing,
link |
to you the next best thing
link |
to playing and winning is playing and losing.
link |
It's just so beautiful
link |
because he basically says,
link |
if you try your best,
link |
but it's still playing,
link |
if you lose, it's okay.
link |
You had an awesome game.
link |
And again, superficially,
link |
it sounds like a super happy song.
link |
But then there's the last verse basically says,
link |
no matter where you are, that's where you'll be.
link |
You can bet your luck won't follow me.
link |
Just give you a song and then one night stand,
link |
you'll be looking at a happy man.
link |
And then in the video of the song,
link |
she just walks away or he just walks away
link |
or something like that.
link |
And it basically tells you
link |
that freedom comes at a price.
link |
Freedom comes at the price of non commitment.
link |
This whole sort of birds who love
link |
you can't really love unless you cry.
link |
You can't just be the lucky one,
link |
the happy boy, la la la,
link |
and yet have a long term relationship.
link |
So it's, on one hand,
link |
I identify with the shallowness of this song,
link |
of you know, you're the lucky one,
link |
jack of all trades, a master or none.
link |
But at the same time,
link |
I identify with a lesson of,
link |
well, you can't just be the happy,
link |
merry, go lucky all the time.
link |
Sometimes you have to embrace loss
link |
and sometimes you have to embrace suffering.
link |
And sometimes you have to embrace that.
link |
If you have a safety net,
link |
you're not really committing enough.
link |
You're not, you know,
link |
basically you're allowing yourself to slip.
link |
But if you just go all in
link |
and you just, you know,
link |
let go of your reservations,
link |
that's when you truly will get somewhere.
link |
So anyway, that's like the,
link |
I managed to narrow it down to what, 15 songs?
link |
Thank you for that wonderful journey
link |
that you just took us on,
link |
the darkest possible places of Greek song
link |
to ending on this country song.
link |
I haven't heard it before,
link |
but that's exactly right.
link |
I feel the same way,
link |
depending on the day,
link |
is this the luckiest human on earth.
link |
And there's something to that,
link |
but you're right, it needs to be,
link |
we need to now return to the muck of life
link |
in order to be able to truly enjoy it.
link |
What do you mean muck?
link |
The messiness of life.
link |
The things that were,
link |
things don't turn out the way you expect it to.
link |
So like, to feel like you're in the right place,
link |
is like focusing on the beautiful consequences.
link |
But then that feeling of things being different
link |
than you expected,
link |
that you stumble in all the kinds of ways,
link |
needs to be paired with the feeling of luck.
link |
There's basically one way,
link |
the only way not to make mistakes,
link |
is to never do anything.
link |
Basically, you have to embrace the fact
link |
that you'll be wrong so many times.
link |
In so many research meetings,
link |
I just go off on a tangent and say,
link |
let's think about this for a second.
link |
And it's just crazy for me,
link |
who's a computer scientist,
link |
to just tell my biologist friends,
link |
what if biology kind of worked this way?
link |
And they humor me.
link |
They just let me talk.
link |
And rarely has it not gone somewhere good.
link |
It's not that I'm always right,
link |
but it's always something worth exploring further,
link |
that if you're an outsider with humility
link |
and knowing that I'll be wrong a bunch of times,
link |
but I'll challenge your assumptions,
link |
and often take us to a better place,
link |
is part of this whole sort of messiness of life.
link |
Like if you don't try and lose and get hurt
link |
and suffer and cry and just break your heart
link |
and all these feelings of guilt and,
link |
wow, I did the wrong thing.
link |
Of course, that's part of life.
link |
And that's just something that,
link |
if you are a doer, you'll make mistakes.
link |
If you're a criticizer, yeah, sure,
link |
you can sit back and criticize everybody else
link |
for the mistakes they make.
link |
Or instead, you can just be out there making those mistakes.
link |
And frankly, I'd rather be the criticized one
link |
than the criticizer.
link |
Yeah, brilliantly put.
link |
Every time somebody steals my bicycle,
link |
I say, well, no, my son's like,
link |
why do they steal our bicycle, dad?
link |
And I'm like, aren't you happy that you have bicycles
link |
that people can steal?
link |
Aren't you happy that you have bicycles that people can steal?
link |
I'd rather be the person stolen from than the stealer.
link |
Yeah, it's not the critic that counts.
link |
So that's, we've just talked amazingly
link |
about life from the music perspective.
link |
Let's talk about life from, human life,
link |
from perhaps other perspective and its meaning.
link |
So this is episode 142.
link |
There is perhaps an absurdly deep meaning
link |
to the number 42 that our culture has elevated.
link |
So this is a perfect time to talk about the meaning of life.
link |
We've talked about it already,
link |
but do you think this question that's so simple
link |
and so seemingly absurd has value
link |
of what is the meaning of life?
link |
Is it something that raising the question
link |
and trying to answer it, is that a ridiculous pursuit
link |
or is there some value?
link |
Is it answerable at all?
link |
So first of all, I feel that we owe it to your listeners
link |
So of course the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
link |
came up with 42 as basically a random number.
link |
Just, you know, the author just pulled it out of a hat
link |
and he's admitted so.
link |
He said, well, 42 just seemed like just random numbers any.
link |
But in fact, there's many numbers that are linked to 42.
link |
So 42, again, just to summarize,
link |
is the answer that these super mega computer
link |
that had computed for a million years
link |
with the most powerful computer in the world
link |
At some point, the computer says,
link |
And they're like, what?
link |
It's like, you're not gonna like it.
link |
And then the irony is that they had forgotten, of course,
link |
what the question was.
link |
So now they have to build a bigger computer
link |
to figure out what the question is,
link |
to which the answer is 42.
link |
So as I was turning 42,
link |
I basically sort of researched
link |
why 42 is such a cool number.
link |
And it turns out that,
link |
and I put together this little passage
link |
that was explaining to all those guests
link |
to my 42nd birthday party
link |
why we were talking about the meaning of life.
link |
And basically talked about how 42
link |
is the angle at which light reflects off of water
link |
to create a rainbow.
link |
And it's so beautiful because the rainbow
link |
is basically the combination of sort of,
link |
it's been raining, but there's hope
link |
because the sun just came out.
link |
So it's a very beautiful number there.
link |
So 42 is also the sum of all rows and columns
link |
of a magic cube that contains all consecutive integers
link |
So basically, if you take all integers
link |
between one and however many vertices there are,
link |
the sums is always 42.
link |
42 is the only number left under 100
link |
for which the equation of X to the cube
link |
plus Y to the cube plus Z to the cube is N
link |
and was not known to not have a solution.
link |
And now it's the only one that actually has a solution.
link |
42 is also one, zero, one, zero, one, zero in binary.
link |
Again, the yin and the yang,
link |
the good and the evil,
link |
one and zero, the balance of the force.
link |
42 is the number of chromosomes for the giant panda.
link |
And the giant panda, I know it's totally random.
link |
It's a suspicious symbol of great strength
link |
coupled with peace, friendship, gentle temperament,
link |
harmony, balance, and friendship
link |
whose black and white colors again symbolize yin and yang.
link |
The reason why it's the symbol for China
link |
is exactly the strength, but yet peace and so on and so forth.
link |
So 42 chromosomes.
link |
It takes light 10 to the minus 42 seconds
link |
to cross the diameter of a proton
link |
connecting the two fundamental dimensions
link |
of space and time.
link |
42 is the number of times a piece of paper
link |
should be folded to reach beyond the moon,
link |
which is what I assume my students mean
link |
when they ask that their paper reaches for the stars.
link |
I just tell them just fold it a bunch of times.
link |
42 is the number of messier object, 42, which is Orion.
link |
And that's one of the most famous galaxies.
link |
It's I think also the place where we can actually see
link |
the center of our galaxy.
link |
42 is the numeric representation of the star symbol
link |
in ASCII, which is very useful
link |
when searching for the stars.
link |
And also a reg exp for life, the universe and everything.
link |
So star, in Egyptian mythology, the goddess Maat
link |
which was personifying truth and justice
link |
would ask 42 questions to every dying person.
link |
And those answering successfully would become stars
link |
continued to give life and fuel universal growth.
link |
In Judaic tradition, God ascribe the 42 lettered name
link |
and trusted only to the middle age pious meek
link |
free from bad temper, sober and not insistent on his rights.
link |
And in Christian tradition, there's 42 generations
link |
from Abraham, Isaac, that we talked about,
link |
the story of Isaac, Jacob, eventually Joseph, Mary and Jesus.
link |
In Kabbalistic tradition, Elocha, which is 42
link |
is the number with which God creates the universe
link |
starting with 25, let there be and ending with 70, good.
link |
So 25 plus, you know, 17, there's a 42 chapter sutra,
link |
which is the first Indian religious tradition
link |
which is the first Indian religious scripture
link |
which was translated to Chinese,
link |
thus introducing Buddhism to China from India.
link |
The 42 line Bible was the first printed book
link |
marking the age of printing in the 1450s
link |
and the dissemination of knowledge
link |
eventually leading to the enlightenment.
link |
A yeast cell, which is called a single cell eukaryote
link |
and the subject of my PhD research
link |
has exactly 42 million proteins.
link |
Anyway, so there's a series of 42.
link |
You're on fire with this, these are really good.
link |
So I guess what you're saying is just a random number.
link |
So all of these are backronyms.
link |
So, you know, after you have the number,
link |
you figure out why that number.
link |
So anyway, so now that we've spoken about Y42,
link |
why do we search for meaning?
link |
And you're asking, you know, will that search
link |
ultimately lead to our destruction?
link |
And my thinking is exactly the opposite.
link |
So basically that asking about meaning
link |
is something that's so inherent to human nature.
link |
It's something that makes life beautiful
link |
that makes it worth living.
link |
And that searching for meaning is actually the point.
link |
It's not the finding it.
link |
I think when you found it, you're dead.
link |
Don't ever be satisfied that, you know, I've got it.
link |
So I like to say that life is lived forward
link |
but it only makes sense backward.
link |
And I don't remember whose quote that is,
link |
but the whole search itself is the meaning.
link |
And what I love about it is that
link |
there's a double search going on.
link |
There's a search in every one of us
link |
through our own lives to find meaning.
link |
And then there's a search which is happening
link |
for humanity itself to find our meaning.
link |
And we as humans like to look at animals and say,
link |
of course they have a meaning.
link |
Like a dog has its meaning.
link |
It's just a bunch of instincts, you know,
link |
running around, loving everything.
link |
You know, remember our joke with a cat and the dog.
link |
Yeah, cat has no meaning.
link |
So, and I'm noticing the yin yang symbol right here
link |
with this whole panda, black and white and the 0102.
link |
You're on fire with that 42.
link |
Some of those are gold ASCII value for a star symbol.
link |
So basically in my view, the search for meaning
link |
and the act of searching for something more meaningful
link |
is life's meaning by itself.
link |
The fact that we kind of always hope that,
link |
yes, maybe for animals that's not the case,
link |
but maybe humans have something that we should be doing
link |
and something else.
link |
And it's not just about procreation.
link |
It's not just about dominance.
link |
It's not just about strength and feeding, et cetera.
link |
Like we're the one species that spends such a tiny,
link |
little minority of its time feeding
link |
that we have this enormous, huge cognitive capability
link |
that we can just use for all kinds of other stuff.
link |
And that's where art comes in.
link |
That's where the healthy mind comes in
link |
with exploring all of these different aspects
link |
that are just not directly tied to a purpose.
link |
That's not directly tied to a function.
link |
It's really just the playing of life.
link |
The, you know, not for particular reason.
link |
Do you think this thing we got,
link |
this mind is unique in the universe
link |
in terms of how difficult it is to build?
link |
Is it possible that we're the most beautiful thing
link |
that the universe has constructed?
link |
Both the most beautiful and the most ugly,
link |
but certainly the most complex.
link |
So look at evolutionary time.
link |
The dinosaurs ruled the earth for 135 million years.
link |
We've been around for a million years.
link |
So one versus 135.
link |
So dinosaurs were extinct, you know,
link |
about 60 million years ago
link |
and mammals that had been happily evolving
link |
as tiny little creatures for 30 million years
link |
then took over the planet and then, you know,
link |
dramatically radiated about 60 million years ago.
link |
Out of these mammals came the neocortex formation.
link |
So basically the neocortex,
link |
which is sort of the outer layer of our brain
link |
compared to our quote unquote reptilian brain,
link |
which we share the structure of with all of the dinosaurs.
link |
They didn't have that and yet they ruled the planet.
link |
So how many other planets have still, you know,
link |
mindless dinosaurs where strength
link |
was the only dimension ruling the planet?
link |
So there was something weird that annihilated the dinosaurs.
link |
And again, you could look at biblical things
link |
of sort of God coming and wiping out his creatures
link |
to make room for the next ones.
link |
So the mammals basically sort of took over the planet
link |
and then grew this cognitive capability
link |
of this general purpose machine.
link |
And primates push that to extreme
link |
and humans among primates have just exploded that hardware.
link |
But that hardware is selected for survival.
link |
It's selected for procreation.
link |
It's initially selected with his very simple
link |
Darwinian view of the world of random mutation,
link |
ruthless selection, and then selection
link |
for making more of yourself.
link |
If you look at human cognition,
link |
it's gone down a weird evolutionary path
link |
in the sense that we are expanding
link |
an enormous amount of energy on this apparatus
link |
between our ears that is wasting, what,
link |
15% of our bodily energy, 20%,
link |
like some enormous percentage of our calories
link |
go to function our brain.
link |
No other species makes that big of a commitment.
link |
That has basically taken energetic changes
link |
for efficiency on the metabolic side for humanity
link |
to basically power that thing.
link |
And our brain is both enormously more efficient
link |
than other brains, but also, despite this efficiency,
link |
enormously more energy consuming.
link |
So, and if you look at just the sheer folds
link |
that the human brain has, again, our skull could only
link |
grow so much before it could no longer go
link |
through the pelvic opening and kill the mother
link |
at every birth, so, but yet the folds continued
link |
effectively creating just so much more capacity.
link |
The evolutionary context in which this was made
link |
is enormously fascinating, and it has to do with
link |
other humans that we have now killed off
link |
or that have gone extinct.
link |
And that has now created this weird place of humans
link |
on the planet as the only species
link |
that has this enormous hardware.
link |
So that can basically make us think
link |
that there's something very weird and unique
link |
that happened in human evolution that perhaps
link |
has not been recreated elsewhere. Maybe the asteroid
link |
didn't hit, you know, sister earth,
link |
and dinosaurs are still ruling, and, you know,
link |
any kind of proto human is squished
link |
and eaten for breakfast basically.
link |
However, we're not as unique as we like to think
link |
because there was this enormous diversity
link |
of other human like forms.
link |
And once you make it to that stage where you have
link |
a neocortex like explosion of, wow, we're not
link |
competing on intelligence, and we're not competing
link |
on social structures, and we're not competing
link |
on larger and larger groups, and being able to
link |
coordinate and being able to have empathy,
link |
the concept of empathy, the concept of an ego,
link |
the concept of a self, of self awareness,
link |
comes probably from being able to project
link |
another person's intentions,
link |
another person's intentions to understand
link |
what they mean when you have these large cognitive groups,
link |
large social groups.
link |
So me being able to sort of create a mental model
link |
of how you think may have come before I was able
link |
to create a personal mental model of how do I think.
link |
So this introspection probably came after this sort
link |
of projection and this empathy, which basically means,
link |
you know, passion, pathos, suffering,
link |
but basically sensing.
link |
So basically empathy means feeling what you're feeling,
link |
trying to project your emotional state
link |
onto my cognitive apparatus.
link |
And I think that is what eventually led
link |
to this enormous cognitive explosion
link |
that happened in humanity.
link |
So, you know, life itself in my view is inevitable
link |
Inevitable. Inevitable.
link |
But the evolution of life to self awareness and cognition
link |
and all the incredible things that humans have done,
link |
you know, that might not be as inevitable.
link |
That's your intuition.
link |
So if you were to sort of estimate and bet some money on it,
link |
if we reran Earth a million times,
link |
would what we got now be the most special thing
link |
and how often would it be?
link |
So scientifically speaking, how repeatable is this experiment?
link |
So this whole cognitive revolution?
link |
Basically, I feel that the longevity of, you know,
link |
dinosaurs suggests that it was not quite inevitable
link |
that we humans eventually made it.
link |
What you're also implying one thing here.
link |
You're saying, you're implying that humans
link |
also don't have this longevity.
link |
This is the interesting question.
link |
So with the Fermi Paradox, the idea that the basic question
link |
is like, if the universe has a lot of alien life forms in it,
link |
why haven't we seen them?
link |
And one thought is that there's a great filter
link |
or multiple great filters that basically would destroy
link |
intelligent civilizations.
link |
Like this thing that we, you know, this multifolding brain
link |
that keeps growing may not be such a big feature.
link |
It might be useful for survival,
link |
but it like takes us down a side road
link |
that is a very short one with a quick dead end.
link |
What do you think about that?
link |
So I think the universe is enormous,
link |
not just in space, but also in time.
link |
And the pretense that, you know, the last blink
link |
of an instant that we've been able to send radio waves
link |
is when somebody should have been paying attention
link |
to our planet is a little ridiculous.
link |
So my, you know, what I love about Star Wars
link |
is a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
link |
It's not like some distant future.
link |
It's a long, long time ago.
link |
What I love about it is that basically says,
link |
you know, evolution and civilization
link |
are just so recent in, you know, on earth.
link |
Like there's countless other planets
link |
that have probably all kinds of life forms,
link |
multicellular perhaps, and so on and so forth.
link |
But the fact that humanity has only been listening
link |
and emitting for just this tiny little blink
link |
means that any of these, you know, alien civilizations
link |
would need to be paying attention
link |
to every single insignificant planet out there.
link |
And, you know, again, I mean, the movie Contact
link |
and the book is just so beautiful.
link |
This whole concept of we don't need to travel physically.
link |
We can travel as light.
link |
We can send instructions for people to create machines
link |
that will allow us to beam down light
link |
and recreate ourselves.
link |
And in the book, you know, the aliens actually take over.
link |
They're not as friendly.
link |
But, you know, this concept that we have to eventually
link |
go and conquer every planet.
link |
I mean, I think that, yes,
link |
we will become a galactic species.
link |
So you have a hope, well, you said think, so.
link |
Oh, of course, of course.
link |
I mean, now that we've made it so far.
link |
So you feel like we've made it.
link |
Oh gosh, I feel that, you know, cognition,
link |
the cognition as an evolutionary trait
link |
has won over in our planet.
link |
There's no doubt that we've made it.
link |
So basically humans have won the battle for, you know,
link |
It wasn't necessarily the case with dinosaurs.
link |
Like, I mean, yes, you know,
link |
there's some claims of intelligence.
link |
And if you look at Jurassic Park, yeah, sure, whatever.
link |
But, you know, they just don't have the hardware for it.
link |
And humans have the hardware.
link |
There's no doubt that mammals have
link |
a dramatically improved hardware
link |
for cognition over dinosaurs.
link |
Like basically there's universes where strength won out.
link |
And in our planet, in our, you know,
link |
particular version of whatever happened in this planet,
link |
cognition won out.
link |
And it's kind of cool.
link |
I mean, it's a privilege, right?
link |
It's kind of like living in Boston instead of,
link |
I don't know, some middle age place
link |
where everybody's like hitting each other
link |
with, you know, weapons and sticks.
link |
You're back to the Lucky Ones song.
link |
I mean, we are the lucky ones.
link |
But the flip side of that is that this hardware
link |
also allows us to develop weapons
link |
and methods of destroying ourselves.
link |
Again, I want to go back to Pinker
link |
and the better angels of our nature.
link |
The whole concept that civilization
link |
and the act of civilizing
link |
has dramatically reduced violence, dramatically.
link |
If you look, you know, at every scale,
link |
as soon as organization comes,
link |
the state basically owns the right to violence.
link |
And eventually the state gives that right
link |
of governance to the people,
link |
but violence has been eliminated by that state.
link |
So this whole concept of central governance
link |
and people agreeing to live together
link |
and share responsibilities and duties
link |
and, you know, all of that
link |
is something that has led so much to less violence,
link |
less death, less suffering, less, you know, poverty,
link |
less, you know, war.
link |
I mean, yes, we have the capability to destroy ourselves,
link |
but the arc of civilization
link |
has led to much, much less destruction,
link |
much, much less war and much more peace.
link |
And of course there's blips back and forth
link |
and, you know, there are setbacks,
link |
but again, the moral arc of the universe.
link |
But it seems to just, I probably imagine
link |
there were two dinosaurs back in the day
link |
having this exact conversation
link |
and they look up to the sky
link |
and there seems to be something like an asteroid
link |
going towards Earth.
link |
So it's, while it's very true
link |
that the arc of our society of human civilization
link |
seems to be progressing towards a better, better life
link |
for everybody in the many ways that you described,
link |
things can change in a moment.
link |
And it feels like it's not just us humans
link |
we're living through a pandemic.
link |
You could imagine that a pandemic would be more destructive
link |
or there could be asteroids that just appear
link |
out of the darkness of space,
link |
which I recently learned it's not that easy
link |
to actually detect them.
link |
So 48, what happens in 48 years?
link |
There's an asteroid that's coming.
link |
In 48 years, it has very high chance
link |
of actually wiping us out completely.
link |
So we have 48 years to get our act together.
link |
It's not like some distant, distant hypothesis.
link |
Like, yeah, sure, they're hard to detect
link |
but this one we know about, it's coming.
link |
So how do you feel about that?
link |
Why are you still so optimistic?
link |
Oh gosh, I'm so happy with where we are now.
link |
This is gonna be great.
link |
Seriously, if you look at progress,
link |
if you look at, again, the speed with which knowledge
link |
has been transferred, what has led to humanity
link |
making so many advances so fast?
link |
So what has led to humanity making so many advances
link |
is not just the hardware upgrades,
link |
it's also the software upgrades.
link |
So by hardware upgrades, I basically mean our neocortex
link |
and the expansion and these layers
link |
and folds of our brain and all of that.
link |
That's the hardware.
link |
The software hasn't,
link |
you know, the hardware hasn't changed much
link |
in the last, what, 70,000 years.
link |
As I mentioned last time,
link |
if you take a person from ancient Egypt
link |
and you bring them up now, they're just as equally fit.
link |
So hardware hasn't changed.
link |
What has changed is software.
link |
What has changed is that we are growing up in societies
link |
that are much more complex.
link |
This whole concept of neoteny basically allows
link |
our exponential growth.
link |
The concept that our brain has not fully formed,
link |
has not fully stabilized itself until after our teenage years.
link |
So we basically have a good 16 years, 18 years
link |
to sort of infuse it with the latest
link |
and greatest in software.
link |
If you look at what happened in ancient Greece,
link |
why did everything explode at once?
link |
My take on this is that it was the shift
link |
from the Egyptian and hieroglyphic software
link |
to the Greek language software.
link |
This whole concept of creating abstract notions,
link |
of creating these layers of cognition
link |
and layers of meaning and layers of abstraction
link |
for words and ideals and beauty and harmony.
link |
How do you write harmony in hieroglyphics?
link |
There's no such thing as, you know,
link |
sort of expressing these ideals of peace and justice
link |
and, you know, these concepts of,
link |
or even, you know, macabre concepts of doom, et cetera.
link |
You don't have the language for it.
link |
Your brain has trouble getting at that concept.
link |
So what I'm trying to say is that these software upgrades
link |
for human language, human culture,
link |
human environment, human education
link |
have basically led to this enormous explosion of knowledge.
link |
And eventually after the enlightenment,
link |
and as I was mentioning the 42 line Bible
link |
and the printed press, the dissemination of knowledge,
link |
you basically now have this whole horizontal dispersion
link |
of ideas in addition to the vertical inheritance of genes.
link |
So the hardware improvements happen
link |
through vertical inheritance.
link |
The software improvements happen
link |
through horizontal inheritance.
link |
And the reason why human civilization exploded
link |
is not a hardware change anymore,
link |
it's really a software change.
link |
So if you're looking at now where we are today,
link |
look at coronavirus.
link |
Yes, sure, it could have killed us a hundred years ago,
link |
it would have, but it didn't.
link |
Because in January, we published the genome.
link |
A month later, less than a month later,
link |
the first vaccine designs were done.
link |
And now less than a year later, 10 months later,
link |
we already have a working vaccine that's 90% efficient.
link |
I mean, that is ridiculous by any standards.
link |
And the reason is sharing.
link |
So the asteroid, yes, could wipe us out in 48 years,
link |
I mean, look at where we were 48 years ago, technologically.
link |
I mean, how much more we understand
link |
the basic foundations of space is enormous.
link |
The technological revolutions of digitization,
link |
the amount of compute power we can put
link |
on any nail size hardware is enormous.
link |
And this is nowhere near ending.
link |
We all have our little problems going back and forth
link |
on the social side and on the political side,
link |
on the sort of human side and the societal side,
link |
but science has not slowed down.
link |
Science is moving at a breakneck pace ahead.
link |
So, you know, Elon is now putting rockets out
link |
from the private space.
link |
I mean, that now democratization of space exploration
link |
is, you know, gonna revolutionize everything.
link |
It's gonna explode, continue.
link |
In the same way that every technology has exploded,
link |
this is the shift to space technology exploding.
link |
So 48 years is infinity from now
link |
in terms of space capabilities.
link |
So I'm not worried at all.
link |
Are you excited by the possibility of a human,
link |
well, one, a human stepping foot on Mars
link |
and two, possible colonization of not necessarily Mars,
link |
but other planets and all that kind of stuff
link |
for people living in space?
link |
Inevitable. Inevitable.
link |
Or do you kind of like Earth? Of course, of course.
link |
You know, how many?
link |
How many people will you wait?
link |
Will you wait for, I think it was about
link |
when the Declaration of Independence was signed,
link |
about two to three million people lived here.
link |
So would you move like before?
link |
Would you be like on the first boat?
link |
Would you be on the 10th boat?
link |
Would you wait until the Declaration of Independence?
link |
I don't think I'll be on the short list
link |
because I'll be old by then.
link |
They'll probably get a bunch of younger people.
link |
But you're, it's the wisdom and the,
link |
then again, you are the lucky one.
link |
But wisdom can be transferred horizontally.
link |
I gotta tell you, you are the lucky one.
link |
So you might be on the list.
link |
I mean, I kind of feel like I would love
link |
to see Earth from above, just to watch our planet.
link |
I mean, just, I mean, you know,
link |
you can watch a live feed of the space station.
link |
Watching Earth is magnificent,
link |
like this blue tiny little shield.
link |
It's so thin, our atmosphere.
link |
Like if you drive to New York,
link |
you're basically in outer space.
link |
I mean, it's ridiculous.
link |
It's just so thin.
link |
And it's just, again, such a privilege
link |
to be on this planet, such a privilege.
link |
But I think our species is in for big, good things.
link |
I think that, you know,
link |
we will overcome our little problems
link |
and eventually come together as a species.
link |
I feel that we're definitely on the path to that.
link |
And, you know, it's just not permeated
link |
through the whole universe yet.
link |
I mean, through the whole world yet,
link |
through the whole Earth yet,
link |
but it's definitely permeating.
link |
So you've talked about humans as special.
link |
How exactly are we special relative to the dinosaurs?
link |
So I mentioned that there's, you know,
link |
this dramatic cognitive improvement that we've made,
link |
but I think it goes much deeper than that.
link |
So if you look at a lion attacking a gazelle
link |
in the middle of the Serengeti,
link |
the lion is smelling the molecules in the environment.
link |
Its hormones and neuro receptors
link |
are sort of getting it ready for impulse.
link |
The target is constantly looking around and sensing.
link |
I've actually been in Kenya and I've kind of seen the hunt.
link |
So I've kind of seen the sort of game of waiting
link |
and the mitochondria in the muscles of the lion
link |
are basically ready for, you know, jumping.
link |
They're expensing an enormous amount of energy.
link |
The grass as it's flowing
link |
is constantly transforming solar energy into chloroplasts,
link |
you know, through the chloroplast into energy,
link |
which eventually feeds the gazelle
link |
and eventually feeds the lions.
link |
And so on and so forth.
link |
So as humans, we experience all of that,
link |
but the lion only experiences one layer.
link |
The mitochondria in its body
link |
are only experiencing one layer.
link |
The chloroplasts are only experiencing one layer.
link |
The, you know, photoreceptors and the smell receptors
link |
and the chemical receptors,
link |
like the lion always attacks against the wind
link |
so that it's not smelled.
link |
Like all of these things are one layer at a time.
link |
And we humans somehow perceive the whole stack.
link |
So going back to software infrastructure
link |
and hardware infrastructure,
link |
if you design a computer,
link |
you basically have a physical layer that you start with.
link |
And then on top of that physical layer,
link |
you have, you know, the electrical layer.
link |
And on top of the electrical layer,
link |
you have basically gates and logic and an assembly layer.
link |
And on top of the assembly layer,
link |
you have your, you know, higher order,
link |
higher level programming.
link |
And on top of that,
link |
you have your deep learning routine, et cetera.
link |
And on top of that,
link |
you eventually build a cognitive system that's smart.
link |
I want you to now picture this cognitive system
link |
becoming not just self aware,
link |
but also becoming aware of the hardware that it's made of
link |
and the atoms that it's made of and so on and so forth.
link |
So it's as if your AI system,
link |
and there's this beautiful scene in 2001 Odyssey of Space,
link |
where Hull, after Dave starts disconnecting him,
link |
is starting to sing a song about daisies, et cetera.
link |
And Hull is basically saying, Dave, I'm losing my mind.
link |
I can feel I'm losing my mind.
link |
It's just so beautiful.
link |
This concept of self awareness of knowing
link |
that the hardware is no longer there is amazing.
link |
And in the same way humans who have had accidents
link |
are aware that they've had accidents.
link |
So there's this self awareness of AI
link |
that is, you know, this beautiful concept about,
link |
you know, sort of the eventual cognitive leap
link |
to self awareness.
link |
But imagine now the AI system
link |
actually breaking through these layers
link |
and saying, wait a minute,
link |
I think I can design a slightly better hardware
link |
to get me functioning better.
link |
And that's what basically humans are doing.
link |
So if you look at our reasoning layer,
link |
it's built on top of a cognitive layer.
link |
And the reasoning layer we share with AI,
link |
it's kind of cool.
link |
Like there is another thing on the planet
link |
that can integrate equations and it's manmade,
link |
but we share computation with them.
link |
We share this cognitive layer of playing chess.
link |
We're not alone anymore.
link |
We're not the only thing on the planet that plays chess.
link |
Now we have AI that also plays chess.
link |
But in some sense that that particular organism,
link |
AI as it is now only operates in that layer.
link |
And then most animals operate
link |
in the sort of cognitive layer that we're all experiencing.
link |
A bat is doing this incredible integration of signals,
link |
but it's not aware of it.
link |
It's basically constantly sending echo location waves
link |
and it's receiving them back.
link |
And multiple bats in the same cave
link |
are operating at slightly different frequencies
link |
and with slightly different pulses.
link |
And they're all sensing objects
link |
and they're doing motion planning
link |
in their cognitive hardware,
link |
but they're not even aware of all of that.
link |
All they know is that they have a 3D view of space
link |
around them, just like any gazelle walking through,
link |
you know, the desert.
link |
And any baby looking around is aware of things
link |
without doing the math of how am I processing
link |
all of these visual information, et cetera.
link |
You're just aware of the layer that you live in.
link |
I think if you look at this, at humanity,
link |
we've basically managed through our cognitive layer,
link |
through our perception layer, through our senses layer,
link |
through our multi organ layer, through our genetic layer,
link |
through our molecular layer, through our atomic layer,
link |
through our quantum layer,
link |
through even the very fabric of the space time continuum
link |
unite all of that cognitively.
link |
So as we're watching that scene in the Serengeti,
link |
we as scientists, we as educated humans,
link |
we as, you know, anyone who's finished high school
link |
are aware of all of this beauty
link |
of all of these different layers interplaying together.
link |
And I think that's something very unique
link |
in perhaps not just the galaxy, but maybe even the cosmos.
link |
This species that has managed to in space
link |
cross through these layers from the enormous
link |
to the infinitely small.
link |
And that's what I love about particle physics.
link |
The fact that it actually unites everything.
link |
The very small and the very big.
link |
The very small and the very big.
link |
It's only through the very big
link |
that the very small gets formed.
link |
Like basically every atom of gold
link |
results from the fusion that happened
link |
of increasingly large particles before that explosion
link |
that then disperses it through the cosmos.
link |
And it's only through understanding the very large
link |
that we understand the very small and vice versa.
link |
And that's in space.
link |
Then there's the time direction.
link |
As you are watching the Kilimanjaro mountain,
link |
you can kind of look back through time
link |
to when that volcano was exploding
link |
and growing out of the tectonic forces.
link |
As you drive through Death Valley,
link |
you see these mountains on their side
link |
and these layers of history exposed.
link |
We are aware of the eons that have happened on earth
link |
and the tectonic movements on earth.
link |
The same way that we're aware of the Big Bang
link |
and the early evolution of the cosmos.
link |
And we can also see forward in time
link |
as to where the universe is heading.
link |
We can see Apophis in 2068 coming over,
link |
looking ahead in time.
link |
I mean, that would be magician stuff in ancient times.
link |
So what I love about humanity and its role in the universe
link |
is that if there's a God watching,
link |
he's like, finally, somebody figured it out.
link |
I've been building all these beautiful things
link |
and somebody can appreciate it.
link |
And figured me out from God's perspective,
link |
meaning become aware of, you know.
link |
Yeah, so it's kind of interesting
link |
to think of the world in this way as layers
link |
and us humans are able to convert those layers
link |
into ideas that you can then combine, right?
link |
So we're doing some kind of conversion.
link |
And last time you asked me about
link |
whether we live in a simulation, for example.
link |
I mean, realize that we are living in a simulation.
link |
We are, the reality that we're in
link |
without any sort of person programming this is a simulation.
link |
Like basically what happens inside your skull?
link |
There's this integration of sensory inputs
link |
which are translated into perceptory signals,
link |
which are then translated into a conceptual model
link |
of the world around you.
link |
And that exercise is happening seamlessly.
link |
And yet, you know, if you think about sort of, again,
link |
this whole simulation and Neo analogy,
link |
you can think of the reality that we live in as a matrix,
link |
as the matrix, but we've actually broken through the matrix.
link |
We've actually traversed the layers.
link |
We didn't have to take a pill, like we didn't, you know,
link |
Morpheus didn't have to show up
link |
to basically give us the blue pill or the red pill.
link |
We were able to sufficiently evolve cognitively
link |
through the hardware explosion
link |
and sufficiently evolve scientifically
link |
through the software explosion
link |
to basically get at breaking through the matrix,
link |
realizing that we live in a matrix
link |
and realizing that we are this thing in there.
link |
And yet that thing in there has a consciousness
link |
that lives through all these layers.
link |
And I think we're the only species.
link |
We're the only thing that we even can think of
link |
that has actually done that,
link |
that has sort of permeated space and time scales
link |
and layers of abstraction plowing through them
link |
and realizing what we're really, really made of.
link |
And the next frontier is of course, cognition.
link |
So we understand so much of the cosmos,
link |
so much of the stuff around us,
link |
but the stuff inside here, finding the basis for the soul,
link |
finding the basis for the ego, for the self,
link |
the self awareness, when does the spark happen
link |
that basically sort of makes you you?
link |
I mean, that's really the next frontier.
link |
So in terms of these peeling off layers of complexity,
link |
somewhere between the cognitive layer
link |
and the reasoning layer or the computational layer,
link |
there's still some stuff to be figured out there.
link |
And I think that's the final frontier
link |
of sort of completing our journey through that matrix.
link |
And maybe duplicating it in other versions of ourselves
link |
through AI, which is another very exciting possibility.
link |
What I love about AI and the way that it operates right now
link |
is the fact that it is unpredictable.
link |
There's emergent behavior
link |
in our cognitively capable artificial systems
link |
that we can certainly model,
link |
but we don't encode directly.
link |
And that's a key difference.
link |
So we like to say, oh, of course,
link |
this is not really intelligent because we coded it up.
link |
And we've just put in these little parameters there
link |
and there's like six billion parameters
link |
and once you've learned them,
link |
we kind of understand the layers.
link |
But that's an oversimplification.
link |
It's like saying, oh, of course, humans,
link |
we understand humans, they're just made out of neurons
link |
and layers of cortex and there's a visual area.
link |
But every human is encoded
link |
by a ridiculously small number of genes
link |
compared to the complexity of our cognitive apparatus.
link |
20,000 genes is really not that much
link |
out of which a tiny little fraction
link |
are in fact encoding all of our cognitive functions.
link |
The rest is emergent behavior.
link |
The rest is the cortical layers
link |
doing their thing in the same way
link |
that when we build these conversational systems
link |
or these cognitive systems or these deep learning systems,
link |
we put the architecture in place,
link |
but then they do their thing.
link |
that's creating something that has its own identity.
link |
That's creating something that's not just,
link |
oh yeah, it's not the early AI
link |
where if you hadn't programmed
link |
what happens in the grocery bags
link |
when you have both cold and hot and hard and soft,
link |
the system wouldn't know what to do.
link |
No, no, you basically now just program the primitives
link |
and then it learns from that.
link |
So even though the origins are humble,
link |
just like it is for our genetic code,
link |
for AI, even though the origins are humble,
link |
the result of it being deployed into the world
link |
is infinitely complex.
link |
And yet, it's not yet able to be cognizant
link |
of all the other layers of its,
link |
you know, it's not able to think about space and time.
link |
It's not able to think about the hardware in which it runs,
link |
the electricity in which it runs yet.
link |
So if you look at humans,
link |
we basically have the same cognitive architecture
link |
as monkeys, as the great apes.
link |
It's just a ton more of it.
link |
If you look at GPT3 versus GPT2,
link |
again, it's the same architecture, just more of it.
link |
And yet it's able to do so much more.
link |
So if you start thinking about sort of
link |
what's the future of that, GPT4 and GPT5,
link |
do you really need fundamentally different architectures
link |
or do you just need a ton more hardware?
link |
And we do have a ton more hardware.
link |
Like these systems are nowhere near
link |
what humans have between our ears.
link |
So, you know, there's something to be said
link |
about stay tuned for emergent behavior.
link |
We keep thinking that general intelligence
link |
might just be forever away,
link |
but it could just simply be that
link |
we just need a ton more hardware
link |
and that humans are just not that different
link |
from the great apes, except for just a ton more of it.
link |
Yeah, it's interesting that in the AI community,
link |
maybe there's a human centric fear,
link |
but the notion that GPT10 will achieve general intelligence
link |
is something that people shy away from,
link |
that there has to be something totally different
link |
and new added to this.
link |
And yet it's not seriously considered that
link |
this very simple thing, this very simple architecture,
link |
when scaled, might be the thing
link |
that achieves super intelligence.
link |
And people think the same way about humanity
link |
and human consciousness.
link |
They're like, oh, consciousness might be quantum,
link |
or it might be, you know, some nonphysical thing.
link |
And it's like, or it could just be a lot more
link |
of the same hardware that now is sufficiently capable
link |
of self awareness just because it has the neurons to do it.
link |
So maybe the consciousness that is so elusive
link |
is an emergent behavior of you basically string together
link |
all these cognitive capabilities that come from running,
link |
from seeing, for reacting,
link |
from predicting the movement of a fly
link |
as you're catching it through the air.
link |
All of these things are just like great lookup tables
link |
encoded in a giant neural network.
link |
I mean, I'm oversimplifying, of course,
link |
the complexity and the diversity of the different types
link |
of excitatory and inhibitory neurons,
link |
the wave forms that sort of shine through
link |
the connections across all these different layers,
link |
the amalgamation of signals, et cetera.
link |
The brain is enormously complex.
link |
I mean, of course.
link |
But again, it's a small number of primitives
link |
encoded by a tiny number of genes,
link |
which are self organized and shaped by their environment.
link |
Babies that are growing up today
link |
are listening to language from conception.
link |
Basically, as soon as the auditory apparatus forms,
link |
it's already getting shaped to the types of signals
link |
that are out in the real world today.
link |
So it's not just like, oh, have an Egyptian be born
link |
and then ship them over.
link |
It's like, no, that Egyptian would be listening in
link |
to the complexity of the world and then getting born
link |
and sort of seeing just how much more complex the world is.
link |
So it's a combination of the underlying hardware,
link |
which if you think about as a geneticist,
link |
in my view, the hardware gives you an upper bound
link |
of cognitive capabilities,
link |
but it's the environment that makes those capabilities shine
link |
and reach their maximum.
link |
So we're a combination of nature and nurture.
link |
The nature is our genes and our cognitive apparatus.
link |
And the nurture is the richness of the environment
link |
that makes that cognitive apparatus reach its potential.
link |
And we are so far from reaching our full potential, so far.
link |
I think that kids being born a hundred years from now,
link |
they'll be looking at us now and saying
link |
what primitive educational systems they had.
link |
I can't believe people were not wired
link |
into this virtual reality from birth as we are now,
link |
cause like they're clearly inferior and so on and so forth.
link |
I basically think that our environment
link |
will continue exploding and our cognitive capabilities,
link |
it's not like, oh, we're only using 10% of our brain.
link |
That's ridiculous.
link |
Of course, we're using 100% of our brain,
link |
but it's still constrained by how complex
link |
our environment is.
link |
So the hardware will remain the same, but the software,
link |
in a quickly advancing environment,
link |
the software will make a huge difference
link |
in the nature of like the human experience,
link |
the human condition.
link |
It's fascinating to think that humans will look
link |
very different a hundred years from now,
link |
just because the environment changed,
link |
even though we're still the same great apes,
link |
the descendant of apes.
link |
At the core of this is kind of a notion of ideas
link |
that I don't know if you're,
link |
there's a lot of people, including you,
link |
eloquently about this topic,
link |
but Richard Dawkins talks about the notion of memes
link |
and let's say this notion of ideas,
link |
multiplying, selecting in the minds of humans.
link |
Do you ever think about ideas from that perspective,
link |
ideas as organisms themselves
link |
that are breeding in the minds of humans?
link |
I love the concept of memes.
link |
I love the concept of these horizontal transfer of ideas
link |
and sort of permeating through our layer
link |
of interconnected neural networks.
link |
So you can think of sort of the cognitive space
link |
that has now connected all of humanity,
link |
where we are now one giant information
link |
and idea sharing network,
link |
well beyond what was thought to be ever capable
link |
when the concept of a meme was created by Richard Dawkins.
link |
So, but I wanna take that concept
link |
just into another twist,
link |
which is the horizontal transfer of humans with fellowships.
link |
And the fact that as people apply to MIT
link |
from around the world,
link |
there's a selection that happens,
link |
not just for their ideas,
link |
but also for the cognitive hardware
link |
that came up with those ideas.
link |
So we don't just ship ideas around anymore.
link |
They don't evolve in a vacuum.
link |
The ideas themselves influence the distribution
link |
of cognitive systems, i.e. humans and brains
link |
around the planet.
link |
Yeah, we ship them to different locations
link |
based on their properties.
link |
That's exactly right.
link |
So those cognitive systems that think of physics,
link |
for example, might go to CERN
link |
and those that think of genomics
link |
might go to the Broad Institute.
link |
And those that think of computer science
link |
might go to, I don't know, Stanford or CMU or MIT.
link |
And you basically have this co evolution now
link |
of memes and ideas
link |
and the cognitive conversational systems
link |
that love these ideas and feed on these ideas
link |
and understand these ideas and appreciate these ideas
link |
now coming together.
link |
So you basically have students coming to Boston to study
link |
because that's the place
link |
where these types of cognitive systems thrive.
link |
And they're selected based on their cognitive output
link |
and their idea output.
link |
But once they get into that place,
link |
the boiling and interbreeding of these memes
link |
becomes so much more frequent.
link |
That what comes out of it is so far beyond
link |
if ideas were evolving in a vacuum
link |
of an already established hardware,
link |
cognitive interconnection system of the planet,
link |
where now you basically have the ideas
link |
shaping the distribution of these systems.
link |
And then the genetics kick in as well.
link |
You basically have now these people
link |
who came to be a student kind of like myself
link |
who now stuck around and are now professors
link |
bringing up our own genetically encoded
link |
and genetically related cognitive systems,
link |
mine are eight, six and three years old,
link |
who are now growing up in an environment
link |
surrounded by other cognitive systems of a similar age
link |
with parents who love these types of thinking and ideas.
link |
And you basically have a whole interbreeding now
link |
of genetically selected transfer of cognitive systems
link |
where the genes and the memes are co evolving
link |
the same soup of ever improving knowledge
link |
and societal inter fertilization,
link |
cross fertilization of these ideas.
link |
So this beautiful image.
link |
So this is shipping these actual meat cognitive systems
link |
to physical locations.
link |
They tend to cluster in the biology ones,
link |
and the biology ones cluster in a certain building too.
link |
So like within that there's clusters on top of clusters,
link |
What about in the online world?
link |
Is that, do you also see that kind of,
link |
because people now form groups on the internet
link |
that they stick together so they can sort of,
link |
these cognitive systems can collect themselves
link |
and breed together in different layers of spaces.
link |
It doesn't just have to be physical space.
link |
Absolutely, absolutely.
link |
So basically there's the physical rearrangement,
link |
but there's also the conglomeration
link |
of the same cognitive system.
link |
Doesn't need to be, i.e. human.
link |
Doesn't need to belong to only one community.
link |
So yes, you might be a member
link |
of the computer science department,
link |
but you can also hang out in the biology department.
link |
But you might also go online into,
link |
I don't know, poetry department readings
link |
and so on and so forth.
link |
Or you might be part of a group
link |
that only has 12 people in the world,
link |
but that are connected through their ideas
link |
and are now interbreeding these ideas in a whole other way.
link |
So this coevolution of genes and memes
link |
is not just physically instantiated.
link |
It's also sort of rearranged in this cognitive space as well.
link |
And sometimes these cognitive systems hold conferences
link |
and they all gather around
link |
and there's like one of them is like talking
link |
and they're all like listening
link |
and then they discuss and then they have free lunch
link |
No, but then that's where you find students
link |
where when I go to a conference,
link |
I go through the posters where I'm on a mission.
link |
Basically my mission is to read and understand
link |
what every poster is about.
link |
And for a few of them,
link |
I'll dive deeply and understand everything,
link |
but I make it a point to just go poster after poster
link |
in order to read all of them.
link |
And I find some gems and students that I speak to
link |
that sometimes eventually join my lab.
link |
And then sort of you're sort of creating this permeation
link |
of the transfer of ideas, of ways of thinking
link |
and very often of moral values, of social structures,
link |
of just more imperceptible properties
link |
of these cognitive systems
link |
that simply just cling together.
link |
Basically, I have the luxury at MIT
link |
of not just choosing smart people,
link |
but choosing smart people who I get along with,
link |
who are generous and friendly and creative and smart
link |
and excited and childish in their uninhibited behaviors
link |
and so on and so forth.
link |
So you basically can choose yourself to surround,
link |
you can choose to surround yourself
link |
with people who are not only cognitively compatible,
link |
but also imperceptibly
link |
through the meta cognitive systems compatible.
link |
And again, when I say compatible, not all the same.
link |
Sometimes, not sometimes, all the time.
link |
The teams are made out of complimentary components,
link |
not just compatible, but very often complimentary.
link |
So in my own team, I have a diversity of students
link |
who come from very different backgrounds.
link |
There's a whole spectrum of biology to computation,
link |
of course, but within biology, there's a lot of realms.
link |
Within computation, there's a lot of realms.
link |
And what makes us click so well together
link |
is the fact that not only do we have a common mission,
link |
a common passion and a common view of the world,
link |
but that we're complimentary in our skills,
link |
in our angles with which we come at it and so on and so forth.
link |
And that's sort of what makes it click.
link |
Yeah, it's fascinating that the stickiness
link |
of multiple cognitive systems together
link |
includes both the commonality,
link |
so you meet because there's some common thing,
link |
but you stick together because you're different
link |
in all the useful ways.
link |
And my wife and I, I mean, we adore each other to pieces,
link |
but we're also extremely different in many ways.
link |
And that's beautiful. Careful.
link |
She's gonna be listening to this.
link |
But I love that about us.
link |
I love the fact that I'm living out there
link |
in the world of ideas and I forget what day it is.
link |
And she's like, well, at 8 a.m.,
link |
the kids better be to school.
link |
And I do get yelled at, but I need it.
link |
Basically, I need her as much as she needs me.
link |
And she loves interacting with me and talking.
link |
I mean, last night, we were talking about this
link |
and I showed her the questions
link |
and we were bouncing ideas off each other.
link |
And it was just beautiful.
link |
We basically have these, basically,
link |
cognitive, let it all loose kind of dates
link |
where we just bring papers
link |
and we're bouncing ideas, et cetera.
link |
So we have extremely different perspectives,
link |
but very common goals and interests and anyway.
link |
What do you make of the communication mechanism
link |
that we humans use to share those ideas?
link |
Because one essential element of all of this
link |
is not just that we're able to have these ideas,
link |
but we're also able to share them.
link |
We tend to, maybe you can correct me,
link |
but we seem to use language to share the ideas.
link |
Maybe we share them in some much deeper way
link |
than language, I don't know.
link |
But what do you make of this whole mechanism
link |
that ghaf on the matlid is to the human condition?
link |
So some people will tell you
link |
that your language dictates your thoughts
link |
and your thoughts cannot form outside language.
link |
I tend to disagree.
link |
I see thoughts as much more abstract
link |
as basically when I dream, I don't dream in words.
link |
I dream in shapes and forms and three dimensional space
link |
with extreme detail.
link |
I was describing, so when I wake up
link |
in the middle of the night, I actually record my dreams.
link |
Sometimes I write them down in a Dropbox file.
link |
Other times I'll just dictate them in audio.
link |
And my wife was giving me a massage the other day
link |
cause like my left side was frozen
link |
and I started playing the recording.
link |
And as I was listening to it, I was like,
link |
I don't remember any of that.
link |
And it was like, of course.
link |
And then the entire thing came back.
link |
But then there's no way any other person
link |
could have recreated that entire sort of
link |
three dimensional shape and dream and concept.
link |
And in the same way, when I'm thinking of ideas,
link |
there's so many ideas I can't put to words.
link |
I mean, I will describe them with a thousand words,
link |
but the idea itself is much more precise
link |
or much more sort of abstract
link |
or much more something difference,
link |
either less abstract or more abstract.
link |
And it's either, basically there's just the projection
link |
that happens from the three dimensional ideas
link |
into let's say a one dimensional language.
link |
And the language certainly gives you the apparatus
link |
to think about concepts
link |
that you didn't realize existed before.
link |
And with my team, we often create new words.
link |
I'm like, well, now we're gonna call these
link |
the regulatory plexus of a gene.
link |
And that gives us now the language
link |
to sort of build on that as one concept
link |
that you then build upon with all kinds of other things.
link |
So there's this coevolution again of ideas and language,
link |
but they're not one to one with each other.
link |
Now let's talk about language itself, words, sentences.
link |
This is a very distant construct
link |
from where language actually begun.
link |
So if you look at how we communicate,
link |
as I'm speaking, my eyes are shining
link |
and my face is changing through all kinds of emotions.
link |
And my entire body composition posture is reshaped.
link |
And my intonation, the pauses that I make,
link |
the softer and the louder and the this and that
link |
are conveying so much more information.
link |
And if you look at early human language,
link |
and if you look at how the great apes
link |
communicate with each other, there's a lot of grunting,
link |
there's a lot of posturing, there's a lot of emotions,
link |
there's a lot of sort of shrieking, et cetera.
link |
They have a lot of components of our human language,
link |
just not the words.
link |
So I think of human communication
link |
as combining the ape component,
link |
but also of course the GPT3 component.
link |
So basically there's the cognitive layer
link |
and the reasoning layer that we share
link |
with different parts of our relatives.
link |
There's the AI relatives,
link |
but there's also the grunting relatives.
link |
And what I love about humanity is that we have both.
link |
We're not just a conversational system.
link |
We're a grunting, emotionally charged,
link |
weirdly interconnected system
link |
that also has the ability to reason.
link |
And when we communicate with each other,
link |
there's so much more than just language.
link |
There's so much more than just words.
link |
It does seem like we're able to somehow transfer
link |
even more than the body language.
link |
It seems that in the room with us
link |
is always a giant knowledge base of shared experiences,
link |
different perspectives on those experiences,
link |
but I don't know, the knowledge of who the last three,
link |
four presidents in the United States was,
link |
and just all the 9 11, the tragedies in 9 11,
link |
all the beautiful and terrible things
link |
that happen in the world.
link |
They're somehow both in our minds
link |
and somehow enrich the ability to transfer information.
link |
What I love about it is I can talk to you
link |
about 2001 Odyssey of Space
link |
and mention a very specific scene
link |
and that evokes all these feelings that you had
link |
when you first watched it.
link |
We're both visualizing that and maybe in different ways.
link |
But in that, yeah, and not only that,
link |
but the feeling is brought back up,
link |
just like you said, with the dreams.
link |
We both have that feeling arise in some form
link |
as you bring up the child facing his own mortality.
link |
It's fascinating that we're able to do that,
link |
Now let's talk about Neuralink for a second.
link |
So what's the concept of Neuralink?
link |
The concept of Neuralink is that I'm gonna take
link |
whatever knowledge is encoded in my brain
link |
directly transfer it into your brain.
link |
So this is a beautiful, fascinating,
link |
and extremely sort of appealing concept,
link |
but I see a lot of challenges surrounding that.
link |
The first one is we have no idea
link |
how to even begin to understand
link |
how knowledge is encoded in a person's brain.
link |
I mean, I told you about this paper that we had recently
link |
with Li Hui Cai and Asaf Marko
link |
that basically was looking at these engrams
link |
that are formed with combinations of neurons
link |
that cofire when a stimulus happens,
link |
where we can go into a mouse
link |
and select those neurons that fire by marking them
link |
and then see what happens when they first fire.
link |
And then select the neurons that fire again
link |
when the experience is repeated.
link |
These are the recall neurons,
link |
and then there's the memory consolidation neurons.
link |
So we're starting to understand a little bit
link |
of sort of the distributed nature of knowledge encoding
link |
and experience encoding in the human brain
link |
and in the mouse brain.
link |
And the concept that we'll understand
link |
that sufficiently one day
link |
to be able to take a snapshot
link |
of what does that scene from Dave losing his mind,
link |
of Khal losing his mind and talking to Dave,
link |
how is that seen and coded in your mind?
link |
Imagine the complexity of that.
link |
But now imagine, suppose that we solve this problem.
link |
And the next enormous challenge is how do I go
link |
and modify the next person's brain
link |
to now create the same exact neural connections?
link |
So that's an enormous challenge right there.
link |
So basically it's not just reading, it's now writing.
link |
And again, what if something goes wrong?
link |
I don't wanna even think about that, that's number two.
link |
And number three, who says that the way
link |
that you encode Dave, I'm losing my mind
link |
and I encode Dave, I'm losing my mind
link |
is anywhere near each other.
link |
Basically, maybe the way that I'm encoding it
link |
is twisted with my childhood memories of running through
link |
the pebbles in Greece, and yours is twisted
link |
with your childhood memories growing up in Russia.
link |
And there's no way that I can take my encoding
link |
and put it into your brain,
link |
because it'll A, mess things up,
link |
and B, be incompatible with your own unique experiences.
link |
So that's telepathic communication from human to human.
link |
It's fascinating, you're reminding us
link |
that there's two biological systems
link |
on both ends of that communication.
link |
The easier, I guess, maybe half as difficult thing to do
link |
in the hope with Neuralink is that we can communicate
link |
with an AI system, so where one side of that
link |
is a little bit more controllable,
link |
but even just that is exceptionally difficult.
link |
Let's talk about two neuronal systems talking to each other.
link |
Suppose that GPT4 tells GPT3, hey,
link |
give me all your knowledge, right?
link |
It's ready, I have 10 times more hardware,
link |
I'm ready, just feed me.
link |
What's GPT3 gonna do?
link |
Is it gonna say, oh, here's my 10 billion parameters?
link |
The simplest way, and perhaps the fastest way
link |
for GPT3 to transfer all its knowledge
link |
to its older body that has a lot more hardware
link |
is to regenerate every single possible human sentence
link |
that it can possibly create.
link |
Just keep talking.
link |
Keep talking and just reencode it all together.
link |
So maybe what language does is exactly that.
link |
It's taking one generative cognitive model,
link |
it's running it forward to emit utterances
link |
that kind of make sense in my cognitive frame,
link |
and it's reencoding them into yours
link |
through the parsing of that same language.
link |
And I think the conversation might actually be
link |
the most efficient way to do it,
link |
so not just talking, but interactive,
link |
so talking back and forth, asking questions, interrupting.
link |
So GPT4 will constantly be interrupting.
link |
Annoying. Annoying, yeah.
link |
But the beauty of that is also that
link |
as we're interrupting each other,
link |
there's all kinds of misinterpretations that happen,
link |
that basically when my students speak,
link |
I will often know that I'm misunderstanding
link |
what they're saying, and I'll be like,
link |
hold that thought for a second.
link |
Let me tell you what I think I understood,
link |
which I know is different from what you said.
link |
Then I'll say that, and then someone else
link |
in the same Zoom meeting
link |
will basically say, well, here's another way
link |
to think about what you just said.
link |
And then by the third iteration,
link |
we're somewhere completely different,
link |
that if we could actually communicate
link |
with full neural network parameters back and forth
link |
of that knowledge and idea and coding,
link |
would be far inferior,
link |
because the reencoding with our own,
link |
as we said last time, emotional baggage
link |
and cognitive baggage from our unique experiences
link |
through our shared experiences, distinct encodings,
link |
in the context of all our unique experiences,
link |
is leading to so much more diversity of perspectives.
link |
And again, going back to this whole concept of these,
link |
entire network of all of human cognitive systems
link |
connected to each other,
link |
and sort of how ideas and memes permeate through that,
link |
that's sort of what really creates a whole new level
link |
of human experience through this reasoning layer
link |
and this computational layer
link |
that obviously lives on top of our cognitive layer.
link |
So you're one of these aforementioned cognitive systems,
link |
mortal, but thoughtful, and you're connected to a bunch,
link |
like you said, students, your wife, your kids.
link |
What do you, in your brief time here on Earth,
link |
this is a Meaning of Life episode,
link |
so what do you hope this world will remember you as?
link |
What do you hope your legacy will be?
link |
I don't think of legacy as much as maybe most people.
link |
Oh, it's kind of funny.
link |
I'm consciously living the present.
link |
Many students tell me, oh, give us some career advice.
link |
I'm like, I'm the wrong person.
link |
I've never made a career plan.
link |
I still have to make one.
link |
I, it's funny to be both experiencing the past,
link |
and the present, and the future,
link |
but also consciously living in the present,
link |
and just, there's a conscious decision we can make
link |
to not worry about all that,
link |
which again, goes back to the I'm the lucky one kind of thing
link |
of living in the present and being happy winning,
link |
and being happy losing,
link |
and there's a sort of,
link |
I'm happy losing, and there's a certain freedom
link |
that comes with that, but again,
link |
a certain sort of, I don't know,
link |
ephemerity of living for the present,
link |
but if you, if you stay back from all of that,
link |
where basically my current modus operandi
link |
is live for the present, make every day
link |
the best you can make,
link |
and just make the local blip of local maxima
link |
of the universe, of the awesomeness of the planet,
link |
and the town, and the family that we live in,
link |
both academic family and biological family,
link |
make it a little more awesome
link |
by being generous to your friends,
link |
being generous to the people around you,
link |
being kind to your enemies,
link |
and just showing love all around.
link |
You can't be upset at people if you truly love them.
link |
If somebody yells at you and insults you
link |
every time you say the slightest thing,
link |
and yet when you see them, you just see them with love,
link |
it's a beautiful feeling.
link |
It's like, you know, I'm feeling exactly like
link |
when I look at my three year old who's like screaming,
link |
even though I love her and I want her good,
link |
she's still screaming and saying, no, no, no, no, no.
link |
And I'm like, I love you, genuinely love you,
link |
but I can sort of kind of see that your brain
link |
is kind of stuck in that little mode of anger.
link |
And there's plenty of people out there who don't like me,
link |
and I see them with love as a child
link |
that is stuck in a cognitive state
link |
that they're eventually gonna snap out of,
link |
or maybe not, and that's okay.
link |
So there's that aspect of sort of experiencing life
link |
with the best intentions.
link |
And I love when I'm wrong.
link |
I had a friend who was like one of the smartest people
link |
I've ever met who would basically say,
link |
oh, I love it when I'm wrong
link |
because it makes me feel human.
link |
And it's so beautiful.
link |
I mean, she's really one of the smartest people
link |
And she was like, oh, it's such a good feeling.
link |
And I love being wrong, but there's something
link |
about self improvement.
link |
There's something about sort of how do I
link |
not make the most mistakes, but attempt the most rights
link |
and do the fewest wrongs,
link |
but with the full knowledge that this will happen.
link |
That's one aspect.
link |
So through this life in the present,
link |
what's really funny is,
link |
and that's something that I've experienced more and more
link |
really thanks to you and through this podcast,
link |
is this enormous number of people who will basically comment,
link |
wow, I've been following this guy for so many years now,
link |
or wow, this guy has inspired so many of us
link |
in computation biology and so on and so forth.
link |
I'm like, I don't know any of that,
link |
but I'm only discovering this now
link |
through these sort of sharing our emotional states
link |
and our cognitive states with a wider audience,
link |
where suddenly I'm sort of realizing that,
link |
wow, maybe I've had a legacy.
link |
Like basically I've trained generations of students
link |
from MIT and I've put all of my courses freely online
link |
So basically all of my video recordings of my lectures
link |
have been online since 2001.
link |
So countless generations of people from across the world
link |
will meet me at a conference and say,
link |
like I was at this conference where somebody heard my voice
link |
and it's like, I know this voice,
link |
I've been listening to your lectures.
link |
And it's just such a beautiful thing where
link |
like we're sharing widely and who knows
link |
which students will get where
link |
from whatever they catch out of these lectures,
link |
even if what they catch is just inspiration
link |
and passion and drive.
link |
So there's this intangible legacy quote unquote
link |
that every one of us has through the people we touch.
link |
One of my friends from undergrad basically told me,
link |
oh, my mom remembers you vividly
link |
from when she came to campus.
link |
I'm like, I didn't even meet her.
link |
She's like, no, but she sort of saw you interacting
link |
with people and said, wow,
link |
he's exuding this positive energy.
link |
And there's that aspect of sort of just motivating people
link |
with your kindness, with your passion, with your generosity
link |
and with your just selflessness of just give,
link |
it doesn't matter where it goes.
link |
I've been to conferences where basically people will,
link |
I'll ask them a question and then they'll come back to,
link |
or there was a conference where I asked somebody a question
link |
and they said, oh, in fact, this entire project
link |
was inspired by your question three years ago
link |
at the same conference.
link |
And then on top of that, there's also the ripple effect.
link |
So you're speaking to the direct influence of inspiration
link |
or education, but there's also the follow on things
link |
that happen to that and there's this ripple
link |
that from you just this one individual first drop.
link |
And from every one of us, from everyone,
link |
that's what I love about humanity.
link |
The fact that every one of us shares genes
link |
and genetic variants with very recent ancestors
link |
with everyone else.
link |
So even if I die tomorrow, my genes are still shared
link |
through my cousins and through my uncles
link |
and through my immediate family.
link |
And of course I'm lucky enough to have my own children,
link |
but even if you don't, your genes are still permeating
link |
through all of the layers of your family.
link |
So your genes will have the legacy there, yeah.
link |
Number two, our ideas are constantly intermingling
link |
So there's no person living in the planet
link |
a hundred years from now who will not be directly impacted
link |
by every one of the planet living here today
link |
through genetic inheritance and through meme inheritance.
link |
That's cool to think that your ideas, Manolis Callas,
link |
would touch every single person on this planet.
link |
It's not just mine, Joe Smith, who's looking at this
link |
right now, his ideas will also touch everybody.
link |
So there's this interconnectedness of humanity.
link |
And then I'm also a professor.
link |
So my day job is legacy.
link |
My day job is training, not just the thousands of people
link |
who watch my videos on the web,
link |
but the people who are actually in my class,
link |
who basically come to MIT to learn from a bunch of us.
link |
The cognitive systems that were shipped to this particular
link |
location in space.
link |
And who will then disperse back
link |
into all of their home countries.
link |
That's what makes America the beacon of the world.
link |
We don't just export goods.
link |
Cognitive systems.
link |
We export people who are born here.
link |
And we also export training that people born elsewhere
link |
will come here to get and will then disseminate,
link |
not just whatever knowledge they got,
link |
but whatever ideals they learned.
link |
And I think that's something that's a legacy of the US
link |
that you cannot stop with political isolation.
link |
You cannot stop with economic isolation.
link |
That's something that will continue to happen
link |
through all the people we've touched through our universities.
link |
So there's the students who took my classes,
link |
who are basically now going off and teaching their classes.
link |
And I've trained generations of computational biologists.
link |
No one in genomics who's gone through MIT
link |
hasn't taken my class.
link |
So basically there's this impact through,
link |
I mean, there's so many people in biotechs who are like,
link |
hey, I took your class.
link |
That's what got me into the field like 15 years ago.
link |
And it's just so beautiful.
link |
And then there's the academic family that I have.
link |
So the students who are actually studying with me,
link |
who are my trainees.
link |
So this sort of mentorship of ancient Greece.
link |
So I basically have an academic family and we are a family.
link |
There's this such strong connection,
link |
this bond of you're part of the Kelly's family.
link |
So I have a biological family at home
link |
and I have an academic family on campus.
link |
And that academic family
link |
has given me great grandchildren already.
link |
So I've trained people who are now professors at Stanford,
link |
CMU, Harvard, WashU, I mean, everywhere in the world.
link |
And these people have now trained people
link |
who are now having their own faculty jobs.
link |
So there's basically people who see me
link |
as their academic grandfather.
link |
And it's just so beautiful
link |
because you don't have to wait for the 18 years
link |
of cognitive hardware development
link |
to sort of have amazing conversation with people.
link |
These are fully grown humans, fully grown adult
link |
who are cognitively super ready and who are shaped by,
link |
and I see some of these beautiful papers and I'm like,
link |
I can see the touch of our lab in those papers.
link |
It's just so beautiful.
link |
Cause you're like, I spent hours with these people
link |
teaching them not just how to do a paper, but how to think.
link |
And this whole concept of, you know,
link |
the first paper that we write together
link |
is an experience with every one of these students.
link |
So, you know, I always tell them
link |
to write the whole first draft
link |
and they know that I will rewrite every word.
link |
But the act of them writing it
link |
and what I do is these like joint editing sessions
link |
where I'm like, let's coedit.
link |
And with this coediting, we basically have...
link |
Creative destruction.
link |
So I share my Zoom screen
link |
and I'm just thinking out loud as I'm doing this.
link |
And they're learning from that process
link |
as opposed to like come back two days later
link |
and they see a bunch of red on a page.
link |
I'm sort of, well, that's not how you write this.
link |
That's not how you think about this.
link |
That's not, you know, what's the point?
link |
Like this morning was having,
link |
yes, this morning between six and 8 a.m.
link |
I had a two hour meeting
link |
going through one of these papers
link |
and then saying, what's the point here?
link |
Why do you even show that?
link |
It's just a bunch of points on a graph.
link |
No, what you have to do is extract the meaning,
link |
do the homework for them.
link |
And there's this nurturing, this mentorship
link |
that sort of creates now a legacy,
link |
which is infinite because they've now gone off on the,
link |
you know, and all of that is just humanity.
link |
Then of course there's the papers I write
link |
because yes, my day job is training students,
link |
but it's a research university.
link |
The way that they learn is through the mens and manus,
link |
It's the practical training of actually doing research.
link |
And that research is a beneficial side effect
link |
of having these awesome papers
link |
that will now tell other people how to think.
link |
There's this paper we just posted recently on MedArchive
link |
and one of the most generous and eloquent comments about it
link |
was like, wow, this is a masterclass in scientific writing,
link |
in analysis, in biological interpretation, and so forth.
link |
It's just so fulfilling from a person I've never met
link |
Can you say the title of the paper, Brian Chen?
link |
I don't remember the title,
link |
but it's single cell dissection of schizophrenia reveals.
link |
So the two points that we found
link |
was this whole transcriptional resilience.
link |
Like there's some individuals who are schizophrenic,
link |
but they have an additional cell type
link |
or an additional cell state, which we believe is protective.
link |
And that cell state when they have it
link |
will cause other cells to have normal gene expression patterns.
link |
And then that cell is connected
link |
with some of the PV interneurons
link |
that are basically sending these inhibitory brainwaves
link |
through the brain.
link |
And basically there's another component of,
link |
there's a set of master regulators that we discovered
link |
who are controlling many of the genes
link |
that are differentially expressed.
link |
And these master regulators are themselves
link |
genetic targets of schizophrenia.
link |
And they are themselves involved
link |
in both synaptic connectivity
link |
and also in early brain development.
link |
So there's this sort of interconnectedness
link |
between synaptic development axis
link |
and also this transcriptional resilience.
link |
So, I mean, we basically made up a title
link |
that combines all these concepts.
link |
You have all these concepts,
link |
all these people working together,
link |
and ultimately these minds condense it down
link |
into a beautifully written little document
link |
that lives on forever. Exactly.
link |
And that document now has its own life.
link |
Our work has 120,000 citations.
link |
I mean, that's not just people who read it.
link |
These are people who used it
link |
to write something based on it.
link |
I mean, that to me is just so fulfilling
link |
to basically say, wow, I've touched people.
link |
So I don't think of my legacy as I live every day.
link |
I just think of the beauty of the present
link |
and the power of interconnectedness.
link |
And just, I feel like a kid in a candy shop
link |
where I'm just like constantly,
link |
where do I, what package do I open first?
link |
And, you know. You're the lucky one.
link |
A jack of all trades, a master of none.
link |
I think for a Meaning of Life episode,
link |
we would be amiss if we did not have at least a poem or two.
link |
Do you mind if we end in a couple of poems?
link |
Maybe a happy, maybe a sad one.
link |
I would love that.
link |
So thank you for the luxury.
link |
The first one is kind of,
link |
I remember when you were talking with Eric Weinstein
link |
about this comment of Leonard Cohen that says,
link |
but you don't really care for music, do you?
link |
That's basically kind of like mocking its reader.
link |
So one of my poems is a little like that.
link |
So I had just broken up with my girlfriend
link |
and there's this other friend who was coming to visit me.
link |
And she said, I will not come unless you write me a poem.
link |
And I was like, writing a poem on demand.
link |
So this poem is called Write Me a Poem.
link |
It goes, write me a poem, she said with a smile.
link |
Make sure it's pretty, romantic and rhymes.
link |
Make sure it's worthy of that bold flame,
link |
that love uniting us beyond a mere game.
link |
And she took off without more words,
link |
rushed for the bus and traveled the world.
link |
A poem, I thought, this is sublime.
link |
What better way for passing the time?
link |
What better way to count up the hours
link |
before she comes back to my lonely tower?
link |
Waiting for joy to fill up my heart,
link |
let's write a poem for when we're apart.
link |
How does a poem start, I inquired.
link |
Give me a topic, cook up a style.
link |
Throw in some cute words, oh, here and there.
link |
Throw in some passion, love and despair.
link |
Love, three eggs, one pound of flour,
link |
three cups of water and bake for an hour.
link |
Love is no recipe as I understand.
link |
You can't just cook up a poem on demand.
link |
And as I was twisting all this in my mind,
link |
I looked at the page, by golly, it rhymed.
link |
Three roses, white chocolate, vanilla powder,
link |
some beautiful rhymes and maybe a flower.
link |
No, be romantic, the young girl insisted.
link |
Do this, do that, don't be so silly.
link |
You must believe it straight from your heart.
link |
If you don't feel it, we're better apart.
link |
Oh, my sweet thing, what can I say?
link |
You bring me the sun all night and all day.
link |
You're the stars and the moon and the birds way up high.
link |
You're my evening sweet song, my morning blue sky.
link |
You are my muse, your spell has me caught.
link |
You bring me my voice and scatter my thoughts.
link |
To put that loving writing in vain, I can try.
link |
But when I'm with you, my wings want to fly.
link |
So I put down the pen and drop my defenses.
link |
Give myself to you and fill up my senses.
link |
The baffled king composing, that was beautiful.
link |
What I love about it is that I did not
link |
bring up a dictionary of rhymes.
link |
I did not sort of work hard.
link |
So basically when I write poems, I just type.
link |
I never go back, I just.
link |
So when my brain gets into that mode,
link |
it actually happens like I wrote it.
link |
Oh, wow, so the rhymes just kind of.
link |
The rhymes just kind of come.
link |
It's an emergent phenomenon.
link |
It's an emergent phenomenon.
link |
I just get into that mode and then it comes up.
link |
That's a beautiful one.
link |
And it's basically, you know, as you got it,
link |
it's basically saying it's no recipe
link |
and then I'm throwing in the recipes
link |
and as I'm writing it, I'm like, you know.
link |
So it's very introspective in this whole concept.
link |
So anyway, there's another one many years earlier
link |
that is, you know, darker.
link |
It's basically this whole concept of let's be friends.
link |
I was like, ugh, you know.
link |
No, let's be friends, just like, you know.
link |
So the last words are shout out,
link |
I love you or send me to hell.
link |
So the title is Burn Me Tonight.
link |
Tell me you love me.
link |
Give me a sweet word, a promise, a kiss.
link |
Give me the world, a sweet taste to miss.
link |
Don't let me lay here, inert, ugly, cold,
link |
with nothing sweet felt and nothing harsh told.
link |
Give me some hope, false, foolish, yet kind.
link |
Make me regret, I'll leave you behind.
link |
Don't pity my soul or torture it right.
link |
Treat it with hatred.
link |
For it's from mildness that my soul dies
link |
when you cover your passion in a bland friend's disguise.
link |
Kiss me now, baby.
link |
Show me your passion.
link |
Turn off the lights and rip off your fashion.
link |
Give me my life's joy this one night.
link |
Burn all my matches for one blazing light.
link |
Don't think of tomorrow and let today fade.
link |
Don't try and protect me from love's cutting blade.
link |
Your razor will always rip off my veins.
link |
Don't spare me the passion to spare me the pains.
link |
Kiss me now, honey, or spit in my face.
link |
Throw me an insult I'll gladly embrace.
link |
Tell me now clearly that you never cared.
link |
Say it now loudly like you never dared.
link |
I'm ready to hear it.
link |
I'm ready to burn and start a new life.
link |
I'm ready to face the rough burning truth
link |
rather than waste the rest of my youth.
link |
So tell me, my lover, should I stay or go?
link |
The answer to love is one, yes or no.
link |
There's no I like you, no let's be friends,
link |
shout out I love you, or send me to hell.
link |
I don't think there's a better way to end
link |
a discussion of the meaning of life.
link |
Whatever the heck the meaning is,
link |
go all in as that poem says.
link |
Manolis, thank you so much for talking today.
link |
Thanks, I look forward to next time.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
with Manolis Kellis, and thank you to our sponsors.
link |
Grammarly, which is a service for checking spelling,
link |
grammar, sentence structure, and readability,
link |
Athletic Greens, the all in one drink
link |
that I start every day with
link |
to cover all my nutritional bases,
link |
Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends.
link |
Please check out these sponsors in the description
link |
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
link |
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
link |
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
link |
follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,
link |
or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
link |
And now, let me leave you with some words
link |
from Douglas Adams in his book,
link |
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
link |
On the planet Earth, man had always assumed
link |
that he was more intelligent than dolphins
link |
because he had achieved so much.
link |
The wheel, New York, wars, and so on,
link |
whilst all the dolphins had ever done
link |
was muck about in the water having a good time.
link |
But conversely, the dolphins had always believed
link |
that they were far more intelligent than man
link |
for precisely the same reasons.
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.