Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness

Manolis Kellis (02:48.480)

interesting, but I give you timestamps so you can skip, but still please do check out the sponsors

Manolis Kellis (02:54.400)

by clicking the links in the description. It's the best way honestly to support this podcast.

Manolis Kellis (03:00.240)

This show is sponsored by Public Goods, an online store for basic health and household stuff.

Manolis Kellis (03:05.600)

Their products have a minimalist black and white design that I find to be just clean,

Manolis Kellis (03:10.000)

elegant, and beautiful. It goes nicely, at least I think so, with the design of Crew Dragon and

Manolis Kellis (03:16.000)

the recent SpaceX NASA mission that sent two humans into space. To me, very few things are

Manolis Kellis (03:22.560)

as inspiring as us humans reaching out into the unknown, the harsh challenges of space.

Manolis Kellis (03:28.880)

Colonizing Mars may not have obvious near term benefits, but I believe it will challenge our

Manolis Kellis (03:33.440)

scientists and our engineers to create technologies whose impact will be immeasurable for us humans

Manolis Kellis (03:39.520)

here on Earth, or those of us who choose to stay here on Earth. Personally, I'm kind of a long time

Manolis Kellis (03:47.280)

big fan of this planet. Anyway, visit publicgoods.com slash Lex and use code Lex at checkout to get 15

Manolis Kellis (03:56.160)

bucks off your first order. This episode is also supported by Magic Spoon, low carb,

Manolis Kellis (04:03.920)

keto friendly cereal. You might have heard on other videos that I eat keto mostly these days,

Lex Fridman (04:10.320)

so Magic Spoon is a delicious healthy treat on a hard workout day that fits into that crazy diet.

Manolis Kellis (04:17.360)

Also, they're a sponsor of episode 100 with my dad, and got my dad to buy this cereal and he now

Manolis Kellis (04:24.160)

loves it. Honestly, just loves it. It's kind of funny actually. The deep heartfelt nature of that

Manolis Kellis (04:30.080)

conversation and the silliness of the cereal captures my dad perfectly. Much of the hardship

Manolis Kellis (04:36.720)

in his life he dealt with using wit and humor. His favorite flavor happens to be cocoa. Mine is too.

Manolis Kellis (04:44.800)

He hasn't bought the eight sleep mattress yet, though my mom wants to, but he's all about this

Manolis Kellis (04:50.160)

Magic Spoon cereal. I think it's his actually favorite sponsor of this podcast. Probably

Manolis Kellis (04:55.680)

because they chose to sponsor the episode he's on. Anyway, click the magicspoon.com slash Lex

Manolis Kellis (05:01.280)

link in the description and use code Lex at checkout for free shipping to let them know

Manolis Kellis (05:06.640)

I sent you and also indirectly to make my dad happy. This show is also sponsored by ExpressVPN.

Manolis Kellis (05:14.240)

Get it at expressvpn.com slash Lex pod. They gave me a suggested opening line of using the internet

Manolis Kellis (05:21.440)

without ExpressVPN is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door. This is like GPT3

Manolis Kellis (05:27.840)

suggesting to me how to be more human like, and I'll honestly take all the help I can get.

Manolis Kellis (05:33.360)

By way of life advice, let me tell you that you need a VPN to protect you from Russians like me.

Manolis Kellis (05:39.760)

In fact, this podcast is a kind of hack of your biological network where I use my monotone,

Manolis Kellis (05:45.520)

low energy voice to convince you to buy kind of expensive cereal as a way to influence the

Manolis Kellis (05:51.120)

stability of the US economy. I use ExpressVPN on both Windows and Linux to protect myself

Manolis Kellis (05:58.320)

if I ever do shady things on the internet, which of course I never do and never will.

Lex Fridman (06:03.920)

So secure your online activity by going to expressvpn.com slash Lex pod to get an extra

Manolis Kellis (06:10.400)

three months free and to support this podcast. And now here's my conversation with Manolis Kallis.

Lex Fridman (06:18.960)

What is beautiful about the human epigenome? Don't get me started. So first of all,

Manolis Kellis (06:25.040)

as an engineering feat, the human epigenome manages the most compact, the most incredible

Manolis Kellis (06:32.640)

compaction you could imagine. So every single one of your cells contains two meters worth of DNA.

Lex Fridman (06:40.400)

And this is compacted in a radius, which is one thousandth of a millimeter. That's six orders of

Manolis Kellis (06:47.200)

magnitude. To give you a sense of scale, it's as if a string as tall as the Burj Al Khalifa,

Manolis Kellis (06:55.840)

which is about a kilometer tall, was compacted into a tiny little ball the size of a millimeter.

Lex Fridman (07:00.880)

And if you put it all together, if you stretch the trillions of cells that we have, we have about

Manolis Kellis (07:10.400)

30 trillion cells in your body. If you stretch the DNA, the two meters worth of DNA in every one of

Manolis Kellis (07:15.200)

your trillion cells, you would basically reach all the way to Jupiter a hundred times.

Lex Fridman (07:24.320)

A hundred times. Yeah, it's all curled up in there. It's 30 trillion cells.

Manolis Kellis (07:30.800)

30 trillion cells, every one of them two meters worth of DNA. So all of that is compacted through

Manolis Kellis (07:37.200)

the epigenome. The epigenome basically has the ability to compact this massive amount of DNA

Manolis Kellis (07:44.160)

from here to Jupiter 10 times into one human body, into just the nuclei of one human body,

Lex Fridman (07:49.520)

and the vast majority of the human body is not even these nuclei.

Lex Fridman (07:52.240)

And that's sort of the structural part. So that's the boring part. That's the structural part.

Manolis Kellis (07:57.600)

The functional part is way more interesting. So functionally, what the human epigenome allows

Manolis Kellis (08:03.120)

you to do is basically control the activity patterns of thousands of genes. So 20,000 genes

Manolis Kellis (08:12.160)

in your human body, every one of your cells only needs a few thousand of those, but a different

Manolis Kellis (08:16.720)

few thousand of those. And the way that your cells remember what their identity is, is basically

Manolis Kellis (08:23.120)

driven by the epigenome. So the epigenome is both structural in sort of making this dramatic

Manolis Kellis (08:28.880)

compaction, and it's also functional in being able to actually control the activity patterns

Lex Fridman (08:35.200)

of all your cells. Now, can we draw a definition distinction between the genome and the epigenome?

Manolis Kellis (08:42.960)

Again, being Greek, epi means on top of. So the genome is the DNA, and the epigenome is anything

Manolis Kellis (08:52.480)

on top of the DNA. And there's three types of things on top of the DNA. The first is chemical

Manolis Kellis (08:58.560)

modifications on the DNA itself. So we like to think of four bases of the DNA, A, C, G, T. C

Manolis Kellis (09:05.360)

has a methyl form, which is sometimes referred to as the fifth base. So methyl C takes a different

Manolis Kellis (09:11.440)

meaning. So in the same way that you have annotations in a orchestra score that basically

Manolis Kellis (09:18.800)

say whether you should play something softly or loudly or space it out or interpret basically

Manolis Kellis (09:25.520)

the score, the human epigenome allows you to modify that primary score. So a modified C

Manolis Kellis (09:32.560)

basically says, play this one softly. It's basically a sign of repression in a gene

Manolis Kellis (09:38.240)

regulatory region. I love how you're talking about the function that emerges from the epigenome as a

Manolis Kellis (09:46.720)

musical score. It is in many ways. And every single cell plays a different part of that score.

Manolis Kellis (09:53.440)

It's like having all of human knowledge in 23 volumes, like 23 giant books, which are your

Manolis Kellis (09:58.320)

chromosomes. And every single cell has a different profession, a different role. Some cells play the

Manolis Kellis (10:04.800)

piano and they're looking at chapter seven from chromosome 23 and chapter four from chromosome

Manolis Kellis (10:09.840)

two and so on and so forth. And each of those pieces are all encoded in the same DNA. But

Lex Fridman (10:17.280)

what the epigenome allows you to do is effectively conduct the orchestra and sort of coordinate the

Manolis Kellis (10:24.480)

pieces so that every instrument plays only the things that it needs to play. One thing that kind

Manolis Kellis (10:29.440)

of blows my mind, maybe you can tell me your thoughts about it, is the way evolution works

Manolis Kellis (10:35.600)

with natural selection is based on the final sort of the entirety of the orchestra musical

Manolis Kellis (10:44.320)

performance, right? But there's these incredibly rich structural things, like each one of them

Manolis Kellis (10:53.040)

doing their own little job that somehow work together. The evolution selects based on the

Manolis Kellis (10:58.160)

final result and yet all the individual pieces are doing like infinitely minuscule specific things.

Lex Fridman (11:05.760)

How the heck does that work? It's a very good insight. And you can even go beyond that and

Manolis Kellis (11:10.800)

basically say evolution doesn't select at the level of an organism. It actually selects at

Manolis Kellis (11:15.520)

the level of whole environments, whole ecosystems. So let me break this down. So you basically have

Manolis Kellis (11:22.080)

at the very bottom every single nucleotide being selected. But then that nucleotide function is

Manolis Kellis (11:28.800)

selected at the level of each gene and every, not even each gene, each gene regulatory control

Manolis Kellis (11:37.440)

element. And then those control elements are basically converging onto the function of the gene

Lex Fridman (11:42.800)

and many genes are converging onto the function of one cell and many cells are converging into

Manolis Kellis (11:47.280)

the function of one tissue or organ. And all of these organs are converging onto the level of

Manolis Kellis (11:54.160)

an organism. But now that organism is not in isolation. So if you basically think about why

Manolis Kellis (12:00.320)

is altruism, for example, a thing, why are people being nice to each other? It was probably selected

Lex Fridman (12:06.720)

and it was probably selected because those species that were just nasty to each other didn't survive

Manolis Kellis (12:13.440)

as a species. And now if you think about symbiosis of, you know, there's plants, for example, that

Manolis Kellis (12:23.440)

love CO2 and there's humans that love O2 and we're sort of, you know, trading different types of gases

Manolis Kellis (12:32.480)

to each other. If you look at ecosystems where one organism was just really nasty, that organism

Manolis Kellis (12:42.160)

actually died because everyone they were being nasty to was killed off. And then that kind of,

Manolis Kellis (12:48.000)

you know, universe of life is gone. So basically what emerges is selection at so many different

Manolis Kellis (12:57.520)

layers of benefit, including, you know, all of these nucleotides within a body interacting for

Manolis Kellis (13:05.920)

the emergent functions at the body level. Yeah. I wonder if it's possible to break it down into

Manolis Kellis (13:12.160)

levels that's selection even beyond humans. Like you said, environment, but there's environments

Manolis Kellis (13:18.080)

at all different levels too, right? At the minuscule, at the organ level, at the tissue level,

Manolis Kellis (13:23.040)

like you said, maybe at the microscopic level. It would be fascinating if like there's a kind of

Manolis Kellis (13:28.880)

selection going on, like both the quantum level and like the, the galaxy level. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Manolis Kellis (13:36.400)

So, so yeah, let's again, sort of break down these different layers. So basically if you think about

Manolis Kellis (13:41.440)

the environment in which a gene operates, that gene, of course, the first definition of environment

Manolis Kellis (13:47.120)

that we think of is pollution or sunlight or heat or cold and so on and so forth. That's the external

Manolis Kellis (13:53.760)

environment. But every gene also operates at the level of the internal cellular environment that

Manolis Kellis (13:58.320)

it's in. If I take a gene from say an African individual and I put it in a European context,

Manolis Kellis (14:05.520)

will it perform the same way? Probably not because there's a cellular context of thousands of other

Manolis Kellis (14:12.320)

genes that that gene has co evolved with, you know, in the out of Africa event and, you know,

Manolis Kellis (14:18.400)

all of this sort of human history of evolution. So basically if you look at Neanderthal genes,

Manolis Kellis (14:25.200)

for example, which again happened long after that out of Africa event, there's incompatibilities

Manolis Kellis (14:32.000)

between Neanderthal genes and modern human genes that can lead to diseases. So in the context of

Manolis Kellis (14:38.720)

the Neanderthal genome, that gene version, that allele was fine, but in the context of the modern

Manolis Kellis (14:43.600)

human genome, that Neanderthal gene version is actually detrimental. So it's, it's, you know,

Manolis Kellis (14:49.040)

that cellular environment constitutes the genetics of that gene, but also of course,

Manolis Kellis (14:54.640)

all of the epigenomics of that gene. It's fascinating that the gene has a history.

Manolis Kellis (15:00.560)

I mean, we talked about this a little bit last time, but just, and then some of your research

Manolis Kellis (15:05.600)

goes into that, but the genes as they are today have, have a story from the beginning of time.

Lex Fridman (15:14.000)

And then some, sometimes their story was like their path was useful for survival for the

Manolis Kellis (15:20.400)

particular organisms and sometimes not. That's fascinating. Let me ask as a tangent. We kind

Manolis Kellis (15:27.040)

of started talking offline about Neanderthals. Do you have something interesting genetically,

Manolis Kellis (15:32.560)

biologically in terms of difference between Neanderthal and like the different branches

Manolis Kellis (15:38.160)

of human evolution that you find fascinating? Neanderthals are only one of about five branches

Manolis Kellis (15:46.080)

that we are pretty confident about. Branches of? Of out of Africa events. So basically there's

Manolis Kellis (15:53.040)

Neanderthals, there's Denisovans. What is the evidence for Denisovans? One tiny little fragment

Manolis Kellis (16:00.320)

of one pinky from one cave in Siberia. Recent, relatively recently discovered, right? Less than

Manolis Kellis (16:08.320)

10 years ago. Yeah. And those are like little folks, right? No, no, no, no, no. That's yet

Manolis Kellis (16:12.880)

another one though. Homo florensis. It had the little folks instead of Indonesia. But then the

Manolis Kellis (16:18.800)

Denisovans are basically another branch that we only know about genetically from that one bone.

Lex Fridman (16:24.240)

And eventually we realized that it's one of the three major branches along with Neanderthal,

Manolis Kellis (16:28.640)

modern human and Denisovan. And then that one branch has now resurfaced in many different areas.

Lex Fridman (16:34.560)

And we kind of know about the gene flow that happened in between them. So when I was reading

Manolis Kellis (16:39.600)

my Greek mythology, it was talking about the age of the heroes, these eras of human like,

Manolis Kellis (16:46.560)

you know, precursors that were wiped out by Zeus or by all kinds of wars and so on and so forth,

Manolis Kellis (16:51.440)

like the Titans and the, you know, it's ridiculous to sort of read these stories as a kid because

Manolis Kellis (16:57.760)

you're like, oh yeah, whatever. And then you're growing up and you're like, whoa, layers and

Manolis Kellis (17:02.560)

layers of human like ancestors. And who knows if those stories were inspired by bones that they

Manolis Kellis (17:08.320)

found that kind of looked human like, but were not quite human like. Who knows if stories of dragons

Manolis Kellis (17:13.760)

were inspired by bones of dinosaurs. And basically this archeological evidence has been there and has

Manolis Kellis (17:20.240)

probably entered the folk imagination, migrated into those stories, but it's not that far removed

Manolis Kellis (17:27.200)

from what actually happened of massive wars of wiping out Neanderthals as humans are, modern

Manolis Kellis (17:34.000)

humans are populating, you know, Europe. Do you think, do you think what killed the Neanderthals

Lex Fridman (17:39.680)

and all those other branches is human conflict or is it genetic conflict? So is it us humans being

Manolis Kellis (17:48.000)

the opposite of altruistic towards each other? Or is it some other competition at some other level,

Manolis Kellis (17:56.240)

like as we're discussing? Yeah. So if you look at a lot of human traits today, they're probably not

Manolis Kellis (18:01.760)

that far removed from the human traits that got us where we are now. So, you know, this whole

Manolis Kellis (18:07.200)

tribalism, you know, you're my sports team or you're my, you know, political party or you're my,

Manolis Kellis (18:14.720)

you know, tiny little village. And therefore, you know, if you're from that other village,

Manolis Kellis (18:19.520)

I hate you. But as soon as we're both in the major city, I can't believe we're from the same region,

Manolis Kellis (18:25.440)

my friend, my family and like two neighboring countries fighting. And as soon as they're off

Manolis Kellis (18:30.240)

in another country, you're like, oh, I can't believe that. So it's, it's kind of funny,

Manolis Kellis (18:34.160)

like this tribalism is nonsensical in many ways. It's like cognitive incongruent that basically

Manolis Kellis (18:40.160)

we like kin and selection for, for sort of liking kin is hugely advantageous genetically.

Manolis Kellis (18:49.040)

Probably across all kinds of organisms, across all kinds of life. Yeah. So, so basically if you

Manolis Kellis (18:54.400)

now transport that to the sort of humans arriving in Europe and Neanderthals are everywhere,

Lex Fridman (19:02.720)

what are you going to do? You're going to kill them off. You know, there's this battle for territory

Lex Fridman (19:07.600)

and this battle for, they're not like us. We have to get rid of them. So basically there's a, you

Manolis Kellis (19:12.480)

know, very interesting mix there, but, and yet, and yet when you look at the genetics, there's

Manolis Kellis (19:18.240)

tons of gene flow between them. So basically, you know, love romance between, you know, tribes,

Lex Fridman (19:25.600)

but love spans the gap between the different tribes. It's Romeo and Juliet across species

Manolis Kellis (19:32.240)

boundaries. Sneaks away from the village. Even before the out of Africa, there's, you know,

Manolis Kellis (19:39.280)

within Africa selection, which was probably massive battles of larger and larger tribes

Manolis Kellis (19:45.200)

selecting for our social networking and savviness and, you know, probably all our conspiracy theory

Manolis Kellis (19:53.920)

genes are, you know, dating back from then. And, you know, so there's a lot of this mischievousness

Manolis Kellis (1:00:01.200)

Or you would wake up and the world would be 10 years later every single day you wake up.

Manolis Kellis (1:00:05.760)

It's the opposite of Groundhog Day where basically you always wake up and it's always 10 years later.

Lex Fridman (1:00:11.120)

So you're saying that's such a powerful, interesting concept that life is more

Manolis Kellis (1:00:18.240)

interesting if you're, of all the life forms on earth, that you're the slowest one.

Lex Fridman (1:00:24.000)

Exactly. Exactly.

Manolis Kellis (1:00:25.200)

Like trees have it right.

Manolis Kellis (1:00:26.640)

Like trees have it right. Olive trees. Like, you know, they've been there since the Minoan

Manolis Kellis (1:00:30.720)

civilization. And you know, that takes us back to the question you asked about sort of

Manolis Kellis (1:00:35.200)

the transformations that have happened in humanity. The Minoan civilization is one of them.

Manolis Kellis (1:00:39.440)

You know, there's this paper that was published just a couple of years ago by one of my friends

Manolis Kellis (1:00:43.440)

that basically looked at the genetic makeup of the Minoans and the Mycenaeans in ancient

Manolis Kellis (1:00:52.720)

Greece and how they relate to modern Greeks. And they found that indeed there was very little gene

Manolis Kellis (1:00:58.160)

flow from, you know, the outside. And, you know, it's fantastic to sort of think about these

Manolis Kellis (1:01:06.800)

amazing civilizations that transformed the way that human thought happens, that basically

Manolis Kellis (1:01:13.520)

looked for rules in nature, that looked for principles, that looked for the standard of beauty,

Manolis Kellis (1:01:21.360)

not human beauty, but beauty in the natural world. This whole concept that the world must

Manolis Kellis (1:01:27.120)

be elegant and there must be deeper ways of understanding that world. To me, that's a massive

Manolis Kellis (1:01:32.560)

transformation of our species, similar to, you know, the earlier transformation that we're talking

Manolis Kellis (1:01:38.720)

about of even involving a brain, of, you know, learning how to communicate language or the

Manolis Kellis (1:01:45.840)

evolution of eyesight. If you look at sort of, you know, we're talking about these worms crawling

Manolis Kellis (1:01:51.440)

around and then sensing which direction are the chemicals more abundant, you know, chemotaxis. So

Manolis Kellis (1:01:57.040)

eventually they grow a nose. Eventually they grow, I mean, when I say nose, I mean, ways of sensing

Manolis Kellis (1:02:02.480)

chemicals. That's probably one of the earliest senses. You know, we always talk about how deep

Manolis Kellis (1:02:06.720)

rooted it is in our brain. That's one of the early senses. If you look at hearing, that's a much later

Manolis Kellis (1:02:11.520)

sense. If you look at eyesight, that's an intermediate sense where you're basically sensing

Manolis Kellis (1:02:15.920)

where the light direction comes from. That's probably something that life didn't need until

Manolis Kellis (1:02:19.760)

it got, you know, into the surface and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of, you know, milestones.

Lex Fridman (1:02:27.280)

And I was talking about the latest milestone, which is LIGO, last time of being able to detect

Manolis Kellis (1:02:31.680)

gravitational waves and sort of being able to sort of have a sense that humans haven't had before.

Lex Fridman (1:02:37.920)

So you see that as a yet another transformation. It gives us an extra little sense.

Manolis Kellis (1:02:42.480)

Of course. And now if you go back to this history of ancient Greece, I mean, this transformation

Manolis Kellis (1:02:47.600)

that happened, I mean, of course, the Egyptians had this incredible, you know, civilization for

Manolis Kellis (1:02:53.120)

thousands of years. But what happened in Greece was this whole concept of let's break things down

Lex Fridman (1:02:58.160)

and understand the natural world. Let's break things down and understand physics. Let's basically

Manolis Kellis (1:03:02.640)

build rules around architecture, about around elegance, around, you know, statues and tragedy.

Manolis Kellis (1:03:10.800)

I mean, another question that you asked me in passing was this whole concept of embracing the

Manolis Kellis (1:03:16.240)

good and the bad, embracing the full range of human emotions. And if you look at Greek tragedy,

Manolis Kellis (1:03:23.200)

it's the definition of that. It's, I mean, drama. I mean, again, it's a Greek word,

Lex Fridman (1:03:29.680)

but the whole concept of some problems that are just so vast and large that dying is the easy way

Manolis Kellis (1:03:38.480)

out. That death, oh, that's the easy solution. You know, so I want to touch a little bit on that

Manolis Kellis (1:03:45.840)

point and sort of talk about this concept that life supersedes physics and that the brain supersedes

Manolis Kellis (1:03:59.200)

life. That basically we have a brain that can decide to not follow evolution's path. We can

Manolis Kellis (1:04:06.800)

decide to not have children. We can decide to not eat. We can decide to suicide. We can decide to

Manolis Kellis (1:04:14.400)

sort of abolish communication with the outside world. I mean, all the things that make us human,

Manolis Kellis (1:04:20.560)

we can basically decide not to do that. And that is basically when the brain itself is basically

Manolis Kellis (1:04:28.640)

is basically superseding what evolution program is for. Okay. So one of the, it's okay. My mind

Manolis Kellis (1:04:38.720)

was already blown at the beautiful formulation of the idea that life is a system that resists

Manolis Kellis (1:04:48.720)

physics and our brain, or perhaps the content of it, or however it may be functionally, our brain

Lex Fridman (1:04:56.560)

is a thing that resists life. Yes. Yes. You're, you're so, you're so brilliant.

Manolis Kellis (1:05:06.960)

But, but, but, but, but I want you to see all of that as continuum. Basically, you're sort of

Manolis Kellis (1:05:12.080)

talking about the sort of individual transformations, but it's a path that, that humanity has been

Manolis Kellis (1:05:17.520)

taking. It's a transformation. It's a path of transformation. And then I want us to think about

Lex Fridman (1:05:22.240)

what it truly means to become human, like the F zine. And you asked me about what motivated

Manolis Kellis (1:05:28.640)

my meaning of life symposium. What motivated it in part, I mean, of course it was an inside joke

Manolis Kellis (1:05:34.640)

of turning 42, but what motivated it in part was actually a midlife crisis. So the joke that I

Manolis Kellis (1:05:42.480)

always like to say is Christos Papadimitriou, a famous Greek professor who was previously at

Manolis Kellis (1:05:47.680)

MIT, at Harvard, at Stanford, at Berkeley, everywhere. A brilliant, brilliant person. That's

Manolis Kellis (1:05:52.320)

actually Costis's advisor. So Christos Papadimitriou likes to say that when you're an undergrad,

Manolis Kellis (1:05:59.040)

you work like a rat to get into grad school. And where you're a grad student, you work like a rat

Manolis Kellis (1:06:03.520)

to get your PhD. And where you're a postdoc, you work like a rat to get your assistant professor

Manolis Kellis (1:06:08.160)

position. And where you're an assistant professor, you work like a rat to become a full professor.

Lex Fridman (1:06:12.000)

And then when you're a full professor, well, by then you're basically a rat.

Lex Fridman (1:06:18.880)

Oh, that's brilliant.

Lex Fridman (1:06:19.920)

So basically what happened to me is that I arrived at the end of the rat race.

Manolis Kellis (1:06:25.360)

You know, life is a rat race. You constantly have hurdles to jump over. You constantly have

Manolis Kellis (1:06:29.520)

tunnels and secret pathways. And I figured it all out. And eventually as I was turning 42,

Manolis Kellis (1:06:35.200)

I looked back and I was like, wow, that was an awesome rat race. But I'm not a rat.

Manolis Kellis (1:06:42.960)

I basically got out of the labyrinth and I was like, I'm not a rat, turns out.

Lex Fridman (1:06:47.520)

Is that the first moment where you saw that you were in a rat race?

Manolis Kellis (1:06:53.520)

No, no, no. I've known that I'm in a rat race for a long time. It's so easy to be in a rat race.

Manolis Kellis (1:06:57.120)

It's so easy to be an undergrad. But you have problem sets. And you know, we're all smart

Manolis Kellis (1:07:01.680)

people. You know, problem set, it has a solution. Somebody made it for you. You can just solve it.

Manolis Kellis (1:07:06.400)

Everything was made as a test. And you keep passing those tests and tests and tests and tests.

Lex Fridman (1:07:11.520)

And you have tasks that are well defined. The PhD is a little different because it's

Manolis Kellis (1:07:16.800)

more open ended, but yet you have an advisor who's guiding you. And then you become a professor

Lex Fridman (1:07:22.320)

and tenure is a well set defined set of tasks. And you do all that.

Lex Fridman (1:07:27.120)

And at 42, I basically had bought a house, three kids, beautiful wife, tenure, awesome students,

Manolis Kellis (1:07:36.640)

tons of grants. Life was basically laid out for me. And that's when I had my main life crisis.

Manolis Kellis (1:07:42.720)

That's when people usually buy a Harley Davidson. And they basically say, I need something new. I

Manolis Kellis (1:07:48.720)

need something different and to be young myself, et cetera. But basically that was my realization

Manolis Kellis (1:07:52.560)

that it's not a rat race, that there's no rat race. It's over. That I have to basically think,

Lex Fridman (1:08:00.400)

how do I fully instantiate myself? How do I complete my transformation into an actual human

Manolis Kellis (1:08:06.000)

being? Because it's very easy to sort of forget all the intangibles of life. It's very hard to

Manolis Kellis (1:08:12.880)

just sort of think about the next task and the next task and it's all metrics. And you know,

Lex Fridman (1:08:16.320)

what is the number of viewers I have? What is the number of publications I have? What is the number

Manolis Kellis (1:08:19.680)

of citations, the number of talks, the number of grants? It's very easy to quantify everything.

Lex Fridman (1:08:24.000)

And then at some point you're like, this is real life. It's not a test anymore. And that's something

Manolis Kellis (1:08:29.680)

that I told my wife early on. I was like, no, no, no, our life is not going to be let's put the kids

Manolis Kellis (1:08:35.760)

through college. And that, you know, maybe that's when I escaped the rat race. Maybe it continued

Manolis Kellis (1:08:40.320)

being a rat race. Maybe the next step would have been, all right, how do I make sure that my kid is

Manolis Kellis (1:08:44.000)

first in class? How do I make sure that they're, you know, into the greatest college? And then,

Manolis Kellis (1:08:48.080)

you know, they're into college. And then you're like 60.

Lex Fridman (1:08:54.320)

So how do you, how do you escape? What is the, is there a light at the end of the tunnel of a

Manolis Kellis (1:09:00.960)

midlife crisis? So, so you should watch that symposium because the videos were transformative

Manolis Kellis (1:09:08.720)

to me and to many others. So basically the advice that I received from all of my friends was so

Manolis Kellis (1:09:15.920)

meaningful. This, you know, there's some, some advice that basically says you have to constantly

Manolis Kellis (1:09:22.240)

maintain unachievable goals. Goals that you can make progress towards, but you can never be fully

Manolis Kellis (1:09:30.240)

done with. And I think that's almost playing into the sort of rat race thing. Like basically make

Manolis Kellis (1:09:34.960)

sure that there's more obstacles for your little rat persona to jump through. So that's one

Manolis Kellis (1:09:40.560)

possibility. So first of all, watch, is it available somewhere? It's on YouTube, just Google,

Manolis Kellis (1:09:46.560)

Google meaning of life symposium. I should have known this. I mean, you should have told me this.

Manolis Kellis (1:09:50.160)

This is awesome. Okay. This is great. But, and also like, you know, saying rat race is, you know,

Manolis Kellis (1:09:58.960)

if we look at ratatouille, it's not, I mean, that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful thing of,

Manolis Kellis (1:10:06.560)

of, of challenges and overcoming challenges. That could be fundamentally the meaning of life is,

Manolis Kellis (1:10:15.280)

to see life as a set of challenges and to fully engage in the overcoming of those challenges.

Manolis Kellis (1:10:23.920)

I would say that that's embracing the rat race view of life. So, so a joke that we like to have

Manolis Kellis (1:10:28.480)

with my wife all the time is, we basically say, we, we, we pretend that we're in this

Manolis Kellis (1:10:33.600)

all inclusive resort that we basically hired all these people to go on the Esplanade and play games

Manolis Kellis (1:10:39.520)

because we enjoy watching people playing on the Esplanade and we enjoy sort of laying and looking

Manolis Kellis (1:10:44.000)

at life and all the people biking and rollerblading and all of that. And then we've paid all these

Manolis Kellis (1:10:48.640)

people in this all inclusive resort that we live in. And then what are we going to do today? I'm

Manolis Kellis (1:10:53.840)

like, Oh, I've signed up for professor activities. It's going to be awesome. They, they, they lined

Manolis Kellis (1:10:58.400)

up a bunch of super smart MIT students for me to meet with. I'm going to have a grant writing

Manolis Kellis (1:11:02.320)

meeting afterwards. It's going to be awesome. And then she signed up for a bunch of consulting

Manolis Kellis (1:11:06.080)

activities. It's going to be great. And then in the evening we just get back together and say,

Manolis Kellis (1:11:09.280)

Hey, how was your consulting today? So in a way, that's another view of life of basically,

Manolis Kellis (1:11:16.080)

wait a minute. If I was a gazillionaire, what would I choose to do? I would probably pay an

Manolis Kellis (1:11:21.680)

awesome university to give me an office there and just pay a bunch of super smart people to work

Manolis Kellis (1:11:27.040)

with me, even though they don't really want to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, I would

Manolis Kellis (1:11:32.480)

have exactly the life that I have now working my butt off every single day because it's so freaking

Manolis Kellis (1:11:40.080)

fulfilling. So let's clarify. It's just a beautiful way. It's almost like a video game view of life

Manolis Kellis (1:11:46.960)

that it's a set of, I mean, again, game is not perhaps a positive term, but it's a, it's a,

Lex Fridman (1:11:52.720)

it is a beautiful term. So do you, or do you not like the rat race view of life?

Manolis Kellis (1:12:00.880)

No.

Lex Fridman (1:12:01.680)

Because it is fulfilling in some fundamental way.

Manolis Kellis (1:12:03.760)

The rat race is about the goal. My view of life is about the path. So again, quoting Greece.

Lex Fridman (1:12:12.240)

Those folks have come up with some good stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:12:14.240)

So this Odysseus Elites basically wrote this beautiful poem about sort of going through life

Lex Fridman (1:12:22.640)

saying, as you go through your journey, impersonating Ulysses of his voyage,

Manolis Kellis (1:12:29.600)

he says, wish that the path is long and arduous because when you get to Ithaca,

Lex Fridman (1:12:37.280)

Ithaca, you might realize that it was all about the path, not the destination.

Lex Fridman (1:12:46.720)

So the rat race view of life makes it all about the destination. It's like,

Lex Fridman (1:12:50.240)

how do I get through the maze to get there? But the all inclusive resort view of life

Manolis Kellis (1:12:57.520)

is about the path. It's about, wow, today I couldn't wish for a better set of activities

Manolis Kellis (1:13:04.640)

all programmed for me to enjoy having my brain, having my body, having my senses and, you know,

Manolis Kellis (1:13:12.880)

the life that I have. So it's a very different kind of view. It's focused on the journey,

Lex Fridman (1:13:17.200)

not on the destination.

Lex Fridman (1:13:18.320)

So you mentioned kind of the ups and downs of life and the midlife crisis.

Lex Fridman (1:13:25.680)

And right now you said focusing kind of on the journey,

Lex Fridman (1:13:28.560)

but what the journey involves is ups and downs. Is there advice or any kind of thoughts

Manolis Kellis (1:13:38.800)

that you can elucidate about the downs in your life, the hard parts of your life and

Lex Fridman (1:13:46.640)

how you got out or maybe not, or is there, how do you see the dark parts of life?

Lex Fridman (1:13:53.920)

So I'm so glad you're asking this question because it's something that our society does

Manolis Kellis (1:13:59.760)

a terrible job at preparing us for. Every Hollywood movie has to have a happy ending.

Manolis Kellis (1:14:06.400)

It is ridiculous. You can count on your 10 fingers the number of bad ending movies that

Manolis Kellis (1:14:11.280)

you've ever watched. And you probably wouldn't need all 10 fingers. We strive to tell everyone,

Manolis Kellis (1:14:18.720)

yes, you can succeed. Yes, you're a millionaire, just temporarily disabled. And yes, you know,

Manolis Kellis (1:14:29.280)

the prince will eventually figure out his princess and they will have a happily ever after ending.

Lex Fridman (1:14:35.840)

And yes, the hero will be beaten and beaten and beaten, but you know that at the end of the movie,

Manolis Kellis (1:14:40.480)

the good guys will win. We need more movies where the bad guys win. We need more movies

Manolis Kellis (1:14:44.880)

where just everybody dies. Where just, you know, MacGyver doesn't figure out how to disable the

Manolis Kellis (1:14:50.480)

bomb and just explodes. You just need more movies that are more realistic about the fact that life

Manolis Kellis (1:14:56.720)

kind of sucks sometimes and it's okay. So again, growing up in Greece, I have been exposed to songs

Manolis Kellis (1:15:05.600)

that are not just sad, but they're miserable. So one of them comes to mind and it's basically

Manolis Kellis (1:15:18.240)

talking about this woman who's lamenting in the early morning about losing the joyful kid,

Manolis Kellis (1:15:26.800)

the joyful young man who basically died in the civil war in the arms of our own fellow citizens.

Lex Fridman (1:15:37.200)

And she's like, if only he had died fighting the foreign forces, if only he had died at the,

Manolis Kellis (1:15:44.960)

you know, sides of the, you know, general, if only he had died with honor, I would be proud to have

Manolis Kellis (1:15:52.800)

lost the joyful kid. I mean, it's devastating, right? It's like, he didn't just die. He died

Manolis Kellis (1:16:01.440)

without honor. And my friend who was with me was listening to the song and she's like, this is

Manolis Kellis (1:16:07.280)

depressing. I'm like, whoa, you have to listen to another one. It's not as sad. And she's like, what,

Manolis Kellis (1:16:11.760)

this one died with honor? So that's one example. It's a kind of a celebration of misery. No, no,

Manolis Kellis (1:16:20.080)

no, no, no, no, no. So let me give you a couple more examples and then I'll answer that question.

Lex Fridman (1:16:25.120)

So another example is I picked up this book that I had from my childhood and I started reading

Manolis Kellis (1:16:30.640)

stories to my kids. And the first story is about these two children. One is really poor living on

Manolis Kellis (1:16:36.480)

the street and the other one is really rich, really living in the house in the bright light

Manolis Kellis (1:16:39.840)

above. And the poor one is wishing, looking at that window and wishing that he could have that

Manolis Kellis (1:16:44.400)

house. And the other one is at the window wishing that he was free, that he wasn't sick all the time,

Manolis Kellis (1:16:49.360)

that he could escape outside. It's only four pages long. And at the end, both children die.

Manolis Kellis (1:16:55.760)

One of them dies from cold, the other one dies from illness. And you're like, how is that even

Manolis Kellis (1:17:00.720)

a children's story? The next story, I'm like, okay, that's fine. Let's skip this one. So I read

Manolis Kellis (1:17:06.160)

this to my kids and then I read the next one. And the next one is about this woman whose brother is

Manolis Kellis (1:17:12.800)

at war against the Turks and he is going to die. And she prays to the Virgin, please don't let him

Manolis Kellis (1:17:22.640)

die. And the Virgin appears and she's like, no problem. Tell me who to kill instead. And she's

Manolis Kellis (1:17:30.000)

like, anyone, anyone. No, no, no, no. Choose one. How about this Turk? This one has two kids,

Manolis Kellis (1:17:36.480)

a beautiful family waiting for him at home. She's like, no, not this one, choose another one.

Lex Fridman (1:17:40.560)

And then she goes through all the life stories of the others. She's like, no, no, just don't take

Manolis Kellis (1:17:44.800)

anyone. She's like, I can't do that. You can choose to bring your brother back. And he will be

Manolis Kellis (1:17:50.320)

depressed for the rest of his life because he didn't fight at war, because he didn't go to that

Manolis Kellis (1:17:54.960)

battle. And he will live without honor. And in the end, the woman decides to have her brother killed

Lex Fridman (1:18:00.880)

instead because he dies with her. I mean, this is insane. So why am I giving you these examples?

Manolis Kellis (1:18:06.800)

It's not a glorification of misery. It's expanding your emotional range. It's teaching you that,

Lex Fridman (1:18:16.640)

and when I read these stories, I'm not a jerk. I'm crying out loud. I have tears. And my face

Manolis Kellis (1:18:23.760)

becomes red from the pain that I'm experiencing through these stories. It's just so deeply

Manolis Kellis (1:18:32.240)

touching to embrace the suffering, not because of an accident, but because of a choice, the sacrifice

Manolis Kellis (1:18:45.200)

to embrace the fact that not everything is cute and rosy and always ending well. And I think that

Manolis Kellis (1:18:51.520)

we don't do a good enough job of teaching our kids that just life sucks and life is unfair sometimes.

Lex Fridman (1:18:57.520)

And that's okay. And sometimes I read a story to my kids. I read a story every night. And sometimes

Manolis Kellis (1:19:03.760)

the story is horrible. And sometimes the story is good and sort of friendly and happy. And my kids

Manolis Kellis (1:19:10.800)

always ask, what's the moral of the story? And sometimes there's a moral and it's like, oh,

Manolis Kellis (1:19:15.280)

you should be good or you should be nice. You should be helping each other, et cetera. And

Manolis Kellis (1:19:18.720)

sometimes there's just no moral. And I tell my kids, you know what? Sometimes just life doesn't

Manolis Kellis (1:19:24.720)

make sense and it's okay. And you can't comprehend everything. And I think this concept of how do you

Manolis Kellis (1:19:31.120)

deal with the bad days comes from the fact that we're taught, we're brainwashed into thinking that

Manolis Kellis (1:19:35.760)

every day should be a happy day. And we're not ready to cope with misery. And the other thing

Manolis Kellis (1:19:42.960)

that crying through these stories teaches you is that you don't have it nearly half as bad as you

Manolis Kellis (1:19:50.640)

think. Do you see what I mean? Basically, it tells you that, I mean, my mom would always tell me about

Lex Fridman (1:19:59.440)

how she was transformed as a teenager when she volunteered in the hospital. And she saw all these

Manolis Kellis (1:20:05.040)

people at the brink of death, clinging for life and helping them out to best she could and crying

Manolis Kellis (1:20:12.240)

her heart out when they were dying. And sort of how that taught her the appreciation for what we

Manolis Kellis (1:20:19.920)

have every day. Waking up every morning and saying, my life doesn't suck. My life is not nearly half

Manolis Kellis (1:20:29.600)

as bad as it could be. And sort of embracing the joy that we have of living where we live in the

Manolis Kellis (1:20:39.520)

moment we live. And I'm going to go further. If you look at the arc of human life, human existence

Manolis Kellis (1:20:49.760)

through the centuries, there's no better way to be alive than now. I mean, we're complaining about

Manolis Kellis (1:20:54.720)

every single little thing. But life expectancy is at an all time high. Sickness, all time low.

Manolis Kellis (1:21:01.360)

Pornness, misery, all time low. There's no better time to be alive globally across all of human

Manolis Kellis (1:21:08.640)

existence. Number one. Number two, here in Boston, there's no better place to be alive.

Manolis Kellis (1:21:16.000)

If you think about the amalgamation of science, engineering, technology, the ridiculously awesome

Manolis Kellis (1:21:22.560)

people you're bringing every week to your podcast. I mean, this is the ancient Greece of modern

Manolis Kellis (1:21:28.080)

society. But the weather still sucks. No, let me put it this way. The weather gives us a range

Manolis Kellis (1:21:35.600)

of emotion. The full range. The full scenic range. That's such a fascinating thing about human

Manolis Kellis (1:21:41.840)

psychology. I often reread this book. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. It's Man's Search

Manolis Kellis (1:21:46.720)

for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And he talks about his living through the Holocaust and the

Manolis Kellis (1:21:58.400)

concentration camps. And even there where there's human misery is at its highest, even there he

Manolis Kellis (1:22:09.440)

discovers these moments by observing the suffering, by accepting the suffering. He observes moments

Manolis Kellis (1:22:19.360)

of true joy of how great his life is relative to others at the camp who have it worse.

Manolis Kellis (1:22:29.680)

Yeah. So it's a dangerous slippery slope to think that way because it's basically being better than

Manolis Kellis (1:22:35.520)

Jones's. And if, you know, if the house next door has a giant car, then you want to get a bigger

Manolis Kellis (1:22:40.800)

car or something like that. It's not comparative misery. I think the way that I see it is slightly

Manolis Kellis (1:22:46.800)

different. It's, and it's not even thinking about all the worst possible outcomes that could have

Manolis Kellis (1:22:53.840)

happened, but didn't. The example, as you were talking about the concentration camps, the most

Manolis Kellis (1:23:00.160)

horrible, I mean, one of the most horrible moments of human existence, is that the concentration

Manolis Kellis (1:23:04.960)

camps, I was thinking about pictures that I was seeing of kids in Syria in war torn zones. And

Manolis Kellis (1:23:11.680)

you're looking at these kids. And again, I cried out loud, imagining my own son in the van after a

Manolis Kellis (1:23:22.400)

bomb explosion, watching his father die or his siblings die or losing his friends. It's something

Manolis Kellis (1:23:30.480)

that we are not capable of fathoming. But if you actually put a seven year old in that situation,

Manolis Kellis (1:23:38.640)

the look that I saw in these kids eyes basically said, it is what it is. It was, and I've

Manolis Kellis (1:23:46.480)

experienced that with my own kid when he gets, like my three year old last, like two years ago,

Manolis Kellis (1:23:53.440)

who's now my five year old, she was burned really badly with like hot chocolate and coffee that just

Manolis Kellis (1:23:59.840)

peeled off her skin. So you could actually see just her fragile skin had just peeled off.

Lex Fridman (1:24:04.880)

And she was the happiest little kid. She was just going along with the punches.

Manolis Kellis (1:24:11.520)

It is what it is. She accepted it.

Lex Fridman (1:24:14.080)

So it's quite dramatic to sort of realize that children don't say, oh, I could have it better.

Manolis Kellis (1:24:24.320)

They sort of embrace the moment, not embrace, but sort of accept the moment. And then

Manolis Kellis (1:24:33.920)

they can have moments of pure joy in a horrendous war torn country. And like so many people from

Manolis Kellis (1:24:43.360)

these war torn countries basically say, oh, you think you Americans are going to just come and

Manolis Kellis (1:24:48.800)

just send us a bunch of aid and food, et cetera? Yeah, sure. That's helpful. But what do we dream

Manolis Kellis (1:24:55.840)

of? What do we struggle for? We struggle for love. We struggle for meaning. We struggle for,

Manolis Kellis (1:25:01.600)

you know, emotions and friendships. We struggle for the same things you guys struggle for.

Manolis Kellis (1:25:07.120)

We're not just like every day waking up and saying, oh, I wish I had more food.

Manolis Kellis (1:25:10.400)

No, that's just the given. I just don't have enough food. But what we struggle with

Manolis Kellis (1:25:14.240)

are basically everything else. And that sort of gives you some perspective on life. It basically

Manolis Kellis (1:25:20.000)

says, you know, and another story that my mom told me when I was a kid is this story about sort of

Manolis Kellis (1:25:25.120)

this man who's basically, you know, he sees the Christ appear in front of him and he says,

Manolis Kellis (1:25:31.680)

oh, Christ, I'm carrying all these problems. I'm carrying this big bag. Can you please take it from

Manolis Kellis (1:25:37.920)

me? And he's like, sure. Let me just give you any other bag. And of course the person in Vienna

Manolis Kellis (1:25:47.360)

accepts his own bag. So acceptance, ultimately the path you recommend is acceptance. Every single

Manolis Kellis (1:25:53.680)

other bag is probably worse. It's the evil you don't know versus the evil you know. Like we all

Manolis Kellis (1:25:59.120)

struggle with our own problems. But if you look at the bigger picture, it's just your path through

Manolis Kellis (1:26:05.280)

life. And if you embrace it, the good and the bad, every single day, it's just joy, elation,

Manolis Kellis (1:26:16.720)

sadness, misery. If you don't have both, you're not a complete human being. You know, you can't,

Manolis Kellis (1:26:24.320)

I mean, the last example I'm going to give is the movie Inside Out by Pixar. Beautiful movie.

Lex Fridman (1:26:31.920)

Which one is that?

Manolis Kellis (1:26:32.800)

The one with the little characters controlling highly trained. So you basically have joy and

Manolis Kellis (1:26:39.120)

sadness and fear and disgust, et cetera. And the moral of the story, if you remember the movie,

Manolis Kellis (1:26:45.280)

the moral of the story is that in the end, joy is basically trying to fix everything,

Manolis Kellis (1:26:50.080)

to make everything happy. And she's failing miserably and everything else is like crumbling

Lex Fridman (1:26:54.720)

and falling apart. And the little girl basically becomes emotionless because all she knows how to

Manolis Kellis (1:26:59.440)

do is fake happiness. And I think it's a very good analogy for our everyday society where we're always

Manolis Kellis (1:27:05.520)

saying, are you happy? Are you happy? My mom calls me and she's like, Manolis, are you happy? I'm

Manolis Kellis (1:27:09.680)

like, mom, stop asking this stupid question. No, I'm not happy. What you should be asking is if

Manolis Kellis (1:27:15.040)

I'm fulfilled. And that's a very different thing. I don't go around being happy.

Manolis Kellis (1:27:19.840)

I would love it if your mom called and said, Manolis, are you suffering beautifully or something

Manolis Kellis (1:27:26.000)

like that? That's exactly right. That's what she should be asking. Are you struggling to achieve

Manolis Kellis (1:27:32.160)

something great? That's the question that mom should be asking. Hear that mom call me about

Manolis Kellis (1:27:36.720)

the suffering, not about how good are you doing? So what I tell her is that life is not about

Manolis Kellis (1:27:42.480)

maximizing happiness. Life is about accomplishing something meaningful. And accomplishing that

Manolis Kellis (1:27:48.080)

meaningful thing cannot come from a series of joyful moments. It comes from a series of struggles,

Manolis Kellis (1:27:54.320)

of successes and failures, of people being nasty to you and people being nice to you and embracing

Manolis Kellis (1:28:01.840)

the full thing. And if you supersede that constant need for gratification, if you supersede that

Manolis Kellis (1:28:08.560)

constant need for kindness, you suddenly know who you are. And what I like to say to my kid,

Manolis Kellis (1:28:16.880)

my son the other day was telling me, oh, so and so called me such and such. And I'm like,

Manolis Kellis (1:28:20.320)

are you such and such? He's like, no. I'm like, ha ha, see, they were wrong. And what I tell him

Manolis Kellis (1:28:25.840)

is if you know who you are, what other people say about you only teaches you about them.

Lex Fridman (1:28:34.480)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:28:35.440)

So it has no influence on your self esteem. If you know where you stand, you embrace the good,

Lex Fridman (1:28:42.800)

but you also embrace the bad. I have plenty of bad and I'm embracing it. I'm a procrastinator.

Manolis Kellis (1:28:48.800)

I'm a procrastinator. How do I deal with that? I trick myself into procrastinating about mindless,

Manolis Kellis (1:28:56.080)

stupid little day to day things. And in that procrastination time doing important things

Manolis Kellis (1:29:01.120)

for the future. So accepting who you are, accepting your flaws, accepting the whole of it,

Manolis Kellis (1:29:07.360)

accepting the struggle, accepting the sleeplessness, accepting the fact that the journey

Manolis Kellis (1:29:14.320)

matters, hoping that your path to Ithaka is full of troubles because those troubles are the life

Manolis Kellis (1:29:21.280)

you will lead. Accepting that life will not start after the next milestone, that life has already

Manolis Kellis (1:29:28.880)

started a long time ago. And what you're experiencing now is the life. This is it.

Manolis Kellis (1:29:35.600)

It's not some kind of future thing that you work yourself hard to get to. And then after that,

Manolis Kellis (1:29:40.000)

you live happily ever after. To me, the happily ever after, that's the end of the story. Nothing

Manolis Kellis (1:29:45.440)

happens after that. The struggle and the struggle and the struggle is much more interesting story

Manolis Kellis (1:29:51.760)

than they lived happily ever after. So I think we have to embrace that as a society that it's

Manolis Kellis (1:29:58.480)

not just about the happy ending, that our kids are brainwashed into expecting that things will

Manolis Kellis (1:30:04.080)

be happy and rosy and it's okay if they're not. And they should keep struggling because the

Manolis Kellis (1:30:09.120)

struggle is the journey and the journey is the meaning of life. It's not the end, it's this

Manolis Kellis (1:30:15.520)

journey. What about accepting one of the harder things? We talked a little bit about immortality.

Lex Fridman (1:30:22.800)

What about accepting that life ends? So do you, Manolis, think about your own mortality?

Manolis Kellis (1:30:32.400)

How, we talked about accepting that there's ups and downs to life. What about the ultimate down,

Lex Fridman (1:30:38.480)

which is the finality of it? Do you think about that? Do you fear it?

Manolis Kellis (1:30:42.640)

You also asked me if I'm afraid of getting older.

Lex Fridman (1:30:48.160)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:30:48.640)

And that's on the path to mortality. So let me talk about that first step and then the last step.

Lex Fridman (1:30:54.800)

The last step.

Manolis Kellis (1:30:55.200)

Literally the last step. So getting older, what does that mean? When I was 18, when I was 20,

Manolis Kellis (1:31:03.280)

my brain, I felt was at my maximum. I was like, nothing is impossible. I can solve anything.

Manolis Kellis (1:31:10.640)

I could take any math puzzle, any logic puzzle, any programming puzzle and just solve it in

Manolis Kellis (1:31:15.280)

milliseconds. I just saw the answer through problems. I was like feeling invincible.

Manolis Kellis (1:31:19.920)

I would show up at lecture with my newspaper, lift up my head every now and then, point to errors,

Manolis Kellis (1:31:25.840)

just brat, complete brat. I would raise my hand and correct my professor from the whole classroom.

Manolis Kellis (1:31:30.800)

Total brat. I have some of those in my class now and it's awesome. It's like very...

Lex Fridman (1:31:34.720)

I used to be you.

Manolis Kellis (1:31:35.440)

It teaches you humility.

Lex Fridman (1:31:40.160)

So I felt invincible and I was like, this is it. This is awesome. I'm living the life.

Manolis Kellis (1:31:45.360)

10 years later, my brain didn't work the same way. I wasn't as good at the tiny little puzzles,

Lex Fridman (1:31:53.040)

but it worked in different ways. And right now, 20 years later, it works in yet different ways.

Lex Fridman (1:31:59.120)

And oh gosh, I love the journey.

Lex Fridman (1:32:02.080)

Can you maybe give some hints of the interesting different ways that your brain works as it aged?

Manolis Kellis (1:32:09.760)

Yeah. I went from the phase of sheer speed and hardcore quantitative thinking to sort of stepping

Manolis Kellis (1:32:19.280)

back, being able to sort of make more connections, being able to sort of say, yeah, but let's use

Manolis Kellis (1:32:24.480)

that thing. Sort of a huge new creativity being unleashed. Basically, when you're young, you're

Manolis Kellis (1:32:30.160)

sort of thinking about that one problem. You can sort of reconfigure all the variables

Manolis Kellis (1:32:33.600)

combinatorially in your head and just wipe it all out. When you're just a little older,

Manolis Kellis (1:32:39.200)

you start getting more creative. You start bringing in things from different fields and different

Manolis Kellis (1:32:43.600)

contexts and sort of stepping outside the box. Basically, it's like being in the rat race and

Manolis Kellis (1:32:48.240)

saying, there's a ceiling. Why are we trying to get through that? So it's sort of thinking outside

Manolis Kellis (1:32:53.600)

the box. And then at 40, what I'm going through now is this whole sort of embracing the path of

Manolis Kellis (1:33:00.480)

life. And when I say life has started already, it's not a test anymore. This is basically

Manolis Kellis (1:33:07.600)

embracing the finality. Embracing that the journey is what it's at. So what I like to say is live

Manolis Kellis (1:33:17.280)

every day as if it's your last one and make plans as if you'll never die. I always have the long term

Manolis Kellis (1:33:26.800)

that I'm sort of planning out for that will eventually become the short term. And I always have

Manolis Kellis (1:33:31.840)

the sort of short term. And I think this ability to sort of look at life in the past and look at

Manolis Kellis (1:33:38.160)

life in the future jointly and sort of embrace the continuity both of life in the universe and

Manolis Kellis (1:33:45.600)

on our planet, as well as life as a human being from the beginning to the end, just as a path,

Manolis Kellis (1:33:50.640)

as a journey, and just embracing every aspect of that. I mean, I was talking about parenthood the

Manolis Kellis (1:33:56.320)

other day and how amazingly fulfilling it is to sort of relive childhood through the eyes of my

Manolis Kellis (1:34:03.200)

kid, but with the perspective of a parent. So the sheer arrogance of youth watching this in my kid,

Manolis Kellis (1:34:18.880)

I can see myself when I was 18 correcting my professor. I felt so proud. Little did I know that

Manolis Kellis (1:34:25.040)

my professor was working on so much more interesting things than the three little

Manolis Kellis (1:34:28.400)

things he was putting on the board that day. And I was like, I'm invincible. But in fact, no,

Manolis Kellis (1:34:33.600)

just a little brat. And basically right now, I sort of can see the sort of journey with a little

Manolis Kellis (1:34:42.320)

more humility. I can sort of look at my own students with their unbelievable abilities,

Manolis Kellis (1:34:49.600)

being able to do things that I'm no longer able to do better than I probably was ever able to do.

Lex Fridman (1:34:54.480)

But yet being able to guide them and shape their thinking and blow their minds with new ideas and

Manolis Kellis (1:35:00.640)

new directions through my perspective. And I know when something is solvable because I've been there,

Lex Fridman (1:35:08.480)

but I'm not going to even bother. It's not that I can't do it. I'm sure I could if I tried,

Lex Fridman (1:35:13.040)

but just I'm not interested in that anymore. So what I'm embracing this journey of aging

Manolis Kellis (1:35:18.320)

is how my brain is changing and how I'm constantly trying to figure out the niches,

Manolis Kellis (1:35:24.800)

the evolutionary niches that I'm best adapted for, for the tasks that I'm best at,

Manolis Kellis (1:35:32.000)

while hiring and recruiting both assistants and research scientists and students and postdocs,

Lex Fridman (1:35:39.680)

and that will be the best at those tasks. But someone still has to see the big picture.

Lex Fridman (1:35:45.920)

And I love being in that role. So at the timescale of a human lifespan,

Manolis Kellis (1:35:52.320)

you're doing the same thing that the worm did at the evolutionary timescale of Growing Arms,

Manolis Kellis (1:35:58.560)

the specialization, the carp compartmentalization. I mean, it's fascinating to think of what

Manolis Kellis (1:36:05.920)

80 year old Manolis would look back at the man that's sitting here today

Lex Fridman (1:36:11.280)

and laugh at the silliness, at the arrogance.

Manolis Kellis (1:36:15.200)

He finally figured out something.

Lex Fridman (1:36:17.840)

I was like, no little thing. You didn't figure out anything.

Manolis Kellis (1:36:21.760)

I mean, ultimately, it seems that if you're introspective about life, it leads to a kind

Lex Fridman (1:36:27.520)

of acceptance, a deeper and deeper acceptance of the whole of it.

Manolis Kellis (1:36:34.320)

Again, I want to be cautious about acceptance because it almost says that you can't change it.

Lex Fridman (1:36:38.560)

Ah, yeah.

Manolis Kellis (1:36:40.000)

It's sort of embracing the struggle and embracing the journey is the way that I would put it.

Lex Fridman (1:36:45.040)

So you ultimately feel the journey isn't just something that happens to you.

Manolis Kellis (1:36:49.760)

You shape it. You shape it. Remember how I was saying that Boston is the best place and the

Manolis Kellis (1:36:53.840)

best time to live in right now, in the history of humanity? I'm exaggerating a little bit.

Lex Fridman (1:36:59.040)

But the way that I think about this is that if you look at the whole of cosmos,

Lex Fridman (1:37:05.200)

where would you rather be if you're just a bunch of molecules, roughly your biomass?

Lex Fridman (1:37:10.000)

Where would you rather be? Would you rather be a rock on Mars?

Lex Fridman (1:37:12.640)

Yeah, probably not. Would you rather be in a black hole? Probably not.

Manolis Kellis (1:37:16.240)

Would you rather be in an exploding supernova? Maybe that might be interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:37:20.320)

But being on Earth is an awesome solar system, an awesome planetary system, an awesome,

Manolis Kellis (1:37:26.800)

you know, place to be in across all of space time.

Lex Fridman (1:37:31.120)

It's a pretty good place to be in as a bunch of molecules.

Manolis Kellis (1:37:33.040)

If you are a bunch of molecules on Earth today, being an animal with, you know, some kind of

Manolis Kellis (1:37:39.760)

awareness of the stuff around you is wonderful. Being a human among all animals is amazing

Manolis Kellis (1:37:46.160)

because you have all this introspection. And being a human who's young, fit, athletic,

Lex Fridman (1:37:52.720)

smart, et cetera, I mean, you know, you have so much to be happy for.

Manolis Kellis (1:37:57.040)

Beyond that, being surrounded by a bunch of awesome people that you interact with all the time.

Manolis Kellis (1:38:02.400)

I mean, I feel blessed to interact with the people I know, with the friends I have,

Manolis Kellis (1:38:06.000)

the dinners that I have, all of this. Students that I interact with, I'm so blessed.

Lex Fridman (1:38:10.480)

And the last little blip in this awesomeness of local maximum, the last little blip comes from

Manolis Kellis (1:38:17.360)

being kind, being grateful, and being kind. I don't know if you remember that little prayer

Manolis Kellis (1:38:23.360)

that I described last time of, thank you for all the good you've given me and give me strength

Manolis Kellis (1:38:30.320)

to give unto others with the same love that you've given to me. And the whole point of that is being

Manolis Kellis (1:38:37.120)

grateful and being kind. What does that do? From a purely egoistic perspective, it makes the people

Manolis Kellis (1:38:44.480)

around you happier. And it takes that little maximum a little bit further.

Manolis Kellis (1:38:49.120)

Because you'll be surrounded by happy people, by being kind. That's the purely egoistic view.

Lex Fridman (1:38:55.120)

And the purely altruistic view, or maybe it's egoistic as well, is that it's just good to give.

Manolis Kellis (1:39:01.120)

It feels good to give. Like basically watching somebody who's touched by what you said, watching

Manolis Kellis (1:39:07.760)

somebody who's like appreciating a rapid response or a generous offer or just random acts of kindness.

Manolis Kellis (1:39:14.880)

It is so fulfilling. So evolutionarily, we were selected for that. There's just such a good feeling

Manolis Kellis (1:39:22.480)

that comes from that. You know, it's fascinating to think you said Boston is the best place,

Lex Fridman (1:39:28.240)

and talking about kindness, that the very thought that Boston is the best place in the universe

Manolis Kellis (1:39:34.720)

is almost, it's a kind of a gravitational field. Your thought and your very life in itself is a

Manolis Kellis (1:39:45.920)

kind of field that makes that real. Yeah, the self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. By claiming it's the

Manolis Kellis (1:39:52.720)

best and thinking it's the best, it becomes the best. And you make others, it's not a force that

Manolis Kellis (1:39:59.040)

just applies to your own cognition. It applies to the others around you. And then suddenly you live

Manolis Kellis (1:40:05.440)

in an even better place. Yeah. And it creates the reality, the actual reality, the social reality,

Manolis Kellis (1:40:12.160)

then it molds the environment. Exactly. One of the coolest things about you, I think, is you represent

Manolis Kellis (1:40:23.440)

the best of MIT, the spirit of MIT. I'm so glad that I'm fortunate enough to be able to talk to

Manolis Kellis (1:40:35.920)

you, because there's a kind of cynicism about academia in parts that I think is undeserved,

Lex Fridman (1:40:47.520)

and that there's this, MIT, of course, but academic institutions is a sacred place where

Manolis Kellis (1:40:57.040)

ideas can flourish. And just in the same very way that you're talking about is both kindness

Lex Fridman (1:41:03.840)

and curiosity and that weird thing that happens when a bunch of curious descendants of apes get

Manolis Kellis (1:41:12.160)

together and just get excited in this ripple effect that happens. I mean, that's the most

Manolis Kellis (1:41:19.360)

beautiful aspect of MIT. People might think competition and grants and position, like you

Manolis Kellis (1:41:28.480)

said, the rat race, but underneath it all is these curious human beings inspiring younger human

Manolis Kellis (1:41:35.520)

beings. And there's this ripple effect that happens. And I'm so glad that, I mean, I'm glad that I get

Manolis Kellis (1:41:44.160)

a chance to record this because it inspires so many other students and so many other people to

Manolis Kellis (1:41:50.560)

do the same, to embrace the inner curious creature that it's not about the race. So let's talk about

Manolis Kellis (1:41:55.840)

the negatives. Let's talk about, no, no, no, I'm serious. I'm serious. You have to embrace the good

Lex Fridman (1:42:00.160)

and the bad. So let's talk about the negative. Let's address it. So why do people want positions

Manolis Kellis (1:42:07.360)

of power? Why do people want more money, more power, more this, more that? Remember the part

Manolis Kellis (1:42:13.920)

where I was saying, if you know who you are, what other people think about you, it makes no

Manolis Kellis (1:42:19.200)

difference to you. It only teaches you about them. Many people feel defunct about what they're doing

Lex Fridman (1:42:28.720)

and define themselves. They feel instantiated through the eyes of others. So being in a position

Manolis Kellis (1:42:37.360)

of power makes them feel better about themselves. Who knows what other kind of struggles they might

Manolis Kellis (1:42:42.880)

have that creates that need to feel better about themselves. But they have a bunch of struggles and

Manolis Kellis (1:42:48.960)

everybody has a bunch of struggles. And every time I see somebody behaving poorly, I'm basically

Manolis Kellis (1:42:54.000)

thinking, well, they're in a tough spot right now. And it's okay. I can kind of see how I would

Manolis Kellis (1:43:01.120)

behave badly in other circumstances as well. So I think if you take away that sort of having to

Manolis Kellis (1:43:10.640)

prove yourself in the eyes of others, life becomes so much easier. So when I first became a professor

Manolis Kellis (1:43:18.320)

at MIT, I started wearing adult clothes. It became a serious person, quote, unquote.

Manolis Kellis (1:43:26.960)

I basically had, I would always go around in my rollerblades and my shorts and a t shirt,

Lex Fridman (1:43:31.360)

and eventually I was a professional. I bought all these khaki pants and these nice

Manolis Kellis (1:43:36.640)

shirts with, what do they call it, the patterns. And I was dressing with my nice belt every day,

Manolis Kellis (1:43:44.400)

showing up. And then a few months later, I was like, I can't stand it. And I just went back to

Manolis Kellis (1:43:51.120)

my rollerblades and my t shirts and my shorts. And it was this struggle of sort of not feeling that

Manolis Kellis (1:43:58.480)

I fit in. I was so intimidated by all of my colleagues, just watching their incredible

Manolis Kellis (1:44:04.080)

achievements. The person's next to me and the person on the floor below me, I was like, oh my

Manolis Kellis (1:44:09.600)

God, they clearly made a mistake. What the heck am I doing here? How will I ever live up to these

Manolis Kellis (1:44:17.520)

people's standards? And eventually you grow up to realize that the way that I grew up to realize

Manolis Kellis (1:44:28.640)

that the way that other people perceived my work was very similar to the way that I perceived

Manolis Kellis (1:44:33.360)

other people's work as flawless. I knew all of the flaws in my work. I knew the limitations. I knew

Lex Fridman (1:44:41.840)

what I hadn't managed to achieve. And what I saw was maybe a third of the way of what I was trying

Manolis Kellis (1:44:47.360)

to achieve. And I saw everything as flawed. What they saw, what I had achieved, they didn't see

Lex Fridman (1:44:53.840)

what I hadn't achieved. They only saw the one third down, which was pretty good in their eyes.

Lex Fridman (1:44:58.640)

So they all respected me and I was feeling miserable about myself. I was like, I'm not worthy.

Lex Fridman (1:45:06.640)

And I think that this is a cognitive problem that we have. We kind of, it's kind of like when we're

Manolis Kellis (1:45:14.400)

talking about artificial general intelligence, AGI, of sort of, we kind of have this definition

Manolis Kellis (1:45:19.280)

that anything that machines can do is not intelligent and anything that they can't do

Manolis Kellis (1:45:23.440)

is intelligent. Therefore, we narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow the field of what intelligence

Manolis Kellis (1:45:27.440)

truly means. And as soon as machines achieve self, I mean, it's not intelligent anymore.

Manolis Kellis (1:45:30.800)

I feel like I was doing the same thing with myself. As soon as I could solve something,

Manolis Kellis (1:45:34.640)

it was the kind of thing that a kid like me could solve. And therefore it was kind of easy.

Lex Fridman (1:45:39.600)

But to the others, it seemed hard. But to me, it seemed easy. So it was this kind of thing that

Manolis Kellis (1:45:45.600)

everything that my colleagues were doing seemed impossible to me. But everything that I was doing

Manolis Kellis (1:45:50.560)

seemed impossible to them. So it was that realization that sort of made me mature into

Lex Fridman (1:45:55.600)

sort of a, not more confident, but more comfortable human being.

Lex Fridman (1:46:00.320)

Can you actually linger on that a little bit? I mean, you mentioned Minsky. I remember he said

Manolis Kellis (1:46:05.680)

something in an interview where he said the secret to his, like the way he approached life was

Manolis Kellis (1:46:14.240)

to never be happy with anything he did. So there's something powerful as a motivator

Manolis Kellis (1:46:21.520)

to doing exactly what you're saying, which is everything you've achieved to see that as easy

Lex Fridman (1:46:26.720)

and unimpressive. What do you do with that? Because clearly that's a useful thing.

Manolis Kellis (1:46:33.920)

I think I've kind of matured past that. And I think the maturity past that is to sort of accept

Lex Fridman (1:46:40.320)

what it is and accept that it has helped others build onto it and therefore advance human knowledge.

Lex Fridman (1:46:49.360)

So it's very easy to sort of fall into the trap of, oh, everything I've done is crap.

Lex Fridman (1:46:54.240)

What I told you last time is that I always tell my students that our best work is ahead of us.

Lex Fridman (1:47:00.080)

And I think that's more of my mindset. That's a beautiful way to put it.

Manolis Kellis (1:47:04.320)

Exactly. What we've done is strong. It's great. It's great for the time. And it'll become obsolete

Manolis Kellis (1:47:10.080)

in 30 years. Not we can, we are doing even better. Exactly. So basically our next work

Manolis Kellis (1:47:16.560)

will just strive. And again, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Manolis Kellis (1:47:21.840)

At some point you have to wrap. I was having a meeting with my student yesterday and it was like,

Manolis Kellis (1:47:27.440)

listen, we know this is not perfect, but it's way better than anything that's ever been done before.

Manolis Kellis (1:47:33.680)

You know how to improve it. But if you try to, your paper is never going to get published.

Lex Fridman (1:47:38.640)

So there's this balance of we're already at the top of the field, get it out. And then you work

Manolis Kellis (1:47:48.000)

on the next improvement. And in my experience, this has never happened. We've never actually

Manolis Kellis (1:47:52.400)

worked on the next improvement. And that's okay. It didn't make a difference because you're

Manolis Kellis (1:47:57.200)

basically putting a new stepping stone that others will be able to step on and surpass you.

Manolis Kellis (1:48:02.640)

My advisor in grad school would basically tell me, Manolis, let others write the second paper

Manolis Kellis (1:48:08.800)

in that field. Just write the first one, move on, move on to the next field. You don't want to be

Manolis Kellis (1:48:14.880)

writing the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth paper in the same field. Just,

Manolis Kellis (1:48:20.080)

it's very shocking to a student to hear that. Cause I was like, I was at the top of my game.

Manolis Kellis (1:48:26.480)

I was owning that field. I was doing it. I was doing it. I was doing it. I was doing it.

Manolis Kellis (1:48:31.920)

Owning that field. And I published the first paper. I'm like, I'm ready for two and three

Lex Fridman (1:48:35.600)

and four. He's like, move on. Just let it be. And I was like, Whoa. And it's so liberating

Manolis Kellis (1:48:42.160)

to sort of not have to surpass everyone, but just put your little stepping stone out there

Lex Fridman (1:48:49.440)

and others will step on it and put their own stones further and eventually cross a bigger

Manolis Kellis (1:48:53.200)

river than if you try to sort of make a giant leap all at once. So you need both.

Manolis Kellis (1:48:58.960)

SL. Beautifully put. So the funny thing is I've, I believe I closed the previous episode

Lex Fridman (1:49:06.240)

with a Darwin quote about the power of poetry and music and life.

Manolis Kellis (1:49:11.600)

SL. I think your quote, and again, I only heard it once, was Darwin basically saying,

Manolis Kellis (1:49:16.720)

if I were to live life again, next time I would read more poetry and something about art every

Manolis Kellis (1:49:23.680)

week or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting for somebody who studied life

Manolis Kellis (1:49:30.080)

at a very cold, I would say, genetic level to say that, yeah, the highest form of living

Manolis Kellis (1:49:37.680)

is the art. But like on that, which made me realize that you write poetry and I

Manolis Kellis (1:49:45.600)

forced you or maybe convinced you somehow to maybe share if it's possible, if it's okay,

Manolis Kellis (1:49:52.560)

some of the poetry you've written yourself in your life.

Lex Fridman (1:49:56.960)

SL. So again, being Greek, a lot of my poems have been pretty miserable.

Lex Fridman (1:50:03.360)

And I always like to say that it's very hard for me to write a poem when I'm happy.

Lex Fridman (1:50:08.480)

And I just have to be in a state of deep despair in order to write poems. But the first poem I ever

Manolis Kellis (1:50:15.520)

wrote was in English class. I was, I'm Greek, I grew up in Greece, but I was in a French high

Manolis Kellis (1:50:21.840)

school and I was taking English as a foreign language. So the English teacher basically

Manolis Kellis (1:50:26.560)

asked us to write a poem in English. So this is basically what I'm going to embarrass myself and

Lex Fridman (1:50:33.280)

read from my 16 year old self many, many years ago.

Manolis Kellis (1:50:36.640)

SL. Can you give a little bit more context about who you were in this moment? So like just...

Lex Fridman (1:50:40.960)

SL. So here's what's really interesting. In terms of growing up, how do we grow up?

Manolis Kellis (1:50:46.080)

SL. It's very difficult to grow up if you're in the same school, going from one class to the other,

Lex Fridman (1:50:51.200)

and all your friends know you inside out. It's very difficult to change. It's very difficult to

Manolis Kellis (1:50:55.680)

grow up because they have a certain set of expectations for who you are and for how you're

Manolis Kellis (1:51:00.000)

going to behave. So in many ways we kind of tend to get set in our ways and not change very much.

Manolis Kellis (1:51:07.520)

I think something that helped me grow up is that when I was 11 years old, I was a

Manolis Kellis (1:51:13.920)

kid in Greece in primary school. When I was 12 years old, I was a kid in Greece in a first year

Manolis Kellis (1:51:20.640)

of high school. When I was 13, I was in France, so basically moved countries and schools. The next

Manolis Kellis (1:51:30.080)

year, I moved schools again because it was a transition in the French educational system

Manolis Kellis (1:51:33.760)

from one school to the next. The next year after that, my family moved to New York in a French high

Manolis Kellis (1:51:38.560)

school there, and the next year after that, I'm moving to MIT. So basically between 11 and 19,

Manolis Kellis (1:51:44.800)

every single year, I actually had the opportunity to grow. I was not held by people who knew me,

Lex Fridman (1:51:53.360)

and I could reinvent myself or reshape myself or reshape my personality, my emotions, as I was

Manolis Kellis (1:52:00.800)

growing up, especially in such a transformative time of a kid's life from 11 to 17. I was

Manolis Kellis (1:52:07.760)

11 to 17. Okay, first of all, it's so powerful that you think of it that way. Did you think of

Manolis Kellis (1:52:11.680)

it that way at the moment? Because it's kind of a source. You said an opportunity to grow,

Lex Fridman (1:52:17.360)

but it's kind of suffering. I mean, you're being torn away from the thing you know into a thing

Manolis Kellis (1:52:21.760)

you don't know. So when we moved from South France to New York, I was pissed. I was pissed. I was

Manolis Kellis (1:52:30.320)

taking these long bike rides in the countryside, jumping in French swimming pools, and I had all

Manolis Kellis (1:52:36.400)

these wonderful friendships, going downtown and just staying by the fountains in the dim lit

Manolis Kellis (1:52:42.880)

streets of Aix en Provence in the South of France. It was magical. And suddenly, I moved to New York

Manolis Kellis (1:52:49.040)

City, a city of cement, of ugliness, like trash in the streets at every corner. It's horrible.

Manolis Kellis (1:52:57.360)

Snow everywhere. Having never seen snow or like real snow in my life, I moved from Athens to South

Manolis Kellis (1:53:03.520)

France to suddenly New York. So I was pissed. But whether I saw it as an opportunity for growth,

Manolis Kellis (1:53:09.840)

I don't think so. I don't think that I was that self reflective. It was just how it happened.

Manolis Kellis (1:53:14.480)

Only now do you see it this way.

Manolis Kellis (1:53:15.920)

I saw it like that probably pretty early on, but not during those transitions. So basically,

Manolis Kellis (1:53:21.840)

during those transitions, I was just a kid being a kid. And maybe the time that I started seeing it

Manolis Kellis (1:53:29.680)

that way was maybe when I decided to stay at MIT as a professor after having been there as a student.

Lex Fridman (1:53:37.120)

And I kind of saw the struggle of getting professors to not see you as a kid when they're

Manolis Kellis (1:53:45.360)

your peers. And I was very flattered when one of my friends basically told me, oh, I remember you

Manolis Kellis (1:53:51.840)

in recitation when you first asked me a question. I said, wow, this kid. I'll pay attention.

Lex Fridman (1:53:58.160)

One day I'll be a peer.

Lex Fridman (1:54:00.720)

So it's, you know, certainly my perception was that many of them could not see me as anything

Lex Fridman (1:54:05.920)

but a kid. But it turns out that some of them saw me as something different than a kid even

Manolis Kellis (1:54:10.720)

before I was actually their colleague. So it's kind of an interesting place because

Lex Fridman (1:54:15.680)

what I like to say about MIT is that people treat you as equal no matter what stage.

Lex Fridman (1:54:20.720)

And they respect you for what you say, not for who you are when you're saying it.

Lex Fridman (1:54:25.840)

And if I'm wrong, my students will tell me. They will have no reservation to just be bluntly,

Manolis Kellis (1:54:32.000)

you know, sorry. I don't agree with that.

Manolis Kellis (1:54:35.440)

Yeah. I mean, the beautiful thing about you, sorry to put it this way, is, you know,

Manolis Kellis (1:54:44.000)

maybe people who weren't familiar with your work beforehand might think, like,

Manolis Kellis (1:54:50.240)

might not realize that you're a world class scientist who leads a large group and so on.

Manolis Kellis (1:54:54.640)

Because there's a youthful nature to you that it's, I mean, you talk like a first,

Manolis Kellis (1:55:00.720)

like an undergrad, you know, with the excitement and the fresh eyes and the sort of excitement

Manolis Kellis (1:55:06.240)

about the world. And that's, first of all, super contagious and beautiful. You know,

Manolis Kellis (1:55:11.120)

it's easy to sort of fall into behaving seriously because then people kind of start putting

Manolis Kellis (1:55:19.840)

you on a pedestal more into a position of power. You want to sort of act like you're

Manolis Kellis (1:55:26.640)

in a position of power as opposed to allowing yourself to be lost in the just the curiosity,

Manolis Kellis (1:55:31.840)

the childish view of the world, which is just this open eyed love of knowledge.

Lex Fridman (1:55:38.400)

And that was the transition that I was describing when I decided to go back to my rollerblades

Lex Fridman (1:55:41.920)

and t shirt and baseball cap. Basically, you know, when I met my first postdoc,

Manolis Kellis (1:55:48.320)

it was basically, you know, he was interviewing for postdocs at MIT. He already had several

Manolis Kellis (1:55:53.200)

first author papers to his name in top journals. And my friend Yulia basically introduced me to

Manolis Kellis (1:56:00.160)

Alex Stark, who basically was interviewing at the time with Rick Young and with Eric Lander,

Manolis Kellis (1:56:04.640)

just like these massive names in the field. And I was just a first year faculty person with,

Manolis Kellis (1:56:09.680)

you know, zero credibility. And she basically says, Oh, there's this friend of mine, Alex,

Manolis Kellis (1:56:16.160)

who's visiting. He's also German. You know, he wanted to meet you. I'm like, Oh, sounds great.

Manolis Kellis (1:56:19.520)

I'd love to talk science. I show up. We sit at the amphitheater in Stata. You know, I basically

Manolis Kellis (1:56:26.000)

arrive in my rollerblades, you know, jump a few steps, sit down wearing my blades. We're having

Manolis Kellis (1:56:32.240)

this awesome conversation about science and about gene regulation and how the whole thing works and

Manolis Kellis (1:56:36.800)

sort of, you know, my perspective and his perspective. We're just bouncing ideas for 30

Manolis Kellis (1:56:40.640)

minutes. And then I just dash off to my next meeting. And he basically emails me afterwards.

Lex Fridman (1:56:46.000)

And I was giving him advice about how to interview with Eric Lander, how to interview with Rick Young

Lex Fridman (1:56:50.000)

and how to sort of get a position with them. And then after a while, he emails me saying,

Lex Fridman (1:56:55.280)

I would love to become a postdoc in your group. I'm like, what are you kidding me?

Manolis Kellis (1:56:59.520)

Like, so, so he basically didn't care that I wear rollerblades and T shirt. All he cared

Manolis Kellis (1:57:11.680)

about was my ideas and sort of embracing the me with the childhood excitement about science

Manolis Kellis (1:57:19.440)

was basically what attracted him. It wasn't the, wow, this guy runs a big lab or this and that.

Manolis Kellis (1:57:24.800)

He was just like, I like his ideas. I want to work with him. That, by the way, folks is the best of

Manolis Kellis (1:57:30.560)

MIT. That's what MIT stands for. So that's a beautiful story. But take me back to the poem

Lex Fridman (1:57:36.400)

and where did this poem come from? Where's your mindset? So who is the 17, 16 year old kid Manolis?

Lex Fridman (1:57:43.520)

So again, I've just seen snow for the first time and I'm in New York. So I'm, you know,

Manolis Kellis (1:57:51.680)

maybe that's where the sadness in the poem comes from. But anyway, we're asked in class to write

Manolis Kellis (1:57:56.400)

an assignment. This is my third language. I'm not very good at it. So pardon me, but here's what I

Manolis Kellis (1:58:01.920)

wrote. Children dance now all in row, children laughing at the snow. But in time's endless flow,

Manolis Kellis (1:58:10.080)

children sooner or later grow. Men are mortal. We go by. If we know it, we may cry. But I thought

Manolis Kellis (1:58:18.160)

a love so sweet was immortal, was so deep. There I told you, darling sweet, that forever love would

Manolis Kellis (1:58:24.960)

keep. Blossomed spring and summer shined. Then blue autumn, winter died. One year passed, but the

Manolis Kellis (1:58:33.200)

clouds still remember all our vows. Never faked and never lied. All we did was stare and smile.

Manolis Kellis (1:58:41.200)

All alone, sitting down, to the snow we made our vow. But you told me you were right. Birds who

Manolis Kellis (1:58:48.800)

love are birds who cry. Now with laughter children play, yet the sky is so gray. Even if the snow

Manolis Kellis (1:58:59.440)

seems bright, without you have lost their light. Sun that sang and moon that smiled, all the stars

Manolis Kellis (1:59:06.640)

have ceased to shine. All of nature drew its grace, found its light within your face. Now you're gone

Lex Fridman (1:59:14.160)

and won't return. Let the snow in my heart burn. There's a Greek in there. That's beautiful. That's

Manolis Kellis (1:59:20.960)

beautiful, by the way. And the rhyming, the musicality, there's both a simplicity and a

Manolis Kellis (1:59:28.240)

musicality to it. I'm 16. It's my third language. No, no, no. So I really enjoy like Robert Frost

Manolis Kellis (1:59:33.520)

poems. I don't mean simplicity in a bad way, in a negative way at all. Again, it's very weird to

Manolis Kellis (1:59:38.320)

analyze your own poem, but I think it captures the simplicity of youth and the way that it kind of

Manolis Kellis (1:59:43.360)

starts with Children Dance Like Only Low. It basically, and it kind of shows that snow can be

Manolis Kellis (1:59:47.920)

interpreted first in the first verse as a happy thing, ta da da da da snow. And then in the end,

Manolis Kellis (1:59:54.160)

you know, now with laughter children play, I'm like, now I've grown basically. It's this

Manolis Kellis (20:00.720)

in the history of human evolution that unfortunately is still present in, you know, many ugly forms

Manolis Kellis (20:07.440)

today, but probably contributed to our success as a species in wiping out other species.

Manolis Kellis (20:14.000)

It just sucks that we don't have neighboring species that are, you know, intelligent like us

Manolis Kellis (20:23.120)

that, but yet very different than us. So we have like, you know, dogs or wolves, I guess,

Manolis Kellis (20:29.840)

co evolved. They, they figured out how to neighbor up with humans in a friendly way and collaborate

Lex Fridman (20:37.840)

and develop in time. You're describing this as if the wolves made a choice.

Manolis Kellis (20:42.160)

It's possible that the wolves never had a say, that basically humans were just so overpowering

Manolis Kellis (20:47.360)

that they had captive wolves. And then at every generation killed off eight of the nine pups and

Manolis Kellis (20:53.200)

only kept the one that was milder. And it only takes a few generations to then sort of have pups

Manolis Kellis (20:58.320)

that are really mild. And so the Neanderthals weren't useful in the same way that wolves were.

Manolis Kellis (21:05.600)

I don't know if it's a question of useful. They were probably super useful. My thinking is that

Manolis Kellis (21:11.520)

they were scary, that basically something that almost resembles you is something that you try

Manolis Kellis (21:18.880)

to eliminate first. It's too close. Yeah. And speaking of, you know, species that are intelligent

Lex Fridman (21:25.680)

and sort of what's left of evolution, it is a shame, exactly like you say, that so many different,

Manolis Kellis (21:32.160)

amazing life forms were extinct and the kind of boring ones remained. So if you look at the

Manolis Kellis (21:40.400)

dinosaurs, I mean, the diversity that they had, if you look at sub, you know, like there's just so

Manolis Kellis (21:46.880)

many different lineages of life that were just abruptly killed. And yet out of that death emerged,

Manolis Kellis (21:56.160)

you know, many new kinds of really awesome lineages. Do you think there was in the history of

Lex Fridman (22:01.280)

life on earth species that may be still alive today that are more intelligent than humans?

Lex Fridman (22:07.360)

And we just don't know. So there's a case to be made for dolphins. Like if you look at their brains,

Manolis Kellis (22:11.440)

if you look at the way that they play, if you look at the way that they learn, you know, I mean,

Manolis Kellis (22:16.880)

they don't have opposable thumbs and we do. So, you know, that probably made a big difference.

Manolis Kellis (22:20.800)

It's terrifying to think that like, not terrifying, I don't know how to feel about it,

Manolis Kellis (22:24.720)

that they're more intelligent than us. It's like the hitchhiker's guide.

Manolis Kellis (22:28.960)

I know. But how do you define intelligence? Basically, like I was saying last time,

Manolis Kellis (22:33.120)

you know, stupid is a stupid does and smart is a smart does. So if the dolphins are basically

Manolis Kellis (22:39.360)

super smart, figured out the meaning of life and just go around playing with water all day,

Manolis Kellis (22:43.760)

which is probably the meaning of life, then we wouldn't know because all they're doing is kicking

Manolis Kellis (22:49.920)

water just like sharks are and sharks are probably pretty stupid. So basically it's very difficult to

Manolis Kellis (22:55.920)

sort of judge a species intelligence unless they kind of go out of their way to demonstrate it.

Lex Fridman (23:00.080)

Yeah, and that's instructive for our understanding of any kind of life form.

Manolis Kellis (23:06.480)

You know, I recently talked to Sara Seager looking for life out there on other planets.

Manolis Kellis (23:11.920)

It'd be fascinating to think if we discover a habitable planet outside of Earth in one day,

Manolis Kellis (23:19.120)

maybe many centuries away, or be able to travel with like a robot there, how would we actually

Manolis Kellis (23:24.160)

know that this species would probably be able to detect that it's a living being? But how would we

Manolis Kellis (23:32.320)

know if it's an intelligent being? I mean, it's both exciting and terrifying to sort of come face

Manolis Kellis (23:40.480)

to face with a life form that's of another world. Like something that clearly is moving in a,

Lex Fridman (23:48.480)

how would you say, like a deliberate way, and to then like ask, well, how do I ask that thing,

Lex Fridman (23:56.480)

whether it's intelligent?

Manolis Kellis (23:58.080)

No, but the question that you're asking is applicable to every species on the Earth now.

Lex Fridman (24:03.840)

On Earth now, yeah.

Manolis Kellis (24:04.800)

Yeah. So basically, you know, dolphins are a great example. We know that they're,

Lex Fridman (24:08.800)

you know, clearly capable hardware wise and behavior wise of intelligence.

Manolis Kellis (24:14.240)

You know, how do we communicate? So basically, if your question is about crossing species

Manolis Kellis (24:18.080)

boundaries of communication, the way that I want to put it is that humans have achieved

Manolis Kellis (24:26.080)

a level of sophistication in our behaviors, in our communication, in our language, in our ways

Manolis Kellis (24:32.320)

of expressing ourselves, that I have no doubt that if we encountered a human like form of

Manolis Kellis (24:39.680)

intelligence, we'd figure out their language in a few weeks. Like, it'd be just fine. As long as,

Manolis Kellis (24:45.680)

you know, of course, they're both trusting each other, not annihilating each other, and not sort

Manolis Kellis (24:50.080)

of fearing each other and attacking each other.

Lex Fridman (24:52.640)

What about, let me ask, just out of curiosity into science fiction land a little bit.

Lex Fridman (24:58.400)

So clearly, you're one of the top scientists in the world. So if we were to discover,

Manolis Kellis (25:05.200)

an alien life form, you would be brought in to study its genetics. Do you think the epigenome

Manolis Kellis (25:12.880)

that we talked about, the genome, the code, the digital code that underlies that alien life form

Manolis Kellis (25:18.720)

would be similar to ours? Like the, in fundamental ways, maybe not exactly, but in fundamental ways,

Lex Fridman (25:26.960)

of how it's structured?

Lex Fridman (25:28.000)

Yeah. So you're getting to the very definition of what we're talking about.

Manolis Kellis (25:31.440)

Of how it's structured. Yeah. So you're getting to the very definition of life. You're getting to

Manolis Kellis (25:35.920)

the very definition of what makes life, life, and how do we decode that life? And it's so easy to

Manolis Kellis (25:44.320)

think that every life form would basically have to, you know, like oxygen, have to like heat from

Manolis Kellis (25:50.400)

the sun and rely on sort of being in the habitable zone of, you know, its solar system and so on and

Lex Fridman (25:57.360)

so forth. But I think we have to sort of go beyond this sort of, oh, life on another planet must be

Manolis Kellis (26:04.800)

exactly like life is on earth. Because of course, life on earth happens to rely on the proximity to

Manolis Kellis (26:10.480)

the sun and benefit from that amount of energy. But we're talking at timescales of human life,

Manolis Kellis (26:19.520)

where we kind of live, I don't know, between, and I'm going to be super wide here. We're going to

Manolis Kellis (26:24.640)

live between six earth months and, you know, 200 earth months or 200 earth years. So basically,

Manolis Kellis (26:32.640)

if you look at the timescale that we inhabit on earth, it is very much dictated by the amount of

Manolis Kellis (26:38.240)

energy that we receive from the sun. If you look at, I don't know, Europa, you know, the smallest,

Manolis Kellis (26:44.320)

the fourth smallest moon of Jupiter, the smallest of the Galilean moons, and also the smallest

Manolis Kellis (26:50.160)

in its distance from Jupiter. It has an iron core, it has a rock exterior, it has ice all around it,

Lex Fridman (27:02.000)

and it has probably massive liquid oceans underneath. And the gravitational pull of

Lex Fridman (27:10.080)

Jupiter is probably creating all kinds of movement under that ice. How did life evolve on earth?

Manolis Kellis (27:17.520)

Yes, sure. Life now, most of life that we above the surface look at, has to do with exploiting

Manolis Kellis (27:27.440)

the solar energy for, you know, our daily behavior. But that's not the case everywhere

Manolis Kellis (27:33.120)

on the planet. If you look at the bottom of the ocean, there are hydrothermal vents.

Manolis Kellis (27:38.960)

There's both black smokers and white smokers, and they are near these volcanic, you know, ducts

Lex Fridman (27:46.400)

that basically emanate a massive amount of energy from the core of our planet. What does life need?

Manolis Kellis (27:53.600)

It needs energy. Does it need energy from the sun? It couldn't care less. Does it need energy from,

Manolis Kellis (28:00.320)

you know, the earth itself? Yeah, possibly. It could use that. And if you look at how did life

Manolis Kellis (28:06.320)

evolve on, you know, on earth, there are many theories. I mean, a kind of silly theory is that

Manolis Kellis (28:12.720)

it came from outer space, that basically there's a meteorite out there that sort of landed on earth

Lex Fridman (28:16.880)

and brought with it DNA material. I think it's a little silly because it kind of pushes the buck

Manolis Kellis (28:21.280)

down the road. Basically the next question is how did it evolve over there? Whereas our planet has

Manolis Kellis (28:26.960)

basically all of the right ingredients, why wouldn't evolve here? So basically let's kind

Manolis Kellis (28:30.240)

of ignore that one. And now the two other competing hypotheses are from the outside in

Manolis Kellis (28:34.480)

or from the inside out. What's that mean? From the outside in means from the surface to the

Manolis Kellis (28:38.880)

bottom of the ocean. From the inside out means from the bottom of the ocean to the surface.

Lex Fridman (28:46.080)

So life on the surface is pretty brutal.

Lex Fridman (28:51.200)

Life obviously evolved in the water and then there was an out of water event.

Lex Fridman (28:58.000)

But basically before it exited, it was clearly in the water, which is a much nicer and shielded

Manolis Kellis (29:04.320)

environment. So just to be clear, on the surface, are you referring to the surface of the sea or

Manolis Kellis (29:11.280)

the bottom of the sea? Versus the bottom of the sea. And you're saying life on the surface is

Manolis Kellis (29:18.800)

harsh. Life outside the water is horrible. It takes huge amounts of evolutionary innovations

Manolis Kellis (29:27.520)

to sustain living outside the water. That's so interesting. Why is that? So it's easier to,

Manolis Kellis (29:34.640)

life is easier in the water. Maybe, see, I'm telling dolphins are onto something.

Manolis Kellis (29:38.160)

We are 70% water. No, dolphins went back into the water.

Lex Fridman (29:42.000)

Really? Oh, because dolphins are mammals.

Manolis Kellis (29:43.840)

Of course. Yeah.

Manolis Kellis (29:45.040)

Interesting. Well, again, they might be smarter. They went back. They're like, screw this.

Lex Fridman (29:49.920)

So if you basically think about the fact that we are 70% water,

Manolis Kellis (29:55.200)

we're basically transporting the sea with us outside the sea. If we don't have water for about

Manolis Kellis (2:00:00.800)

transformation that we're actually talking about, this whole men are mortal, we go by.

Manolis Kellis (2:00:04.320)

I'm sort of, you know, you're saying, are you comfortable with growing old? I'm like,

Manolis Kellis (2:00:07.680)

duh. I was, I was since I was 16. And what's really interesting is that, you know, again,

Manolis Kellis (2:00:12.880)

when I was 12 years old in our summer house in Greece, I remember sort of telling my sister

Manolis Kellis (2:00:18.320)

my outlook that I would have as a father for how to bring up my own kids. So it's very weird that

Manolis Kellis (2:00:24.160)

I've always sort of seen the full path from, you know, a kid. From when you were young. Yeah. I

Manolis Kellis (2:00:31.120)

don't know if you like this Joni Mitchell song. I've looked at clouds from both sides now,

Manolis Kellis (2:00:35.520)

from up and down and still somehow it snows illusions I recall. It's clouds illusions I

Manolis Kellis (2:00:42.080)

recall. I really don't know clouds at all. So it's really beautiful. So I think the Joni Mitchell

Manolis Kellis (2:00:46.960)

song, which again, I heard for the first time much, much after this, and I wouldn't even compare

Manolis Kellis (2:00:51.360)

this to that. But what Joni Mitchell is saying that song is that you can see life from two

Manolis Kellis (2:00:56.720)

perspectives. You can see the good or the bad in both, you know, in everything you see. And I think

Manolis Kellis (2:01:03.920)

that's the allegory of snow right now. You can see snow as this bright, white, wonderful thing,

Manolis Kellis (2:01:09.680)

or you can see snow as this miserable, you know, gray thing. So that's sort of, and what I like

Manolis Kellis (2:01:16.080)

about the last verse now with laughter children play is that it's a recall to the first one

Manolis Kellis (2:01:20.320)

where I was the kid enjoying careless life, and eventually was making promises that something

Manolis Kellis (2:01:27.840)

would be forever. And I think part of that is also the loss of my friendships in France,

Manolis Kellis (2:01:32.400)

of being in New York now and sort of everything's gray. And, you know, even though the snow seems

Manolis Kellis (2:01:38.080)

bright, without you have lost their light, sun that sang and moon that smiled. So it's this

Manolis Kellis (2:01:42.800)

concept that if you lose your love, the same thing can be perceived in a very different way.

Manolis Kellis (2:01:52.720)

Let me ask you this, because somebody wrote me this long email,

Lex Fridman (2:01:57.360)

and I think you're the perfect person to ask this. You mentioned love.

Lex Fridman (2:02:03.840)

From a genetic perspective, what is it? What do you make of love? Why do we humans fall in love?

Manolis Kellis (2:02:17.600)

In your own life, why did you fall in love? You know, the email that was written to me was,

Manolis Kellis (2:02:24.320)

you always talk about mortality and fear of mortality, but you don't ask about love. So I

Manolis Kellis (2:02:33.840)

don't know if there's some thoughts you could give about the role of love in your own life,

Manolis Kellis (2:02:41.360)

or the role of love in human life in general. I think love in many ways defines my life.

Manolis Kellis (2:02:50.560)

It's basically, I like to say that I'm a human first and a professor second. And I think this

Manolis Kellis (2:02:58.640)

passion for life, this passion for, you know, everything around us. I mean, the only way to

Manolis Kellis (2:03:04.720)

describe that is love. It's basically, you know, embracing your, you know, emotional self,

Manolis Kellis (2:03:12.560)

embracing the, you know, the non brainiac in you, embracing the sort of intangible, the

Manolis Kellis (2:03:28.800)

not very well defined. And even in my own research, I'm just very passionate about

Manolis Kellis (2:03:34.320)

everything I do. You know, there's a certain passion that comes through. And what, I'm sorry,

Manolis Kellis (2:03:39.280)

again, being Greek, the etymology of the word passion. What was passion? Passion is suffering.

Manolis Kellis (2:03:46.400)

The etymology, when we talk about the passion of the Christ, it's a suffering.

Lex Fridman (2:03:50.560)

And in the Greek version of that word, pathos, like pathology, pathos is deep suffering. It's

Manolis Kellis (2:03:59.680)

the concept of someone who's sympathetic. Sympathetic means suffering together,

Manolis Kellis (2:04:04.880)

experiencing emotions together. So it's funny that you ask me about love and I respond with passion,

Manolis Kellis (2:04:09.680)

passion for life, passion for research, passion for my family, for my children, for, you know.

Lex Fridman (2:04:14.720)

So there's a certain passion that defines me and everything else follows rather than the other way

Manolis Kellis (2:04:25.360)

around. I'm not first thinking with my brain, what is the most impactful paper we could write? And

Manolis Kellis (2:04:31.040)

then going after that, I'm thinking with my heart, what am I passionate about? What drives me? What

Manolis Kellis (2:04:35.680)

just like, you know, makes me take. And that's a beautiful way to live, but I love it how the Greek

Manolis Kellis (2:04:41.440)

part of you just kind of connects it to the suffering. So if you could remove the suffering.

Manolis Kellis (2:04:46.240)

No, no, no, no, no, no. When I say suffering, I don't mean suffering as in being miserable. I mean

Manolis Kellis (2:04:52.160)

suffering as in being emotionally invested in something. Remember, I mean, again, if you look

Manolis Kellis (2:04:58.880)

at this poem, what is it saying? It's saying birds who love are birds who cry. Right? That's the very

Manolis Kellis (2:05:08.240)

definition of love. Exposing your fragility. If you're not afraid of suffering, you don't fall

Manolis Kellis (2:05:15.200)

in love. As soon as you hold back, you protect, you shield your heart, no love can enter. So there's

Manolis Kellis (2:05:24.320)

this Simon and Garfunkel song. I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island

Manolis Kellis (2:05:34.080)

never cries. So again, there's some aspect of that into this poem. The fact that, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:05:44.000)

but you told me, you know, there I told you, darling sweet, that forever love would keep,

Manolis Kellis (2:05:47.360)

is this intermediate thing. And then there's a recall, but you told me you were right. Birds

Manolis Kellis (2:05:51.040)

who love are birds who cry. So it basically says that love is the fragility that you're

Manolis Kellis (2:05:57.280)

willing to give to another person. It's opening up your vulnerable spots. It's sort of accepting

Manolis Kellis (2:06:06.240)

that there's no safety net. You're just giving yourself fully and you're ready to be hurt.

Lex Fridman (2:06:14.240)

So you've already been way too kind with your time, but I'm going to force you to stay here

Manolis Kellis (2:06:18.560)

just a few minutes longer as we're talking about goodbyes. You have a really nice other poem here

Manolis Kellis (2:06:25.520)

about goodbyes. Can I force you to read it as well? Oh, twist my arm, twist my arm. So the next

Manolis Kellis (2:06:33.760)

poem was written specifically for our high school yearbook. So another poem written on demand,

Manolis Kellis (2:06:40.960)

the rest of them are just so miserable, written by pure, you know, sadness and melancholy.

Lex Fridman (2:06:46.720)

But this one was also written on demand and it was basically saying goodbye, as is appropriate

Manolis Kellis (2:06:53.120)

right now, to my friends and sort of, again, reflecting this whole journey and transformation

Manolis Kellis (2:06:58.640)

through life. And also I think showing a little bit of introspection about how we kind of had it

Manolis Kellis (2:07:04.720)

easy in high school and we're about to go into rougher waters. So the title is actually The Tide

Manolis Kellis (2:07:10.080)

Waters and it's an analogy on that. So here it goes. All this was another lake, where some rest

Manolis Kellis (2:07:19.440)

we sailors take, waters calm and full of fish, we'll find there what we wish, some seek fruit

Lex Fridman (2:07:26.400)

and others feast, some of us just look for peace, some find fresh ships, other love, some seek both

Lex Fridman (2:07:33.600)

and neither have. We were different when we came, each his own story and fame, different people had

Manolis Kellis (2:07:40.800)

we been, different cultures had we seen, different nature, different face, each unlike all in this

Manolis Kellis (2:07:47.440)

place. We had faced success, defeat, then in one lake came to meet. There, the orders that we

Manolis Kellis (2:07:55.840)

followed and the pride that we swallowed, made us one but not the same, joined us strangers who

Manolis Kellis (2:08:03.520)

there came. Sooner later, groups were made, tribes where differences will fade, some attached more

Manolis Kellis (2:08:11.680)

or less, others fought and made a mess. But again we have to go, what for, where to, we don't know,

Manolis Kellis (2:08:19.280)

still we know it, we will try, there to rush, to flee, to fly. There'll be some who wish to stay

Lex Fridman (2:08:26.400)

but they'll carry on away, we'll continue on our journey as we came here, strong yet lonely.

Manolis Kellis (2:08:33.680)

From the lake a river flows, from the river many goals, on that river we will race, each will try

Manolis Kellis (2:08:39.920)

to find his pace, in that scene the sailors face, their first fear, defeat, disgrace,

Manolis Kellis (2:08:47.680)

defeat, disgrace, here and there comes out a face that the waters soon embrace. Some get lucky,

Manolis Kellis (2:08:56.640)

find their way, others sink beneath the waves, in this race we will part, some will settle near the

Manolis Kellis (2:09:04.480)

start, some set goals beyond the stars because the river carries far. You should know in what we've

Manolis Kellis (2:09:11.760)

done, the hard part is still to come. So I'll have to say goodbye, don't you worry, I won't cry,

Manolis Kellis (2:09:20.640)

neither will they those who try, till the end, to keep their pride. But please know dearest friends

Manolis Kellis (2:09:28.560)

who are always there to mend, I will always need your hand, I will miss you till the end.

Manolis Kellis (2:09:35.760)

I don't think there's a better way to end it. Manolis, like I said last time, you're one of

Manolis Kellis (2:09:41.520)

the most special people at MIT, one of the most special people in Boston, and whatever mental

Manolis Kellis (2:09:48.640)

force field that you're applying in saying that Boston is the best city in the world,

Manolis Kellis (2:09:54.000)

MIT the best university in the world, you're actually making it happen. So thank you so much

Manolis Kellis (2:09:58.240)

for talking to us, huge honor. Thank you so much, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for listening to

Manolis Kellis (2:10:03.120)

this conversation with Manolis Kellis, and thank you to our sponsors, Public Goods, Magic Spoon,

Lex Fridman (2:10:08.800)

and ExpressVPN. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to

Manolis Kellis (2:10:14.320)

support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 Stars

Manolis Kellis (2:10:19.440)

on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter

Manolis Kellis (2:10:24.560)

at Lex Friedman. And now, let me leave you with some words from another well known Greek,

Manolis Kellis (2:10:31.040)

Alexander III of Macedonia, commonly known as Alexander the Great.

Manolis Kellis (2:10:35.120)

There is nothing impossible to him who will try. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

Manolis Kellis (30:03.760)

24 hours, we're dry. And if you look at life under the sea, I mean, I don't know if you're a diver,

Lex Fridman (30:09.680)

but when you go diving, your brain explodes. Again, when I say the boring life forms is what

Manolis Kellis (30:16.320)

we see all the time, like tetrapods. I mean, what a stupid boring body plan. Seriously. Just go dive

Lex Fridman (30:24.320)

and you'll see that a tiny little minority of the stuff under the sea, under the surface of the sea

Manolis Kellis (30:29.440)

is actually tetrapods. It's like snails with all kinds of crazy appendages and colors and round

Manolis Kellis (30:37.360)

things and five way symmetric things and eight way symmetric things, all kinds of crazy body plans.

Lex Fridman (30:43.760)

And only the tetrapod fish managed to get out. And then they gave rise to all the boring plans we

Manolis Kellis (30:49.680)

kind of see today of basically, you know, humans with four limbs, birds with four limbs, lizards

Manolis Kellis (30:56.480)

with four limbs, and you know, right? It's kind of boring. If you look at, by comparison, life

Manolis Kellis (31:02.880)

underwater is teeming with diversity. So now let's roll back the clock and basically say,

Lex Fridman (31:09.200)

where did life in the ocean come from, from the surface or from the bottom?

Lex Fridman (31:13.520)

Exactly. Those two options that you were mentioning.

Manolis Kellis (31:15.120)

Yeah, exactly. So basically life on the surface is one option. And then the idea there is that

Manolis Kellis (31:21.440)

there's tides with the moon and the sun sort of causing all this movement. And this movement is

Manolis Kellis (31:26.880)

basically causing nutrients to sort of, you know, coalesce and, you know, bounce around,

Manolis Kellis (31:31.520)

et cetera. That's one option. The second option, massive amount of energy from the core of our

Manolis Kellis (31:39.280)

the core of our planet basically exploited, leading to these basic ingredients of life forms.

Lex Fridman (31:47.920)

And what are these basic ingredients? Metabolism, being able to take energy from the environment

Lex Fridman (31:53.600)

and put it as part of yourself. Metabolism, it basically means transformation. Again, in the

Manolis Kellis (31:59.360)

Greek, it basically means taking stuff from, you know, like nutrients or energy source or anything,

Lex Fridman (32:08.480)

and then making it your own. The second one is compartmentalization. If there's no notion of self,

Manolis Kellis (32:14.720)

there can't be evolution. You have to know where your own boundaries end and where the non self

Manolis Kellis (32:19.920)

boundaries begin. And that's basically the lipid bilayer nowadays, which is extremely simple to

Manolis Kellis (32:26.320)

form. It's basically just a bunch of lipids and then they eventually just self organize into a

Manolis Kellis (32:30.720)

membrane. So that's a very natural way of forming a self. And then the third component is replication.

Manolis Kellis (32:40.560)

Replication doesn't need to be self replication. It could be A helps make more of B, B helps make

Manolis Kellis (32:46.480)

more of C and C helps make more of A. Any kind of self reinforcement is what you need to ignite

Manolis Kellis (32:54.240)

the process of evolution. After you've ignited that process, you know, I don't want to say all

Manolis Kellis (32:59.920)

hell breaks loose, but all paradise breaks loose. So basically you then boom, you know, have life

Manolis Kellis (33:06.240)

going. And the moment you have A, B, C, some kind of thing looping back onto A, you can make

Manolis Kellis (33:12.080)

modifications and you can improve. And then you let natural selection work. Is there some element

Manolis Kellis (33:18.400)

of that that's like some state representation that stores information? Like maybe I should say

Manolis Kellis (33:26.080)

information. Absolutely. We like to think of life as the information propagation, which is DNA,

Manolis Kellis (33:35.600)

the messenger, which is RNA, and then the action, which is protein. So basically DNA,

Manolis Kellis (33:43.120)

we think is an essential part of life. That's where the storage is. And therefore that early

Manolis Kellis (33:49.200)

life forms must have had some kind of storage medium DNA. If you look at how life actually

Manolis Kellis (33:55.200)

evolved, DNA was invented much later. Proteins were invented later. And RNA was fine by itself,

Manolis Kellis (34:05.760)

thank you very much, in an RNA world. So the early version of life as we know it today was in fact

Manolis Kellis (34:13.760)

RNA molecules performing all of the functions. The RNA molecule itself was the protein actuator

Manolis Kellis (34:22.240)

here by creating three dimensional folds through self hybridization. Self what? Self hybridization.

Lex Fridman (34:29.360)

So basically the same way that DNA molecules can hybridize with themselves and basically

Manolis Kellis (34:33.440)

form this double helix. The single stranded RNA molecule can form partial double helices

Manolis Kellis (34:40.480)

in various places, creating structure as if you had a long string with complimentary parts,

Lex Fridman (34:46.400)

and you could then sort of design kind of like origami like structures that will fold onto

Manolis Kellis (34:51.120)

themselves. And then you can make any shape from that. That early RNA world eventually got to

Manolis Kellis (34:59.600)

replication, where enzymes encoded in RNA would replicate RNA itself. And then that process

Manolis Kellis (35:10.880)

basically kicked off evolution. And that process of evolution then led to major innovations.

Manolis Kellis (35:16.880)

The first innovation was translation. So you start with an RNA molecule and you translate it

Manolis Kellis (35:23.840)

into another kind of form. And that's the first kind of encoding. You're like, well,

Lex Fridman (35:27.440)

do you need some kind of code? Yeah, but the code was in fact one thing. It was conflated

Manolis Kellis (35:34.080)

with the actuators. The actuators were separated from the code only later on. So you first had

Manolis Kellis (35:40.800)

the self replicating code, which was also the actuator. And then you kind of have a functionalization,

Manolis Kellis (35:47.520)

partitioning of the functionalization, a sub functionalization of the proteins that are now

Manolis Kellis (35:52.640)

going to be the workhorse of life, but they're not self replicating. The code remains the RNA.

Lex Fridman (35:58.880)

So the most beautiful and most complex RNA machine known to man is the ribosome.

Manolis Kellis (36:04.560)

The ribosome is this massive factory that is able to translate RNA into protein.

Manolis Kellis (36:12.080)

The ribosome, I mean, if you want, I don't know, divine intervention in the history of life,

Lex Fridman (36:16.240)

the ribosome is it. That's one of the great invention in the history of life.

Manolis Kellis (36:20.320)

It's yeah. But again, you can't think of great inventions as one time steps. They're basically,

Manolis Kellis (36:25.760)

you know, the culmination of probably many competing software infrastructures for life

Manolis Kellis (36:32.240)

preservation that won out. And then when the ribosome was so efficient at making proteins,

Manolis Kellis (36:39.040)

all the other ones basically died out. And then the life forms that were using the modern ribosome

Manolis Kellis (36:45.520)

were basically the more successful ones because it could make proteins. And now those proteins

Manolis Kellis (36:50.800)

are much more versatile because RNA only has four bases. Proteins eventually have 20 amino acids,

Manolis Kellis (36:58.720)

not initially, but eventually. And then they can form in much more complex shapes and they can

Manolis Kellis (37:04.480)

create all kinds of additional machines. One of which is reverse transcriptase. So you basically

Manolis Kellis (37:11.520)

now have RNA. Again, we like to think of transcription as the normal, reverse transcription

Manolis Kellis (37:16.720)

as the oddball. Well, RNA preceded DNA. So reverse transcription actually was the first invention

Manolis Kellis (37:23.360)

before transcription itself. So basically RNA invents proteins, RNA and proteins together

Manolis Kellis (37:29.920)

invent DNA. So you now have a more stable medium and more stable backbone with two helices instead

Manolis Kellis (37:40.000)

of one, two strands instead of one, the double helix. And RNA basically says, listen, I'm tired.

Manolis Kellis (37:46.960)

I'm going to delegate all information storage to DNA and I'm going to delegate most actuation

Manolis Kellis (37:54.160)

to proteins. But that's to you is not like a, that's just an efficiency thing. It's not a

Manolis Kellis (38:01.920)

fundamentally new innovation. That's why when you're asking is a separate information storage

Manolis Kellis (38:07.600)

medium a definition of life? I'm like, no, any kind of self preservation, self reinforcement.

Lex Fridman (38:14.080)

And it didn't need to be RNA based initially. It didn't need to be self replication initially.

Manolis Kellis (38:21.200)

You just need to have enough RNA molecules randomly arising that reinforce each other

Manolis Kellis (38:26.640)

that ultimately lead to the, you know, the closing of that loop and the ignition of the evolutionary

Manolis Kellis (38:33.760)

process. Can we just rewind a little bit? Like if you were to bet all your money on the two options

Manolis Kellis (38:39.600)

in terms of where life started at the bottom of the ocean. I don't know if this is answerable, but

Lex Fridman (38:47.200)

how hard is the first step or if there's something interesting you can say about that first leap

Manolis Kellis (38:54.400)

about from not life to life. Yeah. I think it's inevitable on earth or just in the universe.

Manolis Kellis (39:02.640)

I think it's inevitable. If you look at Europa, you know, going back the moon of Jupiter. It's

Manolis Kellis (39:10.400)

also a really nice song by Santana. Europa basically has all the ingredients. It has,

Manolis Kellis (39:17.920)

you know, the core that can emit energy. It has the shielding through the ice sheet,

Lex Fridman (39:25.200)

protecting it just like an atmosphere would. It even has a layer of oxygen,

Manolis Kellis (39:29.280)

probably sufficiently dense to sustain life. So my guess is that there's probably

Manolis Kellis (39:38.000)

independently a reason life form already teeming in Europa because as soon as it today.

Lex Fridman (39:46.080)

Is that exciting or terrifying to you?

Manolis Kellis (39:50.400)

It's, I mean, as a scientist, I can't wait to see non DNA based life forms. I can't wait

Manolis Kellis (39:57.680)

because we are so born in, you know, sort of, as I would say in French, but basically we're sort of,

Manolis Kellis (40:08.880)

you know, we are so narrow minded in our thinking of what life should look like that I can't wait

Manolis Kellis (40:15.680)

for all that to just be blown away by the discovery of life elsewhere.

Manolis Kellis (40:20.080)

Let me bring you into another science fiction scenario. So on that point, if we discovered

Manolis Kellis (40:26.960)

life on Europa and you were brought in, you seem very excited, but how would you start looking at

Lex Fridman (40:37.520)

that life in a way that's useful to you as a scientist, but also not going to kill all of us?

Lex Fridman (40:46.480)

So like to me, it's a little bit scary because not, not because it's a malevolent life. Like

Manolis Kellis (40:53.040)

it's a dictator petting like a cat, it's evil, but just the way life is, it seems to be very good at

Manolis Kellis (41:02.000)

conquering other life. So there's a lot of science fiction movies based on that principle.

Manolis Kellis (41:06.640)

Yeah. And that's sort of what causes the public to be so scared. But if you think about sort of,

Manolis Kellis (41:12.800)

would Europa life be scared of humans coming over and taking over? Chances are no, not even like

Manolis Kellis (41:18.800)

earth bacteria because earth bacteria would be wiped out in an instant in this foreign world

Manolis Kellis (41:24.480)

because they don't know how to metabolize energy that doesn't come from the types of energy sources

Manolis Kellis (41:30.000)

that are here. The levels of acidity may just kill us all off. And at the same way, in the converse

Manolis Kellis (41:37.280)

way, if you bring life from Europa on earth, it'll die instantly because it's too hot or because it

Manolis Kellis (41:43.440)

doesn't need to know how to cope with, I don't know, the sun's radiation so close to these

Manolis Kellis (41:49.280)

completely inhabitable zone by their standards. So what we call the habitable zone might actually be

Manolis Kellis (41:55.680)

the inhabitable zone. Inhabitable for them. So the difference, if the environments are sufficiently

Manolis Kellis (42:00.960)

different, you think we'll just not be able to even attack each other and the basic. It'll take

Manolis Kellis (42:07.200)

massive amounts of engineering to create machines that will go there and sample the oceans,

Manolis Kellis (42:16.000)

basically drill through the layers of ice to basically sample and see what life is like

Manolis Kellis (42:22.960)

there and detecting it will probably be trivial. It definitely won't be DNA based. It's not like

Manolis Kellis (42:29.040)

we're going to send a sequencer, but it'll be some other kind of combination of chemicals

Manolis Kellis (42:34.960)

that will look nonrandom. So if you had to bet, if I took that life form we find in Europa and

Manolis Kellis (42:41.360)

like put it on a sandwich that you're eating and like eat that sandwich. It'll taste just fine.

Manolis Kellis (42:48.000)

Well, I know about that. Will it taste fine? That's interesting. So the other question is,

Manolis Kellis (42:53.760)

do we have taste receptors for this? So where does our taste come from? It's basically

Manolis Kellis (42:59.600)

adaptations to chemical molecules that we are used to seeing. We don't have taste buds for

Manolis Kellis (43:04.720)

things we don't even know about. So we won't be able to know that this chemical tastes funny.

Lex Fridman (43:09.360)

But you think it won't be, it's likely not to be dangerous. Like it won't know how to even

Lex Fridman (43:15.680)

interact. Do you think our immune system will even detect that something weird is going on?

Manolis Kellis (43:20.640)

Probably. And it'll be very easy to detect because it'll be very different from us.

Manolis Kellis (43:24.960)

Very weird.

Lex Fridman (43:25.520)

But it won't be able to sort of attack. I mean, the scene from, I don't know,

Manolis Kellis (43:28.960)

Independence Day where like they're communicating with the alien computer and they're like,

Manolis Kellis (43:32.320)

ooh, I'm in. I mean, it's hilarious because like Macs and PCs have trouble communicating.

Manolis Kellis (43:39.840)

I mean, let alone an alien technology or even alien DNA.

Manolis Kellis (43:43.120)

So, okay. Now I was talking about you being a scientist on earth, but say you were a scientist

Manolis Kellis (43:49.040)

that was shipped over to Europa to investigate if there's life,

Lex Fridman (43:52.960)

what would you look for in terms of signs of life?

Manolis Kellis (43:55.760)

Life is unmistakable, I would say. The way that life transforms a planet surrounding it

Lex Fridman (44:02.960)

is not the kind of thing that you would expect from the physical laws alone.

Lex Fridman (44:07.600)

So it's, I would say that as soon as life arises, it creates this compartmentalization.

Manolis Kellis (44:16.240)

It starts pushing things away. It starts sort of keeping things inside that are self.

Lex Fridman (44:21.120)

And there's a whole signature that you can see from that. So when I was organizing my meaning

Manolis Kellis (44:27.680)

of life symposium, my friend who's an astrophysicist, basically we were deciding on what

Manolis Kellis (44:34.400)

would be the themes for the symposium. And then I said, well, we're going to have biology,

Manolis Kellis (44:39.280)

we're going to have physics. And she's like, oh, come on. Biology is just a small part of physics.

Manolis Kellis (44:46.240)

Everything's a small part of physics.

Lex Fridman (44:47.840)

And I mean, in many ways it is, but my immediate answer was, no, no, no, no, wait.

Manolis Kellis (44:53.920)

Life challenges physics. It supersedes physics. It sort of fights against physics.

Lex Fridman (45:00.720)

And that's what I would look for in Europe. I would basically look for this fight against physics

Manolis Kellis (45:05.840)

for anything that sort of signatures of not just entropy at work, not just things diffusing away,

Manolis Kellis (45:11.280)

not just gravitational pools, but clear signatures of, you remember when I was talking earlier about

Manolis Kellis (45:18.160)

this whole selection for environments, selection for biospheres, for ecosystems, for these multi

Manolis Kellis (45:23.680)

organism form of life. And I think that's sort of the first thing that you can look for, you know,

Manolis Kellis (45:30.960)

chemical signatures that are not simply predicted from the reactions you would get randomly.

Manolis Kellis (45:35.920)

Such a beautiful way to look at life. So you're basically leveraging some energy source to enable

Manolis Kellis (45:42.400)

you to resist the physics of the universe.

Manolis Kellis (45:45.120)

Fighting against physics. But that's the first transformation. If you look at humans,

Manolis Kellis (45:49.760)

we're way past that.

Lex Fridman (45:51.040)

What do you mean by transformation?

Lex Fridman (45:52.400)

So basically there's layers. I sort of see life, you know, when we talk about the meaning of life,

Manolis Kellis (46:01.200)

life can be construed at many levels. We talked about life in the simplest form of sort of the

Manolis Kellis (46:06.960)

ignition of evolution. And that's sort of the basic definition that you can check off. Yes,

Manolis Kellis (46:11.840)

it's alive. But when Alexander the Great was asked to whom do you owe your life to your teachers

Manolis Kellis (46:22.400)

or to your parents? And Alexander the Great answered, I owe to my parents the zin, the life

Manolis Kellis (46:31.360)

itself. And I owe to my teachers the f zin, like euphony. F means good, the opposite of cacophony,

Manolis Kellis (46:38.960)

which means, you know, bad. So f zin, in his words, was basically living a human life.

Manolis Kellis (46:49.520)

A proper life. So basically we can go from the zin to the f zin. And that transformation has taken

Manolis Kellis (46:57.200)

several additional leaps. So basically, you know, life on Europa, I'm pretty sure has gotten to the

Manolis Kellis (47:03.440)

stage of A makes B makes C makes A again. But getting to the f zin is a whole other level. And

Manolis Kellis (47:13.920)

that level requires cooperation. That level requires altruism. That level requires specialization.

Manolis Kellis (47:23.280)

Remember how we were talking about the RNA specializing into DNA for storage, proteins,

Lex Fridman (47:28.960)

and then compartmentalizations. And if you look at prokaryotic life, there's no nucleus. It's all

Manolis Kellis (47:35.600)

one soup of things intermingling. If you look at eukaryotic life, there's no nucleus. There's no

Manolis Kellis (47:43.760)

eukaryotic life. Again, U for true, good, you know. So a eukaryote basically has a nucleus,

Lex Fridman (47:51.040)

and that's where you compartmentalize further the organization of the information storage

Manolis Kellis (47:57.360)

from all of the daily activities. If you look at a human body plan or any animal,

Manolis Kellis (48:02.560)

you have a compartmentalization of the germline. You basically have one lineage that will basically

Manolis Kellis (48:07.760)

be saved for the future generations. And everything outside that lineage is almost superfluous. If you

Manolis Kellis (48:14.400)

think about it, the rest of your body, all it does is ensure that that lineage will make it

Manolis Kellis (48:20.240)

to the next generation, that these germlines will make it to the next generation. The rest is

Manolis Kellis (48:24.240)

packaging. I'm starting to be so blunt. And if you look at nutrition, you know, we're deuterostomes.

Lex Fridman (48:30.880)

What does deuterostome mean? Deutero means second, where this is the second mouth. The first mouth

Manolis Kellis (48:37.280)

is actually down here, it's the oesophagus. So deuterostomes have evolved a second layer of

Manolis Kellis (48:42.560)

eating, kind of like alien with the two mouths. So you can think of us as alien where the first

Manolis Kellis (48:48.000)

mouth is up here and then the second mouth is down there. Is the first mouth just the

Manolis Kellis (48:53.840)

physical manipulation of the food to make it more consumable? Correct. And basically, again,

Manolis Kellis (48:58.800)

you know, if you look at a worm, it's an extremely simple life form. It basically has a mouth,

Manolis Kellis (49:03.840)

it has an anus and it has, you know, just some organs in between that consume the food and just

Manolis Kellis (49:08.480)

spit out poo. Humans are basically a fancy form of that. So you basically have the mouth,

Manolis Kellis (49:15.680)

you have the digestive tract, and then you have limbs to get better at getting food.

Manolis Kellis (49:20.480)

You have eyesight, hearing, et cetera, to get better at getting food. And then you have,

Manolis Kellis (49:25.440)

of course, the germline and all of this food part, it's just auxiliary to the germline.

Lex Fridman (49:30.640)

So you basically have layers of addition, of compartmentalization, of specialization

Manolis Kellis (49:36.160)

on top of this zine to get all the way to the Earth zine.

Manolis Kellis (49:39.680)

Yeah. So like the worm is like Windows 95, very few features, very basic. And then

Manolis Kellis (49:45.120)

us humans are like Windows Vista, Windows 10, whatever it is.

Lex Fridman (49:48.960)

Well, a few innovations beyond that.

Manolis Kellis (49:51.680)

Beyond that, all right. I don't know.

Lex Fridman (49:53.840)

We're Windows 2000, at least we're that way.

Manolis Kellis (49:56.400)

So, okay. That's such a fascinating way to look at life as a set of transformations.

Lex Fridman (50:01.360)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (50:01.920)

So like, is there some interesting transformations to our

Lex Fridman (50:05.520)

history here on Earth that like appeal to you?

Manolis Kellis (50:08.400)

Of course.

Lex Fridman (50:09.040)

And what are the most brilliant innovations and transformations?

Manolis Kellis (50:12.160)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is such a fascinating question. Of course, like,

Manolis Kellis (50:16.160)

you know, we're talking about basic, basic life forms and we're talking about eukaryotic life

Manolis Kellis (50:19.840)

forms. And then the next big transformation is multicellular life forms, where the specialization

Manolis Kellis (50:26.240)

separates the germ line from everything else that accompanies it and sort of carries it.

Lex Fridman (50:31.840)

And then that specialization then sort of has this massive new innovation, like above the second

Manolis Kellis (50:38.000)

mouth, which is this massive brain. And this massive brain is basically something that arises

Manolis Kellis (50:45.360)

much, much later on. Basically, you know, notochords, like having the first spinal cord,

Manolis Kellis (50:49.920)

this whole concept that along with these very simple layers, you basically now have

Manolis Kellis (50:55.440)

a coordinating agent and this coordinating agent is starting to make decisions.

Lex Fridman (51:00.720)

And remember when we were talking about free will, I mean, you know, as a worm is hunting for food,

Manolis Kellis (51:07.360)

oh, it has plenty of free will. It can choose to, you know, follow chemotaxis to the left or

Manolis Kellis (51:12.080)

chemotaxis to the right. And maybe that's free will because it's unpredictable beyond a certain level.

Lex Fridman (51:17.520)

So you basically now have more and more decision making and coordination of all of these different

Manolis Kellis (51:26.560)

body parts and organs by a central operating system, a central machine that basically will

Manolis Kellis (51:31.680)

control the rest of the body. And the other thing that I love talking about is the different

Manolis Kellis (51:37.280)

timescales at which things happen. You know, we're talking about the human epigenome before.

Manolis Kellis (51:40.960)

The human epigenome is basically able to find what genes should be expressed in response to

Manolis Kellis (51:47.760)

environmental stimuli in the order of minutes and basically receive a stimulus, transfer all that

Manolis Kellis (51:54.400)

data through these humongously long string of searching and then sort of find what genes to

Manolis Kellis (52:00.880)

turn on and then create all that. All of that is happening in the timescale of minutes. Basically,

Manolis Kellis (52:06.480)

you know, three minutes to half an hour. That's the expression response. But our daily life

Manolis Kellis (52:12.320)

doesn't happen on the order of three minutes to half an hour. It happens on the order of

Manolis Kellis (52:15.360)

milliseconds. Like I throw a ball at you, you catch it right away. No gene expression changes

Manolis Kellis (52:20.320)

there. You just don't have time to do that. So you basically have a layer of control built on

Manolis Kellis (52:26.800)

a hardware that supports it, but that hardware itself lives in a different timescale than the

Lex Fridman (52:34.000)

controlling machine on top of that. Is that an accident, by the way? Is that like a feature?

Manolis Kellis (52:37.760)

Is it, was it possible for life to have evolved where the hour, the daily life of the organism

Lex Fridman (52:44.560)

as it interacts with its environment was on a timescale similar to the way our internals work?

Manolis Kellis (52:52.400)

If you look at trees, they look kind of boring and stupid. You're like looking at the tree like

Manolis Kellis (52:57.520)

stupid. If you speed up the movie of a tree from spring until October, you'll be like, oh my God,

Manolis Kellis (53:03.760)

it's intelligent. And the reason for that is that at that timescale, the tree is basically saying,

Manolis Kellis (53:09.920)

Oh, I'm looking for a, you know, a thing to catch onto. Ooh, I just caught onto that. I'm going to

Manolis Kellis (53:14.400)

grow more here. I'm going to spoil out there, et cetera. Like I can see the trees in my garden,

Manolis Kellis (53:18.800)

just growing and sort of, you know, looping around. And it's all a matter of timescale.

Manolis Kellis (53:24.880)

It's all a matter of timescale. And if you look at the human timescale, remember we were talking

Manolis Kellis (53:30.000)

about neoteny the last time around. The whole fact that our young are pretty useless until,

Manolis Kellis (53:36.720)

you know, maybe, you know, a few months of age, if not a few years of age, if not, I don't know,

Manolis Kellis (53:40.720)

getting out of college. And then we, we basically hold them enabling their brain to continue being

Manolis Kellis (53:48.880)

malleable and infusing it with knowledge and thoughts as, you know, that period of neoteny

Manolis Kellis (53:56.320)

increases and expands. If you fast forward, I don't know, another million years.

Lex Fridman (54:02.640)

So humans have only been around, you know, different from apes for about that long.

Lex Fridman (54:07.840)

Jump another unit of that, another human chimp divergence. What could happen

Manolis Kellis (54:13.360)

from an evolutionary timescale? A lot. One of the things that's happening already is expansion of

Manolis Kellis (54:18.800)

human lifespan. We have longer and longer periods before we mature. And we have longer and longer

Manolis Kellis (54:25.280)

periods before we have babies. So intergenerational distance is, you know, grown from, I don't know,

Manolis Kellis (54:31.360)

16 years to 40 years. You're saying that's in the genetics. No, no, not necessarily. But it's,

Manolis Kellis (54:39.440)

it's sort of an environmental tendency that's happening. But as we medically expand human

Manolis Kellis (54:46.720)

lifespan, the generations might actually be pushed instead of 40 years to 60 years, to 100 years.

Manolis Kellis (54:55.040)

Like if we look at the long arc of the evolutionary history. Exactly. So as we start thinking about

Manolis Kellis (55:01.280)

intergalactic travel now, sorry, that's a heck of a transition. Yeah. So let's talk about it.

Manolis Kellis (55:10.240)

No, no, no, no, no. As we, as a species start thinking about, I'm talking about these transitions

Manolis Kellis (55:15.680)

that are happening, right? And that's, that's awesome. Continue along these transitions.

Lex Fridman (55:19.280)

What does the future hold in the next million years? So the concept of us going to another planet

Lex Fridman (55:24.720)

and that taking three human lifetimes might be a joke if the human lifetime starts being 400 years

Manolis Kellis (55:32.080)

or 800 years. So imagine, it's all time scale. It's all time scale. It's just different time scales.

Manolis Kellis (55:39.120)

You asked me offline whether I would like to live forever. I mean, my answer is absolutely.

Lex Fridman (55:45.760)

And there's many different types of forevers. One forever is, do I want to live today forever?

Manolis Kellis (55:53.760)

Kind of like Groundhog Day. And the answer is absolutely. The stuff that I want to learn today

Manolis Kellis (56:00.160)

will probably take a lifetime just to learn, you know, basically to clear my to do list for the day.

Manolis Kellis (56:05.840)

You mean like relive the day and then, and then pick up different things from the richness of

Manolis Kellis (56:10.640)

the experiences that are all in today. There's just so much happening in the world every single

Manolis Kellis (56:15.040)

day. So much knowledge that has happened already that just to catch up on that will probably take

Manolis Kellis (56:19.440)

me around forever. On that, on that point, I just, I would just love to see you in the Groundhog movie

Manolis Kellis (56:25.520)

just because you're so naturally as a scientist, but just the way your mind works beautifully,

Manolis Kellis (56:32.400)

just all the richness of the experiences that you will pick up from that.

Manolis Kellis (56:36.880)

That's a beautiful visual. I try to live each day as if it was Groundhog. I'm basically every

Lex Fridman (56:41.840)

single day waking up and saying, all right, how would Bill Murray get out of that one?

Manolis Kellis (56:45.760)

Well, you know what, on a funny tangent, I got a chance to go to a Neuralink demonstration event.

Manolis Kellis (56:55.920)

I'm not usually familiar with Neuralink. And I talked to Elon for a while. And one of the

Manolis Kellis (57:02.240)

funny things he said on his Groundhog Day thing is, you know, it's a beautiful dream to eventually

Manolis Kellis (57:10.000)

be able to replay our memories. So we're kind of these recording machines. Our brain is kind of,

Manolis Kellis (57:16.560)

maybe a noisy recording machine of memories. And it would be beautiful if we can someday in the

Manolis Kellis (57:23.600)

future, maybe far into the future, be able to, like in the Groundhog Day situation, replay that.

Lex Fridman (57:29.680)

And the funny comment that stuck with me is he said that maybe this, our conversation now,

Manolis Kellis (57:36.240)

is a replay of a previous memory. And that stuck with me because it would probably be my replay.

Manolis Kellis (57:43.920)

You know, who the hell am I? I'm just an idiot guy. But like Elon Musk is, you know, probably

Manolis Kellis (57:50.640)

because of SpaceX and so on, is probably going to be remembered as a special person,

Manolis Kellis (57:54.960)

one of our special apes in history. So if I wanted to replay a memory, probably be that one. You know,

Manolis Kellis (58:01.440)

talking to Elon for a while. That's an interesting possibility from, if we think about time scales,

Manolis Kellis (58:09.920)

if we think about the richness of the experience through time that we humans take and be able to

Manolis Kellis (58:18.640)

replay some aspects of that, of that biology, that's super interesting. But anyway, sorry for

Manolis Kellis (58:24.640)

the tangents. Let's, yeah, you were talking about time scales and the expansion of the human lifetime

Lex Fridman (58:32.320)

and the idea of intergalactic travel. Yeah. No, but you're laughing about this. I can't believe

Manolis Kellis (58:38.160)

you're laughing about this. You're talking about this. You're talking about exploring alien worlds

Lex Fridman (58:42.160)

and going to other planets. I mean, you know, when Sarah was here, she was talking about sort of going

Manolis Kellis (58:46.080)

to other planets when we find these life. I mean, I'm just very naturally, given the topics that

Manolis Kellis (58:52.560)

we've approached, talking about the timescale at which this will happen. So you think eventually

Manolis Kellis (58:57.440)

we will human or life, life will expand out into the universe. The point that I'm trying to make

Manolis Kellis (59:04.960)

is that an intergalactic species will probably find ways to engineer its biology in order to

Manolis Kellis (59:13.360)

expand the way that we experience time, expand the timescale that we experience. And going back to

Manolis Kellis (59:20.240)

this whole concept of, you know, would I like to live forever? Yes, I'd like to live forever. Even

Manolis Kellis (59:25.440)

if it was, even if it was stuck on the same day, I'd love to live forever because I would finally

Manolis Kellis (59:29.760)

have time to do all these things that I want to do. But if living forever actually comes with a perk

Manolis Kellis (59:35.680)

of watching the whole world evolve forever, I mean, that's a huge perk. And I would, you know, just,

Manolis Kellis (59:42.160)

it'll never get boring, just a never changing world. And then the mind, you know, sort of

Manolis Kellis (59:48.000)

the experiment that I want you to do is to also ask, what if I wanted to live forever

Lex Fridman (59:54.400)

one day at a time every year or one day at a time every decade, would you choose that?

Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness

马诺利斯·凯利斯谈生命起源、苦难与幸福