YouSaid · the spoken record

Manolis Kellis

lines on the record: 152
first: 2020-09-12
most recent: 2020-09-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“But please know, dearest friends, who were always there to mend, I will always need your hand. I will miss you till the end.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be some who wish to stay but will carry on away. We will continue on our journey as we came here, strong, yet lonely. From the lake, a river flows from the river many goals. On that river we will race. It will try to find his pace. In that scene the sailor's face their first fear, defeat, disgrace here and there comes out a face that the waters soon embrace. Some get lucky, find their way, others sink beneath the waves. In this race we will part, some will settle near the start, some set goals beyond the stars,'cause the river carries far. You should know in what we've done the hard part is still to come. So I'll have to say goodbye. Don't you worry, I won't cry. Neither will they those who try till the end to keep their pride.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All this was another lake, where some rest we sailors take, waters calm and full of fish we'll find there what we wish. Some seek fruit, another's feast. Some of us just look for peace, some find friendship, other love, some seek both and neither have. We were different when we came, each his own story and fame, different people had we Different nature, different face, each unlike all in this place. We had face success, defeat that in one lake came to meet. There the orders that we followed and the pride that we swallowed made us one but not the same, joined us strangers who there came. Sooner later groups were made, tribes where differences will fade. Some attached, more or less, others fought and made a mess. But again, we have to go, what for? Where to? We don't know. Still we know it. We will try, there to rush, to flee, to fly.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, twist my arm, twist my arm. The next poem was written specifically for our high school yearbook. So another poem written on demand. The rest of them are just so miserable written by pure sadness and melancholy. But this one was also written on demand. And it was basically saying goodbye, as is appropriate right now to my friends and sort of again reflecting this whole journey and transformation through life. And also, I think showing a little bit of introspection about how we kind of had it easy in high school. And we're about to go into rougher waters. So the title is actually The Tide Water, and it's an analogy on that. So here it goes.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, but you told me, you know, there I told you, darling sweet, that forever I would keep is this intermediate thing? And then there's a recall, but you told me you were right, birds will love or birds will cry. So it basically says that love is the fragility that you're willing to give to another person. It's opening up Vulnerable spots, it's sort of accepting that There's no safety net. You're just giving yourself fully and you're ready to be hurt.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, no, no, no. When I see suffering, I don't mean suffering as in being miserable. I mean suffering as in being emotionally invested in something. Remember, I mean, again, if you look at this poem, what is it saying? It's saying birds who love are birds who cry. That's the very definition of love. Exposing your fragility. If you're not afraid of suffering, you don't fall in love. As soon as you hold back, you protect, you shield your heart No love can enter This Simon and Garfunkel song I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries. So again, there's some aspect of that into this poem. The fact that”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Etymology, when we talk about the passion of the Christ, it's a suffering. And in the Greek version of that word, pathos, like pathology, pathos is deep suffering. It's the concept and someone who's sympathetic. Sympathetic means suffering together. Experiencing emotions together. So it's funny that you ask me about love, and I respond with passion passion for life, passion for research, passion for my family, for my children, for you know, so there's a certain passion that defines me and everything else follows rather than the other way around. I'm not first thinking with my brain what is the most impactful we could write and then going after that. I'm thinking with my heart, what am I passionate about? What drives me? What just like, you know, makes me take.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think love in many ways defines my life. It's basically, I like to say that I'm a human first and a professor second. And I think this passion for life, this passion for everything around us, I mean, the only way to describe that is love. It's basically embracing your emotional self, embracing the The non brainac in you, embracing the sort of intangible, the Not very well defined. And even in my own research, I'm just very passionate about everything I do. You know, there's a certain passion that comes with. And I'm sorry, again, being Greek, the etymology of the word passion. What was passion? Passion is suffering.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can see the good or the bad in both everything you see. And I think that's the allegory of snow right now. You can see snow as this bright white, wonderful thing. Or you can see snow as this miserable, you know, gray thing. So that sort of, and what I like about the last verse now with laughter children play is that it's a recall to the first one where I was the kid enjoying careless life and eventually was making promises that something would be forever. And I think part of that is also the loss of my friendships in France, of being in New York now and sort of everything's gray. And even though the snow seems bright, without you have lost their light some that sang and moon that smiled. So it's this... Concept that if you lose your love. The same thing can be perceived in a very different way.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if you like this Johnny Mitchell song. I've looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow. It snows illusions I recall. It's clouds illusions, I recall. I really don't know clouds at all. So it's really beautiful. So I think that Johnny Mitchell song, which again, I heard for the first time much, much after this. And I wouldn't even compare this to that. But what Johnny Mitchell is saying that song is that you can see life from two perspectives.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a bad way, a negative way at all. Again, it's very weird to analyze your own poem, but I think it captures the simplicity of youth and the way that it kind of starts with children dance line only low. And it kind of shows that snow can be interpreted first in the first verse as a happy thing, no, and then in the end, you know, With laughter children play, I'm like now I've grown basically it's this transformation that we're actually talking about, this whole men are mortal we go by, I'm sort of, you know, you're saying, are you comfortable with growing old? I'm like, duh, I was since I was 16. And what's really interesting is that, you know, again, How to bring up my own kids, so it was very weird that I've always sort of seen the full path. From a kid”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even if the snow seems bright, without you have lost their light, sun that sang and moon that smiled, all the stars have ceased to shine, all of nature drew its grace, found its light within your face, now you're gone and won't return, let the snow and my heart burn.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pardon me, but here's what I wrote Children dance now all in row, children laughing at the snow, but in times endless flow, children sooner or later grow. Men are mortal, we go by. If we know it, we may cry, but I thought a love so sweet was immortal, was so deep. There I told you, darling sweet, that forever love would keep. Blossomed spring and summer shined, then blue autumn winter died. One year passed, but the clouds still remember all our vows, never faked and never lied all we did was stare and smile, all alone, sitting down to the snow we made our vow, but ye told me you were right birds who love our birds who cry. Now, with laughter, children play, yet the sky is so gray”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So again, I've just seen snow for the first time and I'm this New York? This is New York. So maybe that's where the sadness in the poem comes from. But anyway, we're asked in class to write an assignment. This is my third language. I'm not very good at it.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He basically didn't care that we wear rollerblading t shirt. All he cared about was my ideas and sort of embracing the me with the childhood excitement about science was basically what attracted him. It wasn't the, wow, this guy runs a big lab or this and that. It was just like, I like his ideas. I want to work with him.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wearing my blades, we're having this awesome conversation about science and about gene regulation and how the whole thing works and sort of my perspective and his perspective. We're just bouncing ideas for 30 minutes. And then I just dash off to my next meeting. And he basically emails me afterwards and I was giving him advice about how to interview with Eric Lander, how to interview with Rick Young and how to sort of get a position with them. And then after a while, he mails me saying, I would love to become a postdoc in your group. I'm like. Are you kidding me? So.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that was the transition that I was describing when I decided to go back to my rollerblades and t shirt and faceful cap. Basically, when I met my first postdoc, it was basically, you know, he was interviewing for postdocs at MIT. He already had several first author papers to his name in top journals. And my friend Julia basically introduced me to Alex Stark, who basically was interviewing at the time with Rick Young and with Derek Lander, just like these massive names in the field. And I was just the first year faculty person with, you know, zero credibility. And she basically says, oh, there's this friend of mine, Alex, who's visiting. He's also German. You know, he wanted to meet you. I'm like, oh, sounds great. I'd love to talk science. I show up. We sit at the amphitheater in Stada. I basically arrive in my rollerblades, you know, jump a few steps, sit down.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's certainly my perception was that many of them could not see me as anything but a kid. But it turns out that some of them saw me as something different than a kid even before. I was actually their colleague. So it's kind of an interesting place because. What I like to say about MIT is that people treat you as equal no matter what stage, and they respect you for what you say, not for who you are when you're saying it. And if I'm wrong, my students will tell me. They will have no reservation to just be bluntly sorry. I don't agree with that.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I saw it like that probably pretty early on, but not during those transitions. So basically during those transitions, I was just a kid being a kid, you know. Maybe the time that I started seeing it that way was maybe when I decided to stay at MIT as a professor after having been there as a student. And I kind of saw the struggle of getting professors to not see you as a kid when they're your peers. And it was very flattered when one of my friends basically told me, oh, I remember you in recitation. When you first asked me a question, I said, wow, this kid. I'll pay attention. One day it'll be”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when we moved from South France to New York, I was pissed. I was taking these long bike rides in the countryside, jumping in French, swimming pools, and I had all these wonderful friendships going downtown and just staying by the fountains in the dim lit streets of Aixen Provence in the south of France. It was magical. And suddenly I moved to New York City, a city of cement. Of ugliness, like trash in the streets at every corner, it's just horrible. Snow everywhere. Having never seen snow or like real snow in my life. I moved from Athens to South France to settling New York. So I was pissed. But whether I saw it as an opportunity for growth, I don't think so. I don't think that I was that self-reflective. It was just”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was 13, I was in France. So basically moved countries and schools. The next year I moved schools again because it was a transition in the French educational system from one school to the next. The next year after that, my family moved to New York in a French high school there. And the next year after that, I'm moving to MIT. So basically between 11 and 19, every single year, I actually had the opportunity to grow. I was not held by people who knew me. And I could reinvent myself or reshape myself or reshape my personality, my emotions, as I was growing up, especially in such a transformative time of a kid's life from 11 to 17.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So here's what's really interesting. In terms of growing up, how do we grow up? Very difficult to grow up if you're in the same school going from one class to the other and all your friends know you inside out. It's very difficult to change. It's very difficult to grow up because they have a certain set of expectations for who you are and for how you're going to behave. So in many ways we kind of tend to get set in our ways and not change very much. I think something that helped me grow up is that when I was 11 years old I was a kid in Greece in primary school. When I was 12 years old, I was a kid in Greece in first year of high school.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So again, being Greek, a lot of my poems have been pretty miserable And I always like to say that it's very hard for me to write a poem when I'm happy. And I just have to be in a state of deep despair in order to write poems. But the first poem I ever wrote was in English class. I'm Greek. I grew up in Greece, but I was in a French high school and I was taking English as a foreign language. So the English teacher basically asked us to write a poem in English. So this is basically what I'm going to embarrass myself and read from my 16-year-old self many, many years ago.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your quote, and again, I only heard once Darwin basically saying if I were to live life again next time, I would rid more poetry and something about art every week or something like that.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was like, whoa. And it's so liberating to sort of not have to surpass everyone, but just put your little stepping stone out there, and others will step on it and put their own stones further and eventually cross a bigger river than if you tried to sort of make a giant leap all at once. So, you need both”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It didn't make a difference because you're basically putting a new stepping stone that others will be able to step on and surpass you. Advisor in grad school would basically tell me an always let others write the second paper in that field. Just write the first one, move on. Move on to the next field. You don't want to be writing the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth paper in the same field. And it's very. Shocking to a student to hear that because I was like, I was at the top of my game. I was owning that field and I published the first paper. I'm like, I'm ready for two and three and four. He's like, move on. Just let it be.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So basically, our next work will just strive. And again, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. At some point, you have to rap. I was having a student meeting with my student yesterday, and it was like, listen, we know this is not perfect. It's way better than anything that's ever been done before. You know how to improve it, but if you try to, your paper is never going to get published. So there's this balance of we're already at the top of the field. Get it out Then you work on the next improvement. And in my experience, this has never happened. We've never actually worked on the next improvement. And that's okay.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I've kind of matured past that, and I think the maturity past that is to sort of accept what it is and accept that it has helped others build onto it. Therefore, advance human knowledge. So it's very easy to sort of fall into the trap of, oh, everything I've done is crap. What I told you last time is that I always tell my students that our best work is ahead of us. And I think that's more of my mindset.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything that I was doing seemed impossible to them. So it was that realization that sort of made me mature into sort of a not more confident, but more comfortable human beings.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that this is a cognitive problem that we have. We kind of, it's kind of like when we're talking about artificial general intelligence, HEI, of sort of we kind of have this definition that anything that machines can do is not intelligent and anything that they can't do is intelligent. Therefore, we narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow the field of what intelligence truly means. And it's just machines each of them. It's not intelligent anymore. I feel like I was doing the same thing with myself. As soon as I could solve something, it was the kind of thing that a kid like me could solve, and therefore it was kind of easy. But to the others, it seemed hard. But to me, it seemed easy. So it was this kind of thing that everything that my colleagues were doing seemed impossible to me.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eventually, you grow up to realize that the way that I grew up to realize that the way that other people perceived my work was very similar to the way that I perceived other people's work as flawless I knew all of the flaws in my work. I knew the limitations. I knew what I hadn't managed to achieve and what I saw was maybe a third of the way of what I was trying to achieve. And I saw everything as flawed. They saw what I had achieved. They didn't see what I hadn't achieved. They only saw the one third down, which was pretty good in the ARIs. So they all respected me I was feeling miserable about myself. I was like, I'm not worthy.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I basically had, I would always go around in my rollerblades and my shorts and a t shirt, and eventually I was a professional, like, oh, I bought all these khaki pants and, you know, these nice shirts with like, you know, what do they call it, patterns? And I was like, you know, dressing with my nice belt every day, showing up. And then a few months later, I was like, I can't stand it. And I just went back to my rollerblades. And my t shirts and my shorts. And it was this struggle of sort of not feeling that I fit in. I was so intimidated by all of my colleagues, like just watching their incredible achievements, like persons next to me and the person, you know, the floor below me. I was like, oh my God, like they clearly made a mistake. What the heck am I doing here? How will I ever live up to these people's standards?”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Define themselves, they feel instantiated through the eyes of others. So being in a position of power makes them feel better about themselves. Who knows what other kind of struggles they might have that creates that need to feel better about themselves? But they have a bunch of struggles and everybody has a bunch of struggles. And every time I see somebody behaving poorly, I'm basically thinking, well, they're in a tough spot right now and it's okay. You know, I can kind of see how I would behave badly in other circumstances as well. So I think... If you take away that sort of having to prove yourself in the eyes of others, Life becomes so much easier. So when I first became a professor at my I started wearing adult clothes. I had my like, you know.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's address it So, why do people want positions of power? Why do people want more money, more power, more this, more than that? Remember the part where I was saying if you know who you are, what other people think about you, it makes no difference to you. It only teaches you about them. Many people feel”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's talk about the negative. Let's talk about. No, no, no. I'm serious. I'm serious. You have to embrace the good and the bad.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, watching somebody who's touched by what you said, watching somebody who's appreciating a rapid response or a generous offer or just random acts of kindness is so fulfilling. So evolutionarily, we were selected for that. They're just such a good feeling that comes from that.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being grateful and being kind. I don't know if you remember that little prayer that I described last time of thank you for all the good you've given me and give me strength to give unto others with the same love that you've given to me. And the whole point of that is being grateful and being kind. What does that do? From a purely eguistic perspective, it makes the people around you happier. And it takes that little maximum a little bit further because you'll be surrounded by happy people by being kind. That's the purely egoistic view. And the purely altruistic view, or maybe it's egoistic as well, is that it's good to give. It feels good to give.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being a human among all animals is amazing because you have all this introspection. Being a human who's young, fit, athletic, smart, et cetera. I mean, you know, you have so much to be happy for. Beyond that, being surrounded by a bunch of awesome people that you interact with all the time. I mean, I feel blessed to interact with the people I know, with the friends I have, the dinners that I have, all of this, the students that I interact with. I'm so blessed. And the last little blip in this awesomeness of local maximum, the last little blip comes from being kind.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You shape it. You shape it. Remember how I was saying that Boston is the best place and the best time to live in right now in the history of humanity? I'm exaggerating a little bit, but the way that I think about this is that if you look at the whole of cosmos, where would you rather be? If you're just a bunch of molecules, roughly your biomass, where would you rather be? Would you rather be a rock on Mars? Probably not. Would you rather be in a black hole? Probably not. Would you rather be in an exploding supernova? Maybe that might be interesting. But being on Earth is an awesome solar system, an awesome planetary system, an awesome place to be in across all of space-time. It's a pretty good place to be in as a bunch of molecules. If you are a bunch of molecules on Earth today, being an animal with some kind of awareness of the thoughts.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, I want to be cautious about acceptance because it almost says that you can't change it. It's sort of embracing the struggle and embracing the journey. This is the way that I would put it.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Through my perspective. And I know when something is solvable because I've been there. 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. I just, I'm not interested in that anymore. So what I'm embracing this journey of aging is how my brain is changing and how I'm constantly trying to figure out the niches, the evolutionary niches that I'm best adapted for For the tasks that I'm best at while hiring and recruiting the Both assistants and research scientists and students and postdocs and that will be the best at those tasks. But someone still has to see the big picture. And I love being in that role.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the sheer Arrogance of youth. Watching this in my kid, I can see myself when I was 18, correcting my profession. I felt so proud. Little did I know that my professor was working on so much more interesting things than the three little things he was putting on the board that day. And I was like, oh, I'm invincible. But in fact, no, just a little brat. And basically right now I sort of can see the sort of journey with a little more humility. I can sort of look at my own students with their unbelievable abilities being able to do things that I'm no longer able to do better than I probably was ever able to do. But yet being able to guide them and shape their thinking and blow their minds with new ideas and new directions.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anymore? This is basically embracing the finality. Embracing that, the journey is what it's at. So, what I like to say is live every day as if it's your last one and make plans as if you'll never die. I always have the long term that I'm sort of planning out for that will eventually become the short term. And I always have the sort of short term. And I think this ability to sort of look at life in the past and look at life in the future. Jointly and sort of embrace the continuity both of life in the universe and on our planet as well as life as a human being from the beginning to the end just as a path as a journey and just embracing every aspect of that. I mean I was talking about parenthood the other day and how amazingly fulfilling it is to sort of relive childhood through the eyes of my kids but with the perspective of a parent.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I went from the phase of sheer speed and hardcore quantitative thinking to sort of stepping back, being able to sort of make more connections, being able to sort of say, yeah, but let's use that thing, sort of a huge new creativity being unleashed. Basically, when you're young, you're sort of thinking about that one problem. You can sort of reconfigure all the variables combinatorily in your head and just wipe it all out when you're, you know, it's a little older, you start getting more creative. You start bringing in things from different fields and different contexts and sort of stepping outside the box. Basically, it's like being in the right race and saying, there's a ceiling. Why are we trying to get through that? So it's sort of thinking outside the box. And then at 40, what I'm going through now is this whole sort of embracing the path of life. And when I say life has started already, it's not a test.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Teaches you humility So I felt invincible and I was like, this is it. This is awesome. I'm living the life. Ten years later, my brain didn't work the same way. I wasn't as good at the tiny little puzzles But it worked in different ways. And right now, twenty years later, it works in yet different ways. And oh gosh, I love the journey.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You also ask me if I'm afraid of getting older. And that's on the path to mortality. So let me talk about that first step and then the last step. Literally the last step. So getting older, what does that mean? When I was 18, when I was 20, my brain, I felt was at my maximum. I was like, nothing is impossible. I can solve anything. I could take any math puzzle, any logic puzzle, any programming puzzle and just solve it in milliseconds. I just saw the answer through problems. I was like feeling invincible. I would show up at lecture with my newspaper, lift up my head every now and then, point to errors, just brat, complete brat. I would raise my hand and correct my professors from the whole classroom. Total brat. I have some of those in my class now and it's awesome. It's like very...”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They struggled and they struggled and they struggled is much more interesting story than they lived happily ever after. So I think we have to embrace that as a society that it's not just about the happy ending, that our kids are brainwashed into expecting that things will be happy and rosy and it's okay if they're not and they should keep struggling because the struggle is the journey and the journey is the meaning of life. It's not the end, it's the journey.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Accepting the struggle Accepting the sleeplessness, accepting the fact that the journey is what matters, hoping that your path to Ithaca is full of troubles because those troubles are the life you will lead. Accepting that life will not start after the next milestone, that life has already started a long time ago. What you're experiencing now is the life. This is it. It's not some kind of future thing that you work yourself hard to get to. And then after that, you live happily ever after. To me, the happily ever after, that's the end of the story. Nothing happens after that.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it has no influence on your self-esteem. If you know where you stand, you embrace the good, but you also embrace the bad. I have plenty of bad, and I'm embracing it. I'm a procrastinator. How do I deal with that? I trick myself into procrastinating about mindless, stupid little day-to-day things. And in that procrastination time, doing important things for the future.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what I tell her is that life is not about maximizing happiness. Life is about accomplishing something meaningful. And accomplishing that meaningful thing cannot come from a series of joyful moments. It comes from a series of struggles, of successes and failures, of people being nasty to you and people being nice to you and embracing the full thing. And if you supersede that constant need for gratification, if you supersede that constant need for kindness, you suddenly know who you are. And what I like to say to my kid and my son the other day was telling me, Oh, so and so called me such and such. And I'm like, are you such and such? He's like, no. I'm like, ha, see, they were wrong. And what I tell him is if you know who you are, What other people say about you only teaches you about them.”
2020-09-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source