Are You Searching for Meaning?

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The search for meaning and the act of searching for something more meaningful is life's meaning by itself. I like to say that life is lived forward, but it only makes sense backward. We're the one species that spends such a tiny little minority of its time feeding so we have this enormous cognitive capability that we can just use for all kinds of other stuff. That's where art comes in with exploring all of these different aspects that are just not directly tied to to a purpose.

Manolis Kellis is a computational biologist at MIT. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:48) – Music and life
(46:21) – The number 42
(52:22) – The question about the meaning of life
(55:02) – Are humans unique in the universe?
(1:00:46) – Human civilization
(1:12:52) – Mars
(1:14:45) – Human mind and the abstraction layers of reality
(1:25:38) – Neural networks and intelligence
(1:32:55) – Ideas as organisms
(1:42:19) – Language
(1:53:34) – Legacy
(2:08:25) – Poems