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They're Made out of Meat

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Re: They're Made out of Meat

#31

Post by rbanffy »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #29
markyc wrote: post #16

It's a nice story, but not very logical If meat thinking beings were so unheard of, you'd think they'd be all over us, trying to get to know what makes us tick, and why not, talking to us. Like if we'd find a talking dog. Maybe a more logical conclusion would be if they'd go: "Oh, it's just another meat civilisation. Just let them wander around in the dark like all the others, there's no chance they'll ever find anyo…

This story doesn't work for me, because the emphasis given to main word (which is the whole point I guess) I imagine "Meat" to be a very human concept, strictly related to food, and to our nature as carnivores. I can´t picture non carbon-based lifeforms talking about humans as "meat". The whole concept of "meat" would be completely, well, alien to them.

Keep in mind they'd probably not be using English either.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#32

Post by hibikir »

Shivetya wrote: post #28
jwdunne wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have illustrated the point of the story by assuming these alien beings would react exactly how human's would. We don't know anything but human nature but it's not hard to imagine that non-human's or, rather, non-meat wouldn't have a non-human, non-meat nature.

the problem I had with the story is, exactly what type of existence do these aliens have? Why would they refer to other races as meat if they were not similar, biological lifeforms? Meat is a term used to denote food, not a life form type.

I am pretty sure the aliens are not actually speaking in English, and if they are really non-human, does their communication even resemble our languages?

So having a problem with what an English term used in a story because it doesn't have quite the kind of meaning you think aliens would use seems rather inconsistent.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#33

Post by Kurtz79 »

rbanffy wrote: post #31
Kurtz79 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story doesn't work for me, because the emphasis given to main word (which is the whole point I guess) I imagine "Meat" to be a very human concept, strictly related to food, and to our nature as carnivores. I can´t picture non carbon-based lifeforms talking about humans as "meat". The whole concept of "meat" would be completely, well, alien to them.

Keep in mind they'd probably not be using English either.

That´s the point, we have to assume that "meat" is the English word that in their culture would be the best translation for the concept of "Biological, carbon-based lifeform".

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#34

Post by pdkl95 »

tspiteri wrote: post #9
pdkl95 wrote: post #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ The short-film adaptation of this was very well done. The David Lynch-influenced directing style worked well.

To me, it doesn't work at all. The whole point is that they are not-meat talking about meat . In the sketch, they look very meaty indeed, and their speech sounds like flapping meat, so that it does not work at all.

One of the things I really liked about this adaptation is how the dialog between the two doesn't actually match their lips properly. The "incorrect" voices and the "obviously a disguise" fez always suggested to me that the English we hear was just for the benefit of the audience and that their actual communication was different.

Of course, as with most art, opinions and interpretations will vary.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#35

Post by midhir »

I can't help but make the assumption that the protagonists are machines and then wonder that they weren't 'invented' by a meat species at some stage in their history.

The arrogance of the meat-species, eh! They could be cells of phosphorescent algae, communicating by radioactive emission, or collections of electrical charge in balls of substrate. Who the Hell knows.

Great story!

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#36

Post by gecko »

sidcool wrote: post #11
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #7

Could any life travel faster than the speed of light? (Including digital life.) Do we know much about dark matter yet? Could it travel faster than light, or is it bound by the same rules as normal matter?

There is a very interesting concept that indicates that the limit of speed is not light, but the space itself. Space itself is such that it cannot let anything travel faster than light. It's like check points in space which slows down light to it's speed we call C. May be somewhere in the universe, or within the black hole, space is malleable enough to allow faster than light travel. It's just a concept, but a very i…

I just like to think of it at the universe's loading screen.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#37

Post by richardwhiuk »

laumars wrote: post #14
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #7

Could any life travel faster than the speed of light? (Including digital life.) Do we know much about dark matter yet? Could it travel faster than light, or is it bound by the same rules as normal matter?

You couldn't travel in 3 dimensional space faster than the speed of light, but you can travel vast distances faster by taking "short cuts" through other dimensions. I'm guessing the author used 'C space' as a way of describing '3 dimensional' (ie a = 1, b = 2, c = 3). So 'C space beings' would be limited to light speed travel (unless we build meat containers that could manipulate or penetrate 'D space')

I'm assumed that it's called C space because the speed of light is normally termed c - so the space was described in terms of the limiting speed.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#39

Post by zingermc »

sidcool wrote: post #11
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #7

Could any life travel faster than the speed of light? (Including digital life.) Do we know much about dark matter yet? Could it travel faster than light, or is it bound by the same rules as normal matter?

There is a very interesting concept that indicates that the limit of speed is not light, but the space itself. Space itself is such that it cannot let anything travel faster than light. It's like check points in space which slows down light to it's speed we call C. May be somewhere in the universe, or within the black hole, space is malleable enough to allow faster than light travel. It's just a concept, but a very i…

Wanna know the real reason? C is just the maximum floating point value of the computer that our universe's simulation is running on. Similarly, the Planck length is the value closest to zero.
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