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They're Made out of Meat

terrybisson.com

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Re: They're Made out of Meat

#61

Post by roc »

markyc wrote: post #22
ghshephard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we found talking poo (kind of like Mr. Hanky) Wouldn't the entire idea that such a thing could be _sentient_ be more than we could handle. Re-Read the story again, and substitute "poo" for "meat" and maybe you'll get a feel for it. After all - a talking dog is really just talking meat.

i think if we found any talking thing/being other than ourselves we'd be all over it. poo included

We know dolphins and whales speak and think. We are not "all over it". We could barely agree to a modest effort to reduce incidentally slaughtering some in our quest for other fish. We can not remotely agree to stop* directly slaughtering others.

If an alien race looked at us the way we look at dolphins, whales, or even primates -- we'd be damn lucky if they simply turned around and went home.

*edit: forgot "stop"

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#62

Post by k__ »

smcl wrote: post #30

Not sure how appropriate or relevant this is, but both me and a friend read this and were reminded slightly of the stuff "written" by Matthew Holness' "Garth Marenghi" character. Sharing a couple of choice excerpts in case anyone is curious, but the real gold is in "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace" - a series set in 1980s hospital in Romford. Dead Centre - http://www.garthmarenghi.com/books/deadcentre.htm - "This near-leg…

Me it reminded of Stanisław Lem.

He often wrote stuff with an astronaut from the future, who meets other civilisations and often they are a little bit like the world now. So this guy goes there and is like "how crazy those aliens are, doing this and that" and the reader feels is like "well... he is totally right but that's how it's here in real life right now!!"

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#63

Post by outworlder »

zingermc wrote: post #39
sidcool wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More likely, it is the maximum speed the physics engine can handle per tick.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#64

Post by weavie »

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…

We do find talking dogs. People stick the footage up on YouTube and we all sit around and have a hearty laugh then get on with out lives.

Other people claim to hear voices in the wind telling them to do stuff. We lock them up because we think they are insane and a threat to us.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#65

Post by ctdonath »

netcan wrote: post #52
tim333 wrote: post #15

>We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat? I'm wondering if we can fix that one.

Immortal meat? Are you expecting me to believe there can be meat that lives forever, without refrigeration?

That would require...self-repairing meat.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#66

Post by puzzlingcaptcha »

k__ wrote: post #62
smcl wrote: post #30

Not sure how appropriate or relevant this is, but both me and a friend read this and were reminded slightly of the stuff "written" by Matthew Holness' "Garth Marenghi" character. Sharing a couple of choice excerpts in case anyone is curious, but the real gold is in "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace" - a series set in 1980s hospital in Romford. Dead Centre - http://www.garthmarenghi.com/books/deadcentre.htm - "This near-leg…

Me it reminded of Stanisław Lem. He often wrote stuff with an astronaut from the future, who meets other civilisations and often they are a little bit like the world now. So this guy goes there and is like "how crazy those aliens are, doing this and that" and the reader feels is like "well... he is totally right but that's how it's here in real life right now!!"

Similar case with Janusz Zajdel. Notably both have been writing during the communist rule. Some amusing stuff had been passed under the nose of censors.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#67

Post by simias »

It's quite a fun read but I don't understand why the author chose the word "meat". I mean, if for those aliens human biology is so weird and foreign, how could they have a concept of meat? Or meat flaps?

That seems to imply that they're familiar with non-sentient meat, but what would that be? And if those aliens are so different from us they probably don't have the same concept of food as we have, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to single out "meat" at all. The story works better for me if I replace "meat" with, say, "carbon blob" or something like that. I still the humour still works out and it's a less culturally-loaded phrase.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#68

Post by xyzzyz »

simias wrote: post #67

It's quite a fun read but I don't understand why the author chose the word "meat". I mean, if for those aliens human biology is so weird and foreign, how could they have a concept of meat? Or meat flaps? That seems to imply that they're familiar with non-sentient meat, but what would that be? And if those aliens are so different from us they probably don't have the same concept of food as we have, so it wouldn't make…

I think the idea is that they have plenty of contact with meat-based living forms, but none of them are intelligent or sentient.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#69

Post by ctdonath »

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 recall fragments of a theory that everything moves at the same speed (think multidimensional unit vector), just in various directions (time included as a "direction", explaining why if you travel C in one physical direction "your" time stops).

Perhaps someone can point me to a full description of this theory.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#70

Post by markyc »

roc wrote: post #61
markyc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think if we found any talking thing/being other than ourselves we'd be all over it. poo included

We know dolphins and whales speak and think. We are not "all over it". We could barely agree to a modest effort to reduce incidentally slaughtering some in our quest for other fish. We can not remotely agree to stop* directly slaughtering others. If an alien race looked at us the way we look at dolphins, whales, or even primates -- we'd be damn lucky if they simply turned around and went home. *edit: forgot "stop"

we can't actually talk to dolphins can we?

they're not trying to reach us and learn from us, and "swap ideas", as far as we know

and yet we still try to understand them and talk to them

if a dolphin was to one day utter: "hey guys, let's chat. let me tell you about my world, and you tell me about yours" - I think it would be all over the news, not glossed by like "pff.. stupid animal trying to think"

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