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They're Made out of Meat

terrybisson.com

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Re: They're Made out of Meat

#81

Post by Zikes »

This reminds me of a proposition put forth once (I think on tumblr of all places) that while humans are normally considered a "baseline" species in sci-fi, what would a sci-fi universe look like where humans were the superbeings?

There were dozens of replies along the lines of:

"I heard humans can survive losing a limb! Or even multiple limbs!"

"Their strength and tolerance for gravity far exceeds our own!"

"When one of their organs fails they can just swap it out with another compatible human that's died recently!"

It's pretty funny to imagine, and it's a perspective not often seen.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#82

Post by sergiosgc »

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.

I reasoned about it in the same vein but with a different approach. We are running in a discrete simulation. The most you can move is one space quantum per time tick. That speed is C.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#83

Post by gizmo686 »

malka wrote: post #60
laumars wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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')

wouldn't that break causality ? because light / information would still travel in 'C space'.

Yes. Of course the only evidence we have for causality is that we have not observed it being broken (and recognized that observation)

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#84

Post by Dn_Ab »

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 once the aliens got past the whole meat thing they'd find much common ground as fellow bigoted beings.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#85

Post by romaniv »

Is there any point toposting this aside from smug reassertion of the local hivemind's belief in equality of humans an hypothetical thinking machines? Because I don't see any insightful reasoning in this piece aside from simple reversal, which is only convincing if you already a believer.

The reality is that we don't know how minds really work and we don't have thinking machines. The belief that the limited knowledge about brain chemistry "explains" consciousness is similar to the belief that knowing how semiconductors work "explains" hardware and software engineering.

Edit: Down-votes on an opinion without any explanation in reply simply prove my point. This is a hive-mind belief and opposing world views are not tolerated.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#86

Post by antirez »

patio11 wrote: post #49
antirez wrote: post #46

At this level of evolution for the aliens it would be obivous that intelligence can come in different forms but the basic process is the same and mostly irrelevant.

The point is to satirize intelligent lifeforms less than 9 light-minutes from Sol, who think "alien" and immediately think "A bipedal humanoid with colorful skin and Buddhist-by-way-of-Native-American spiritual practices."

I know, but science fiction satire can be written in a way to be still pseudo-scientific. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiotimoline

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#87

Post by noblethrasher »

Zikes wrote: post #81

This reminds me of a proposition put forth once (I think on tumblr of all places) that while humans are normally considered a "baseline" species in sci-fi, what would a sci-fi universe look like where humans were the superbeings? There were dozens of replies along the lines of: "I heard humans can survive losing a limb! Or even multiple limbs!" "Their strength and tolerance for gravity far exceeds our own!" "When one…

I remember that. Here is the link by way of r/scifi : http://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/1kl5ly/tumblr_for_onc...

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#88

Post by laumars »

malka wrote: post #60
laumars wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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')

wouldn't that break causality ? because light / information would still travel in 'C space'.

Not really. Sound travels faster than light so we see really fast moving objects before we hear them. If we folded the universe and took a shortcut then we'd just arrive at the destination before it's visible that we've left. But that's little different to seeing stars millions of light years away shining away which would have already died thousands of years ago (hence why some scientists romanticize about astronomy as being like time travel - as they're often looking at events that happened hundreds or even millions of years in the past)

In any case, there's already enough literature on this subject to last you a life time so if you have any question then it's an interesting subject to read. And by "literature" I don't mean "Star Trek" (though their "Warp Drives" are based on a similar premise or warping 3 dimensional space - despite obviously being a work of fiction)

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#89

Post by benihana »

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…

A hilarious show, all five episodes are on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darkplace

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#90

Post by tehmaco »

Zikes wrote: post #81

This reminds me of a proposition put forth once (I think on tumblr of all places) that while humans are normally considered a "baseline" species in sci-fi, what would a sci-fi universe look like where humans were the superbeings? There were dozens of replies along the lines of: "I heard humans can survive losing a limb! Or even multiple limbs!" "Their strength and tolerance for gravity far exceeds our own!" "When one…

A quick search turned up this:

http://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/57702943181/mikhailvladimir...

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