Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

They're Made out of Meat

terrybisson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 176 posts

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#111

Post by shangxiao »

tehmaco wrote: post #90
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...

There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.

Isn't that how the bushman in The Gods must be Crazy hunted his prey?

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#112

Post by schrodinger »

romaniv wrote: post #85

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…

You're reading too far into motivations for posting this story. I certainly didn't get that this is some reassertion of the equality humans and thinking machines, rather a lighthearted thought experiment about the possibility of life existing very differently than ours.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#114

Post by iLoch »

shangxiao wrote: post #111
tehmaco wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick search turned up this: http://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/57702943181/mikhailvladimir...

There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator. Isn't that how the bushman in The Gods must be Crazy hunted his prey?

That's how humans hunt their prey everywhere (before we had tools.)

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#116

Post by jfb »

shangxiao wrote: post #111
tehmaco wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick search turned up this: http://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/57702943181/mikhailvladimir...

There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator. Isn't that how the bushman in The Gods must be Crazy hunted his prey?

It's called cursorial hunting; wolves do it as well.

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#118

Post by KaiP »

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…

See http://www.reddit.com/r/hfy for more stories with a similar tack

Re: They're Made out of Meat

#119

Post by bentcorner »

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.

"3 x 10^8 m/s ought to be enough for anybody"
Post reply on HN