141–150 of 191 posts
By all accounts the CPUs we've made with ridiculous stuff like 2nm transistors is _surely_ more advanced than neurons, right? We just haven't figured out how to wire them properly :)
Discarding scientific evidence usually looks differently than "we discussed that we didn’t liked it". Is is usually not looking at all, never starting a discussion, or even lacking an intellectual framework to comprehend the phenomenon. See "The great silence" by Ted Chiang, http://worker01.e-flux.com/pdf/supercommunity/article_1087.p... for this "not looking at". For this "beyond comprehension", think about Solaris…
Somehow this story isn't as fun today as it was when first printed ...
I like this story, but I never liked the wording "made out of meat", as if the word exists in a world without animals. I could have accepted "proteins", but that's not a catchy title.
Maybe this kind of thing isn't for you if the above is required explanation, though.
This is fun to read but any such galactic intelligence would probably recognize that its predecessor were meat, probably kept the original meat safe in a corner of the galaxy too.. The universe were quite uniform in character. Galaxies, stars, they are very predictable and essentially the same everywhere, across billions of years (both time and distance), can't see why that doesn't apply to life too in a general sens…
> any such galactic intelligence would probably recognize that its predecessor were meat Perhaps it's predecessor was just advanced enough to build self-modifying replicators and fire them out into space. Eventually it hits a planet or asteroid and gradually becomes sentient and intelligent. No trace of how it originated.
1st generation stars seed the galaxies with carbon.
2nd generation stars are a sea of amino-acid comet soup. One bag-of-mostly-water lifeform evolves sentience. Its legacy is silicon intelligence, broadcast through the galaxy. It disappears.
3rd generation stars illuminate meat-based life, but it holds no novelty for the silicon travelers between the stars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they exist, they're probably currently placing bets whether we will manage to destroy ourselves (or at least set our civilization back by centuries) with our nuclear weapons, our climate change or our social media...
Depends how they're listening I think. There was a time not long ago when reportedly looking at the emails being exchanged around the world one would think the most pressing matter, discussed at length, was how to "enlarge your penis".
I like this story, but I never liked the wording "made out of meat", as if the word exists in a world without animals. I could have accepted "proteins", but that's not a catchy title.
They are clearly familiar with meat-based animals: > “That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.” > “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they’re made out of meat.” And indeed sentient species that are partly made of meat: > “Maybe they’re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes t…
Does this ring a bell for anyone?
This reminds me of a different short story I read somewhere that I, for the life of me, cannot find anymore. It's about aliens discussing earth (but they call it differently I believe) and how far they have evolved. They have 2 books/logs. One containing all life, and then another book containing all super intelligent life. They find out that earth already has some super advanced stuff, so they are deciding if it sho…