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They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

mit.edu

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Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#41

Post by teddyh »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #11
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

This feels very shallow and wrong. Surely an super intelligent alien species that studied “meat” would know the depth of the organization starting with the organic molecules and extending to the cell and then to the neurons and neural networks and then the brain. The surprising thing to them would not be that we are made of meat but that we eat meat. How could we take such intricately organized matter and just burn i…

You think an advanced species would be surprised that we're made of what we consume? Quite a funny take, because there's literally no other option. The reason a power plant, or factory, or any machine at all doesn't "eat" what it's made of is because human engineers are the digestion enzymes and protein factories. We digest raw materials (amino acids) into parts (proteins) based on plans and schematics (DNA), and the…

> we also exhibit odd and illogical cultural trends

Culture is illogical. If it was logical, it wouldn’t be culture.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#42

Post by delecti »

fiforpg wrote: post #21

I like how the word "meat" is clearly an inaccurate translation of a notion in the language of the conversation, for lack of a better word in human languages. "Organic matter" would be more accurate, but less striking. Meaning, "meat" is a variation on the "unreliable narrator" theme: the "unreliable language". This is used a lot in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun , where medieval language describes artifacts of a s…

Funnily I thought almost the opposite. I feel like "meat" is deliberately chosen in-character to be both less precise and less respectful than "organic matter". It would be like a species with organic computers incredulously describing our computers as "rocks".

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#43

Post by surprisetalk »

munchler wrote: post #38
surprisetalk wrote: post #15

Andy Weir's The Egg is another excellent short story: [1] http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html If you're looking for more short stories, I highly recommend the following: • Ted Chiang's Exhalation • Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life and Others • Ken Liu's Paper Menagerie • Borges's Ficciones • Smullyan's What is the Name of This Book? • Smullyan's Lady or the Tiger? • Douglas Adams's God's Debris Remember t…

God's Debris is by Scott Adams, not Douglas.

Thank you! What a silly slip of the fingers

Although, now that Douglas Adams has been brought up, I think I should also recommend his lesser-known book, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which I believe has some connection to Dr. Who.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#44

Post by jtagen »

munchler wrote: post #38
surprisetalk wrote: post #15

Andy Weir's The Egg is another excellent short story: [1] http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html If you're looking for more short stories, I highly recommend the following: • Ted Chiang's Exhalation • Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life and Others • Ken Liu's Paper Menagerie • Borges's Ficciones • Smullyan's What is the Name of This Book? • Smullyan's Lady or the Tiger? • Douglas Adams's God's Debris Remember t…

God's Debris is by Scott Adams, not Douglas.

Jesus. This story is like a train. You know it's coming, then it hits you.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#45

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

gcanyon wrote: post #40
surprisetalk wrote: post #15

Andy Weir's The Egg is another excellent short story: [1] http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html If you're looking for more short stories, I highly recommend the following: • Ted Chiang's Exhalation • Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life and Others • Ken Liu's Paper Menagerie • Borges's Ficciones • Smullyan's What is the Name of This Book? • Smullyan's Lady or the Tiger? • Douglas Adams's God's Debris Remember t…

Ted Chiang is a genius, and pretty much everything he writes is magnificent. "Exhalation" is ridiculously good. "Understand" is probably my favorite.

"The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling" is an excellent short that is entirely available online - for those who don't yet appreciate his talent

https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterrane...

Edit: I was actually thinking of "The Great Silence" (aka the parrot one) which is a bit shorter but also available online. (The last line always gets to me)

https://electricliterature.com/the-great-silence-by-ted-chia...

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#46

Post by HanClinto »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #31

My favourite short story is Last Contact , by Steven Baxter[1]. It always scared the hell out of me, because it was so... mundane , to the very end. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20080725045740/http://www.solari...

That was beautiful and haunting, thank you!

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#47

Post by timetraveller26 »

surprisetalk wrote: post #15

Andy Weir's The Egg is another excellent short story: [1] http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html If you're looking for more short stories, I highly recommend the following: • Ted Chiang's Exhalation • Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life and Others • Ken Liu's Paper Menagerie • Borges's Ficciones • Smullyan's What is the Name of This Book? • Smullyan's Lady or the Tiger? • Douglas Adams's God's Debris Remember t…

The Egg is one of my life long favorite histories. kurzgesagt did a video animation of it a few years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#48

Post by sandworm101 »

surprisetalk wrote: post #43
munchler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God's Debris is by Scott Adams, not Douglas.

Thank you! What a silly slip of the fingers Although, now that Douglas Adams has been brought up, I think I should also recommend his lesser-known book, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency , which I believe has some connection to Dr. Who.

Most everything in modern sci-fi is connected to either Hitchhikers or the doctor. Writers put jokes and references to them in nearly everything.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#50

Post by shawnz »

delecti wrote: post #42
fiforpg wrote: post #21

I like how the word "meat" is clearly an inaccurate translation of a notion in the language of the conversation, for lack of a better word in human languages. "Organic matter" would be more accurate, but less striking. Meaning, "meat" is a variation on the "unreliable narrator" theme: the "unreliable language". This is used a lot in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun , where medieval language describes artifacts of a s…

Funnily I thought almost the opposite. I feel like "meat" is deliberately chosen in-character to be both less precise and less respectful than "organic matter". It would be like a species with organic computers incredulously describing our computers as "rocks".

I think that the computers-as-rocks analogy works even better than this story, since there is no such thing as non-sentient meat, but there most certainly are rocks that can't compute
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