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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)

#71

Post by phlakaton »

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…

Add to that "Thang" by Martin Gardner (yes, that Martin Gardner, you Scientific American old-timers). I read it in an Isaac Asimov-curated short story collection once upon a time and it remains one of my favorite short-shorts.

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

#72

Post by edanm »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #45
gcanyon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

I love Ted Chiang, and "The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling" is maybe my favorite of his stories. Certainly the one I think about most often.

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

#74

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

Douglas Adams actually wrote a few Dr. Who episodes.

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

#75

Post by edanm »

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…

So wonderful to see Smullyan recommended here!

Though I have to add, as a huge fan of Ted Chiang, that you missed one of his best short stories, and certainly his shortest story - it's about a page long and will probably take less than five minutes to read, iirc:

"What's Expected of Us": https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a

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

#77

Post by x86x87 »

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.

Strongly agree. I have yet to run into a story written by Ted that I do not find amazing and through provoking.

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

#78

Post by causality0 »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #45
gcanyon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

I generally like Chiang's work and its derivatives but that was... kind of terrible. It felt like you told a government PSA writer to do sci-fi, except it isn't really sci-fi. It's an essay which posits that parrots are sapient and our failure to recognize it means we won't recognize alien sapience, and also wiping out parrots is bad. It's an if/then statement that stops at the if.

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

#79

Post by pixl97 »

gizajob wrote: post #17
timeon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This feels very shallow and wrong. What would you expect from meat.

It’s even typing its complaint in digitally encoded binary. Even when using our codes it’s still thinking with its meat fingers. How beastly.

How dare it mock us so.

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

#80

Post by pixl97 »

latexr wrote: post #22
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…

> This feels very shallow and wrong. It’s a comedic short story, not a dissertation on the powers of reasoning of undiscovered alien species. Rule of funny trumps accuracy. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfFunny It’s important to remember science fiction tends to explore and make a commentary on the human aspect. The best stories aren’t about new technology, but its implications and effects on the hu…

People: "How dare this short story underestimate what aliens could imagine"

Also people: "AI will never be as intelligent and capable has humans are"

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