8 ms·
They're Made Out of Meat (1991)
- pcblues 3y agoI have no meat, and I must scream.
- lproven 3y agoThe author, Terry Bisson, is now in his 70s and has bowel cancer. :-( This recent New Yorker profile and interview is a great read. « Terry Bisson’s History of the Future For more than two decades, one of pulp sci-fi’s masters has delivered headlines from a time line defined by the absurd. » https://archive.ph/k0RRI#selection-573.0-577.119 https://archive.ph/k0RRI#selection-573.0-577.119
- myko 3y agoI love this video adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ
- joeblubaugh 3y agoThe director uploaded a higher-quality version a few years ago! https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg?si=2j3-ctWbT7IXaZKj https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg?si=2j3-ctWbT7IXaZKj
- stavros 3y agoUnfortunately, it doesn't seem to be much higher quality, it's a bit more contrasty and less washed-out, but that's it.
- gpvos 3y agoI love that one too, but sadly it leaves out the final few lines which make the piece so much more poignant.
- maxverse 3y agoPast discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737993
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoBBC Radio version: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yyz3b https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yyz3b
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- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoThis 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 it for fuel? It would be like coming across a power plant that is powered by burning CPUs and motherboards. They would wonder why we didn’t just use the abundant sunlight and elements to power ourselves (like for example plants).
- timeon 3y ago> This feels very shallow and wrong. What would you expect from meat.
- CPLX 3y ago“This science fiction would never happen in real life!!” is my favorite kind of comment.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zdragnar 3y agoIt is a personality trait I identify with, made more stark because my wife is quite the opposite. IMHO, good fiction asks us to suspend our disbelief to create a novel setting and unique circumstances. Having accepted that, we still expect the world to behave according to its own logic. Bad fiction abuses the suspension of disbelief, and it rubs people like me (and the gp) wrong. In this case, it is a silly short story, so it doesn't bother me much. On the other hand, complaining about TV shows and movies can practically become a sport with the the right company. For example, I quite enjoyed the Netflix movie Spectral, right up until the end, where they tried too hard to explain the mystery and violated things that I had not suspended my disbelief about. The TV show Fringe had a ton of these moments as well. Some were easy to accept, some episodes were painful to get through.
- surprisetalk 3y agoAndy Weir's The Egg is another excellent short story: [1] http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html 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 to support local booksellers when possible :) [2] https://bookshop.org https://bookshop.org
- munchler 3y agoGod's Debris is by Scott Adams, not Douglas.
- surprisetalk 3y agoThank 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.
- fknorangesite 3y agoAnd its sequel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. And the very strange not-for-everybody-but-definitely-for-me TV adaptation.
- loxias 3y ago> And the very strange not-for-everybody-but-definitely-for-me TV adaptation. Hah!! There's _two_ of us! ;-) Okay, now I might actually try to make "that really cool jacket" from S2. (you know what I mean)
- mcv 3y agoI really love that TV version. One of my favourite things on Netflix. And I didn't think they could possibly follow up that first season with something equally weird without becoming repetitive, but they managed it.
- fiforpg 3y agoI 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 space-faring civilization.
- leeoniya 3y ago"if god didnt want us to eat pigs, he wouldn't have made them out of bacon!"
- delecti 3y agoFunnily 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".
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- shawnz 3y agoI 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
- john-radio 3y agoYou've crystalized for me what I've always liked about this story, it implies that for some (horrifying?) reason the aliens are totally familiar with non-sentient meat.
- philistine 3y ago- Can you believe those so-called humans. They made their computing devices out of rocks! They shovel sand out of beaches, make disgusting plates out of it, and force electricity through little paths of metal on them. - Ew!
- cubefox 3y agoI think this idea was much smarter (and funnier) executed in Stanisław Lem's short story "Prince Ferrix and the Princess Crystal".
- pohl 3y agoHeck, all of The Cyberiad has this dismissal of meat done better.
- hermitcrab 3y ago"But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
- dwheeler 3y agoI like this audio performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GggK9SjJpuQ&pp=ygUZVGhleSdyZSBtYWRlIG91dCBvZiBtZWF0Lg%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GggK9SjJpuQ&pp=ygUZVGhleSdyZ... It makes me smile each time.
- hoten 3y agoThis American Life recorded this w/ Maeve Higgins and H. Jon Benjamin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usXhX0zaO4&ab_channel=Podclips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usXhX0zaO4&ab_channel=Podcl...
- delta_p_delta_x 3y agoMy 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.solarisbooks.com/books/newbookscifi/last-contact.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20080725045740/http://www.solari...
- HanClinto 3y agoThat was beautiful and haunting, thank you!
- hotnfresh 3y agoA lot like Melancholia. Or that one short story about discovering the light of another star was about to reach us… and getting the predictions of its intensity very wrong.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoFinis? http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605041.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605041.txt
- hotnfresh 3y agoYep, that’s the one
- DalasNoin 3y agoI feel somewhat similar about the arrival of AGI, I definitely want to cherish my time now more. I think it is at least plausible that these are the last years of anything resembling any value. Even beyond my own existence. It is not exactly the same, with AGI there is more uncertainty about timelines and outcome, and there is no general expert opinion that one could defer to.
- SuperHeavy256 3y agoI love it, reminds me a lot of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
- jksmith 3y agohttps://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg?si=cfIs3_mZ9bI_WtX4 https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg?si=cfIs3_mZ9bI_WtX4
- golemotron 3y agoI like that performance even more than the story. Tom Noonan is a great actor. The other actor is wonderful in this too.
- askiiart 3y agoShort link without tracking (?si=...): https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg Invidious link: https://invidious.askiiart.net/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg https://invidious.askiiart.net/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg, https://yewtu.be/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg https://yewtu.be/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg
- badosu 3y agoI enjoyed thoroughly this short exploring concepts of time perception between host and child simulated reality entities: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5wMcKNAwB6X4mp9og/that-alien-message https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5wMcKNAwB6X4mp9og/that-alien...
- wbl 3y agoThis has been turned into a truly hilarious song with only a few changes. https://youtu.be/6NW67-Mu2wU https://youtu.be/6NW67-Mu2wU
- DonHopkins 3y agoIf God didn't mean for people to eat other people, he wouldn't have made us of meat! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjAHw2DEBgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjAHw2DEBgw
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- epgui 3y agoMakes me think of the dual idea that “neural nets can’t be conscious/etc”
- svat 3y agoAlso: “Your Whole Family Is Made Of Meat” https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=484 https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=484 which became the title of a Dinosaur Comics book.
- Borrible 3y agoAnd they lack communion. Such loneliness. Poor Things. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
- helpfulmountain 3y agoEnjoyed this but upon reflection seems odd that they would have a word "meat" and yet be unfamiliar with biological systems / consciousness in animals.
- miffel 3y agoThat's what seems odd? It's no more odd than aliens speaking English in the first place. At the risk of stating the obvious, the language here is not only used to transmit the ideas in the story, but convey feeling. With the use of "meat" as a pejorative, you're supposed to understand the feeling of contempt and almost repulsion that these beings have towards us.
- timeon 3y ago"Meat" here reminds particular mammals that other mammals, other animals, are sentient as well. For many it is just meat.
- data_vault 3y agoAnother great interpretation of the story would be via speciesism/anthropocentrism, we consider ourselves better than other animals, but for the aliens, we would all be "meat".
- oxygen_crisis 3y agoOdd, how? They're not unfamiliar with biological systems containing meat, they describe beings that are a "meat head with an electron plasma brain inside..." We have a word for wood, yet we would be astonished by consciousness and civilization coming from plants...
- utopcell 3y ago"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotation ago, wants to be friendly again." 2 galactic rotations ? That's a long time to keep a grudge. But also fun to think that Earth is only ~20 galactic years old.
- atom058 3y agoWe are born meat and die meat; our life spans are short "Hyrdogen core clusters" might be around a bit longer On a related note, it would be curious to see how many years a computer could keep chugging along silently doing its job. Of course dependent on a reliable power supply and that We stop our habit of breaking all dependencies every three months. Maybe thousands of years would be possible? A bit interesting to think about.
- utopcell 3y agoThe longest-running computer that we are aware of ran for about 4.5 billion years, and even then it only stopped because it was destroyed in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project for a hyperspace express route.
- shpx 3y agoI've never understood what people see in this story. Meat is a complex organization of trillions of self-replicating machines, each of which (besides red blood cells maybe) is also incredibly complex... much more advanced than anything human minds have been able to build. I can't imagine what a sentient entity would have to be made out of or how much less "efficient" or stable it would have to be than me for me to find it amusing. If it turns out that some slow geological process or a momentary dust cloud are actually self aware, the last thing I would do is laugh. Is it just an abstract association that we're wet inside whereas computer chips are dry? That's just where our technology is right now, it largely reflects how our brains can't simulate fluid dynamics or conceive self replicating distributed systems efficiently enough so we resort to designing simple, solid state things.
- tim333 3y agoMy recollection is that there was quite a lot of debate back then on whether machines would be able to think or be conscious with arguments on the can't think side being Searle's Chinese Room and similar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room), which I always thought was a bit silly and people don't seem to take seriously now but did back in 1991. The Made of Meat story was quite a nice counter argument to that.
- tarsinge 3y agoThe argument that sentience can't derive from computation alone because computations can be slowed down and done by hand still hold for me. The piece of paper written on or the silicon doesn't acquire different properties because what the operation will be used for, the GPU doesn't differentiate between graphic rendering and weight computation when it's adding 1. That's in opposition with animal brains that not only do computations but interact with real-world matter/fields directly. With that said of course we don't know if human like sentience is a prerequisite to (super)human level intelligence. But recent advancements in AI tends to diminish the argument sentience is a side effect of intelligence though.
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- swayvil 3y agoThis is pretty good. It reminds me of Friendship is Optimal https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal
- doubloon 3y agoweird to remember when universities gave people web pages and let them remain, even after they left. the owner has apparently passed away. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/bostonglobe/name/david-policar-obituary?id=51764031 https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/bostonglobe/name/david-... https://stuff.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/dave/resume.html https://stuff.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/dave/resume.html
- jevogel 3y agoI first heard this story on an episode of This American Life. It was performed by H Jon Benjamin and Maeve Higgins. It's a great performance. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/803/greetings-people-of-earth/act-two-7 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/803/greetings-people-of-ear...
- SilverBirch 3y agoI feel like you could write a variation with this attitude: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE
- dang 3y agoRelated: They're Made Out of Meat (2005) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35848313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35848313 - May 2023 (5 comments) They're made out of meat (1991) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965062 - July 2022 (151 comments) They're Made Out of Meat (1991) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737993 - Oct 2020 (292 comments) They're Made Out of Meat [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436550 - June 2020 (4 comments) They're Made Out of Meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108726 - Jan 2020 (1 comment) They're Made Out of Meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561522 - April 2016 (3 comments) They're made out of meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910420 - Jan 2015 (1 comment) They're Made out of Meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152131 - Aug 2014 (170 comments) They're made out of meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8098264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8098264 - July 2014 (1 comment) "They're Made out of Meat?" Short first contact sci-fi story - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549320 - Feb 2012 (62 comments) They're made out of Meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774139 - Aug 2009 (3 comments)
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- dartos 3y agohttps://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg?si=HSwmXF9i5OCZvFVh https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg?si=HSwmXF9i5OCZvFVh The host of cash cab starred in this enactment of this script.