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They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

by mailarchis on 11/26/23, 8:36 AM with 168 comments

• by shpx on 11/26/23, 8:16 PM

  I'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.

• by fiforpg on 11/26/23, 2:27 PM

  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 space-faring civilization.

• by dang on 11/26/23, 10:04 PM

  Related:

  They're Made Out of Meat (2005) [video] - 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 - July 2022 (151 comments)

  They're Made Out of Meat (1991) - 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 - June 2020 (4 comments)

  They're Made Out of Meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108726 - Jan 2020 (1 comment)

  They're Made Out of Meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561522 - April 2016 (3 comments)

  They're made out of meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910420 - Jan 2015 (1 comment)

  They're Made out of Meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152131 - Aug 2014 (170 comments)

  They're made out of meat - 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 - Feb 2012 (62 comments)

  They're made out of Meat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774139 - Aug 2009 (3 comments)

• by surprisetalk on 11/26/23, 2:02 PM

  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 to support local booksellers when possible :)

  [2] https://bookshop.org

• by jksmith on 11/26/23, 3:31 PM

  https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg?si=cfIs3_mZ9bI_WtX4

• by myko on 11/26/23, 1:24 PM

  I love this video adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

• by dwheeler on 11/26/23, 3:02 PM

  I like this audio performance:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GggK9SjJpuQ&pp=ygUZVGhleSdyZ...

  It makes me smile each time.

• by utopcell on 11/26/23, 7:05 PM

  "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.

• by ndsipa_pomu on 11/26/23, 1:35 PM

  BBC Radio version: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yyz3b

• by hoten on 11/26/23, 3:06 PM

  This American Life recorded this w/ Maeve Higgins and H. Jon Benjamin.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usXhX0zaO4&ab_channel=Podcl...

• by DonHopkins on 11/26/23, 4:38 PM

  If 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

• by wbl on 11/26/23, 4:05 PM

  This has been turned into a truly hilarious song with only a few changes. https://youtu.be/6NW67-Mu2wU

• by maxverse on 11/26/23, 1:30 PM

  Past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737993

• by cubefox on 11/26/23, 2:46 PM

  I think this idea was much smarter (and funnier) executed in Stanisław Lem's short story "Prince Ferrix and the Princess Crystal".

• by hermitcrab on 11/26/23, 2:56 PM

  "But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

• by helpfulmountain on 11/26/23, 6:48 PM

  Enjoyed this but upon reflection seems odd that they would have a word "meat" and yet be unfamiliar with biological systems / consciousness in animals.

• by badosu on 11/26/23, 3:46 PM

  I enjoyed thoroughly this short exploring concepts of time perception between host and child simulated reality entities: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5wMcKNAwB6X4mp9og/that-alien...

• by delta_p_delta_x on 11/26/23, 3:09 PM

  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...

• by dartos on 11/27/23, 2:14 AM

  https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg?si=HSwmXF9i5OCZvFVh

  The host of cash cab starred in this enactment of this script.

• by lproven on 11/28/23, 12:17 PM

  The 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

• by jevogel on 11/26/23, 9:37 PM

  I 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-ear...

• by svat on 11/26/23, 5:47 PM

  Also: “Your Whole Family Is Made Of Meat” https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=484 which became the title of a Dinosaur Comics book.

• by swayvil on 11/26/23, 8:41 PM

  This is pretty good.

  It reminds me of Friendship is Optimal

  https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal

• by SilverBirch on 11/26/23, 9:56 PM

  I feel like you could write a variation with this attitude: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE

• by doubloon on 11/26/23, 9:23 PM

  weird 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-...

  https://stuff.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/dave/resume.html

• by epgui on 11/26/23, 5:16 PM

  Makes me think of the dual idea that “neural nets can’t be conscious/etc”

• by SuperHeavy256 on 11/26/23, 3:19 PM

  I love it, reminds me a lot of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

• by Borrible on 11/26/23, 6:00 PM

  And they lack communion.

  Such loneliness.

  Poor Things.

  https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

• by pcblues on 11/27/23, 10:19 AM

  I have no meat, and I must scream.

• by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 11/26/23, 1:35 PM

  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 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).