Is it me, or is there a subliminal message in the banner of LightSpeed magazine? No time to look into it, but there appears to be a changing message that flashes on and off to take the place of the "LIGHTSPEED" graphic in the banner. The only one I caught was "RESIST".
OkayPhysicist 1 days ago [-]
"Resist" and "Do not obey in advance". It's just an animated GIF.
mcmcmc 1 days ago [-]
There’s definitely something, I saw RESIST pop up for a flash as well.
GMoromisato 1 days ago [-]
I loved this story when I first read it. I made me feel wistful, like a world was dying and simultaneously being born. I can't explain it, but the idea of bears using fire has stayed with me ever since.
Pay08 13 hours ago [-]
That's the same feeling I had about the first half of Children of Time.
chrisweekly 20 hours ago [-]
I'm reminded of an excellent surreal novel, "The Bear Comes Home" by Rafi Zabor, about an ursine jazz saxophonist.
teapot7 19 hours ago [-]
Ok - bear mode activated: I'll add 'The Star Bear' by Michael Swanwick, where a man's series of encounters with a bear in Paris echo his feelings about being a Russian emigre.
You saying “bear mode activated” reminds me of Dicey Dungeons...
(For those who don't know, there's a place in the game where, with a moderate amount of luck, you can trigger an item that transforms you into a bear, which changes your stats and available equipment, and you remain that way for the entire rest of the dungeon)
I didn't really get it to be honest. I feel like something went over my head.
zulux 1 days ago [-]
Fair enough.. It's not really sci-fi. Just a quiet slice of life with a twist.
If I may be so bold, this story would have sucked when I was younger, but now that I've been acquainted with the ages of all the characters, it makes sense.
nickburns 24 hours ago [-]
The big bear tended the fire, breaking up the dry branches by holding one end and stepping on them, like people do. He was good at keeping it going at the same level. Another bear poked the fire from time to time but the others left it alone. It looked like only a few of the bears knew how to use fire and were carrying the others along. But isn’t that how it is with everything? Every once in a while, a smaller bear walked into the circle of firelight with an armload of wood and dropped it onto the pile. Median wood has a silvery cast, like driftwood.
emmelaich 19 hours ago [-]
Same, I thought the newberries were going to be some sort of intelligence enhancer.
The short film makes no sense, as the 2 people talking are meat themselves.
gcanyon 20 hours ago [-]
They only look like they're made of meat. And they only look like they're made of meat to you because you know you're made of meat, and they look like you.
To them, they're just disguised as "what the creatures on this planet look like," which is obviously (to them) not meat, because they've never seen meat beings. To them, we are obviously not-meat, although how we appear is compatible with being meat. But silicone dyed the correct shade can look like meat. Stone painted the right color can look like meat.
And if you say that silicone and stone don't look like meat even when prepared to copy it, bear in mind that we are made of meat and very good at distinguishing it. Different races favor different attributes for distinguishing one person from another, hence why "they all look alike" is somewhat true for pretty much any "them" you care to name. Rocky from Project Hail Mary almost certainly thinks all humans look alike.
AlwaysRock 1 days ago [-]
"probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
The two talking, and other races, are machines that cover themselves however they like. These two are machines with artificial skins. That is normal. Fully meat beings are not. At least that is how I always read this story.
axus 22 hours ago [-]
Machines with artificial skins? I'll have to re-read the story, I thought the "meat" was matter and the aliens were made of energy.
outworlder 16 hours ago [-]
No, it's literal meat that they have issues with. Machines are fine, hydrogen clusters are fine.
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
You should probably go watch the Terminator movies.
bigbuppo 1 days ago [-]
They only look like meat to blend in. It's the only way to figure out if they're made out of meat.
lelanthran 1 days ago [-]
> They only look like meat to blend in. It's the only way to figure out if they're made out of meat.
Perhaps the makers of the movie neglected to read the story before creating a script?
the_af 1 days ago [-]
In the story, the very idea of permanently meat-based beings appals them, and in fact one of them doesn't entirely believe it. So why would they look like meat to "blend in", a priori, if one of them doesn't even fathom the idea? "Blend in" with what? One of them doesn't believe what it's dealing with!
Like a sibling comment mentions, they talk about "meat sounds"... using meat sounds! Why would they find it surprising if that's how they are communicating in the short film? They are not depicted as communicating via telepathy or whatever.
(Yes, I understand the limitations of low budget shorts. But it doesn't mean it has to work...)
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
> So why would they look like meat to "blend in", a priori, if one of them doesn't even fathom the idea?
I'd imagine British spies in WWII sometimes wore swastikas to blend in?
They infiltrating to investigate. It needn't be an endorsement of the practice.
kadoban 20 hours ago [-]
> I'd imagine British spies in WWII sometimes wore swastikas to blend in?
British spies in WWII wouldn't do that if the entire concept of what a swastika was baffled them. You have to understand at least basically what the thing you're looking at is in order to use it as a symbol.
If you have _no_ concept of people being made out of meat being possible, you don't dress up as people made out of meat. You do that if it's a common concept to you and you're trying to fit in.
ceejayoz 20 hours ago [-]
But they mention species with a meat phase.
The concept of meat isn’t foreign. Meat that’s sentient and has no cybernetic parts or phase is.
And they do say they’ve studied and probed for several human lifetimes.
the_af 20 hours ago [-]
> And they do say they’ve studied and probed for several human lifetimes.
Only one of them has. The other is entirely surprised by the whole concept, and wouldn't even entertain disguising itself as something it has never considered and in fact it's being convinced during the story it even exists.
It's important for the story to work that one of the beings is entirely unconvinced and has to be told, as they discuss the matter, that this is an actual thing!
ceejayoz 20 hours ago [-]
The one that looks super goofy?
He’s dressed like someone told “hey you have to try to blend in” and didn’t really know how.
brucehoult 18 hours ago [-]
Picking the right name is also important to blending in. For example: Ford Prefect.
Stratoscope 14 hours ago [-]
Like the guy in Star Trek IV who took too much LDS.
the_af 19 hours ago [-]
Tom Noonan in the short film, yes.
> He’s dressed like someone told “hey you have to try to blend in” and didn’t really know how.
Blend with what? It (the alien) didn't believe these "meat" sentient beings existed when the story starts! It had to be told during the conversation. It thought there must have been machines somewhere who were the real sentient beings. How can anyone attempt to blend in with something one doesn't believe exists?
I understand the adaptation changes this, because there's no other way of working with human actors and also staying within budget. I understand the decision; I'm just saying it misses the mark and makes the story way less funny.
The way I envision this story is a couple of aliens, much like the scenes with the Simpsons aliens, hovering in a spaceship near Earth, discussing humans, with only one of them having actually seen a human. It doesn't work if both have seen them.
All in my opinion, of course, taste and sense of humor are completely subjective.
emmelaich 19 hours ago [-]
It's partly for dramatic purposes, to slow the realisation of the audience that they are aliens talking about people.
And, ofc, in-drama logic; the beings (of silicon or whatever) are/were blending in with humans to study them.
the_af 18 hours ago [-]
You have a point. Maybe if I hadn't read the story first it would work better for me.
In the story, there's little doubt these are aliens (though their physical form, if they have any, is never described). If there's any doubt, it's about what they are talking about -- but this is dispelled pretty soon too.
I think the real reason is simply budget.
I can understand the limitations of working around budget, and constraints sometimes spark some inventive storytelling, like in the pretty cool "The Booth at the End", which has a very similar minimalistic setting in a diner! In fact, this short somewhat reminded me of that much better show.
(If you haven't watched "The Booth at the End", I strongly encourage you to do so... it used to be free online ages ago, not sure now).
bigbuppo 1 days ago [-]
Well, if you think you can do a better job, make it happen. Make the film you want to see.
the_af 1 days ago [-]
Why? Surely one can criticize a movie, book, videogame, etc, without being required to create a better one in turn.
I didn't hate it, and I always appreciate the charm of low budget productions. I'm just saying this particular adaptation doesn't work for me, and trying to explain why.
One low budget feature-length film about aliens I quite liked (though it obviously has a higher budget, and of course its own set of flaws; and to be clear I'm not arguing both productions are in the same ballpark!) is "The Vast of Night" [1]. I quite liked the actors and the directorial choices.
* This is a virtual environment and the "meat actors" are depicting avatars of virtual/not-meat entities inhabiting that world. That's why there's inconsistencies with real life, for example the red guy's clothes. This was what I thought when I first saw this short.
* This was really an exchange of concepts and data in a language not really suitable for humans to understand. So what you are seeing is not what actually took place, but a translation. Some machine took the abstract data interchange and translated it to what it thought would be more appropriate for a meat head to understand, including setting it up in an environment that would make sense to a human. But it made some mistakes (the clothes, the weird behavior of some characters). This could have predicted AI Video slop, in a way.
TazeTSchnitzel 1 days ago [-]
You're interpreting it overly literally. Cinema can be as abstract as theatre or the written word.
jvuygbbkuurx 1 days ago [-]
It was funny when they talked about meat sounds using meat sounds.
the_af 1 days ago [-]
Plus for the story to make sense, they have to be seeing Earth from scans/sensors, and one of them must in fact not be familiar with Earth at all, having disbelief in what the other is saying. But if they are both there, in a diner, they cannot be as skeptical.
I get the constraints of short indie films, I love them regardless, but in this particular case it completely misses the mark.
stdbrouw 1 days ago [-]
You just have to go along with the idea that skin provides no indication of meatiness and that the two aliens are Ford Prefect types, then the short film lands just fine.
the_af 1 days ago [-]
I guess. It's still hard to mesh with the idea they don't believe these humans flap their meat at each other, or that they do not communicate exclusively via radio signals.
It doesn't match my idea that these are two energy/mechanical beings discussing a faraway planet from their spaceship or whatever, talking theory without actually seeing the beings they are discussing.
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
You've never encountered, say, a baffling code bug that couldn't possibly be caused by X, spent a day on it, and found out it turns out to be caused by X?
the_af 1 days ago [-]
Oh yes. But never dressed up as X! :D
More seriously, what you describe is partly the short story. The short film adaptation doesn't quite work for me, for the reasons I explained in other comments.
Oh No! Sad news! I missed hearing about it at the time.
I'm also a big fan. He's awesome in a bunch of things, but my favourite is Cain in Robocop 2. Such a great performance.
"Jesus had days like this. Hounded and attacked like a criminal. But like him, I don't blame you. They program you, and you do it"
"Frank. The Benzedrine's got my teeth wiggling. Cut it... Scopalomine, five mills per"
joezydeco 1 days ago [-]
It's a good visualization but they skipped the punchline, which was the entire purpose of the story.
hn_throwaway_99 19 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I found this was definitely a case of "the book was much better than the movie", especially odd since most of the dialog was word-for-word, yet they skipped over the small parts that gave the story its lesson and relatability. Like the whole "officially or unofficially" part is one of my favorite parts of the original story, as it makes it seem like these intergalactic beings have to deal with the same concerns as Bob in corporate HR.
I think it highlights why the original text was uniquely brilliant and why it makes it reliably makes it to the top of HN every year or so.
joezydeco 6 hours ago [-]
Well said, thank you.
StumpChunkman 1 days ago [-]
Agreed! I love the saxophone riff for the opening/closing song.
Also, funny to see Ben Bailey outside of a taxi cab.
ubermonkey 7 hours ago [-]
That's Tom Noonan (who recently passed away) and Ben Bailey; one of the kids in the other booth we see briefly is played by Gbenga Akinnagbe in his first film role, who rose to greater prominence as Chris Partlow on The Wire.
stared 1 days ago [-]
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.
For this "beyond comprehension", think about Solaris Ocean, a mind (or non-mind?) we cannot relate to anything else. Or WAU from SOMA.
EdwardDiego 11 hours ago [-]
That short story makes me think of the kea (Alpine parrot) of New Zealand.
They're ridiculously smart and dexterous.
When I was a ranger I'd tell tourists to think of them as "monkeys who can fly... ...you're laughing, but I'm serious".
Their upper and lower beaks can move independently like a human's thumb and forefinger, unlike nearly all other birds, and they can also use their beaks like scissors, or to undo screws - that last one is very true, I'm not making it up, their upper beak makes for an effective flathead.
They share knowledge like corvids do, once one kea learns that the self closing door on your shop closes slowly enough, after a human enters, to give them time to get in, steal a chocolate bar and get out, there'll be five more trying it tomorrow.
They can undo zips on your backpack and then undo the latches on your lunchbox to steal your sandwiches, or they'll untie your bootlaces (yep they can undo knots) and remove them from your boots, or remove your tent pegs, or maybe cut your guylines, all of this just for fun.
There was a gang that would deploy one of their number at a viewing platform to act very engagingly and oh so photogenic to distract the tourists while its mates quietly stole interesting things from the hand bags, backpacks,and, if you left the door open, cars(!) of the tourists who were focused on the photogenic decoy putting on a show.
They had a bit of a penchant for passports during my time. Most of which were last seen being dropped into a deep and dangerous mountain ravine by a parrot that then let out a mocking laugh.
There used to be a gang of juvenile males that would deflate tyres at the local public toilets to prove they were tough - because the noise depressing a tyre valve made was scary, so the longer you pressed it, the tighter tougher you were, while your mates egged you on.
They also have distinct and recognisable facial expressions they use to indicate their emotions.
They've been taught to speak in the past - but the fact that they can survive, and indeed, they thrive, in the harshest environment in New Zealand is far more indicative of their intelligence than any Polly Wanna A Cracker would ever be.
reverius42 9 hours ago [-]
> the fact that they can survive, and indeed, they thrive, in the harshest environment in New Zealand is far more indicative of their intelligence than any Polly Wanna A Cracker would ever be.
It's not a reproach at all! We do this all the time when something has appeared before on HN, so that people can look at older threads if they're interested. It's significant signal that a particular post has appeared repeatedly on HN over the nearly two decades we've existed. It's also interesting to see how the style of discussion about the topic may have changed over time.
nofunsir 18 hours ago [-]
It's already a feature (click the link domain).
tomhow 18 hours ago [-]
That isn't always a simple, reliable way of finding the historical submissions of the article. Sometimes it's on a domain that has had many other submissions. Sometimes the domain has changed or the content appears in different forms in different places.
It's a longstanding convention to do this, and the audience appreciates it. Not sure why anyone would take issue with it.
hyperhello 18 hours ago [-]
It does appear a bit mechanical, like something the system would do. Maybe a submission should always automatically find all previous discussions as an automatic comment.
epistasis 18 hours ago [-]
It's not a reproach, there are no negative words in the comment.
It's a gathering of information so that people can get more comments.
antitoxic 14 hours ago [-]
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 should move to the second log.
Bisson once lived in the town just across the river from where I grew up and was an inspiration for me as a nerdy kid from the sticks who just wanted to write science fiction. His novels Talking Man, Fire on the Mountain, Voyage to the Red Planet, and Pirates of the Universe (don't be fooled by those last two titles; he was always undermining old sci-fi tropes) were among my favorites. This story is one of his goofier ones. I wasn't as big a fan of his short stories as they tended towards the jokey style of absurdism, but a favorite of mine is his "Bears Discover Fire."
"We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
Somebody recently recounted that they had been a convention of people who been 'abducted' by aliens. They commented that "Aliens certainly have a type".
glitchc 1 days ago [-]
Earlier I found it awe-inspiring. Nowadays I find it funny because we have yet to even remotely approach the complexity of meat.
babblingfish 1 days ago [-]
It's amazing how consciousness remains a mystery given all the scientific progress over the last 100 years
ryeights 1 days ago [-]
Is it surprising? It seems likely you could build a complete working model of the universe with no provision for consciousness at all. As far as modern science goes, it's an intractable problem
GoblinSlayer 12 hours ago [-]
You can do it with no provision for molecules too.
ryeights 1 hours ago [-]
That wouldn’t be complete though. I mean that an outside observer could view a simulation of the universe by your model, down to the subatomic particle level, and find no differences with the real world. There is no measurable “consciousness field” as far as we know, so how can our science even begin to approach the topic?
squigz 21 hours ago [-]
It doesn't seem likely to me that in, just a couple hundred years, humans have developed such a thorough understand of every natural process as all that.
outworlder 16 hours ago [-]
Consciousness had millions of years headstart. Give it time.
gaigalas 6 hours ago [-]
We don't know that.
Consciousness might have actually started today at 7am and, before that, we were all automatons without subjective experience of the world, just going through the motions.
You might say that's impossible, because yesterday you were conscious and you know that, but you can't prove it to anyone.
Epistemologically, this is not a problem that can be solved with "give it time".
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 sense. Maybe different RNA building blocks and genetic chemistry, but probably work out similar to meat and organic stuff.
outworlder 16 hours ago [-]
> This is fun to read but any such galactic intelligence would probably recognize that its predecessor were meat
That does not follow at all. It's _likely_ that life elsewhere would be carbon-based since carbon is so useful and common. It is not a requirement. Silicon has been proposed as a replacement. While not as flexible as carbon, it's pretty close. Silicon-based lifeforms wouldn't be "organic" at all. Even if we just stick to carbon, there are many organic compounds (and lifeforms) that aren't anything close to what we would consider 'meat'.
We are working with N=1. Until we find more lifeforms elsewhere, we can't assume anything beyond basic physics and chemistry. RNA isn't a given. A lifeforms probably needs something that will pass along instructions to their offspring (in whatever form they take). It doesn't have to be RNA.
For a fictional description of a lifeforms that doesn't have RNA, DNA or anything remotely similar, I like to point out Blindsight, by Peter Watts. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
n4r9 1 days ago [-]
> 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.
FarmerPotato 14 hours ago [-]
Oh! good one. Here's a new twist:
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.
Espressosaurus 1 days ago [-]
Thanks for doing a "well AKTually" on a piece of amusing fiction.
Aperocky 1 days ago [-]
There's no refutation of anything here, I seriously thought about the possibility of evolution without meat, but you should be convince me otherwise if you can show me how it can arise naturally after big bang.
It's a discussion of reality stemming from an inspirational fiction. The whoosh apply to you.
kjs3 20 hours ago [-]
Seriously...don't read any other science fiction stories. The things they write about that we can't indulge you by proving how they could possibly happen will make your head explode.
Edit: spelling
jounker 1 days ago [-]
I think the point is that the story’s universe is populated by intelligent life forms that did not evolve from any lineage of meat. Hence the reference at the end to the hydrogen cluster.
kelnos 17 hours ago [-]
The race of meat people are humans, though. So it's our universe.
justonceokay 1 days ago [-]
It’s called fiction for a reason. Glad you’ve risen above that nonsense!
I personally hate that it implies there are faster ways to travel than light speed. We know this to be a hard limit in the physics of our universe and it rubs me the wrong way when SF writers just glaze over reality. Not to mention hydrogen life forms, what’s that about!?
psd1 6 hours ago [-]
I can relate. However. The unspoken rider is "...according to our current understanding". I don't think you have the footing to constrain the future to only what we understand today, especially since we can't reconcile our two most fundamental theories. I don't think you can do that even if you could explain quantum entanglement in terms of relativity.
On a separate note, science fiction isn't generally about science, imo, it's about human politics (Greg Egan being an outlier). The cod-science gives colour and setting. If you read it as stories about humanity, maybe the charlatanry won't irk you so much. I find this mindset helps me deal with my own irascibility.
jounker 1 days ago [-]
You seem to be lacking in imagination.
zamadatix 1 days ago [-]
I think they are abound in sarcasm :).
squigz 19 hours ago [-]
Things like star and galaxy formation/interactions are (relatively) straightforward, with fairly simple processes/mechanics at the heart of it. It's easier to predict on such a large-scale what's going to happen.
Things are far more complex on a biological level, which makes it harder to make generalized predictions. I see no reason to infer that life would only consistently evolve into organic life as we know it.
IncreasePosts 1 days ago [-]
Why would it's predecessors need to be meat, besides for you own absence of imagination
DamnInteresting 1 days ago [-]
I love this short story, it's one whose memory visits me unbidden from time to time. I blogged about it over 20 years ago[1], and it was already around 15 years old at that time. OMNI magazine was great.
Somehow this story isn't as fun today as it was when first printed ...
globular-toast 14 hours ago [-]
Was it ever "fun"? I always found it scary and depressing, in a good way, of course.
timonoko 11 hours ago [-]
Why is "They Were Made Out Of Meat" Hacker News favourite, but "Bordered in Black" is always flagged?
Gemini:
In short, "They're Made Out of Meat" makes people feel smart and curious, while "Bordered in Black" makes people feel uncomfortable and argumentative—and on Hacker News, "uncomfortable and argumentative" is a fast track to being flagged.
dooglius 3 hours ago [-]
Do you have an example of it being flagged? I only see one old post from 7 years ago (not flagged), and that links to a scribd pdf rather than the author's website
zamadatix 9 hours ago [-]
Asking Gemini with the titles swapped will give you an equally confident story and reasoning about why "Bordered in Black" is actually preferred. This, and more, is why we're interested in what you have to say about the stories instead of what the LLM has to say.
What makes you a big fan of the story/reminded you of it here? I just gave it a re-read and thought it was alright. Not my favorite work of his... but certainly not bad either. Perhaps I've just read too many Sci-Fi stories to be properly shocked by the theme given the relatively short time to be immersed in the setting :).
timonoko 8 hours ago [-]
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oersted 22 hours ago [-]
If you liked this check out 365tomorrows.com, they one such scifi story for each day of the year on rotation, quite similar in style, wit and length.
It’s a great daily snack, the constraints of Flash Fiction yield quite lean and punchy stuff.
> It was incredible man. Mold on a rock that got to think. Ha, it was amazing while it lasted
nasretdinov 1 days ago [-]
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 :)
indoordin0saur 1 days ago [-]
The 2nm claim is all marketing. The smallest features on these gates is much larger. For example, the gate pitch (what this measure used to refer to) on the 2nm process is actually 45 nanometers.
outworlder 16 hours ago [-]
Neurons are insanely more complex, even if you disregard their electrical signaling entirely.
Theodores 1 days ago [-]
Nature's machines, for example, for reproducing DNA or for photosynthesis, are in a totally different league of 'precision engineering' to anything that our brightest engineers have ever created.
At times we get all giddy because we have invented a quartz clock, a wheel, a straight line or a calculator that seems to be better than anything in the world of nature, however, we sometimes have to overlook nature or forget to question why nature didn't evolve such things. With the clock, every cell in our body has some 'timing circuitry' tied into day/night cycles, seasons and much else. We just insist on doing it our way and proclaiming it better.
psd1 6 hours ago [-]
Counterpoint: biology looks like vibe-coding. I would hate to have nature as a colleague, she's an arrogant fool with a mail-order degree. I'd rather maintain a Jeep than a knee.
Is including an iFrame to Terry Bison's website reprinting?
Finnucane 1 days ago [-]
I still remember seeing Terry do a reading of this at Lunacon, I think, shortly after it was published. It was a good reading, he really knew how to land a joke.
analog8374 1 days ago [-]
So, Link, it's all very straightforward and scientific if you just think about it carefully for a moment : we're made out of pixels.
I do wonder sometimes if someone out there is waiting for something actually intelligent to emerge down here.
rob74 1 days ago [-]
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...
Izkata 21 hours ago [-]
I like the idea we live inside the Veil of Madness (A sort of galactic bermuda triangle that drives inhabitants insane, so all spacefaring civilizations stay away).
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".
FarmerPotato 14 hours ago [-]
Think if the metazoans had written down their reproductive anxieties.
the_af 1 days ago [-]
I upvoted because I didn't know the short film existed and it's interesting.
I think the short film completely misses the mark if both entities are there in human form, in a diner. (Of course, budget constraints, and the adaptation cannot just be two inorganic beings talking, but still...)
ohnoNotAgain321 1 days ago [-]
see also Stanisław Lem
takahitoyoneda 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
asah 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
supriyo-biswas 1 days ago [-]
I'm sure this account has been compromised (or this was the posters plan all along) and they're posting spam links now.
dooglius 4 hours ago [-]
The link appears to be as described and is not spam
prvc 1 days ago [-]
The concept of "meat" presupposes the existence of carnivores, so it's hard to see how the realization in the story could ever have been surprising.
mihaic 1 days ago [-]
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.
jvuygbbkuurx 1 days ago [-]
I think that is what makes it great, because it makes it sound absurd.
If it was just talking about carbon based lifeforms it wouldn't land the same way.
post-it 1 days ago [-]
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 through a meat stage.”
> “Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”
glenstein 1 days ago [-]
I get your point but I don't think that those quotes establish familiarity with meat based animals. Familiarity with animals would be something like "yeah, sure, we know about that planet with cows but this is something else entirely!" (Also humans wouldn't be so surprising if they knew about things like cows).
Their references are not to creatures that are meat through-and-through but fictional alien races that have a kind of incidental relationship to meat that doesn't establish meat-based cognition as normal the way that animals would.
FarmerPotato 14 hours ago [-]
You have to read the story in the original eshidilii.
It just sounds so illogical in English.
whycome 1 days ago [-]
Maybe it’s lab grown in a future and not tied to animals in any way. Just for food.
globular-toast 14 hours ago [-]
The characters aren't speaking English. We are reading the author's translation into English and we have to trust the author's judgement.
Maybe this kind of thing isn't for you if the above is required explanation, though.
indoordin0saur 1 days ago [-]
I think this story is tacky and doesn't really make sense. Do they already know what meat is? And if so, why do they act surprised when they find that lifeforms are "made" of it? Why even do they have an opinion on "meat"?
I find it good for a chuckle perhaps but there's nothing profound in here.
jhbadger 1 days ago [-]
It has something to say if you compare it to the traditional arguments against the possibility of AI like Searle's terrible "Chinese Room" analogy - the point is arguing that computers can't possibly think because they are "just machines following programming" is a lot like these mechanical aliens believing that the idea of thinking meat is absurd.
indoordin0saur 5 hours ago [-]
I think you completely missed the point about the Chinese Room. The assertion wasn't that machines can't think or compute, but that they don't necessarily have any experience of the thing they are computing. We still have not the faintest idea where consciousness comes from and the Chinese Room thought experiment I think demonstrates this.
ryeights 1 hours ago [-]
The original formulation of Chinese Room deals with ‘understanding’. One supposes that understanding implies some form of subjective experience. I take OP’s use of ‘think’ to refer to an equivalent concept
mpalmer 1 days ago [-]
This does what the best speculative fiction does, attempts to stretch and expand your understanding of the real world by presenting a provocative fictional reality.
The author is trying to get you to speculate on the kind of intelligence that would say this about humans.
the_af 1 days ago [-]
> Do they already know what meat is?
Yes, they do:
> "“Maybe they’re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”"
What they cannot fathom is a sentient lifeform that achieves things but lives their entire lives as meat-based things, flapping their meat mouth parts to make disgusting meat sounds at each other. And I think they really never thought much about human reproduction!
mortenjorck 1 days ago [-]
As I’ve gotten older, it’s become increasingly hard for me to understand how anyone can read such comical reductionism as enlightenment.
We are infinitely complex arrangements of systems built upon systems, from the quantum properties of carbon atoms up through the proteins that make the “meat” we are so glibly reduced to, through the complexities and adaptations of mammalian bodies, up to the fearsome order of the human brain and the intricate sprawl of human society and culture.
To reduce us to anything less is to deny the awesomeness of the cosmos itself.
tantalor 1 days ago [-]
I don't know where you get the claims from "anyone" about "enlightenment".
This story is obviously satire. Meaning, it is a lie that tells the truth.
1 days ago [-]
indoordin0saur 1 days ago [-]
> This story is obviously satire.
Is it though? What is it satirizing? Is it satirizing the idea of water and carbon based life? How does that tell any truth?
glenstein 1 days ago [-]
It's a good question, because I would say it's mostly not satire. It's kind of making fun of the perspective of thinking meat is unimpressive, but that's not exactly a view held by anyone except in the fiction of the story. I think toward the very very end tonally it veers close to a satirical vibe but it's hard to put a finger on what about it counts as satire strictly speaking.
I think basically the humor is how unimpressed they are with a Sagan-style sense of wonder at the cosmos that is implicitly treated as the human perspective, how bleak it would be if true. The aliens ridiculing that is funny, and the actual bleakness of it is funny too.
the_af 1 days ago [-]
> What is it satirizing?
I think it's (partly) satirizing how we feel about ourselves as the apex beings, and as explorers of the cosmos and colonizers. What if we are actually quite subpar, and the actual apex beings in the universe find us so unlikely and disgusting that they prefer to pretend they are not there, thus giving an answer to Fermi's Paradox? They don't want to conquer us, they don't want to have anything to do with us!
But of course, it's also satirizing this alien-as-a-bug idea, so common of early scifi, that the alien is a disgusting mess of antennae or simly appendages. What if we were disgusting to enlightened aliens?
What we can absolutely be sure of is that Bisson wasn't making fun of meat or the human brain, the thought that apparently irked the topmost commenter.
YurgenJurgensen 21 hours ago [-]
I thought it was satirising faux-intellectual SF short stories that try to seem deeper than they are. If it’s just an actual faux-intellectual SF short story, that’s much less interesting.
On this planet, we’ve found that basically anything can be used to perform computation, electronics (semiconductors, vacuum tubes), mechanics (linkages, gears, cams, steel balls) , pneumatics, photonics, electromechanics, electrochemistry, optoelectronics, chemistry, phonons, hydraulics, even collectible card games. Donald Trump has said many dumb things, but he was right when he said “everything is computer”.
And almost anything has been used to transfer information. Light (fire, smoke, electricity, heated wires, coloured flags, mirrors, lasers, bioluminescence, LEDs, discharge tubes, electric arcs), sound (vibrating strings, membranes, tubes of air in hundreds of configurations, explosives, blunt objects), chemistry, electricity, electromagnetic radiation, waving body parts around, burning pieces of dead tree to make coloured marks on squished pieces of dead tree, magnetism, scratching into rocks, circles of aluminium with tiny holes in them embedded in plastic, transistors, circles of vinyl with wavy grooves cut in them, pieces of paper with tiny holes punched in them, rockets, flares.
So the notion that any advanced spacefaring civilisation would be astonished by any form of creature or communication method given how much variety there is on this one planet is hard to entertain, even as satire.
the_af 20 hours ago [-]
> I thought it was satirising faux-intellectual SF short stories that try to seem deeper than they are. If it’s just an actual faux-intellectual SF short story, that’s much less interesting.
I think it's neither. It's a humorous scifi story. Bisson had a sense of humor (much like, say, Asimov also had one and wrote many humorous stories that you'd best not overanalyze!).
> So the notion that any advanced spacefaring civilisation would be astonished by any form of creature or communication method given how much variety there is on this one planet is hard to entertain, even as satire.
It may be hard to entertain, but the trope this is riffing on was very well established in scifi. Many people still think in terms of mankind exploring and conquering new frontiers, space included.
You're overanalyzing this. It's satire, a joke story.
RajT88 1 days ago [-]
Rainier Wolfcastle: THAT'S THE JOKE
0x3f 1 days ago [-]
Part of the human expression of disgust includes thought terminating cliches. Imagine how the average person would talk about a race of bug-like aliens, no matter how advanced they were. It would be a dismissive kind of 'ew, gross'. The humor is in seeing other beings reacting that way to us. I don't think it's supposed to imply the aliens are some kind of flawless geniuses revealing the true nature of human beings.
zulux 1 days ago [-]
Sentient plants that move quickly would be another case of us humans going "WTF?!?!"
indoordin0saur 1 days ago [-]
"They're made out of wires!"
"Oh god, you're right! They're all just tiny pieces of rubber and silicon, transistors and circuits all crammed chaotically together! How horrifying!"
lucianbr 1 days ago [-]
How many of the billions of people alive have your perspective? How many of our leaders even, given the news in the last... let's say two weeks. But you can look at thousands of years of history and to me it still seems that people and their leaders don't share your view of "infinitely complex arrangements". I mean they might think such of themselves, but of "others", obviously not.
The story mentions some "official rules". Consider that we also have official rules and behaviour that does not obey them.
I dare suggest your own view might be reductionist.
glenstein 1 days ago [-]
I feel like the point of the story was that it was celebrating how spectacular the brain is, by showing how unlikely it would seem, and how incredulous another intelligent creature could be upon hearing of it if it weren't already built into their sense of normal.
It might be that this alternative cosmic sense of "normal" is not a real thing (meat may prove to be more cosmically normal than machine at the end of the day), but the sense of wonder in response to something as ridiculous as a brain, in its capabilities and its design, is a real feeling that the story is appropriately trying to evoke.
the_af 1 days ago [-]
> As I’ve gotten older, it’s become increasingly hard for me to understand how anyone can read such comical reductionism as enlightenment.
First, it's a humorous piece.
Second, it's as much a critique of the aliens as of the humans. The aliens are also depicted as clueless about what makes human life interesting, and even shown to be petty in the end. Their behavior is entirely "human", so if they are criticizing humans for it...
BearOso 1 days ago [-]
> To reduce us to anything less is to deny the awesomeness of the cosmos itself.
Teacher: "Photosynthesis makes energy from water, CO2 and light. The mitochondria are the power centers of the cell."
Grade-schooler: "How do they work?"
Teacher: "Um. Um..."
Modern scientist: "Quantum entanglement and tunneling. We don't really understand any of it."
kelnos 17 hours ago [-]
You must be fun at parties.
It's comedy. You might not find it funny, but it's rather small-minded to suggest that no one else could find it funny.
empath75 1 days ago [-]
Do you feel the same about cows and pigs and chickens? One way to read this is your reading. Another way to read it is as an attempt to make you question the concept of meat.
draw_down 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
AntiDyatlov 1 days ago [-]
Well, actually, probably not. If you say we're made out of meat, you end up with the hard problem of consciousness.
I'm imagining a purple cube in this moment. Is the purple cube made out of meat?
otikik 1 days ago [-]
Of course not.
If you put two stones in the ground, they define a line. It goes through the center of mass of both stones and extends towards both sides through the universe.
Now remove the stones.
Does the line stop existing? You can still "see it" in your brain. It could be argued that the line has always been there. That the stones were just a marker. A means for an idea to manifest in the physical word. You could put any two other markers at any point on that line and they would represent the same line.
The idea that "the cube is made out of meat" is akin to saying that "the line is made out of stone". Ideas always exist, their representation in the physical world don't.
Your sense of consciousness is just one of those representations. It is "immortal", just like the line is. In principle it could exist without the physical substrate that is your brain, or in a different substrate. Probably there's a way to encode all of that into a big number.
I think this is where the idea of an "immortal soul" comes from. It is however kind of easy to misinterpret it, especially if one is a mesopotamian sheperd who explains the world with gods and religion.
rokkamokka 1 days ago [-]
It's electrical signals... Inside your meat
AntiDyatlov 1 days ago [-]
So the power grid is having experiences? Computers too?
glenstein 1 days ago [-]
This is the funniest possible place attempt to open a hard problem of consciousness conversation, but also fitting because it makes it as ridiculous as I feel it actually is.
On another level even this clarification kind of misses the mark because many/most versions of the HPOC still treat physical substrate as a necessary condition, just not a sufficient one, sometimes will appeal to radio receivers, or the mental and physical being two aspects of the same underlying thing (sometimes called neutral monism). I personally think that view is mistaken and deeply confused, but even so, it's a view that ties consciousness to the substrate of "thinking meat" without reducing it, and would probably be a moot point from the aliens perspective.
pixl97 1 days ago [-]
Where does the simulation happen inside a computer.
The hard problem of consciousness isn't.
Rendered at 20:30:58 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://reactormag.com/the-star-bear-michael-swanwick/
(For those who don't know, there's a place in the game where, with a moderate amount of luck, you can trigger an item that transforms you into a bear, which changes your stats and available equipment, and you remain that way for the entire rest of the dungeon)
If I may be so bold, this story would have sucked when I was younger, but now that I've been acquainted with the ages of all the characters, it makes sense.
To them, they're just disguised as "what the creatures on this planet look like," which is obviously (to them) not meat, because they've never seen meat beings. To them, we are obviously not-meat, although how we appear is compatible with being meat. But silicone dyed the correct shade can look like meat. Stone painted the right color can look like meat.
And if you say that silicone and stone don't look like meat even when prepared to copy it, bear in mind that we are made of meat and very good at distinguishing it. Different races favor different attributes for distinguishing one person from another, hence why "they all look alike" is somewhat true for pretty much any "them" you care to name. Rocky from Project Hail Mary almost certainly thinks all humans look alike.
The two talking, and other races, are machines that cover themselves however they like. These two are machines with artificial skins. That is normal. Fully meat beings are not. At least that is how I always read this story.
Perhaps the makers of the movie neglected to read the story before creating a script?
Like a sibling comment mentions, they talk about "meat sounds"... using meat sounds! Why would they find it surprising if that's how they are communicating in the short film? They are not depicted as communicating via telepathy or whatever.
(Yes, I understand the limitations of low budget shorts. But it doesn't mean it has to work...)
I'd imagine British spies in WWII sometimes wore swastikas to blend in?
They infiltrating to investigate. It needn't be an endorsement of the practice.
British spies in WWII wouldn't do that if the entire concept of what a swastika was baffled them. You have to understand at least basically what the thing you're looking at is in order to use it as a symbol.
If you have _no_ concept of people being made out of meat being possible, you don't dress up as people made out of meat. You do that if it's a common concept to you and you're trying to fit in.
The concept of meat isn’t foreign. Meat that’s sentient and has no cybernetic parts or phase is.
And they do say they’ve studied and probed for several human lifetimes.
Only one of them has. The other is entirely surprised by the whole concept, and wouldn't even entertain disguising itself as something it has never considered and in fact it's being convinced during the story it even exists.
It's important for the story to work that one of the beings is entirely unconvinced and has to be told, as they discuss the matter, that this is an actual thing!
He’s dressed like someone told “hey you have to try to blend in” and didn’t really know how.
> He’s dressed like someone told “hey you have to try to blend in” and didn’t really know how.
Blend with what? It (the alien) didn't believe these "meat" sentient beings existed when the story starts! It had to be told during the conversation. It thought there must have been machines somewhere who were the real sentient beings. How can anyone attempt to blend in with something one doesn't believe exists?
I understand the adaptation changes this, because there's no other way of working with human actors and also staying within budget. I understand the decision; I'm just saying it misses the mark and makes the story way less funny.
The way I envision this story is a couple of aliens, much like the scenes with the Simpsons aliens, hovering in a spaceship near Earth, discussing humans, with only one of them having actually seen a human. It doesn't work if both have seen them.
All in my opinion, of course, taste and sense of humor are completely subjective.
And, ofc, in-drama logic; the beings (of silicon or whatever) are/were blending in with humans to study them.
In the story, there's little doubt these are aliens (though their physical form, if they have any, is never described). If there's any doubt, it's about what they are talking about -- but this is dispelled pretty soon too.
I think the real reason is simply budget.
I can understand the limitations of working around budget, and constraints sometimes spark some inventive storytelling, like in the pretty cool "The Booth at the End", which has a very similar minimalistic setting in a diner! In fact, this short somewhat reminded me of that much better show.
(If you haven't watched "The Booth at the End", I strongly encourage you to do so... it used to be free online ages ago, not sure now).
I didn't hate it, and I always appreciate the charm of low budget productions. I'm just saying this particular adaptation doesn't work for me, and trying to explain why.
One low budget feature-length film about aliens I quite liked (though it obviously has a higher budget, and of course its own set of flaws; and to be clear I'm not arguing both productions are in the same ballpark!) is "The Vast of Night" [1]. I quite liked the actors and the directorial choices.
---
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6803046/
* This is a virtual environment and the "meat actors" are depicting avatars of virtual/not-meat entities inhabiting that world. That's why there's inconsistencies with real life, for example the red guy's clothes. This was what I thought when I first saw this short.
* This was really an exchange of concepts and data in a language not really suitable for humans to understand. So what you are seeing is not what actually took place, but a translation. Some machine took the abstract data interchange and translated it to what it thought would be more appropriate for a meat head to understand, including setting it up in an environment that would make sense to a human. But it made some mistakes (the clothes, the weird behavior of some characters). This could have predicted AI Video slop, in a way.
I get the constraints of short indie films, I love them regardless, but in this particular case it completely misses the mark.
It doesn't match my idea that these are two energy/mechanical beings discussing a faraway planet from their spaceship or whatever, talking theory without actually seeing the beings they are discussing.
More seriously, what you describe is partly the short story. The short film adaptation doesn't quite work for me, for the reasons I explained in other comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Noonan
I'm also a big fan. He's awesome in a bunch of things, but my favourite is Cain in Robocop 2. Such a great performance.
"Jesus had days like this. Hounded and attacked like a criminal. But like him, I don't blame you. They program you, and you do it"
"Frank. The Benzedrine's got my teeth wiggling. Cut it... Scopalomine, five mills per"
I think it highlights why the original text was uniquely brilliant and why it makes it reliably makes it to the top of HN every year or so.
Also, funny to see Ben Bailey outside of a taxi cab.
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 Ocean, a mind (or non-mind?) we cannot relate to anything else. Or WAU from SOMA.
They're ridiculously smart and dexterous.
When I was a ranger I'd tell tourists to think of them as "monkeys who can fly... ...you're laughing, but I'm serious".
Their upper and lower beaks can move independently like a human's thumb and forefinger, unlike nearly all other birds, and they can also use their beaks like scissors, or to undo screws - that last one is very true, I'm not making it up, their upper beak makes for an effective flathead.
They share knowledge like corvids do, once one kea learns that the self closing door on your shop closes slowly enough, after a human enters, to give them time to get in, steal a chocolate bar and get out, there'll be five more trying it tomorrow.
They can undo zips on your backpack and then undo the latches on your lunchbox to steal your sandwiches, or they'll untie your bootlaces (yep they can undo knots) and remove them from your boots, or remove your tent pegs, or maybe cut your guylines, all of this just for fun.
There was a gang that would deploy one of their number at a viewing platform to act very engagingly and oh so photogenic to distract the tourists while its mates quietly stole interesting things from the hand bags, backpacks,and, if you left the door open, cars(!) of the tourists who were focused on the photogenic decoy putting on a show.
They had a bit of a penchant for passports during my time. Most of which were last seen being dropped into a deep and dangerous mountain ravine by a parrot that then let out a mocking laugh.
There used to be a gang of juvenile males that would deflate tyres at the local public toilets to prove they were tough - because the noise depressing a tyre valve made was scary, so the longer you pressed it, the tighter tougher you were, while your mates egged you on.
They also have distinct and recognisable facial expressions they use to indicate their emotions.
They've been taught to speak in the past - but the fact that they can survive, and indeed, they thrive, in the harshest environment in New Zealand is far more indicative of their intelligence than any Polly Wanna A Cracker would ever be.
By this logic, aren't extremophiles the most intelligent beings? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469761
I found this short story very moving. Of course, it's designed on purpose for this. But Chiang is usually so cerebral it caught me by surprise.
They're Made Out of Meat (1991) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43994603 - May 2025 (3 comments)
They're Made Out of Meat (1991) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38420111 - Nov 2023 (168 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=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)
It's a longstanding convention to do this, and the audience appreciates it. Not sure why anyone would take issue with it.
It's a gathering of information so that people can get more comments.
Does this ring a bell for anyone?
https://www.contecurte.eu/2019/05/ecumene-silly-asses/
Somebody recently recounted that they had been a convention of people who been 'abducted' by aliens. They commented that "Aliens certainly have a type".
Consciousness might have actually started today at 7am and, before that, we were all automatons without subjective experience of the world, just going through the motions.
You might say that's impossible, because yesterday you were conscious and you know that, but you can't prove it to anyone.
Epistemologically, this is not a problem that can be solved with "give it time".
* Extended: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/blogs/blog/i-hate-dragons-e...
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 sense. Maybe different RNA building blocks and genetic chemistry, but probably work out similar to meat and organic stuff.
That does not follow at all. It's _likely_ that life elsewhere would be carbon-based since carbon is so useful and common. It is not a requirement. Silicon has been proposed as a replacement. While not as flexible as carbon, it's pretty close. Silicon-based lifeforms wouldn't be "organic" at all. Even if we just stick to carbon, there are many organic compounds (and lifeforms) that aren't anything close to what we would consider 'meat'.
We are working with N=1. Until we find more lifeforms elsewhere, we can't assume anything beyond basic physics and chemistry. RNA isn't a given. A lifeforms probably needs something that will pass along instructions to their offspring (in whatever form they take). It doesn't have to be RNA.
For a fictional description of a lifeforms that doesn't have RNA, DNA or anything remotely similar, I like to point out Blindsight, by Peter Watts. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
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.
It's a discussion of reality stemming from an inspirational fiction. The whoosh apply to you.
Edit: spelling
I personally hate that it implies there are faster ways to travel than light speed. We know this to be a hard limit in the physics of our universe and it rubs me the wrong way when SF writers just glaze over reality. Not to mention hydrogen life forms, what’s that about!?
On a separate note, science fiction isn't generally about science, imo, it's about human politics (Greg Egan being an outlier). The cod-science gives colour and setting. If you read it as stories about humanity, maybe the charlatanry won't irk you so much. I find this mindset helps me deal with my own irascibility.
Things are far more complex on a biological level, which makes it harder to make generalized predictions. I see no reason to infer that life would only consistently evolve into organic life as we know it.
[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/retired/short-fiction-made-o...
Gemini: In short, "They're Made Out of Meat" makes people feel smart and curious, while "Bordered in Black" makes people feel uncomfortable and argumentative—and on Hacker News, "uncomfortable and argumentative" is a fast track to being flagged.
What makes you a big fan of the story/reminded you of it here? I just gave it a re-read and thought it was alright. Not my favorite work of his... but certainly not bad either. Perhaps I've just read too many Sci-Fi stories to be properly shocked by the theme given the relatively short time to be immersed in the setting :).
It’s a great daily snack, the constraints of Flash Fiction yield quite lean and punchy stuff.
At times we get all giddy because we have invented a quartz clock, a wheel, a straight line or a calculator that seems to be better than anything in the world of nature, however, we sometimes have to overlook nature or forget to question why nature didn't evolve such things. With the clock, every cell in our body has some 'timing circuitry' tied into day/night cycles, seasons and much else. We just insist on doing it our way and proclaiming it better.
I do wonder sometimes if someone out there is waiting for something actually intelligent to emerge down here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/8vbfgk/the_veil_of_mad...
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 think the short film completely misses the mark if both entities are there in human form, in a diner. (Of course, budget constraints, and the adaptation cannot just be two inorganic beings talking, but still...)
If it was just talking about carbon based lifeforms it wouldn't land the same way.
> “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 through a meat stage.”
> “Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”
Their references are not to creatures that are meat through-and-through but fictional alien races that have a kind of incidental relationship to meat that doesn't establish meat-based cognition as normal the way that animals would.
Maybe this kind of thing isn't for you if the above is required explanation, though.
I find it good for a chuckle perhaps but there's nothing profound in here.
The author is trying to get you to speculate on the kind of intelligence that would say this about humans.
Yes, they do:
> "“Maybe they’re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”"
What they cannot fathom is a sentient lifeform that achieves things but lives their entire lives as meat-based things, flapping their meat mouth parts to make disgusting meat sounds at each other. And I think they really never thought much about human reproduction!
We are infinitely complex arrangements of systems built upon systems, from the quantum properties of carbon atoms up through the proteins that make the “meat” we are so glibly reduced to, through the complexities and adaptations of mammalian bodies, up to the fearsome order of the human brain and the intricate sprawl of human society and culture.
To reduce us to anything less is to deny the awesomeness of the cosmos itself.
This story is obviously satire. Meaning, it is a lie that tells the truth.
Is it though? What is it satirizing? Is it satirizing the idea of water and carbon based life? How does that tell any truth?
I think basically the humor is how unimpressed they are with a Sagan-style sense of wonder at the cosmos that is implicitly treated as the human perspective, how bleak it would be if true. The aliens ridiculing that is funny, and the actual bleakness of it is funny too.
I think it's (partly) satirizing how we feel about ourselves as the apex beings, and as explorers of the cosmos and colonizers. What if we are actually quite subpar, and the actual apex beings in the universe find us so unlikely and disgusting that they prefer to pretend they are not there, thus giving an answer to Fermi's Paradox? They don't want to conquer us, they don't want to have anything to do with us!
But of course, it's also satirizing this alien-as-a-bug idea, so common of early scifi, that the alien is a disgusting mess of antennae or simly appendages. What if we were disgusting to enlightened aliens?
What we can absolutely be sure of is that Bisson wasn't making fun of meat or the human brain, the thought that apparently irked the topmost commenter.
On this planet, we’ve found that basically anything can be used to perform computation, electronics (semiconductors, vacuum tubes), mechanics (linkages, gears, cams, steel balls) , pneumatics, photonics, electromechanics, electrochemistry, optoelectronics, chemistry, phonons, hydraulics, even collectible card games. Donald Trump has said many dumb things, but he was right when he said “everything is computer”.
And almost anything has been used to transfer information. Light (fire, smoke, electricity, heated wires, coloured flags, mirrors, lasers, bioluminescence, LEDs, discharge tubes, electric arcs), sound (vibrating strings, membranes, tubes of air in hundreds of configurations, explosives, blunt objects), chemistry, electricity, electromagnetic radiation, waving body parts around, burning pieces of dead tree to make coloured marks on squished pieces of dead tree, magnetism, scratching into rocks, circles of aluminium with tiny holes in them embedded in plastic, transistors, circles of vinyl with wavy grooves cut in them, pieces of paper with tiny holes punched in them, rockets, flares.
So the notion that any advanced spacefaring civilisation would be astonished by any form of creature or communication method given how much variety there is on this one planet is hard to entertain, even as satire.
I think it's neither. It's a humorous scifi story. Bisson had a sense of humor (much like, say, Asimov also had one and wrote many humorous stories that you'd best not overanalyze!).
> So the notion that any advanced spacefaring civilisation would be astonished by any form of creature or communication method given how much variety there is on this one planet is hard to entertain, even as satire.
It may be hard to entertain, but the trope this is riffing on was very well established in scifi. Many people still think in terms of mankind exploring and conquering new frontiers, space included.
You're overanalyzing this. It's satire, a joke story.
"Oh god, you're right! They're all just tiny pieces of rubber and silicon, transistors and circuits all crammed chaotically together! How horrifying!"
The story mentions some "official rules". Consider that we also have official rules and behaviour that does not obey them.
I dare suggest your own view might be reductionist.
It might be that this alternative cosmic sense of "normal" is not a real thing (meat may prove to be more cosmically normal than machine at the end of the day), but the sense of wonder in response to something as ridiculous as a brain, in its capabilities and its design, is a real feeling that the story is appropriately trying to evoke.
First, it's a humorous piece.
Second, it's as much a critique of the aliens as of the humans. The aliens are also depicted as clueless about what makes human life interesting, and even shown to be petty in the end. Their behavior is entirely "human", so if they are criticizing humans for it...
Teacher: "Photosynthesis makes energy from water, CO2 and light. The mitochondria are the power centers of the cell."
Grade-schooler: "How do they work?"
Teacher: "Um. Um..."
Modern scientist: "Quantum entanglement and tunneling. We don't really understand any of it."
It's comedy. You might not find it funny, but it's rather small-minded to suggest that no one else could find it funny.
I'm imagining a purple cube in this moment. Is the purple cube made out of meat?
If you put two stones in the ground, they define a line. It goes through the center of mass of both stones and extends towards both sides through the universe.
Now remove the stones.
Does the line stop existing? You can still "see it" in your brain. It could be argued that the line has always been there. That the stones were just a marker. A means for an idea to manifest in the physical word. You could put any two other markers at any point on that line and they would represent the same line.
The idea that "the cube is made out of meat" is akin to saying that "the line is made out of stone". Ideas always exist, their representation in the physical world don't.
Your sense of consciousness is just one of those representations. It is "immortal", just like the line is. In principle it could exist without the physical substrate that is your brain, or in a different substrate. Probably there's a way to encode all of that into a big number.
I think this is where the idea of an "immortal soul" comes from. It is however kind of easy to misinterpret it, especially if one is a mesopotamian sheperd who explains the world with gods and religion.
On another level even this clarification kind of misses the mark because many/most versions of the HPOC still treat physical substrate as a necessary condition, just not a sufficient one, sometimes will appeal to radio receivers, or the mental and physical being two aspects of the same underlying thing (sometimes called neutral monism). I personally think that view is mistaken and deeply confused, but even so, it's a view that ties consciousness to the substrate of "thinking meat" without reducing it, and would probably be a moot point from the aliens perspective.
The hard problem of consciousness isn't.