1.2M views · Mar 20, 2013 · 6:16 · 1 HN recommender · 9 mentions · discussed 2014–2023
A short film adaptation of Terry Bisson's story 'They're Made Out of Meat', in which alien explorers discuss with disbelief that humans are sentient beings made of meat. It won a grand prize at the 2006 SIFF short film festival.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN commenters recommend it as a well-made version of the story and quote it jokingly whenever discussions touch on biology versus machine intelligence.
“The short-film adaptation of this was very well done.”HN comment, 2014
“The short-film adaptation of this was very well done.”
Well-done short film adaptation with Lynch-influenced directing.
this video The short-film adaptation of this was very well done. The David Lynch-influenced directing style worked well.
“People are made out of meat, and we communicate by flapping peices of meat”
This analysis of poetry is like declaring that the purpose of physics is to build perpetual motion machines and then saying we all dislike physics because it fails in this transcendent purpose. The author trots out uncritically the entire corpus of Romantic twaddle, swathed in sufficient technical language that most poeple will feel too intimidated to challenge it. But twaddle it is. The failure of poetry in the modern world is a result of the rejection of concrete experience as the foundational matter of poems. This has been accompanied by the abandonment of the physical rhythmicities of speech (including rhyme) as the basis of poetic structure. There's nothing transcendent about good poetry. People are made out of meat, and we communicate by flapping peices of meat: this video Poetry reflects our meat-based lives, the physicality of our meat. When we abandon that, when we abandon concrete, sensual experience for floating abstraction, as the Romantics did, or for purely internal emotional states as modern confessional free verse does, we abandon the very thing that makes poetry possible and necessary: meat. Poetry is speech, specifically speech where the rhythmical structure dominates the gramatical structure. The rhythmical structure can be strong and overt (rap, Kipling, etc) or subtle (even the best confessional free verse manages this at times, or the L A N G U A G E poets at their most surreal, although I don't have any use for their political programme.) The rhythmical st
“reminds me of the short story They're Made out of Meat [0] (and a version on youtube [1]).”
Short story reminded by AI discussion; video version.
A universe of what we perceive as AI, reminds me of the short story They're Made out of Meat [0] (and a version on youtube [1]). [0] link [1] this video
“the Stephen O'Regan film adaptation [1] someone else already posted here won the 2006 Grand Prize at the SIFF Science Fiction Short Film Festival [2].”
Film adaptation won a 2006 festival grand prize.
> I'll grant that it's not going to win any awards... For what it's worth it was one of six nominations for Best Short Story in the 1991 Nebula awards [0] and the Stephen O'Regan film adaptation [1] someone else already posted here won the 2006 Grand Prize at the SIFF Science Fiction Short Film Festival [2]. [0]: link [1]: this video [2]: link
“And who decides the task is done, complete and works? The Meat does [2]”
We need another "No Silver Bullet" [1] for these modern times of ridiculous hype. Contain your ego and all these Matrices Statistical manipulations you decide to call AI...Somebody please volunteer. "OpenAI estimates that OpenAI Codex (what powers Github’s Copilot) can already complete 37% of coding tasks." And who decides the task is done, complete and works? The Meat does [2]...The Meat and nobody else. [1] "No Silver Bullet": link [2] "They're Made Out of Meat": this video
“They talk by flapping their meat at each other.”
> "They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?" > "Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat." > "I thought you just told me they used radio." > "They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat." this video
“They're made out of meat”
They're made out of meat this video By the way, I agree with you, it is unsettling to hear human beings reduced to such terms.
“we might be able to fib and convince them the meat is made out of carbon dioxide?”
So, in a possible future overhearing of two aliens discussing us being made out of meat this video we might be able to fib and convince them the meat is made out of carbon dioxide? Universe, here we come!
“We'll selectively breed humans until one can just compute it in...meat[0].”
Outside tools are not required. We'll selectively breed humans until one can just compute it in...meat[0]. this video
