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That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat.

Maybe they just don't want to meet meat.

Anyhow, by what the --in context multi-level silly-- men in black movie calls the "best damn investigative reporting on the planet", they're out there, they've been here, and by all accounts, that wasn't such a grand idea. Better for us they stay elsewhere. Though for purely selfish reasons I'd still love to get my hands on their tech and go zip around the universe.

I really shoulnd't post this because I like the Oracle's answer's style so much better, but I can't help but post it anyway. With apologies for the inconvenience.

What if everyone is listening

No. Because talking meat.

Meat

http://www.terrybisson.com/pag...

Your comment reminds me of THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT.

1) Sex is expensive....you are married, which is the most expensive

Unless your wife makes more than you do. What do you need money for, anyway? Cannot take it to your grave.

2) ...Include the time invested in managing one's appearance, finances, etc.,

And normally you don't need to manage either? Might save on rent as well in #1 and move into a cardboard box.

3) Sex is dangerous.

Do it with a steady GF or your legal GF. Avoid putting it in other men if you can help it.

No matter how much you get, you still want more.

Do it daily or something? Add a productive use of lunch hour?

5) Sex is gross

So is eating, pooping, and beings made of meat

6) Sex is not necessary.

it is not

friendship cures loneliness whereas romance does not

Unless your SO is also your friend, which makes the whole "research" kinda meaningless

One does not need any puritanical/religious beliefs to see that it is in one's selfish best-interest to avoid sex altogether.

Completely true. And that is why we don't put it into everything that moves. However, if you go overboard with it your self-interest might come to an untimely end with nobody to take the flag -- which still is a perfectly valid choice.

Obligatory: http://www.terrybisson.com/pag...

Sending meat to the moon is not "for a greater good".

After all, who wants anything to do with people made out of meat?

They’re made out of meat.

... is made of meat.

It must also be said: They're Made Out of Meat.

http://www.terrybisson.com/pag...

Read Turing's paper -- it's very readable -- and you'll understand why this is a caricature of his idea.

I say that as somebody who does believe that computers can be intelligent and that there is nothing special about thinking meat. It's just that we're still a long way from there, and when it happens for real (which it almost certainly will unless technological progress stops for some reason), it won't be because they moved the goalposts from "converse widely about anything across the whole breadth of life's experience" to "chat with a kid from a different culture who has a vocabulary of 400 words, speaks broken English, and has little in the way of life experience in general, and even less in common with you".

There's a semi-famous SciFi story first published in a 1990 edition of OMNI magazine:

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

Quite relevant, and quite funny.

Someone also made a seven and a half minute film of the story. It has a few cute video aspects, but overall it didn't come off so well and it's missing a few lines. I definitely recommend the original text link above rather the video version, but here's the video link anyway.

-

Meat, by Terry Bisson

When they [the computers] do, I bet they don't... Because, you know -- They're Made of Meat

Mmmmmm! Bacon!

What makes you so sure the planet itself *isn't* the life form?
Obligatory reference to They're Made Out of Meat

You guys are all of the incredibly naive assumption that intelligent aliens will have anything in common with us at all, an example is Terry Bison's excellent short story They're made out of meat. (full text at the link)

A thousand years more advanced? How about ten million years more advanced? That's mine but another example of how we have no clue whatever (BTW, I'm posting the last chapter tomorrow). Ten million years is a small fraction of the thirteen billion plus the universe has existed.

The bottom line, though is that we have no idea. There's no proof, or even any indication, that Earth isn't the first planet in the galaxy and maybe even the universe (unlikely as that seems to me) to host life. Mars was once hospitable to life, as our robots have found, but there is no indication it ever started there.

Great topic for discussion, though. Personally, I think they exist or did exist or will exist, but I really doubt we'll meet them.

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

5. Why would someone want to talk to meat?

They're made out of meat

"Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

Very nice short story and almost humorous in its execution. It is mandatory to provide a link to the author's page where he has the whole story available:

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html/

They found life, just not the kind they were expecting.... http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

Like being a good host or source of protein?

I think we're flattering ourselves if we think that's what aliens would travel across the universe to suck on our delicious brain meats.

Or they would be disgusted by that.

Maybe they don't want to say "Hello".

That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat.

• Meat - This is an argument that simply defies logic....

They're made out of Meat by Terry Bisson

They have identified our signal, but the problem is that nobody wants meet meat.

From Terry Bisson - I think this short story sums it up nicely

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

"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."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

----------
You will love the ending.

Fantastic!

Much like the short story "They're made of meat" by Terry Bisson.

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

Meat is the same tissue, but terminally locked into 'deadness'

It would appear that we are all undead.

For one, if you're geeky enough to use the word in casual speech, you might well find people who freak out at such vocabulary to be tiresome, so using the term works as a kind of social self selection.

For two, read the wonderful short story, They're Made out of Meat . Choice quote:

"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."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much..."

Cheers,

He won't be interested in us; we're made of meat, after all.

Occam's Razor. The reason extraterrestrials haven't crossed interstellar distances to visit us is probably because it isn't possible to cross interstellar distances safely.

Safely for whom?

Personally, I find this scenario to be more likely.

But they're made of....meat...

Missing link augmented.

Not to forget Lem (The Cyberiad), of course.

CC.

Maybe they just think 'thinking meat' should be left alone? http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

And I'm being serious too - maybe they don't have faster than light flight; maybe their lifespan is such that they don't need it - they've plenty of time, indeed, if you were immortal, wouldn't you?

They're made out of meat!

Did you know it had been turned into a short film?
http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/made_meat/

(The guys own site : )
http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

Only if theyre made out of meat.

What if they are anti-meatists?

Why not donate your body to science?

They seem to have pretty good service - and it's free. If you want to cremate the leftover parts, they will do that, too. You can pick the ashes up for free, or have them sent to you through certified mail for only $15. (Way cheaper than your local crematorium.) Either way, someone gets some use out of your leftover meat.

Perhaps it's because we're made of meat.

Yup, that's just the kind of thinking that comes from someone Made Out Of Meat.

http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

I've often thought it would be cool if meat.com redirected to Terry Bisson's story, They're Made of Meat

People are machines. Meat-machines. Being a machine doesn't necessarily eliminate the possibility for emotion. We have emotions because we say we do. Feelings are feelings because we perceive (experience would be a better word) them as feelings. Fear and joy exhibit different physiological phenomena within the brain, yet we call them both emotion.

However, computer operations do not occur, in any way, similarly to the operations of a meat-brain. If you raise the possibility that something along the lines of emotion occurs within commonplace commodity computers,then either you're severely stretching the definition of 'emotion' to the point where it no longer resembles an emotion at all, or you're just wrong. There is no distinctly analogous operation within a PC to what happens in a human brain.

This is similar to what happens in the inevitable "If you're vegetarian, how do you know that plants don't feel pain" argument. They don't feel pain because they don't have brains. I don't think it's that ridiculous to place the requirement of a brain (let's be generous, let's say it could even be a large collection of nerve ganglia) as necessary for pain or any other type of feeling because it provides the necessary physical condition for similar function to take place. A piece of broccoli doesn't have the hardware for feeling. Nor do commodity computers.

There has been work to replicate emotion, however. And I do think it will eventually be successful in producing something with a level of complexity that allows the function of human-like emotion. The key is in the operation, not the medium. It is very likely that emotion will be simulated relatively soon. I may be wrong, but hasn't a mosquito brain already been simulated virtually?

I don't know if I'm a "self-aware mathematical entity in a mathematical universe." I very much doubt it, but it really doesn't make any difference if I am. If I discovered that my world has simply been a simulation all along, then I find out that I've been wrong about a lot of things. This, however, IMHO, does not change the function of my consciousness (though you could make the argument that one's consciousness is dependent on methods of embodiment, to an extent).

Anyhoo.
Fun Links:
http://www.cs.umu.se/kurser/TDBC12/HT99/Dennett.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brain-vat/

"They're Made Out Of Meat"

http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

I am personally surprised to find someone here on /. with such a different point of view. It is good to see that we are not as monolithic as we might seem.

However, if you agree that AI can become indistinguishable than it follows that you MUST grant them rights since there is no way to proved that any person you ever meet or have ever met is "real" - they could just be really advanced tech in a pretty package that cons you into thinking they are human. If there is no difference you can tell, what is the difference?

And for those few people who might read this and have not read the following short story:

They're made out of meat

is a classic and shorter than many /. posts.

They're made out of meat?

http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html