Re: Fourth Story

On 6/24/2025 10:41 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:

   (Spoiler after the next paragraph)
    So, I really was not all that into the fourth story. -
   When I read something, I want to be caught off guard a bit,
   but here the main idea just felt way too obvious to actually be
   interesting. And even though the story is maybe ten years old,
   it just happens to be weirdly relevant again right now.
           *  *  *   S p o i l e r   *  *  *
    Two alien computers head to Earth, looking for intelligent life.
   Even though there are clear signs that the locals (humans) are
   intelligent, the computers do not count them as intelligent beings
   since they are based on protoplasm. So, the ship just keeps moving.
    The supposed "argument" of "How can something be intelligent if
   it just strings together the most likely word every time?" is
   just flipped around here: "How can something be intelligent if
   it is based on protoplasm?". But honestly, that reversal is just
   too on the nose and bland for me to really care.
    Since the whole story, unless I missed something, pretty
   much just leans on that one idea, it is well-meaning on the
   teaching side (and it throws in some Turing test stuff on the
   side), but it does not really teach you much, unless maybe
   you have never come across this kind of thing before.

This sounds an awful lot like "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry
Bisson.
It was made into an excellent 7 minute short film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg
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