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"We all just meat bags." No. Can we stop with the nerd reductionist attitude so prevalent on sites like this? The majority of people don't consider human life t
by rubikscube 14y ago
"We all just meat bags."
No.
Can we stop with the nerd reductionist attitude so prevalent on sites like this? The majority of people don't consider human life to be simply "just meat bags."
Sorry for the loss of your friend.
- DanielStraight 14y agoHe/she was pointing out the fragility of our bodies, not making any sort of value judgment.
- gknoy 14y agoI initially read it as a joking reference to Star Wars: KOTOR's assassin droid's constant references to the other characters as meatbags.
- mikeash 14y agoIt doesn't matter what the majority of people think. That is ultimately what we are, and the tragedy of being killed by a bomb reinforces it.
- ars 14y agoUltimately? Really? If you are going to deconstruct that way, why stop there, why not bags of water? Or a random assortment of atoms? By that reasoning a work of art is just random colors and there is no reason to admire it. But in actuality the whole is greater than the parts, and that applies to people too.
- mikeash 14y ago"By that reasoning a work of art is just random colors and there is no reason to admire it." I disagree. There is no conflict between admiring the organization of the fundamental particles and realizing that stuff is ultimately just big collections of fundamental particles.
- ars 14y agoYes, but "realizing that stuff is ultimately just big collections of fundamental particles" is probably the ultimate in pointless activities. (Unless of course you are studying particle physics.) By that measure every single thing that exists is exactly identical to everything else. If nothing is different, then nothing matters, and nothing has value. Let's just short circuit that entire pointless line of thought and look at the whole, not just the parts.
- mikeash 14y agoI'll consolidate the conversation here. "By that measure every single thing that exists is exactly identical to everything else." Where do you get this idea? "X is ultimately just a big collection of fundamental particles" and "Y is ultimately just a big collection of fundamental particles" does not imply "X is identical to Y". It's like saying you should never call anybody a "person" because you're implying all people are identical. I mean, what?
- tekacs 14y agoI would add to my sibling comment here that one should note that a particular characteristic of the engineer (or software developer) is the ability to internalise all of the layers of a system and to be able to treat it as whichever subset of the layers are relevant at any given time. Doing so hardly means that one considers all such systems equivalent or indeed that one doesn't think of a reductionist view as just the most reified (though pretty damned vague) possible view of the system.
- mikeash 14y agoThat's a great point. All layers are correct, but most won't be useful for a given problem. If you're thinking about, say, crowd reactions, then you don't want the "meatbag" model. Instead, you need a higher-level psychological model. However, if your problem is "what kind of injuries result from a bomb", then the "meatbag" model is right on. Thinking of the body as a loose confederation of fundamental particles is fairly useless when trying to decide how much to charge for a product, but it's an excellent model when e.g. figuring out how much radiation a person will absorb from a source. No layer denies the usefulness or reality of any of the others.
- pyre 14y ago| why not bags of water Already been done: "Ugly bags of mostly water" http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Home_Soil_(episode) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Home_Soil_(episode)
- vacri 14y agoIronically you're using 'a work of art' in your defense while attacking a statement made in an artistic style.
- rubikscube 14y agoIf all you are is a "meat bag", then a bomb blast is no more tragic than making sloppy joes with ground beef. Silly nerd thinking. Your "meat bag" and "meat space" thinking is ridiculous.
- mikeash 14y ago> If all you are is a "meat bag", then a bomb blast is no more tragic than making sloppy joes with ground beef. Does not follow, and I disagree strongly. Specifics matter, but that doesn't make the "meat bag" thing untrue.
- ars 14y agoIt's also true that a person and a block of wood are the same - they are both made of atoms, and the same types of atoms for that matter. If everything is true then nothing is. If you want to compare a person to a meat bag, then you also have to compare them to a block of wood, and the sun, and everything else. i.e. you've actually done nothing whatsoever.
- jlgreco 14y agomatter / | \ meat wood ... / \ \ human cow ... Humans are not wood, though wood and humans are both matter. Humans are however "made of meat", just as any other animal is. As far as I can tell, the point of describing humans as meat is not to make an assessment of worth, but rather to drive home the fragile and temporary nature of humans. I don't know why anyone would object to that.
- PavlovsCat 14y ago"is" != "is (mostly) made of"
- jlgreco 14y agoFair enough. I suspect the terminology "meat" is mostly a homage to Terry Bisson's short story "They're Made Out of Meat". That is why I like the word anyway. ;)