From: Sayke@aol.com
Date: Mon Oct 04 1999 - 21:57:45 MDT
In a message dated 10/4/99 7:16:42 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au writes:
> At 09:46 AM 4/10/99 -0400, Robin wrote in reply to Greg's:
>
> >>Same here. If I have to go down for the cold sleep, I don't expect to be
> >>initially reanimated as a meat machine.
>
> >I think uploads will really miss meat bodies for a long while.
>
> One of the major problems we face in conveying our apparently outrageous
> ideas is a simple matter of tact versus self-preening shock value in the
> terms we coin and use.
>
> I'd like to suggest that people stop using the term `meat' about human
> beings.
>
> I know there's a tradition behind this usage. I realise it's partially
> meant to wean us off our enculturated regard for the contingent fact that
> minds are currently instantiated in flesh rather than on other substrates.
> But it's an unnecessarily offensive term, when you stop and look at it for
> a moment.
well... i guess im not quite sure about the unnecassary part. ive found
that, by using words similar to 'meat' on a regular basis, im able to get
people do a mild doubletake, and from there, im able to get into very
positive conversations with them. i think this is functionally similar to ayn
rand's use of the word 'selfish'.
> `Meat' is dead flesh intended for eating. Few of us eat human remains.
lol... well, ya know, every once in a while i chew my fingernails, but i
have yet to resort to anything even close to being along the lines of soylent
green, although i dont quite understand the common revulsion to the idea. if,
eris forbid, something terribly damaging happens to this bioshell, and it no
longer serves to weave my consciousness, i have given several close friends
permission to grok the fullness of my existance, if they could get away with
it ;)
<meaningless side note>
it is my understanding that my dad ate take-out chinese [sorry, had to
say it] during the (near the end of the) korean war. i guess he was stuck
down under the pusan peremeter, and had ammo, but no food. macarthur hadnt
landed yet, ya see. well, so my old man had ammo and no food, while the
chinese had no ammo, and no food, and ya do whatcha gotta do, i suppose... i
guess ya wanna keep em alive as long as you can; keeps the meat from being
damaged by the cold. ::shrug:: whats done is done. but has this hit the press
at all? ive never really heard about it, other then via my dad, and one of
his old war buddies (assisted by liberal applications of bad-tasting
alchohol)...
</meaningless side note>
> Most people are revolted by the idea. Conflating healthy, alert living
people
> with slabs of stuff at the butcher's counter is... well, it's
> counter-productive.
i dunno. id go so far as to say that shock value is a good thing. i want
people to think twice about some of the things i say. which would we rather
have: passing attention, or notoriety? ::strikes cheesy austin powers pose::
ARE WE NOT REVOLUTIONARIES, MAN!? hehe...
> I'd like to suggest a moratorium on this usage, not because I'm squeamish
> but because a vast number of the people we'd like to guide to a better
> understanding of the coming world *are*. I'm not sure what term to offer in
> replacement, but perhaps *protein body* might do? That's also a tad
> dehumanised, but it doesn't have the swaggering adolescent taint of *meat*.
yea, i understand. mindless rebellion is as bad as mindless conformity...
but i dont think thats whats goin on here, at all, and i dont think thats how
its commonly percieved. (yea, i know... wtf do i know of "commonly"? am i a
poll?) but, as purely anecdotal evidence, i present that i have had nothing
but positive experiences with people whom i have used the word at.
<some snippage>
sayke, v2.3.05 [anders, was it you who came up with putting version numbers
after your name? i dig that. =) ]
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