HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

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": http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf

[2] "They're Made Out of Meat": https://youtu.be/7tScAyNaRdQ

why has no one posted the video

https://youtu.be/7tScAyNaRdQ

⬐ gpvos

Two others did before you

⬐ KennyBlanken

And, hilariously, the guy didn't even link to the original but someone's re-upload.

My favorite film adaptation of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

⬐ KennyBlanken

Please link to the one posted by the director, not some slimeball stealing his work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg

⬐ draw_down

None

⬐ ncmncm

That is better than I could ever have imagined.

⬐ onionisafruit

It’s very different but reminds me of the line “literally made of chicken” from Mitchell and Webb. https://youtu.be/_pDTiFkXgEE

So, in a possible future overhearing of two aliens discussing us being made out of meat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ we might be able to fib and convince them the meat is made out of carbon dioxide? Universe, here we come!

⬐ rememberlenny

Classic. I remember this from middle school.

⬐ thunderbong

The original short story by Terry Bisson from 1991 -

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

I know ...its hard to believe... "They're Made Out of Meat"

https://youtu.be/7tScAyNaRdQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

There is also a short film based on the short-story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

> 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]: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/nominated-work/theyre-made-meat/

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060521202739/http://www.sfhome...

A performance of this: https://youtu.be/7tScAyNaRdQ

⬐ telesilla

There's a few of these, thanks for posting my favorite version.

⬐ rbanffy

I think this is the best one. The others are... meh...

This one nails the Twilight Zone tone perfectly.

⬐ Finnucane

Shortly after this was published, I saw Terry give a reading of it, at Lunacon, I think. He was pretty funny. I suspect some here are really overthinking this. It’s fun because it’s short and basically all dialogue, so it lends itself pretty well to this kind of performance.

⬐ mwcampbell

I wonder what he thinks of the tone of that short film version, which at least to me isn't comedic at all.

⬐ kevinmgranger

I found it dry-comedic. But then again, I could only see that one person as the Cash Cab guy.

⬐ Borborygymus

Flawless.... or /almost/ flawless... At 5m 20s, the house of cards is clearly glued together.

They're made out of meat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

By the way, I agree with you, it is unsettling to hear human beings reduced to such terms.

⬐ h2odragon

Lovely adaptation... See also http://www.terrybisson.com/

⬐ grayneckbeard96

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They're_Made_Out_of_Meat#They'...

Cash Cab guy (Ben Bailey) and the reverend from Hell on Wheels (Tom Noonan).

⬐ perl4ever

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/bears-discover-fir...

⬐ termy

Good read, thanks.

They're Made Out of Meat, as a short film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

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] https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

The excellent video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

⬐ jacquesm

Hilarious, thank you!

There's a short film adaptation of this as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

> "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."

https://youtu.be/7tScAyNaRdQ

⬐ mwcampbell

What a haunting short film. (I understand that it's adapted from a short story.)

Tangent: It's ironic that the dialogue between the two aliens is spoken by humans. After all, the actors are rendering the dialog with meat sounds. I think it would have been better to use a speech synthesizer that's not based on actual recordings of meat sounds -- like eSpeak, DECtalk, or ETI-Eloquence. DECtalk, at least, is flexible enough to speak with whatever intonation you want, so the dialogue wouldn't necessarily come out sounding flat.

I think you meant Google project.

Googles real products are made out of meat [1]

1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

I prefer this version:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

I love this adaptation of it too: https://youtu.be/7tScAyNaRdQ

⬐ raddad

The video is pretty good. Thank you for that.

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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

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 structure of speech comes from the way we form sounds with meat, and nothing else.

Nor does poetry have to be about anything out of the ordinary, although it certainly can be. Poetry is, amongst other things, the literature of moments. It's a way to capture and communicate a fleeting experience. Consider:

    young girls in blue shorts  
    street corner in summer rain  
    light changes, they run  

Way more memorable and evocative than "I saw some girls wearing blue shorts on the corner waiting for the light to change and they ran when it did 'cause there was a hard summer rain falling."

Poetry makes the mind work in useful ways, focusing on structure and meaning and meat. We are physical beings capable of abstract appreciation of the world. Poetry exists at the intersection, grounded in one, guided by the other.

What's to dislike?

⬐ igravious

> But twaddle it is.

That's a bit harsh, don't you think?

> 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.

In "Ranking Contemporary American Poems"[1] Michael Dalvean uses natural language processing and rudimentary machine learning to prise apart the language poets use. What he finds is that professional poets tend to (among other techniques) use more concrete language than amateur poets. This is because imagery relies on concrete imagery to effectively evoke emotion. And it the emotive force that moves us. So, no, poets (proper ones) haven't, as you say, rejected concrete experience. In fact, it is one of the things that distinguishes them from rank amateurs. Secondly, what has been abandoned is not "the physical rhythmicities of speech" (metric verse?) but rigid form. That is the achievement of contemporary verse -- free-form verse or projective verse[2] or whatever you want to call it. Consider, in the same light, the flight from representation in the visual arts that swung through impressionism and rattled past abstract expressionism. Poetry followed suit, at a slower pace. It is not twaddle, it is experimentation (pardon the clumsy word) with form and it has its own "bitter logic" in its progression as Mr. Lerner explains.

Really, where poetry intersects computation is the current frontier -- Lerner does not even allude to this. There you'll find, perhaps, your meat.

[1] http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/1/6

[2] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-creeley ("Olson and Creeley together developed the concept of “projective verse,” a kind of poetry that abandoned traditional forms in favor of a freely constructed verse that took shape as the process of composing it was underway.")

⬐ tjradcliffe

I said "Romantic twaddle", not "modernist experimentation". As indicated in what I wrote, I find a number of aspects of modernism interesting and worthwhile, for much the reasons you cite.

Also, I wrote about concrete experience and you've replied by talking about concrete language. Weird.

Good modern poetry has much to recommend it, but there is also a vast amount of unstructured garbage. Unfortunately anyone who complains about the latter is assumed to hate the former even if he explicilty states--as I did--that there is much value in it. For example, someone chimed in agreeing with me and then dissed Seamus Heaney. Err...

But the Romantic theory of poetry is twaddle, and it does represent a detour that has taken almost 200 years to recover from. We're slowly getting there.

The relative value of "rigid form" (I'm not sure why "rigid" is required... it certainly isn't a characteristic of any good formal poetry at any time) is something that non-technical people have trouble understanding (you see, I'm doing the same thing you did: assuming I know something about you, and then condescending to explain things to you on the basis of that baseless assumption... irritating, isn't it?) There is a proverb that every engineer knows: "Form is liberating."

We've actually got more in common in our views than you're apparently willing to acknowledge, and have instead chosen to project onto me some fairly weird ideas rather than engaging the words I've actually written. "O no! Someone is misunderstanding me on the 'Net!" is about as useful a call to action as "someone is wrong on the 'Net" but you're clearly not an idiot, so I couldn't help but be tempted to put things right. Now all I need to do is figure out how to buy you a virtual beer with bitcoin... this sort of argument is always much better with beer.

⬐ igravious

Fair enough.

Thank you for giving me the benefit that I failed to give you.

Part of what poetry tries to do is capture experience. It does this with language. The more concrete the language the better. A perhaps unwarranted value judgement but... I stand by it... I think that contemporary poetry still does this. I really must disagree with you if you see otherwise. We may be talking at cross-purposes here.

Of course you use the word "transcendent". And "romantic". These words Lerner studiously avoids but, as you've noted, this is his thesis. I think that this central argument/position holds though. Without using poncey language -- "Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all." -- Lerner is stating that the (primary?) aim of poetry is to put into words that which cannot be put into words. That is why to be silent is to succeed. Notice that a similar idea runs through philosophy. Apparently Wittgenstein was happiest when a student _gave up_ philosophy. Also, isn't this the same chap who said, "the limits of my language […] mean the limits of my world"? Same with the Joycean epiphany. Poetry (and poetic prose) really sings, really lifts off, when it gets us to connect in whatever way with what the words are pointing towards. But all the words can do is point! They can never be a substitute for the thing-in-itself, how can they be! Other forms of writing don't have this aim because they don't have the concision that poetry strives for. By definition almost they don't have the concision. Do you not agree?

Regarding form. I had not come across this, "Form is liberating." I agree 100%. And, I will steal it. The thing is: poetry had not even properly begun to explore the combinatorial space of forms. (Including formlessness.) What has happened is an enlarging of the space (of forms). This is why Lerner points out the irony of those who push against becoming in time part of that which they push against. I am not criticising form. I embrace and celebrate the bigger house. My nature means that I do privilege the new and that is a failing of mine. I do not reject the old, do not misunderstand me here.

Besides, I felt the piece was really well written. Written with a poet's ear.

[hashing this out over a bevvy would be most agreeable :)]

⬐ murbard2

Poetry is hugely successful in the modern world, it just happens to be set to music most of the time.

⬐ JadeNB

Do you have any examples of genuine poetry—as opposed simply to lyrics using poetic structures, like rhythm and rhyme—in music? (Or would you take issue with the distinction that I draw, and declare that lyrics with poetic structures are poetry?) The closest that I can think of are Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen, but both of them stand out mainly by being much closer to poets than their peers, rather than seeming to me to be authentic poets themselves: trying to read their lyrics without the music usually robs them of their sense of poetry (for me, anyway).

⬐ calinet6

So much in the space of folk (of many cultures), your examples are closer to that than most other music. Indeed some of the best music out there melds the poetry perfectly with the music. It's an art that doesn't exist if either part is missing.

Example that comes to mind, Nanci Griffith's 'Wing and the Wheel' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDs1kXTS9r8

    The wing and the wheel they carry things away
    Whether it's me that does the leavin' or the love that flies away
    The moon outside my window looks so lonely tonight
    Oh, there's a chunk out of it's middle big enough for an old fool to hide
    
    Where are all the dreamers that I used know?
    We used to linger beneath street lamps in the halos and the smoke
    The wing and the wheel came to carry them away
    Now they all live out in the suburbs where their dreams
    Are in their children at play
    
    There's a pale sky in the east all the stars are in the west
    Oh, here's to all the dreamers may our open hearts find rest
    The wing and the wheel are gonna carry us along
    And we'll have memories for company long after the songs are gone

⬐ ruricolist

This is a good example of the technical restrictions that make lyrics a (proper) subset of poetry: note in particular the abundance of long vowels, which make it not just readable but singable.

⬐ calinet6

It enables the lyricism of the song! Even more beautiful. That actually makes a lot of sense, thanks for pointing it out.

⬐ gwern

> Do you have any examples of genuine poetry—as opposed simply to lyrics using poetic structures, like rhythm and rhyme—in music?

Poetry is often set to music. It's totally common to read in literature texts about a poet's works being set to music; I'm reading Donald Keene's book on post-Meiji Japanese literature and for at least one poet he mentions that his poems were popular enough that they were recited with music, and there's examples in Western literature, especially the Greeks like Sappho with lyric poetry.

⬐ JadeNB

This is a good point, but I took murbard2's post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9708591) to refer to works that are intended to be musical, but that can be recognised as poetry, rather than to works that were first written as poetry, and then set to music. (I recognise that I am on possibly dodgy grounds here by trying to determine whether a given work is 'really' poetry, but musical, or 'really' music, but poetic.)

⬐ zyxley

As noted in a different comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9708878), substantial amounts of hip-hop and rap music are essentially long poems set to a beat.

⬐ jzymbaluk

when I think of hip hop as poetry, I think of Saul Williams. I'm on mobile and traveling at the moment so I can't provide a link, but one of the suns of his that comes to mind is Scared Money

⬐ mturmon

Bob Dylan would be another example, although I don't personally feel passionate about his work.

⬐ murbard2

Would you consider Stairway to Heaven to be poetry when read without the music?

⬐ existencebox

AesopRock. Some of his more involved songs read as much as poetry as anything I've encountered in the past. (ZZZ top provides a good example and is a personal favorite for me.)

But what do you describe as "genuine poetry"? Some sort of meter usage, some form of writing, structure? I think that creates an artificial divide, and prefer instead to just see many forms of storytelling through organized words, a continuum of various implementations of poetry/prose.

⬐ Nadya

Zero Dark Thirty is a good example of what I would consider poetry by Aesop.

http://genius.com/Aesop-rock-zero-dark-thirty-lyrics

⬐ JadeNB

> But what do you describe as "genuine poetry"? Some sort of meter usage, some form of writing, structure?

I don't have a good definition, just an "I know it when I see it" sort of thing.

> I think that creates an artificial divide, and prefer instead to just see many forms of storytelling through organized words, a continuum of various implementations of poetry/prose.

I think that I would agree with the point that I thought tjradcliffe (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9707954) was making upthread. Informally, a 'genuine' poem to me is a way of communicating a story, an experience, or an emotion in a way that would be less effective if translated into prose. I don't know if this sort of definition by opposition is worthwhile; and, in fact, as I state it this way, I wonder if maybe I am arguing against my original position that not much music is poetry.

⬐ ssaassaa

> I don't have a good definition, just an "I know it when I see it" sort of thing.

Does this meet your definition?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K81UGHwhWaw

⬐ vacri

> I don't have a good definition, just an "I know it when I see it" sort of thing.

Without a decent definition, no-one can hope to satisfy "as opposed simply to lyrics using poetic structures, like rhythm and rhyme". Basically you're asking people to prove your personal preferences.

'What is the difference between poetry and lyrics' is an age-old difficult question, with an easy answer for those who don't think there's a difference, and difficult searching for subtle differentiation for those who do. The link below is a good write-up of many of the issues, with the author thinking there is a difference, and that is only that lyrics don't work 'as well' without their attendant music (but which means we should to define what 'as well' means... and exceptions can always be found).

http://bostonreview.net/forum/poetry-brink/difference-betwee...

Ultimately, if differentiation is that difficult a question, the two entities aren't all that qualitatively different, in my opinion.

⬐ walljm

like

For me, its always been about Rhythm and Contrast, which, if you think about it, is the foundation of all art. Poetry, and prose, in a different way, use rhythm and contrast to draw attention to things, to make words mean more than their surface implies. its an endowment of depth.

I love that you pointed out that poetry is the "literature of moments". I never liked really long poems, as the rigid structures often get in the way of the narrative, preferring short verses that capture a moment or feeling.

⬐ ruricolist

You aren't by any chance Yvor Winters?

⬐ tjradcliffe

I'm much less dead, and have numerous other important differences, but I can see why you might see similarities.

⬐ innguest

You're absolutely right. Those are the right reasons to like Poetry. Which is why I tell people that the stuff that the "Poetry Society of America" has been plastering NYC subways with is not poetry (none of them care about any of the beautiful traits of a Poem that you enumerated).

(Chase Twichell, Jim Moore, Seamus Heaney, Tracy K. Smith, see them here: http://web.mta.info/mta/aft/poetry/poetry.html)

⬐ matthewowen

Is this a joke? Your position is that Seamus Heaney's work (etc) isn't poetry? And that's because you don't think there's rhythm and melody to what he writes?

I find that very disheartening.

⬐ atmosx

I believe poetry is the highest level of expression, using words. It's the purest and most powerful form of writing.

Now talking about poetry and programming (object oriented programming), here's a nice pun:

    [...]
    What might have been is an abstraction
    Remaining a perpetual possibility
    Only in a world of speculation.
    [...]

Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

A short film based on same story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

BTW, the movie of this, featuring the brilliant Tom Noonan and Ben Bailey is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ .

Surprised nobody's linked to this video yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

The short-film adaptation of this was very well done. The David Lynch-influenced directing style worked well.

⬐ tspiteri

To me, it doesn't work at all. The whole point is that they are not-meat talking about meat. In the sketch, they look very meaty indeed, and their speech sounds like flapping meat, so that it does not work at all.

⬐ mankyd

I simply assumed that they made themselves look like the locals. It doesn't mean that they are actually made of meat or see themselves as having any other resemblance to the humans.

To give a silly analogy, imagine we visit the world of the Smurfs together. We both paint ourselves blue to fit in, but then you tell me: "they're made out of cake frosting". I'm going to give you quite a strange look when you say that, regardless of the fact that I'm painted blue.

⬐ mechanical_fish

The core of the story is that the aliens can't accept the notion of a meat-based lifeform.

The idea that they might not just be wrong, but also in serious denial, is a cute twist.

Have you really never encountered an intelligent lifeform made entirely of meat who insists, often furiously, that an intelligent lifeform made entirely of meat is impossible? Because they're not exactly an endangered species around here.

⬐ judk

Even as a vegan, this interpretation had never occurred to me but just blew my mind.

Thank you!

⬐ pdkl95

One of the things I really liked about this adaptation is how the dialog between the two doesn't actually match their lips properly. The "incorrect" voices and the "obviously a disguise" fez always suggested to me that the English we hear was just for the benefit of the audience and that their actual communication was different.

Of course, as with most art, opinions and interpretations will vary.

⬐ pavel_lishin

It looks like the sound is a little bit off, but it still looks like they're saying the same things we hear.