[fiforpg]

I like how the word "meat" is clearly an inaccurate translation of a notion in the language of the conversation, for lack of a better word in human languages. "Organic matter" would be more accurate, but less striking.

Meaning, "meat" is a variation on the "unreliable narrator" theme: the "unreliable language". This is used a lot in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, where medieval language describes artifacts of a space-faring civilization.

[delecti]

Funnily I thought almost the opposite. I feel like "meat" is deliberately chosen in-character to be both less precise and less respectful than "organic matter". It would be like a species with organic computers incredulously describing our computers as "rocks".

[shawnz]

I think that the computers-as-rocks analogy works even better than this story, since there is no such thing as non-sentient meat, but there most certainly are rocks that can't compute

[john-radio]

You've crystalized for me what I've always liked about this story, it implies that for some (horrifying?) reason the aliens are totally familiar with non-sentient meat.

[philistine]

- Can you believe those so-called humans. They made their computing devices out of rocks! They shovel sand out of beaches, make disgusting plates out of it, and force electricity through little paths of metal on them.

- Ew!

[leeoniya]

"if god didnt want us to eat pigs, he wouldn't have made them out of bacon!"

[mr_toad]

> Organic matter

By weight we’re mostly made of inorganic molecules.

[mcv]

But it's not our bones doing the thinking. It's our potassium isotopes.

[themanmaran]

The Long Sun series (also Gene Wolfe) was another excellent use of this. Everything is narrated by a priest unknowingly living on a generational starship and you're left to interpret the world around them.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Also happens in a classical setting with the Soldier of the Mist books.

That's sort of a "house special" at the Gene Wolfe fine writing establishment - his characters use the words expectable for their time and circumstances, and the reader has to work it out to the contemporary context.