Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

The debate often rages on whether animals have souls, or that farm animals are anything more than food. I like my dog, but I like my iPhone better. Animals are robots, programmed by some unknown mechanism called instinct, but personalities that can be easily reproduced by a computer program. If you are of the opinion that the Turing Challenge will soon be accomplished, thinking the voice on the other end of the phone is a real person, not an AI, then how can you not believe that a chicken can't be represented by computer now? Certainly cats can be simulated, and a dog would take hardly more consideration; even primates wouldn't be much of a problem.

That flesh and blood creature you love for its individuality is just a Packard that poops, but people still think their dog is special, that nothing can replace Bootsie. It's an easily explained phenomenon; humans naturally anthropomorphize animals & even objects: we see cats smiles & happy faces on automobile grills. Animals have intelligence enough to survive, and we extrapolate that to fit human expectations, and even apply human moral strictures, mostly subconsciously, especially those people that have no contact with animals outside of storybooks & the zoo. In the evolutionary scheme of things, where companionship & husbandry is a survival mechanism, feeling protective of animals is a perfectly reasonable point of view; almost everybody does it, but mass psychosis doesn't make imaginary things any more real.