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Re: Robot Pets Almost as Good as Real Ones?
Posted By: Darien, on host 71.161.144.78
Date: Monday, January 23, 2006, at 20:53:49
In Reply To: Robot Pets Almost as Good as Real Ones? posted by Ciaran on Monday, January 23, 2006, at 13:28:08:

> I just came across this Slashdot article (linked below) and I must admit to being kinda disturbed by the responses its getting.

Most of the responses seemed sensible to me. I was a bit annoyed by the people who had nothing to say but "robot dogs will never be as good as real dogs" and provided no rationale for this, but welcome to people.

I can't personally think of any reason why a robot pet of sufficient complexity would be less good than a real pet, and it does have convenience advantages - no mess on the carpet, doesn't run away or get hit by cars, doesn't wake you up in the middle of the night, and so forth.

Let's play thought experiment. If, instead of the toy-level robot pets we have today, we sometime down the road create a highly sophisticated robot pet that looks and acts just like a real dog, but with no messes, no health issues, no need to feed,and no possibility of running away or attacking somebody or what-have-you, would that still not be as good as a real dog? If not, why not?

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