> 'If I could get a robot dog that could emulate
>the "sad face" look of my existing real dog, and
>play with the kids without going into some kind
>of "kill" mode, that would be great, and I would
>consider trading. I had my dog in a kennel for
>two days this weekend, and it seems to have
>ruined his housetraining. A robot dog doesn't pee
>on the floor, so in my book, that makes it a 100%
>improvement over old-fashioned meat-based dogs.'

Sounds like a person who doesn't really like dogs much. Especially if they're willing to trade in the dog they have on another one. Nobody would be willing to do that with a truly loved pet, regardless of the upside of "no more puking on the rug after eating the stolen box of donuts" and such.

Anyway, I have mixed feelings myself on this. Something completely fabricated from metal and silicon just can't look and feel "just like a real dog" anyway, so my thinking is this hypothetical robodog that "looks and feels just like a real dog" is going to have to be part organic anyway. And anything part organic is going to need to eat and poop just like any other organic creature (probably not as much, and the waste product can probably be excreted in nice sealed packets) so my thinking is you'll never get away entirely from feeding and cleaning up after your robodog.

If you posit a part-organic robodog (or cyborg-dog if you will) then you have even stickier moral issues I think. Stephen has already said he'd support equal rights for totally fabricated robodogs if they displayed true dog-level intelligence, but not everyone would feel this way. However, I think a lot more people would be unwilling to take an axe to a cyborg-dog if it had real flesh and blood over it's metal endoskeleton and bled real blood when wounded.

From a strictly personal point of view, I think I'd be cool with one of the hypothetical "indistinguishable from the real thing" robodogs. I'm not sure I buy Sam's argument that cleaning up poop is part of the joys of dog ownership. And I think a convincing simulation of a dog would inspire the same feelings of love and companionship in me that a real dog would. I don't buy that knowing it "wasn't real" would change that somehow. If the robodog is functionally indistinguishable from a real dog, then it *is* a real dog to me. However, I can't ever see trading in a currently owned pet for a robodog. Anybody who would do that just doesn't really love their pet, I think.

-- Dave