“People joke that the Internet is made for kittens. But animals play an important role by helping us humans feel closer to each other. When you go home for the holidays, the whole family gathers around the family dog, pets the dog, feels affection for the dog, but also feels closer to each other. On Facebook, the billions of animal pictures let people say ‘awwwww’ with the people in their lives and that shared empathic emotion is a big part of being human. In Philip K. Dick’s classic sci-fi book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, one of the ways to tell if someone was human (and not an android) was empathy toward animals. If you are worried someone you know might be an android, send her this post and if she shows no emotion, you know she is actually a robot.”
—Jonah
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