> I don't know beans about how computers work, and don't
> know and don't really care if they ever get smart
> enough to have to worry about whether we should give
> them rights. The point of the analogy -- this is what
> Michael D doesn't see -- is what it tells us about
> _us_. Joanne thinks it tells us that we are degraded
> to mere mechanism. I think it tells us that we are
> fully part of the natural world, just a moderately
> intelligent bit of it. That is a view that people have
> been resisting tooth and claw since the dawn of the
> modern age.