I'm impressed with the robot's behavior. It snuggles when you hold it. It falls asleep when you cradle it. It gets frisky when you scratch it under the chin. It's much more lifelike than Sony's discontinued Aibo.So when I watched this video of a couple of guys from Dvice torturing the Pleo and making it whimper pathetically, I felt uncomfortable, even though I knew it was absolutely ridiculous to feel that way.
I don't think it's ridiculous. It's not rational to be upset by seeing animals or strangers suffering, but most normal people are that way, and we like to think that the people around us are normal like that. This irrational attitude is naturally quite blurry, and I would be less comfortable in the company of those who enjoyed even simulated suffering.
That drives my view of animal rights: I don't care whether any given species does or doesn't feel pain. I don't think it's an important question, and I'm not sure it's even a meaningful question. I care whether the animal appears to feel pain.
10 IF INKEY$ = "" THEN GOTO 10
20 PRINT AT 11.14; "OUCH"
30 IF INKEY$<>"" THEN GOTO 30
40 PRINT AT 11,14; " "
50 GOTO 10
The identical code appears in the ZX Spectrum manual, (with the typo fixed in line 20; the dot should be a comma), but with the introduction "for sadists"