There were rules about how to quickly kill insects before consumption. She’d seen such things on the packaging of Pepper’s snacks: Harvested humanely in accordance with GC law. You could be fairly sure beetles didn’t understand what was happening to them, and that they didn’t suffer much, but consideration was given to the fact that they might. Did petbots come with any such ethical labelling? What was the difference between strung-together neurons and a simple bundle of if/then code, if the outward actions were the same? Could you say for certain that there wasn’t a tiny mind in that bot,
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