The manual informed me that Adam had an operating system as well as a nature—that is, a human nature—and a personality, the one I hoped Miranda would help provide. I was unsure how these three substrates overlapped or reacted with each other. When I studied anthropology, a universal human nature was thought not to exist. It was a romantic illusion, merely the variable product of local conditions. Only anthropologists, who studied other cultures in depth, who knew the beautiful extent of human variety, fully grasped the absurdity of human universals. People who stayed behind at home in comfort
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