In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Rick Deckard is sent to the Rosen Corporation to determine if the Voigt-Kamff machine can determine whether someone is a human or a Nexus-6 andy. Rick explains that the the machine tests for involuntary bodily reactions to specific phrases that would invoke empathy in any human. If one does not have these empathetic responses, then they cannot possibly be human. This implies that the defining difference between human and machine is our ability to empathize. When he administers this test to Rachael Rosen, she almost makes him believe she is human. This shows that she did have some empathetic responses.
Since we have recently discussed that millennials are less empathetic than than prior generations, this brought me to two questions: Do you feel any less human because we are considered less empathetic? How far off are we from being Rachael?