* Isidore briefly wonders how Buster Friendly can produce 46 hours altogether of programming each day, and Hannibal Sloat has realised how, but doesn't anybody else find it... odd?
** but anyone who watches Discovery Channel or any other satellite channel will be familiar with the practice of expanding 3 or 4 hours actual content into 24 hours a day transmission by repeats, trailers, flashbacks etc.
*** The Truman Show plays with this at some length.
*** it isn't actually stated that the Buster Friendly Show consists of continuous live transmission. Considering the impossibility of watching TV 23 hours a day, and the stated context that most of the audience are mentally deficient, it isn't really difficult to envisage what Buster Friendly must be like to watch.
*** Except that Isidore states that neither show repeats and all content is new for both programs simultaneously. He may be incorrect in that assumption, but we're never given reason to doubt it. Additionally, Buster Friendly is broadcast to the colonies, where the population is not mentally deficient.
*** Considering that [[spoiler: Buster Friendly and his crew are androids, it could possibly be that there are two, if not more, versions. One group films the 23 hour TV Programme while the other records the 23 hour Radio Show. You can decide whether they know about each other or not]]
** It's possible that it's not a secret how Buster Friendly is able to do this, when the detail is first set up, it seems like it should be obvious to the reader. It's only ''Isidore'' who doesn't seem to get it, and even he is painfully aware of his limitations. In other words, the important takeaway isn't about Buster's nature, but about how Isidore views the world and people.
** Isidore's boss says Buster and his guest stars are as immortal as Mercer. Cynical much?
* The title. "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" No. They ''count'' electric sheep when they're not getting sleep.
** It's about the interpretation of sheep in dreams, which mainly indicates the longing for conformity.
** Why can't it be about "dream" as in "wish" as opposed to REM sleep? Deckard muses on whether androids dream in this way and decides that they do - they wouldn't go to Earth if they didn't want to.
* Why does Rachel bother to tell Rick about all the bounty hunters she slept with at all?
** My interpretation is that she does it because she's a two year old child. She knows something usually works, and feels a childish urge to happily brag about it, being too young to understand that bragging about it will undo the manipulation. I think that's the subtext of the entire test bounty-hunters perform: it tests for empathy, because androids are too young to have developed much empathy. Of course, initially we are intended to think they don't possess empathy because they don't have souls, which makes the revelation that they can never be older than four a deliberate wham line. That's probably why it isn't revealed until late in the story, despite its importance. I.e. Deckard thinks he's executing the soulless, when he's actually murdering children. The dialogue of the various andys takes on a new meaning viewed through that lens.
** It's implied she's trying to get him to ''empathise'' with her (and stated that it has worked before, with other runners). Which means she at least understands intellectually what empathy is, she just doesn't have it herself. So, while your idea was definitely PKD-worthy, it doesn't stand confrontation with the book. Also, while this troper has encountered [[ChildrenAreCruel kids who claimed ladybugs ought to be killed because they poo]], psychological research suggests kids can and do have empathy (they may not understand the other person's needs and wants differ from their own, but they do know the other person is a person).
** Rachael's understanding may not stem that far. Her thought process may simply be, "I did this once out of desperation and it worked, so I'm going to do it again" - a subversion of EvilCannotComprehendGood, with the twist being that androids aren't so much evil as they are too young to possess complete moral understanding. Furthermore, while children are certainly capable of some forms of empathy, it's an incomplete capacity that progresses as they age, and in any case, PKD may not have necessarily intended androids' development to mirror human children's in every aspect.
* So here's a pretty obvious one. If Phil Resch is human then whats the deal with the police station? Was it in operation for years with a real Garland that some how Deckard had never heard of? Or was Resch given fake memories somehow? The whole scene works well to put Deckard in danger in the moment but on retrospect it seems to make little sense.
** The world of the book is massively depopulated and seems to be very compartmentalized, so it was likely in operation for a while without their respective police ever crossing paths. It's also mentioned that the Rosen Corporation is using it as a sort of "underground railroad" for androids.
* While Resch is suspected to be a replicant, Deckard tells him that, as a replicant, he won't be able to take credit or collect the bounties for the replicants he killed. Yet after Resch is confirmed as human, Deckard still gets credit for Resch's kills.
** Resch was a bounty hunter for a different police station, one that probably went underground after they found Garland dead. If any, Bryant doesn't know any better, and it even protects Resch's back if androids think there's only one bounty hunter on their heels, and not two.
* There is a hole in the "androids are children" theory - how come they use complex language, make plans, build working gadgets and have fine motor control? Toddlers don't do these things, or at least they don't do them well - they're still learning. They aren't all that good at deception yet, either (Luba and especially Rachel play Deckard like a fiddle). So are androids somehow able to learn these faster? But if so, how do they lie without putting themselves in the other person's head? Or feature them in their plans? The problem with androids isn't that they have a learning disability, it's in their emotional development. The book states Voight-Kampff test might give a false positive for a schizoid human.
** Artificial intelligences do what they are programmed to do - no more, no less. The dichotomies in their capacity for understanding may simply be a case of programming - they're programmed to have the understanding of how to use complex language, plan, build; tasks that are suited to the slave labour to which they're subjected. But you don't need a slave to be able to solve complex moral problems; they're menial labour, and it's not their concern. Of course, by the mere act of ''creating'' an artificial slave with thoughts and feelings, you yourself have crossed the MoralEventHorizon. Why did Rosen create them to have emotions? As far as I remember, the novel never really says.\\
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However, it's possible that the eventual development of empathy is a natural consequence of the androids' possession of emotions to begin with - in order to *have* emotions that would be recognisably human, they'd need to be able to develop an *understanding* of human emotions, and the longer they spend interacting with humanity, the more their behaviour comes to mirror humanity's. When [[spoiler:J.R. Isidore freaks out over the dead spider towards the close of the novel, the android Irmgard Baty attempts to comfort him.]] Is this a reaction of empathy on her part, or is it a case of her being afraid of [[spoiler:Isidore's]] unfamiliar and unpredictable reaction, and thus doing something that she's seen humans do that she thinks will end it? How could you tell the difference? And if you could, is it actually important?\\
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The Voigt-Kampff empathy test is an attempt within the universe of the novel to answer the first two of these questions, but it's not clear how reliable it is; it's suggested the test may return false positives with non-neurotypical humans, and perhaps it returns false negatives as well. As for the androids' ability to manipulate Deckard, this may be a product of androids possessing superior intelligence and the fact that the human survivors on Earth may suffer fallout-related brain damage as a result of World War Terminus. The ability to lie in an artificial intelligence wouldn't necessarily depend upon the ability to put oneself in another's head; it simply would depend upon perceiving an advantage to doing so. In the end, though, a lot of this is left up to readers' interpretations, and the fact that we mostly get the UnreliableNarrator Rick Deckard's thoughts (as well as those of J.R. Isidore, who possesses even less understanding of his surroundings) doesn't help.
** OK, but how do you lie convincingly ''without'' an idea of how the other person will understand your words? As to Irmgard's reaction to J.R.'s freakout:
-->'He's really upset,' Irmgard said nervously. 'Don't look like that, J.R. And why don't you say anything?' To Pris and to her husband she sais, 'It makes me terribly upset, him just standing there by the sink and not speaking; he hasn't said anything since we turned on the TV.'\\
'It's not the TV,' Pris said. It's the spider. Isn't it, John R. Isidore? He'll get over it,' she said to Irmgard, who had gone into the other room to shut off the TV.

This is all Irmgard does before J.R. has his mystical mercerist experience. And right afterwards, Deckard finds them. So yes, she turns off the TV, possibly because she thinks it's upsetting J.R. But nothing more. Then again, the entire idea of making artificial slaves (and androids are really persons, by the way - they can't connect to others, they're unable to understand mercerism, but so would be a lot of people in real life, I think) is really... slimy, morally speaking. Resch mentions a possibility of {{Sex Slave}}s (it's illegal, but who cares, he says), even slimier, to be honest - he also can't understand why Deckard makes Luba a gift of an art album and burns it after her death. This may be the key. This, and Mercer's somewhat mystical, paradoxical, koan-like explanations. Empathy isn't about whether you're placing it in the right spot (Deckard briefly hates Resch with passion, because ''Resch likes his job'', because Resch likes killing, while Deckard feels he's doing what he has to).

** The repair shops for the ersatz animals are designed, as part of their business model, to imitate vet clinics, so as not to raise suspicion when their technicians are sent out to do service on the automatons. Predictably, someone ends up mixing one of these up with a vet clinic and hurriedly calls on them for a sick cat without taking the time to clear up the misunderstanding. How ''is'' someone supposed to know if they're calling the correct kind of business, if the folks with ersatz animals have a vested interest in hiding the fact that their animals aren't real? It does help thematically that this ties in with a major theme of the novel about the difficulty telling real and artificial apart. Real humans vs androids, real animals vs electric ones, real vets vs maintenance techs made up to look like them. Regardless, the question remains.
** A possible FridgeHorror - the novel briefly mentions androids to have evolved (as in, their design having evolved) from artificial soldiers (''Screamers'', anyone?). Possibly the emotional (lack of) development is a side effect of being "descended" from killing machines?
* Why would Pris Stratton tell Isidore she was called "Rachael Rosen"? I understand it from a meta perspective, you want the reader to realize it's the same model... but then you learn Deckard's information says she's Pris, not Rachael, so she has already been using that name. I doubt she was proving just how much of a chickenhead Isidore was, too, but that's possible.
** Hard to tell - she might be trying a different name as a disguise, but "Rosen" is bound to raise eyebrows, because people would connect it with the Rosen Corporation immediately. Then again, Pris is in a state of near-panic at the time, so it might be that.
** Or - she's gaslighting him. When Isidore comes knocking to her door, Pris is terrified, because she thinks that's a bounty hunter after her. She's trying to confuse him. Then she sees Isidore is a harmless chickenhead and something visibly clicks in her mind, switching from "drive away" to "use". And then the first thing she does is claiming to be Rachael Rosen. When he questions that, Pris switches to Pris Stratton, acting like he's stupid for even thinking her name was Rachael Rosen. She ostentatiously doesn't believe what he says about having a job and pretty much tells him to come and help her move in later, after noon.
** Maybe, being a somewhat domestic model in her first appearance, "Rachael Rosen" is her actual model designation. Like that being the model all the female android workers in the Rosen Company out of earh are based on.