Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Really Confused...

EDIT: Just realized there is an old dedicated Philip K. Dick Thread. Should I move this there?

I've read up to the end of the fifth chapter and my head hurts so bad. I don't understand anything in this chapter.

So Rachael was an android after all and the test does in fact work. It's been established that if the test can't work, the corporation won't be able to make any more of these new androids. It's also made clear that Deckard's job depends on the test's working. Since both the corporation and Deckard benefit from its working, why did Eldon and Rachael pull this whole stunt? Couldn't they have just let him test all of the androids and it would've worked just fine for all of them?

Deckard realizes that the test does in fact work after asking Rachael the question involving baby hide. Her reaction comes too late. Deckard then realizes she's an android. But didn't Eldon explain that she's like this because of her upbringing? How does this test prove that she's an android and not, as the Rosens tried to pass off, that she's just an un-empathetic human? Something to do with how this last test involved a shocking thing regarding a human rather than animals? Is Deckard positing that while her lack of proper responses to the animal stuff can be explained by her being an un-empathetic human, even an schizoid human should have been genuinely bothered by the baby thing and therefore since her reaction came to late that she must be an android?

Deckard thinks up this final test when Rachael refers to the owl as if it were an android. I don't understand this.

Ugh...No matter how many books I read I always feel like the slow guy. Please explain this to me like I'm a moron. Thanks a bunch.

edited 12th Mar '16 12:44:49 PM by ArbitraryValues

The society of the book adores animals, to the point of borderline worship. That's why having pets is so important. Killing animals and eating their meat or wearing their skins is utterly abhorent to them, so someone who doesn't feel revulsion at the idea must have an android's lack of empathy. Rachael was supposedly raised elsewhere, and thus has no more of an emotional reaction to products made from slaughtered animals than most contemporary people do, so she gave the android test a false positive. But when she had the same unempathetic response to the idea of human children being killed for their skins, it was clear that explanation doesn't hold and she really is an android.

So my guess I mentioned up top was right. So I understand that much, but I still don't understand plenty of things.

Both the Rosens and Deckard benefit from the test's being reliable. Why did the Rosen's make Rachael a part of the test and pretend she was a human? When the test then said that she was an android, their insistence that she was a human made the test look unreliable. So why did they do all of this?

Right after the initial test and after Eldon claims that Rachael is just a schizoid human, the book talks about how the Rosen's "had managed to snare him." The book refers to Deckard's "massive error" in dealing with the Rosen's. Much is made of the fact that this was recored. I don't get it at all. How is it that they've "snared" him?

Once again, I don't see how Rachael's referring to the owl as a android gave Deckard the idea to test her again.

Near the end of the chapter we're told something like that they had "come close to undermining the test", and that the "do a good job of protecting their products." As I said earlier, don't the Rosens also want the test to work so that their products won't be recalled?

Prior to realizing that she actual is an android, Deckard mentions that they "pulled this schizoid girl on me before hand so I never got a chance to test one of them." He then realizes that the test is wiped out. We later learn that the test did actually work, but as of that moment, I don't see why they had to use Rachael. If the test wasn't actually reliable, it could have just failed in the the test proper. Nuts...I'm not even sure how to explain why I'm confused. This is hard.

Bottom line is I don't understand what the Rosens were trying to pull here.

edited 13th Mar '16 2:00:29 PM by ArbitraryValues

It's tempting to say that your real problem is thinking that Phillip K. Dick makes sense. He often doesn't.

It appears to be an attempt to discredit Rosen's critics. Basically, if they were successful Rosen could say: "the test is obsolete, and even if it still worked, the police are corrupt. We're being unfairly targeted by people who don't know what they're doing. Buy more Rosen androids."

I see. I don't really know anything about Dick, I just decided to get familiar with some older sci-fi and this book happens to be first go at it.

Some of his stuff is very, very good. I recommend The Man in the High Castle in particular. Just don't expect it all to make sense. He did a lot of drugs and was not entirely sane even when he wasn't on drugs.

Existential weirdness ("reality is not what you think it is...maybe") is the primary theme in his work because he seems to have felt that way about real life.

edited 15th Mar '16 7:47:24 AM by Bense

Interesting. I can dig some existential weirdness.

That said, not every instance of "not making sense" is existential weirdness. Sometimes a plot hole is a plot hole. This section didn't feel weird in a trippy, existential way. Rather, it just felt plain confusing.

I'll keep at it, but assuming I'm not misunderstanding anything, it seems to me that what I've described in this chapter isn't really existential weirdness so much as it is just plain "not thought through" weirdness.

I took it as the Rosen's actually trying to protect the androids.

I don't know how far you are in the book, but based on later events Rosen's and Rachel's assertion that she was raised a human was most likely a big fat lie.