I know it's a meme but there's an actual answer: because humans have them, and Dr. Soong wanted Data to feel human. That was the whole point of the project from what I understand.
I did a version of this during the height of the pandemic where I hung up a big old clothesline in the front yard and pinned dozens of full size bars to it. Always interesting to see which ones get taken; Twix and KitKat proved the most popular. And the line wasn't empty at night's end! Our neighborhood kids are sweet.
Yes, clearly the only people that don't like commies are fascists, like all of those people who lived under nominally "communist" regimes. Weird how they developed fascism from the experience.
I really do try to model the behavior and stay home when I'm ill. I had Shingles and Hand, Foot and Mouth this year, so they've seen me call out (I was happier before I knew that viral orchitis was a thing and also, boy does it suck to get a shingles out break near your bloody eye).
Well I've told them and behaved that way to suit. It's been a bloody year. Also we're public sector, so it's not like we're going to be downsized out of nowhere.
Okay so here's what I don't get. I run a small team of 10. I am SUPER cool about people calling in. I don't give people grief for it. I don't have ridiculous performance expectations. I get that timelines have to slip when people call in. Even my upper management is pretty sane.
YET PEOPLE STILL COME IN SICK. WHY?!?
Motherfucker you're in a union shop with 8 hours sick leave a month and 10+ hours of vacation time per month AND at least 3 floating days you can use whenever AND other leave benefits. Most of you assholes are sitting on like 200-500+ hours of leave in your banks. I tell people to take care of themselves and their families first on the regular. The hell else am I supposed to do? Give people a gold star and a BJ for calling in sick? Keep your goddamned plague at home.
You really think enough people are going to love doing septic tank maintenance and picking berries and all the other hot, painful, messy shit that people have to do to keep ourselves alive to support that? Because I don't.
Maybe when we've got amazing robots that can do all that I guess, but then we've just moved on to robot maintenance and coding. Granted more people will be ok with those tasks, but they call it work because it's WORK.