Ned nods his understanding; he'd seen that Daneel put the question to the general populace, had spoken to him later about the responses he'd gotten. Daneel hadn't gone into great detail, but he had said that the near-unanimous response was that he counted a person. Which is good. Because otherwise Ned's dislike for his fellow captives would have become near-unanimous.

"He was designed to pass as human. To be able to fool people." Ned knows, probably better than anyone else in this place, the degree of detail that had been put into making that mimicry as perfect as possible. Something about Dirk's wording rubs him the wrong way, but it's not Dirk that he is frustrated at, so much as the knowledge that most people would think of it that way. "Personally, I don't think of him as more than a robot. But I also don't think being a robot makes him any less than a human. If anything, it makes him better."

Vastly better, in a variety of different ways. It also makes him vulnerable, but Ned isn't about to tell Dirk that. He doesn't idolize Daneel's nature, but he doesn't think it's anything to be overcome. At least, not in the way that Dirk seems to mean.

"What insight did you offer, if you don't mind my asking?" It might seem a strange thing to ask so intently, but it matters to Ned. It matters to how he's going to treat Dirk in the future, knowing what he'd said to Daneel at this critical stage in his struggle to find his own identity.