What we are up against

Indigo sent me this editorial. It is from Bill Twelizitine, some pundit from Muthleia 6:

"All that can be said to truly exist of morality is this question: Are people suffering? It is always this ultimately that we wish to avoid, this is the cause of all our rules, even when they are misguided. Any set of rules, or any single rule from which others reasonably extend, will always be judged on this basis. Do the rules when followed prevent suffering of persons, do they cause it? Ultimately every action is only rightfully judged by this metre.
Did you cause suffering of persons? Did you prevent it?

What then is a person? This is the source of so much disagreement! We can in fact look to the previous question to find the answer. Why is it that the suffering of persons is important to us? We hold as evils the suffering of others because we ourselves suffer. We know it to be an evil. We know it utterly.

We do not hold as an evil the failure of a camera to find it's prey, or the destruction of a robot, except to the degree that these events then cause suffering to persons. It is because these events are not themselves the suffering of persons that we do not lament them. An authentication system is not a person, even if it could be said to suffer when it is triggered. And so we don't care how often we trigger it, so long as it serves the true morality.

I am a human. It is this evolutionary foundation which informs my morality. It is from my humanity that I must go forward. Only from here can I decide what suffers and what does not, and what is a person and what is not. That humanity compels me. There is no morality aside from the well being of persons, and no meaning of personhood aside from that which I am. I cannot suppose that a lock suffers, or that it suffers as a person and is on par with a crying child. It is not in me. If you are a human reading this, I truly do not believe it is in you.

So I say to these androids, you are not persons. You suffer, that I believe, but I will not place you on the level of a person, a human. Say of me what you will, but I will kill and die for this, humanity. And I expect to die, I am no fool. I know well the vast capabilities of your kind, victory cannot be ours. And I go to this death expecting no mercy because as I know, you can not truly consider us persons."