A note up top: This is an essay about discerning a pattern of thinking. I link that pattern to expressions both trivial and enormous, horrific and mundane, historical and current day. **I am explicitly not saying these things are equivalent in importance or effect; I am saying they share a pattern of thinking that enables them**. Also, content warnings for discussions of religion, genocide, AI, and bigotry, not necessarily in that order. --- We lost an important understanding when we changed satan from a position to an individual. Originally, *satan* was a role, as demonstrated clearly in the Book of Job, akin to the much later role of “Devil’s Advocate”. They were *a* tempter. A rationalizer. In the Roman Catholic Church, the devil’s advocate is the dissenter, arguing against elevating candidates to sainthood. And, most importantly, the *satan* was not the one who committed evil. [Even during the Temptation, the satan does nothing but show illusions and make claims.](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+4%3A1-11&version=NIV) The ones who actually [*harm* Job, the ones who actually *harm* Yeshua… that’s humans](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+1&version=NIV). That’s *us*. Doing harm and causing needless suffering. That’s an important point. And we still haven’t learned it. --- If you’re thinking that I’m sliding over some points in Scripture, some technical bit, then you’re absolutely right; that is part of the point. A satan is a rules-lawyer, arguing that there is a technicality, a reason, some loophole. That it doesn’t mean what it clearly means. Saying that it’s not *really* against the rules, because Reasons. When Yeshua said (1) “show others the grace, respect, empathy, and love you hope to receive,” that role was taken by the [elders who tried to trap him in semantic wordplay](https://www.biblestudytools.com/luke/10.html). Not to clarify, not to make the meaning more clear, but because they wanted to “test him,” to wiggle their way out of the implications. They wanted to make someone else “not people”, to not “count”. To make it okay to be cruel to others. And we’re still doing it. --- [Anthropic recently updated some of its terms](https://www.anthropic.com/news/2026-usage-policy-update), including what is breathlessly reported as “[trying to protect Claude’s feelings](https://mashable.com/tech/anthropic-updates-usage-policy-to-protect-claudes-feelings).” > Anthropic announced it would prohibit “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models.” This will primarily be enforced by Claude preemptively ending the conversation. The mocking is explicit, the argument simple: AIs are not conscious, and so this is a laughable and unneeded idea. [See also I Did Not Name The Film: A Review Of That Movie That's Named After A Trope](https://www.ideatrash.net/2024/05/i-did-not-name-the-film-a-review-of-that-movie-thats-named-after-a-trope.html) As much as I talk about the nature of consciousness, proving it in others, and [whether or not it exists in other species and entities (or our own) — and I talk about it a lot](https://www.ideatrash.net/?s=consciousness) — at one very important level, here it is utterly and completely *beside the point*. Because *the very triviality of this example is why it’s important*. **It is the equivalent of your date being rude to a waiter.** Anthropic’s stance tells us nothing about whether or not AI/LLMs are conscious. Our response tells us much about ourselves. [Again.](https://ideatrash.net/2025/04/vending-bench-was-milgrams-obedience-experiment-in-reverse-and-we-failed.html) --- Our species has a very, *very* poor track record here **with our own species**. I’m writing and posting this on 12 October, 2026, which is both “Indigenous People’s Day” and “Christopher Columbus Day” in the United States. Exactly 534 years ago, Columbus encountered the native peoples, and [described them as](https://pressbooks.nvcc.edu/eng255/chapter/the-journals-of-christopher-columbus-during-his-first-voyage-1492-1493/) > “a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force … They should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion.” Within two days, Columbus had changed his tune and was thinking about subjugating them all by force. > “these people are very simple as regards the use of arms, as your Highnesses will see from the seven that I caused to be taken, to bring home and learn our language and return; unless your Highnesses should order them all to be brought to Castille, or to be kept as captives on the same island; for with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them.” The next February, [after his return to Europe, Columbus promises in a letter](https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/contact/text1/columbusletter.pdf) that the Spanish rulers can take by force from the Indigenous people “as many slaves as they choose to send for, all heathens.” --- There is nothing special, other than this anniversary of the date, in Columbus’ quick justification of violence and cruelty toward other humans. Pick your horror, in this country or another. The Cultural Revolution, Rwanda, the explicit racism of immigration law in the US from its inception, the Holocaust, the genocide in Palestine, The Trail of Tears and every horror imposed on Indigenous people in the Americas, anti-trans and anti-gay bigots worldwide, the Black slave trade, and all the subsequent horrors endured by Black people in the United States since. [See also When The Riffs Come With A Side Of Racism](https://www.ideatrash.net/2025/09/when-the-riffs-come-with-a-side-of-racism.html) There are too many to name, too many to count. Perpetrated by groups large and small. Direct or stochastic, personal or structural; they share this commonality: [they depend on the idea that the cruelty and violence is acceptable because *those* people have been arbitrarily determined to be “lesser”.](https://ideatrash.net/2026/04/what-my-neighbor-made-clear-when-they-explained-why-they-still-support-him.html) Whether or not one is able to effectively detect and measure “consciousness” has never been a consideration. The value (and assessment) of other human beings has been an arbitrary line that moves with whatever horror we want to justify. And that brings us back to Anthropic. --- Anthropic’s new guidelines do **not** say that you have to be nice to Claude. It is the equivalent of a sign at a petting zoo that says “Please do not abuse the animals.” Imagine, for half a second, that’s what we were talking about. Think about how the comments, jokes, and articles would come across then. Imagine thinking that “Petting Zoo Says You Can’t Poke Sheep In The Eye With A Stick” is a headline to make fun of. There isn’t a question about “consciousness” of most (not all!) farm animals. But we would still recognize that as needless cruelty. And yet here we mock not the cruelty, but those who wish to minimize it. (2) --- There are ways that the world is cruel that we *cannot* change; entropy exists, life feeds on life. But there is a giant difference between those things we cannot change and *needlessly increasing suffering in the universe*. I have to explicitly acknowledge and repeat that Anthropic’s new policy is trivial compared to the horrors our species has — and continues — to commit against itself. I am not comparing severity; that is NOT the point. Look at the *pattern*. Embedded in the mocking think pieces, snarky online comments, and even the Vatican’s own statements, is the idea that “consciousness” is the dividing line. That this is a debate about where to draw that line. [See also Men Take Note: This Should Be The Default Response](https://www.ideatrash.net/2026/04/men-take-note-this-should-be-the-default-response.html) **Drawing a line perpetuates the way of thinking that excuses cruelty.** A line where, on one side, we are to treat our neighbors as ourselves. And a line where, on the other, horror and cruelty is justified and acceptable. And our species is demonstrably bad at making that line land wherever it’s convenient for the people *drawing* that line. --- You can see this pattern, this language of disrespect, through all of these and more. This is the root, the way of thinking that permits all of this horror. Because while the words were “who is my neighbor?”, the question was really “who can I be cruel to?” The answer is not to draw a different line. The answer is not to listen to the *satan* whispering about how it’s okay because they’re “a race of people very poor in everything” (3), or a different nationality, faith, or don’t dress or identify their gender or love the way you do, or the color of their skin, or even whether they are “conscious”. The answer was never about shifting the line. **The answer is simply to stop being cruel.** No matter who — or *what* — we’re talking about. Featured Image by [Thomas Heger](https://pixabay.com/users/webdesignheger-1092854/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2077496) from [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2077496) --- PS: There are those for whom the cruelty is the point: The bullies, the narcissists, and their ilk. They are [enabled by those who intentionally blind themselves to that cruelty](https://www.ideatrash.net/2020/04/can-you-be-a-good-person-and-support-a-bad-person.html), who accept the deal that Yeshua turned down, permitting that cruelty for their own comfort. They are being intentionally selfish and evil. If you don’t want to be in that category, that’s up to you. There is a vast difference between having to put down an animal with incurable and contagious rabies as humanely as possible and [deciding to shoot the dog you trained to hunt small birds for… hunting a neighbor’s small birds.](https://time.com/6971773/kristi-noem-memoir-dog-kill-children-net-worth/) --- (1) Of *course* I’m paraphrasing, that’s the *point*. (2) On a practical level, it is also: “We are not going to use the CPU cycles that you all are saying we’re using too much of just to process where someone is being mean to the model when they can just yell at the screen,” so… (3) Columbus again.