Can you please point me to Bostrom's paper? I can't seem to find the reference.

I'm very curious if the in-context quote is better fleshed out. As it stands here, it looks a lot like it's affected by anthropomorphic bias (or maybe references a large number of hidden assumptions that I don't share, around both the meaning of individuality and the odds that intelligences which regularly undergo synchronization can remain similar to ours).

I can imagine a whole space of real-life, many-integrated-synchronized-copies scenarios, where the process of creating a copy and torturing it for kicks would be accepted, commonplace and would not cause any sort of moral distress. To me, there is a point where torture and/or destruction of a synchronized, integrated, identical copy transition into the same moral category as body piercings and tatoos.