Interesting story. Yes, I think our intuitions about what kinds of computations we want to care about are easily bent and twisted depending on the situation at hand. In analogy with Dennett's "intentional stance," humans have a "compassionate stance" that we apply to some physical operations and don't apply to others. It's not too hard to manipulate these intuitions by thought experiments. So, yes, I do fear that other people may differ (perhaps quite a bit) in their views about what kinds of computations are suffering that we should avoid.