@emilymbender
If you tear a page in a book, do the characters in the story feel pain?

Anthropic's requirement to "not be abusive towards their models" could be argued to have some merit from a few angles, like not rewarding abusive behavior on the part of the users, or not wanting abusive behavior because all interactions are used as feedback and it could taint their future models (as if those need anything to taint them).

But claiming its because the models feel distress is dumb, or as you have pointed out, a distraction.