I'm not saying you are wrong to feel distress or discomfort from reading words that resemble human language expressing pain, conflict, etc. -- but these things

I'm not saying you are wrong to feel distress or discomfort from reading words that resemble human language expressing pain, conflict, etc. -- but these things are just mimicking patterns of human communication. It's a very clever trick, but it's plainly a trick. We know how it works. It was built. Rats, on the other hand, have complex inner workings beyond our understanding. Rats are like us. We naturally empathise with hot plate rat. And we don't know to what extent hot plate rat understands what we're doing to it.