if people aren't people, are there any beings that are?

Probably not. At risk of getting to “real” on here, I often suspect that consciousness is a mirage and that even if it is real it is so fleeting that it is not our default sate of being. So in a lot of ways the idea of a person is kinda meaningless philosophically speaking.

That said I am not one of those hardliners who thinks this justifies not treating everyone like people. In fact I am sort of the opposite, if it quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, I act like it’s a duck because generally speaking you’re on the wrong side of history when you decide something doesn’t deserve kindness.

[Braces himself for the 100s of comments explaining how wrong and ignorant his half-baked take on existentialism is]