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I don't think it's a good idea to chuck people into volcanoes because they didn't have PTSD when you thought it appropriate.
Certainly, a serial killer who targets children, he gets loaded into the trebuchet. But there are multiple ways to the same outcome of "not an unjustified killer of children", and "can do correct ethical reasoning when it matters" works as well as "has an innate aversion".
(I get nervous about this kind of thinking, because I've seen people call for me to get loaded into the metaphorical trebuchet over certain psychological blocks I don't have.)
Not quite what I mean.
More that if someone doesn't have the requisite cognitive wiring to consider children a particularly 'special' class in terms of moral weight (that is, they are genuinely 'innocent' and have a heightened need for protection) it ups the odds, in my eyes, that they have other sociopathic traits that make them an overall undesirable neighbor, whatever their other values. Wouldn't want them around my kids, for sure.
What other types of vulnerable individuals would they feel comfortable exploiting? What moral code, if any, DO they follow, if 'killing kids' is easily permissible?
But as we've established, one can't really know another's heart or their true feelings so I accept that we have to make do with the circumstances we're given.
To make my position 100% clear, I do have a very particularized wariness of abortion doctors and the docs who push gender transition surgeries and puberty blockers on kids.
Okay, I'll elaborate.
Like 10 years ago, I was living rurally, and as sometimes happens rurally, a wild mouse snuck into the house and started eating our food (in particular, my Weet-Bix). My aunt put out poison for it, as she'd done many times before. However, I didn't much relish the idea of having to find the corpse by the horrible stench of putrefying mouse. So, when I spotted it one night, I got a pair of tongs, grabbed it (I think it was slowing down from the poison), crushed it to death, and then chucked it in our wood heater to be incinerated. Perfectly logical and justifiable action.
But lots of the urban West has grown up... shall we say, sheltered. They're not up to the job of killing an animal in that kind of personal fashion, even when there's good reason to do it. I grew up sheltered too, but for whatever reason that psychological block didn't take root. Probably something to do with me being high-functioning autistic and/or borderline.
So the instant half the Blue Tribe hears this story, of course, they start doing the Body Snatchers scream. I don't think like them, so I'm not one of them, so I'm dangerous, so I'm to be destroyed or at least contained. Xenophobia. It doesn't matter that there's nothing ethically wrong with what I did (unless you're Ziz, I suppose); the thought process wasn't the same, so the hardware's not the same, so I'm pattern-matched to a serial killer.
I really, really don't want to legitimise the Body Snatchers scream. I know my face looks exceptionally tasty, so I'm not going to vote for the Leopards Eating Faces Party.
(Admittedly, I'm willing to make the "no, being sapient doesn't mean having anything remotely like human morality" argument with regard to AI. Combination of being essential to understanding the danger and the bright line of "not human".)
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