The shock comes when you get a Player jump in and just destroy you. Okay, if an NPC does that, fine. It's a programme. But a human - that's the reason you want to be in open, for the interaction. If all you want is to see a ship explode, there's plenty of NPCs that won't say a word. To say PvP against traders is because you want the human interaction, and then the only interaction you do is at the end of a beam - you lie. It's just one big lie. You just want another human to feel it - plain and simple.
DB did not say he didn't want PvP in the Game, just that it would be meaningful. You're talking taking down pilots because of different objectives? Then you are talking Blockades. Blockades aren't meaningful because the BG Simulation, and other pilots exist in other instances and other modes. You being on faction Y killing player on faction X has no effect. Even worse, if the pilot was clean, you end up worse off and no gain, no rating increase, nada. Piracy looses a mark, and that's not good for the game over all. If the faction is in Civil war, in a war zone, possibly with Capital Ships, there is your meaningful PvP, what the system was designed to support.
You mentioned the psychopath role. It is the lowest of the low in terms of roles, because they bleed out the blood Pirates live on. They should be hunted by Pirates and Bounty Hunters alike. Instead, everyone rushes to defend them, even to the point of defending combat logging and port blocking. Of course, traders get blasted for doing that, cause "You should go play in solo if you don't like it." Of course, systems like Lave are supposed to be high security, are advertised as such, but are in fact a noob killing grounds. That's not playing the game as it was designed, it goes against the design, something that FDev have recognised and have already moved to fix. Suddenly how the game was designed becomes less important than the motivation "Because I can."
And yes, it's three months in. The whole reasoning for early release was provided in the same article. Of course not everything is ready yet. And yes, there are things to be rectified, like wings, comms, legacy fines (fines and bounties that cannot be exploited.) But the excuse of being stupidly bored cause there's nothing to do so I just kill every human pilot I see is as lame as it is a lie. It's just another excuse.
Add to that when people start appealing to "It's just a game, you're taking it too serious" when they find that their argument is getting weak is not good. The next thing will be personal attacks, name calling, etc. etc. Hope you're bigger than that.
