Isn't "mainly in how it destroys thinking" precisely what the parent comment was referring to with the Torvalds quote? I am not sure what your disagreement even is.
I don't think the analogy is that AI is just copy/pasting code, but rather that getting an AI to generate code for you and directly using the output is like copy/pasting code.
But to get AI to write you a working solution, more often than not you are supposed to understand the problem at hand along with possible solutions, right?
At that point, you're re-writing the entire solution, albeit without actually typing it out.