If someone claims that X is "always"(!) the case, then giving just one example where X is not the case counts as a refutation. The statement that the GP quoted is just obviously false and there is nothing "bad faith" about pointing that out.
Artisan made tools compared to high end tools from a factory are more like a mechanical watch compared to an electronic one. It might be a cool mechanism and a more unique statement piece than an Apple Watch, but it sure won’t keep better time.
On other topics, the cognition flips.
This is the nature of evolved, culturally conditioned consciousness (one of the things most HN'ers like talking about from an abstract perspective, but really don't like talking about at the object level during discussions of certain controversial ideas, when heuristics have taken control of the mind).
For fun: observe the nature of comments in this thread from a meta perspective of a curious alien observer.
it's important to get the chemistry right, but if you know the failure modes, it's far less of a black box and thus less scary.
A chemist broke this rule on YouTube by turning styrofoam into cinnamon candy that he ate himself, but he went through an extreme amount of effort to make it safe:
I think this phenomenon itself is very interesting and a huge deal (cognitive ability is what makes us the most dominant species, and is required just to maintain living standards), but also the secondary effect is interesting: the mind does not allow focus to be placed on it.
If you ask me, it is about as close to magic as you can get.
I don’t get why that is so controversial. Microchips are definitely not what I have in mind when I talk about a “tool” at all.
You say that this is a good enough example to completely refute the OPs point which I disagree with.