I had a very similar experience of the block size war. It was an incredibly confusing time. I ended up trusting my gut and it paid off.

The arguments I was hearing from Roger were disingenuous and sensationalized. His alignment with CSW basically sealed the deal for me. I know there were bigger more important figures on the big block side, but those were the faces I saw most often.

I hadn't thought of it in terms of time preference as you stated above, but that's a clear way to think about it.

At the moment I feel similarly confused about the Knots / Core fight, but I feel much less concerned about it.

I'm running knots, not because I'm heavily aligned with the knots team or their pathos arguments, but because I didn't trust the disingenuous ethos arguments coming from core or their entitlement towards making software changes that affect everyone.

Honestly at this point I'm wondering if taproot was a mistake, specifically in the way it was rolled out. Tick tock next block regardless.