Reasoning from first principles is always a good thing. But we have to recognize our cognitive limitations as individuals. I’d love to review every line of open source code that I’ll ever use but that’s never going to happen. The vast vast majority of what I know about the world is stuff that I’ve learned from other people. Topics like bitcoin I reason from first principles to the best of my ability, but I’ll never stop relying on trusted people to guide my thinking.

I don’t have a strong opinion on core vs knots. And LukeJr can be kinda crazy. But he’ll always have my respect based on a few of the positions he’s taken in the past. Among them: the March 2013 unintentional chain split. Read the bitcoin-dev channel, he knew pretty much instantly what happened and what needed to be done, faster than most (including Gavin).