I have the feeling this thread will be interesting to read in 20 years. Not in the same we read Krugman's 1998 [paraphrase] "the internet is dumb" statement but instead from a post-truth post-hypernormalization world were capital and code are closely entwined. You can already partially see in this thread a technical community that would like to, but can not quite, separate their personal bottom line from some pseudo-scientific idea of right/wrong. I would guess 20 years from now that falsehood will have faded and this thread will look interestingly passé.
1. web.archive.org/web/19980610100009/www.redherring.com/mag/issue55/economics.html