You're arguing worst-case, and people running anubis are saying it dramatically helps in their experience, because they're not getting too many of the sorts of bots that people like you and Tavis (correctly) argue are theoretically possible. So the argument that it's "bad CS" falls flat.
A better, perhaps the best, argument is that a worse bot mix might appear tomorrow, so anubis should be used as a runway for a better solution, and not as a solution in itself. If only everyone with a website had the desire (or AI tokens) to implement their own better solution. In some cases even desire or a lot of tokens isn't enough. I mean, you think kernel.org folks haven't put some serious thought into it? And yet, as HN argues about it, there's kernel.org running anubis at difficulty 5.
A better, perhaps the best, argument is that a worse bot mix might appear tomorrow, so anubis should be used as a runway for a better solution, and not as a solution in itself. If only everyone with a website had the desire (or AI tokens) to implement their own better solution. In some cases even desire or a lot of tokens isn't enough. I mean, you think kernel.org folks haven't put some serious thought into it? And yet, as HN argues about it, there's kernel.org running anubis at difficulty 5.