This line of reasoning leads to Richelieu's six lines,  where everyone is guilty of something, so you can punish anyone at any time for any reason: process crimes make for a much more plausible pretext to go after a target than any "intrinsically bad" thing.

tout their “holistic” approach to recognizing creativity and intellectual promise

This doesn't mean what you think it means. It's code for racial discrimination.

I edited the screenshot of this Twitter thread.

If you'd put in a link to a deleted tweet, I'd probably have believed it.

With a bit of luck, we might soon get a Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques who will weigh in on the other side of this, which should help even out the "holiness." From a morality/virtue perspective, I favor the bone-saw guy: he seems generally less preachy.

How about "xif," for "exclusively if"?

If I came up with a game in which always saying "[wrong answer], ≈0%" was a winning strategy, I'd conclude not valuing correctness at all was a fatally flawed idea, and the change the rules so that wasn't true any more, not insist the game was fine, and it's the people who actually thought about the rules who were playing it wrong.

absolutism, treating their conclusions and the righteousness of their cause as obvious, and assuming it should override ordinary business considerations.

It doesn't take certainty in any position to criticize driving at half-speed.

Seen in the light of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act asymmetrically binding Republicans, what you're calling an "unprovoked bout of gerrymandering" might be better understood as an attempt to reduce the unfair advantage Democrats have had nationally for decades.

Peer review, for all its flaws, is the best tool to ensure the integrity and rigor of scientific discourse about any important issue

Is this a belief that evidence could disabuse you of, or an affirmation of faith? What other systems you have considered that didn't have the flaws of the currently entrenched system, and assessed their flaws to be worse?