This take is interesting. It reminds me of a concept I came up with to explain some behaviors I've observed. I called it "moral entrepreneurship". It's basically a game where the goal is to signal one's virtue in a way that one ups your peers. In order to succeed you have to be creative and do things that, when looked at from the perspective of practicality or effectiveness seem completely preposterous, but when seen from how you can "appear" to be virtuous make complete sense.

I came across this article some time ago: https://www.concordia.ca/news/stories/2019/09/20/3-concordia...

At first the concept seemed completely ludicrous. Three white researchers from Canada want to "decolonize" science and will try to integrate "indigenous" knowledge into physics. Then I remembered the concept of moral entrepreneurship and it all made sense. The goal is not to advance physics or to achieve "social justice" whatever that means, it is to appear virtuous in a novel way.