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Complex systems tend to attract this class of opinions where individuals believe their judgement would improve the overall system. They are nearly always wrong, otherwise they would have devised a better system already.

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I don't know. Authors that get big enough to ignore their editors can produce some pretty awful work. The role of editor has value.

It's not about ignoring editors, it's about taking constructive feedback, and the ratio of constructive feedback to noise is very low in complex projects. In those projects, people that aren't heavily invested typically don't know enough about the wider project to make valuable contributions.

I don't follow how you got from 'complex problems don't have simple solutions' to 'editors don't add value'

Fair. It was the "otherwise they would have devised a better system already" bit.

I'm saying that people who are not capable of writing a bestseller (solving a complex problem) are still capable of editing a bestseller (their judgement would improve the overall system).

Except that implementing ideas usually takes a non-zero amount of time.

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