You average grad student in physics is less wrong than Newton in physics (he knows about special relativity for example). It’s not "smugness", of course building on the shoulders of those who comes before means building better than them.
Loaded question (well, affirmation), on a confident sneery tone while using poorly defined terms ("essential humanity") and very poor comprehension of object-level facts of the ground ("Markov chains"). And no sign of even trying to understand the other side, just trying to score rhetoric points on a internet board.
I guess I misunderstood then. It’s not just an Internet forum. It’s an internet forum with strict moderators. And it’s _very_ valuable.