I 100% agree with you that people should be and are free to give their opinions, full stop.
Many specific things people said only make sense to me if they have some internal sense that they are owed a justification and input (example, example, example, example).
I almost-but-don’t-totally reject PR arguments. EA was founded on “do the thing that works not the thing that looks good”. EAs encourage many other things people find equally distasteful or even abhorrent, because they believe it does the most good. So “the castle is bad PR” is not a good enough argument, you need to make a case for “the castle is bad PR and meaningfully worse than these other things that are bad PR but still good”. I believe things in that category exist, and people are welcome to make arguments that the castle is one of them, but you do have to make the full argument.
I 100% agree with you that people should be and are free to give their opinions, full stop.
Many specific things people said only make sense to me if they have some internal sense that they are owed a justification and input (example, example, example, example).
I almost-but-don’t-totally reject PR arguments. EA was founded on “do the thing that works not the thing that looks good”. EAs encourage many other things people find equally distasteful or even abhorrent, because they believe it does the most good. So “the castle is bad PR” is not a good enough argument, you need to make a case for “the castle is bad PR and meaningfully worse than these other things that are bad PR but still good”. I believe things in that category exist, and people are welcome to make arguments that the castle is one of them, but you do have to make the full argument.