You're correct; the debate is pretty arcane and the purpose of this particular post is mostly for Noah to lob bombs at other wonk bloggers he interacts with on

You're correct; the debate is pretty arcane and the purpose of this particular post is mostly for Noah to lob bombs at other wonk bloggers he interacts with on Twitter frequently. This is a pathology of his writing on Substack, and actually of the entire Substack ecosystem more broadly. Most of the content produced in this ecosystem is basically "takes" on "stuff I heard online". See also Freddie de Boer and others. Extreme forest for trees problem. It's not just that it feels tribalistic and inaccessible to a lay audience, it's that it feels tribalistic and inaccessible to even a particularly educated and engaged audience who nevertheless don't spend all their time in this particular online bubble. I say this acknowledging that the actual criticisms here are reasonable and I don't have any particular disdain for the post or the discussion, just that I am totally unsurprised that you picked up on it being oddly insular.