For the most part, sure, but at the margin I'm not sure the "best paper" can be completely well-defined within its four corners, independent of the author. E.g.

For the most part, sure, but at the margin I'm not sure the "best paper" can be completely well-defined within its four corners, independent of the author. E.g. the reader might rationally care (to some degree) about what a paper says about the future of the field. If an underfunded non-famous researcher describes marginal preliminary results by pursing some approach, that's one thing, but if my very successful colleagues at Berkeley/Washington/Tsinghua or Google/MSR/Alibaba publish a paper that's like, "We have gotten pretty excited about this technique for a bunch of reasons, some quantified but some more conjectural, or qualitative, or just more difficult to measure so not done yet, but here are some interesting preliminary measurements that should whet your appetite, and because of who we are, our track record of success, and our many grad students/researchers digging for gold, we'll probably find more to report in due time" well, am I wrong to be a little more interested in the second paper on the grounds that I'd like to keep up with the field? (You might also reasonably believe that the job of an editor or program committee is to assemble the most edifying program or issue when considered as an ensemble, rather than each paper individually.) I also don't think it's completely crazy to consider to a tiny degree what the reader "wants," separate from their true interest in an omniscient sense. When you click around on the Internet, do you only read the "best papers"? Probably not. This is similar to why the New York Times (and Hacker News) don't use 90% of their word count to remind readers to eat healthy, stop smoking, maintain friendships and regular activity, sleep regular hours, and give away most of their money to buy malaria nets.