I think you're speaking more philosophically, whereas I'm talking more practically, as in right down to Louie CK and his daughter saying "it's not a FIG NEWTON, it's a PIG NEWTON stoopid!" Or, if you want to implement a distributed system, there are certain "best practices" you need to follow. One can try to follow what they feel is their own "correct path", and that's all well and good, but if they don't know WTF they're doing the only ones they'll end up hurting are themselves and those who they sucked into believing they were competent enough to "pull it off".

However, the even trickier part is that for many things, the correct answer (if there even is one) can still be more of a "gray area". For example, take the following chart. If one person bought, and another person sold at the same time, they BOTH could have been very happy, AND very broke in relatively short order. The "correct" path for all would be to use sound risk management and position size versus their capital at risk.

But philosophically, as you said, that may not be the correct path for some. Perhaps they're just in it for the thrill of the ride! :D

And I can't leave out the PIG NEWTON...! lol