I don't think you're ever going to hit on the "right way to do" the complicated things you've mentioned. However, there's nothing wrong with having discussions about it.
A good example is voting, because there is a lot of science behind it now. If you look at different voting systems and the amount of "Bayesian Regret" in each system, it's clear that Score Voting is the best system. Things like this I was astonished to discover, because there can be decades between discovery and consensus.
