Moreover the two lost shuttles included human lives. Better to blow stuff up with demo payloads now before sending up large contracted payloads or worse human beings!

I couldn’t believe my ears when I first heard that the second ever flight of SLS was going to be crewed.

It worked out in the end, but I can’t imagine being so confident in a new system, no matter how much money and brainpower has been spent to make it safe.

> Better to [...]

That's undeniably true. Nonetheless "Better than the shuttle, which sucked" isn't the design goal.

The question is not even just "is it better to blow up 12 Starships?", which would probably still be true. It's "Why isn't Starship working yet?" and the implied "Maybe Starship sucks too?!".