I unfortunately predict doom for this group. Statecraft is largely about coalition building and who is doing favors for whom. Without this the wheels simply stop turning, public bureaucracies stop cooperating, private funding dedicates itself to destroying you instead of supporting you. This is never going to change, this is how politics is, it's why parties always form even when we try to prevent them.

The essential factor in whether a state is good or bad for the people at large is arguably whether you can draw a clear line around which sorts of favoritism are permitted and which are outlawed as corrupt, and actually achieve enforcement when people in power inevitably break these rules. A cardiologist, bioarchaeologist and a physicist are going to know nothing about all of this. Their job is to work with the incumbent bureaucrats and elites who hold the real power in that society and those people will almost certainly run circles around them. Fantasyland Reddit politics consists of making aggressive, principled statements. Real world politics is about recognizing you have to deal with a ton of people who are quite frequently awful but because they've managed to cling to one lever of influence or another you can't ignore them. They are moving things in a the direction you don't want them to go every day so what do you do about them? Jail them? Kill them? Buy them off? Cut a deal with them? Make them see reason even though it's against their personal interest because you're just that smart? (lol!) You can't ignore them. It's nothing like the deterministic systems all these people have studied. I wish them luck but I think I know how this is gonna end.