Great points! But I want to quibble with this a bit.
> To be honest, the idea that you can produce valuable intellectual work by outsourcing the details is absurd.
It is absurd. But it's also very common! There are an awful lot of people who have done very well not by understanding anything, but by posturing and performing. E.g., take the ghostwritten book. The books of many politicians from all parties could generously be called mediocre. But they don't need to create valuable intellectual work; they just need something anodyne and book-shaped with their name on it.
Surprisingly often, people get away with this kind of absurdity, especially when rich and/or powerful. Indeed, one of the fascinating things for me about Musk's ongoing clown show at Twitter is that we're getting a real-time look at what happens when somebody who refuses to contend with the details fools themself into thinking they know what's going on.
That totally matches my experience where Architecture Astronauts have free reign. They are rewarded not for making this work, but talking impressively about big things. So what they produce is a lot of talk. When it's implemented by actual developers, does it work out well? Usually not! But that doesn't matter, because the people who empower them are also people who talk impressively about big things without understanding them.