I own a few scholarly texts from india about temple architecture. Despite their best efforts, the authors can’t help themselves but describe mythology (surrounding temples, religion etc) as if it were history.
Hinduism is also very amorphous and culture and regional norms greatly overlaps with what constitutes the actual religious system—and this makes secular taxonomy very hard. At least it makes it inaccessible.
What I find “rationalist” about this essay is that it attempts to offer a secular taxonomy, and attempts to overcome very common mistakes (like conflating mythology with history).
I can think of one situation where pulling the levers would be more ‘good’ than ‘bad’.
Estimate each of their future influence on others—both span and depth. If you consider it ‘high’, then pull the lever. If you consider it ‘low’ (which might further correlate with lower IQ), then (tentatively) hold off.