You think Core changing the policy was a "dumb call" - do you understand they they were reacting to the network already routing around said policy and thus rendering it ineffective? Thus, keeping the policy in place was actually detrimental to nodes and impairing their ability to predict what transactions will be in the next block. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKuZMvXWMAAKFOD?format=jpg&name=4096x4096