There are at two paths when you vet an idea to death (life?) like that. One is that you come to the optimal solution. Another is that enough people get exhausted defending their objections and eventually give in to what is a suboptimal solution.

So there is something still missing from the recipe for coherent decision-making. It's the reason Feynman says these are "great men" - it's NOT the process which makes it work, but rather a quality inherent in the character of these men.

I don't have an answer for what that may have been, but in the spirit of your second paragraph I just wanted to bring up this thought.