He didn't claim that our innate appreciation for specific forms might imply that we make good decisions about how to find more.
What he did say was that our degree of appreciation for proven designs, founded in evidence, seems to show that, as animals, we have buttons buried deep within us, that these designs manage to push.
We all seem to like the same thing, once someone finds it or figures it out, even without knowing specifically why. Certain shapes and designs seem to transcend language, education, formal training and analytical judgement.
There are rule sets that seem to appeal to us, instictively, and yet spaceships are not bound by those "rules of instinctive appeal" even though qualitatively, we can't state what those rules are or where they come from.
The mystery, regarding where that post-hoc appeal comes from is what's interesting.
Not that people aren't master draftsman, and materials scientists out of the womb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears%E2%80%93Haack_body
Yet I'm not aware of anyone who is. In fact, the Sears-Haack body is basically a toothpick, which makes it ugly as far as I'm concerned.
There's a simpler explanation for why airplane designs are often beautiful. Ugly designs typically don't sell as well. So designers look for something beautiful and at least reasonably efficient. In this view, there's no particular connection between the beauty of the design and its efficiency.
I know that for car designs, we've known empirically for nearly 100 years how to make a very low drag body shape. And most car shapes on the market are far from optimal. While I've had arguments with people about why the most efficient shapes don't appear on the market (e.g., someone argued they'd have less cargo capacity, which I don't agree with), ultimately, few people want to drive a car that looks like a fish or something else that's strange. I imagine a similar phenomena occurs with planes.
This design is very efficient, but the company folded after about 6 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_2_Series
Personally, I don't find the design attractive. And I doubt your average HN reader feels as compelled by the design as they do about the latest Tesla, for example.
That aerodynamics is counterintuitive is fairly well accepted among fluid dynamicists. Watch this classic series of videos from MIT:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=j0rQ4F3f-Ic
I have not watched the videos, but I did read the associated book, and it goes into detail about the counterintuitiveness.
As a fluid dynamicist, I'd say closer to the opposite is true. The shapes might look good, but ask a person not trained in basic fluid dynamics to explain what makes a particular shape aerodynamic and they'll likely do poorly.
Boundary layer separation phenomena seems to be inherently unintuitive. I can recall talking about aerodynamics with someone very smart but untrained in the field. They seemed focused on the high pressure zone created in front, with no consideration of the size of the low pressure zone in the back. (In a simplified view of the problem.) If the boundary layer separates prematurely, it creates a larger low pressure zone and increases drag. So the shape of the back of an object matters to its drag. There's a reason airfoils are elongated and not just smooth fronts with abrupt ends.
And the intuitive understanding most people have would not suggest that roughening an object could decrease its drag. But this is a well known phenomena explained by boundary layer separation as well.
(Note that I don't know much anything about supersonic aerodynamics and what I say here is only what I know about subsonic aerodynamics. I am not an aerodynamicist, just a guy who works broadly in fluid dynamics.)