I really appreciate the taxonomy and links given there, but whenever I see someone claiming "you can't do Z before you've mastered X and Y" it tells me that someone's afraid of others succeeding with simply skipping the masterhood of X and Y and going straight to Z, picking up just enough X and Y in the process.

In fact, since the direct path is more rocky than going via X and Y, it naturally selects the most motivated people, so those succeeding in it will generally outperform those who went X-Y-Z.