It might have 'degenerated' the moment someone got it into their head that the sort of mathematical cleverness one sees in HAKMEM is somehow transferable and applicable to wild and woolly fields such as 'life' or 'the economy' or 'human relations'. It's a tremendously tempting and alluring notion - its lustre is such that otherwise rational thinkers are eager to leave their critical faculties in their other pants and toot its every minor or anecdotal random success as deeply significant.