Not at all. Fundamentally, you do need understanding in order to criticize. "Criticizing" without understanding is merely whining. If your intent is to whine, you are certainly welcome to until your heart's content, but it will be fruitless. Without you having an understanding – and being able to articulate it – progress cannot be made. This should be obvious.
> A stack trace is ground truth
But a costly truth. Even languages that do pass around stack traces are careful to avoid them except under special circumstances, which is kind of nonsensical from a theoretical point of view. If you find them to be useful, you'd find them useful in all cases. However, it is a necessary tradeoff for the sake of computing efficiency.
With a few small changes to your codebase you can restore the automatic attachment of stack traces like the original experiments had. Stack traces are made available for you to use! But, it remains that the research showed that the typical application didn't ever use it, so it wasn't a sensible default to include given the cost of inclusion. "But, but I wish it were!" doesn't change reality like you seem to think it does.
Understanding comes from all kinds of places. When a child touches a hot stove, they come to understand the consequences. That child doesn't gather 30 participants and record their reactions as they take turns burning their fingers. I'll leave you to extrapolate.
How I come across has no bearing on what is said. This is irrelevant and a pointless distraction.
> Understanding comes from all kinds of places.
If you have an understanding then you've studied it. All that is lacking, then, is the communication of what is understood. Strangely, after several comments, still crickets on the only thing that would add value to the discussion...