I would agree with your call for rationalist debate on the matter and agree that branding such debate "wrong" is well wrong. But I must disagree with the venue, because of signalling reasons. I would also to a limited extent endorse your criticism of the effectiveness of PUA for some (our?) kinds of people.

The main value I got out of PUA is its excellent predictive value, not any particular benefit via applying said knowledge.

The main tangible practical benefit I got from PUA can be summed up in the following four points:

1. Preform many many light-hearted social experiments, you need data.
2. Most of everyday casual communication is status signalling
3. The meaning of a communication is the response it elicits.
4. "Natural game" is practised by millions who don't think about what they are doing at all. They are not punished, resented or reviled for it at all in fact they are admired and appreciated. What you are doing is developing a substitute for the black box in their brain that you seem to be missing. The behaviour itself is attractive, its not used as a shorthand for some other qualities (which is not to say that some other qualities can't be attractive in their own right). The behaviour itself is all that is attractive, the machinery that is behind it doesn't matter one bit unless it fails to emulate the output or if it demonstrates other undesirable traits. But the set of appropriate behavioured in themselves are still attractive. If undesirables traits overcome the positive effect upon objective analysis this is not a call against reverse engineering, it is a call to use a different design for emulation.