If he means effectively maximizing the expectation of, then there is nothing mysterious about different levels of 'effectively' being available for different functions and his rhetorical point with 'mysteriously' falls apart.

I agree that education also allows for skipped fundamentals. Self education can be good if one has good external critique, such as learning to program and having computer tell you when you're wrong. Blogging, not so much. Internal critique is possible but rarely works, and doesn't work for things that are in the slightest bit non rigorous.