it's discounted entirely as a useful technique
I don't think it's true, that it's generally considered not useful. One of MIRIs interviews was with one person engaged into provably-secure computing and I didn't see any issues in that post. It's just that provably-secure computing is not enough when you don't have a good specification.
As per a recent comment this thread is meant to voice contrarian opinions, that is anything this community tends not to agree with. Thus I ask you to post your contrarian views and upvote anything you do not agree with based on personal beliefs. Spam and trolling still needs to be downvoted.