Whelp, if that's not a succint answer I dunno what is. I ended up asking the search engine what you thought on the topic [0], and I think it was informative. At least, it made me feel a bit less bad about my stance. (Confirmation bias / appeal to authority ahoy.)

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=tptacek+antivirus#!/comment/foreve...