Proper WoT is not just critical for nostr to work, it’s critical for the internet at large to work. (Although “nostr” here could be used interchangeably with “internet”)
Producing garbage is extremely cheap and getting increasingly cheaper, or, said another way, it’s getting increasingly more expensive to discern what is garbage.
You either go with an authority that helps you remove 99.99% of the existing garbage or you use an approach that, much like cryptography, makes the cost of putting garbage in front of your eyes asymmetrically expensive.
We’ve tried the authority-first approach and it has led to the current state of manipulation, polarization and reduction of individuals’ agency.