A lot of people who propose changes to bitcoin script 1) disagree with each other on which changes to do and 2) have a different view than what they had a year ago.

To me, this is indicative of a design space and risk/reward analysis that is not fully mapped out yet. As discussion and development continue, people rapidly change their view on what the best way to proceed is.

People often point to recent events to support their view. So for example, the fee spikes associated with Ordinals/BRC-20, and then more recently Runes, are currently used as reasons to accelerate base layer change proposals. That's a way to drum up emotional support and create a sense of urgency. But for example, if you took a snapshot of which script changes were most popular a year ago vs today, you'd have a different set for the most part. That sense of emotional urgency tries to lock in whatever the current thing is, even if a year from now the current thing is different based on ongoing development and discussion.

I don't mean niche programmers as an ad hominem. I mean developers of proposed scaling methods that are likely niche or at least not demonstrated yet to have broad demand, and want to change the base layer quickly with widespread agreement that a change is safe. And not everyone has to understand a change, but to get miners and node operators on board, it does take a pretty broad conviction.