I don't even see how any of the alternatives you mentioned or any of the proponents of the alternatives I've seen over the years solve the specific shortcuts to media that defies category problem you cited.

Tagging would because you would tag the media with whatever genres that apply. Searching any of those genres would bring up the media. This, again, is something that exists and is functional but is not part of the OS and has to be added in by third party. But it doesn't solve the fundamental problem because it's yet another interface layer. You can just fix the fundamental problem of the filing system.

Look, you keep saying nobody is showing you an alternative filing system or OS. I've just explained alternative filing systems that work and are used everyday. Your argument seems to be they're not true alternatives because they still use files and folders. Again, this is another instance of the jargon issue and being specific about what we're saying. No matter what filing system you use, the discrete packets of data are probably going to be called files. Any container in which you put a file is probably going to be called a folder. Those are the widely adopted terms for pieces of information and locations where the information is stored. It doesn't invalidate that there are existing and working ways to store and address a piece of information.

Besides, what is your argument then? That nothing exists outside of the desktop metaphor? That no filing system exists that isn't hierarchical? That's just plain wrong on a technical level.

As for why you don't have 30 alternative operating systems: capitalism. It's very simple. Creating an operating system is a lot of time and requires more than a few people. Companies aren't going to spend resources on that without users and there won't be users without a working piece of software. There have been alternative interfaces and file-handling. These have been created mainly for research purposes.

Within the commercially viable operating systems that do exist you even have desktop alternatives like Symbian, anything with a CLI, Android, iOS.

For the final time alternatives do exist, just not for your PC because the PC market has been dominated by the companies who created the desktop metaphor for home computers to begin with. It's not that nobody is refusing to show you or explain it, it's that you're refusing to acknowledge it. You have been presented with no other option in your entire life, due to the mode of production of software, and are mistakenly assuming it's just the correct option and no other option exists. Your reasoning is that if another option existed that was way better, you would hear about it and would be able to test it out. But due to the nature of how software is produced and what cuts through to consumers on modern hardware, you will not see those options. At least not in a way where you have extensive documentation and a person in a video explains how it works. You can go read white papers on the research that explains alternative examples of OS/filing system combos.

And then I'll also say that it's bad because Alan Kay, a "techbro" as you put it (it's so disingenuous to call the Xerox Parc researchers Tech Bros, because that implies they were profit-seeking trend chasers rather than research scientists)

I know some people have a warm fuzzy feeling for post WWII Keynesian spending on private R&D, but let's not lose our way here. They are absolutely tech bros, that's where tech bros come from. That's where the Californian Ideology comes from. They were capitalists and they were profit-seeking. Xerox is a private company and the direction of researchers was steered by profit, even if that profit was near endless government money. They were not innocent imagineers just exploring the possibilities of cyberspace. They had a job and were paid to create the foundation for what we have now. There's nothing disingenuous about acknowledging basic facts.

Of course not. But that's a shifty way to introduce the idea that everything is subject to critique (which I totally agree with), because you're implying that the desktop metaphor is as sexist and ridiculous as the bikini armor.

Because the defense of desktop appeals to human nature in a specious way and defenders will not examine the inherent biases of society when discussing a piece of culture that is a product of a biased society. Suddenly there are no biases and nature prevails when it comes to this one outcome.

If you find yourself defending any capitalist product/outcome as "well that's just how the human brain works" or "that's just human nature", you should take a pause and do some introspection. Defenders of the dekstop will say that it had to be that way because people needed something to relate to. Then you say you understood it as a child. Children aren't office workers so you had no frame of reference for the metaphor. Meaning the metaphor was arbitrary in the first place. So no, it was not needed because the brain can only understand something if it relates to past experience. No, hierarchical thinking is not human nature. It's learned behavior and it's something you came to understand through engagement. It could have been almost anything else and you would have learned it too and it would now seem just as natural.

My final word is that you should use your socialist glasses to look at this the same way as you would someone defending "rules based world order" or any current system that is said to be the best or only way to do things. This is an appeal you hear all the time in defense of manufactured realities. We're always told it's the best way. If it's not the best way, it's the only viable way. If it's not viable, there are no other alternatives. The realm of possibility is restricted due to "real" concerns, technical limitations, or nature itself. This is hardly ever the case and is almost always an excuse to preserve an exploitative system.