It must be better, because it's difficult.
Wow, this is definitely an arguable point. Just stepping outside and looking into the science or engineering and manufacturing worlds, one can quite often name multiple different techniques and methodologies used to obtain a certain goal. Let's just think of DNA sequencing. There's the Sanger's sequencing vs most of the new, 3rd and next generation sequencing methods (Pyro-, various Illumina, Nanopore, and so many that I did not keep track of in recent years). Sanger's more laborious, slower, most of the time less precise. Its benefits are mostly less technologically advanced equipment that's required and an excellent demonstrability of the process - but it is better in only these terms. The fact, that it is more laborious (hence, more difficult) doesn't make it better for obtaining the results. Now, one could argue that the next generation sequencing methods are more difficult because of the technological advancement - but they surely won't be more difficult for the person undertaking the analysis.
But the example I gave is not even a really good one. There are surely better examples of methods that are not only more laborious, time and resource consuming, over engineered, but also much less efficient than simpler solutions that required some technological breakthrough in terms of the tools used or even simpler, thorough understanding of the ways available to reach a desired goal.
Now, in arts this is more disputable, because very much often there's many people that don't only discuss the value of the piece displayed on its own, but also the way it's been created. This discussion board is a great example of the crowd cherishing the craft sometimes even more than the result itself. But as there are many cases of methods carrying a set of different advantages and disadvantages coupled to their labour cost, as is in the case in the discussion of digital vs non-digital or hybrid photography processes, or also on very objective grounds like in science and engineering, there are different techniques carrying similarly different sets of costs and gains in the ways of obtaining similar goals, there are surely methods that will be more difficult, and objectively almost worthless, especially when stripped from the meaning that we as humans put in the craft - again, more applicable in STEMs rather than in arts. But in photography, let's say, using highly radioactive plutonium as a light source to create a portrait image of a living subject, without killing yourself as a creator in the process. That would definitely be more difficult to pull off than anything of historical or contemporary processes. There would be surely a couple of people that would appreciate the craft of undertaking the task, as compared to simpler, safer photography methods. Would it REALLY be better than other methods?
My hot take is that ETTR/ETTL and zone system are more often distracting than they are useful. There is surely great value there, there are some images that hugely benefited from incorporation of these, but there's a much bigger number of captivating images that had no concious incorporation of any of these in the making process.