A bloody-minded willingness to argue over meaningless technical minutiae is one of the mighty fences separating engineering from philosophy. It subtly undermines the supposedly profound statements by pointing out that there's still a little bit of bullshit in them, too.
As no engineer ever said, "The house built from enlightenment has insufficient amps coming into the breaker panel."
The philosopher makes a profound statement that less sophisticated thinkers can understand. The engineer just builds a hydraulic cutter that is remarkable in its system to keep the silicon carbide grit slurry from clotting in the supply lines, and asks which river rock you want sliced up.
Intentionally missing the point is a form of trolling. And it's super fun when it's deflating the pomposity out of someone.
Which makes sense, as this is essentially a Rorschach test about prosocial behavior.
Basically the test is immune to this kind of criticism, because it's only interested in your response to it.
And lo and behold if you "troll" it by declaring it all bullshit, you're a type A engineer willing to argue over meaningless things, which certainly isn't very prosocial, whatever value it otherwise brings.
I don't think it's fair to criticize metaphor as bullshit insofar as the definition of bullshit is something like "saying things without regard for their truth values" (paraphrasing Harry Frankfurt) because metaphor doesn't have the sort of truth requirement you seem to think it does.
> It subtly undermines the supposedly profound statements by pointing out that there's still a little bit of bullshit in them, too
This actually caught me and I found myself trying to game the test itself.
For the first one, I was like "Yeah, it's true and is saying that persistence is important if you want to achieve your goals, but it's kind of a bullshitty way to say it" And then reading the rest, they all felt like they belonged on posters of silhouetted people looking over mighty vistas. So I declared the entire exercise a trick question.
It's like taking issue with another of the profound statements: "Your teacher can open the door, but you have to step in."
"Well, no," you point out, "you could be carried in by the teacher. Or maybe you're in a wheelchair and you need to wheel in."
The door, and stepping, in this case, are to be understood metaphorically. So is the river and the rock.