I probably agree about the tool, each writer adds their own flourishes and richness to their prose to capture vividly in your mind a scene or emotion. Hemingway probably doesn't understand this.

But the reason he arrives at using it is because he rightly calls out a bunch of prose that is terrible writing and is trying to quantify this in some way. And whilst I have no problems reading long form articles, many these days do tend to suffer from confusing and downright tedious language.