He wasn't saying that the engineers believe that in ontological sense. Rather he was presenting the difference in how we usually think about complex systems (i.e. the thermostat "wants" to keep a stable temperature). We abstract away the materialism we believe in because it's not practical and in a way we come back to the causes that aristotle wrote about, just metodologically not ontologically.
With vibe coding, one could even say that you can believe in the computer's intent to write the code and the code working through that intent. You might not even know how the code looks after all.
Your comment came at a right moment, right after my lecture in ontology yesterday where the proffesor presented the inverted casuality of a controller feedback loop as an example of a 2 types of causes described by aristotle that are lost in modern materialistic thinking, the formal cause and the final cause.
Great examples with the tea and the opamp for how a final cause be in the "future" of the effect, I'll remember them for the exam :)
Honestly I am not surprised. I imagine he wrote it quickly as this fun quirky look at the universe but then it got extremely popular, kurzgesatz video released and all. A lot of people based their personal beliefs off of the story.
Imagine you write a small story for fun but then it becomes nearly a religion. It must be a little frustrating for Andy.