My apology, I did not know he has a PhD by now! His semicha is before that and is also legit.
Re: machlokes, surely each of the chazal had their own approaches, mesorah, and opinions. There are patterns in those disagreements and a lot of Gemorah is discovering and then applying those patterns in cases that we can’t resolve otherwise. When R Yochanan pointed to Resh Lakish former occupation, surely there were personality and life experiences involved …
A big part of learning would be to get rid of inappropriate biases, of course, by working out with counterparts. Resh Lakish did not keep his former attitudes, but retained knowledge of how to make a weapon.
Again, as in many cases, I see you (and not just you) reacting to negative development by going into opposite direction. Yes, there are academic authors who abuse Torah by assigning everything to psychology, but rejecting them does not mean rejecting the real part of it.