Disagree, I think it's just a missunderstanding of how noise works and what causes noise, that's why he wants to stop direct calculation, but it's not because he wants direct/indirect, he is just thinking on how the render and the clean up proccess can be faster, and he is giving an idea, the thing is that this idea is based on a wrong paradigm about noise.
And regarding the "always"... you are right, not always, but it's the feeling you get the first times you work with this kind of render engines, and it's the idea you get when you prepare a simple scene, so this drives unexperienced people with this engines to think that direct light is always clean meanwhile indirect is the reason of noise.
Of course it's not, but it's something people find difficult to understand, that is why there is a need to explain the "where the noise com from" matter, so people understand that it's not just light entering from the window, but there may be many other reasons.
So, of course not always, but if you simplify it is what people in general thinks until they understand how this work. (at least is my feeling about how newbies understand this).
So I still think he is referring to adaptivity without knowing it BUT the only person who knows this for sure is Tiago, so please Tiago clarify this (just out of curiosity hahaha)
Cheers.
