Because the main chain will always be the one with the most nodes to be executed. Because this is the one that miners want to follow in order to be able to maintain the current gains.
Ehhhhh... by tomorrow anyone with an amazon and google cloud account and a bit of money to blow could spin up more nodes than the current entire network following whatever rules they want.
Of course, with no user behind these nodes they're irrelevant, and nothing in bitcoin works by counting nodes. So attackers don't bother (mostly, their are spies that run thousands of 'nodes'), but they easily could if it mattered.
It reminds me of this old post,
https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3iao3i/how_to_run_3000_completely_legit_full_nodes_aka/. This approach could be extended if each port assigned to different proxy IP address.
Strict mempool policy actually filters out a lot of spam transactions which makes running a node long-term a bit easier. i used to think Knots was just about enforcing Luke’s personal ideology but now I see it actually has some real practical benefits.
Do you mind telling us the real practical benefits?