Agree. Security fixes are the killer app for automatic updates. I would argue there are other kinds of fixes that should make the cut: crash bugs, data loss bugs. Maybe even broken features, interaction annoyances, etc. Then it becomes a slippery slope, and the risk/benefit trade-offs are harder to arbitrate.

I don't think "ill-conceived" is giving enough credit. It has been clear to me for a long time that "security" is the justification for pushing the user to update, but the updates themselves are frequently leveraged as a vector for other, less user-friendly, practices.