Why can't the 737 MAX's horizontal stabilizer autotrim be cut out by control yoke inputs?
Allow me to emphasize the article quote differently:


  That feature was disabled on the Max when M.C.A.S. was activated


For a regular trim runaway without MCAS activation, the yoke can still cut out electronic trim as before. The only change was inhibiting this behavior when MCAS is active. MCAS is designed to improve handling at high angles of attack. One way to get to a high angle of attack is with lot of yoke input, so it would somewhat defeat the purpose to stop MCAS in that situation.

The designers chose to trust MCAS (and its sensor inputs) over the pilot inputs in this situation. It certainly seems now that this trust was misplaced, but this has more to do with the system design than the general philosophy. Fly-by-wire planes have many protections that will change control input depending on sensor inputs. In normal law, Airbus alpha protection will prevent the angle of attack from increasing, even with full aft sidestick input. It compares three sensor inputs to do this, rather than trusting only one, but even that is not infallible.