Story points are pointless on their own, but estimation meetings are invaluable. In those meetings, story points serve as shortcuts for expressing gut feelings. However, after the meetings, they become completely useless, and even harmful, because, as the article mentions, people start treating them like precise numbers and do arithmetic with them.
Much like one huge difference between string "42" and the number 42 is that the latter can have math done to it. If you want to avoid the arithmetic, label tasks with words like "simple", "small", "quick", or my favorite "Won't fix".
