Well, yeah, you are right to point out that EVEN GARY fell to the urge to put gotcha! elements into his games. I think you can sort of look at it in his case as trying to deal with the inevitable consequences of his play style. It certainly wasn't ignorance. It is still kind of crappy, though. And I think that is the real reason why we all eventually went on to more rewarding processes and games that enable them. I mean, I didn't even run a D&D game between about 1993 and 2008, basically. Played in a few now and again, but that was about it.
So, here's the issue with discussing these matters (from my perspective).
Look at how the thread started. It was a specific exploration as to why certain topics continue popping up in conversations about 5e. Which is evident on this forum-
1. Lethality in 5e (this has a number of sub-topics, from whether or not each encounter should be appropraite to the party to hit point bloat to traps to level drain to save or suck)
2. RPing as opposed to metagaming. The interminable, "playing your intelligence" issues, player knowledge about monsters, etc.
3. Defined abilities (and skill checks) and when to use them. Again, the oldest D&D debate is probably the whole, "If you have a defined skill, does that then mean others can no longer do it?" which dates back to the introduction of the thief.
However, despite the narrow nature of the OP, eventually the thread became overran with people who:
A. Choose to argue with a common term ("SP"), despite the fact that not only was this issue noted in the OP, but has been repeatedly stated. It gets to the point of ridiculousness, as if any thread where someone want to discuss "Story Now," became enthralled to those who wish to argue that, "Hey, other modalities of play also can have story elements!"
B. Is largely continued by those who not only do not want to discuss the topic of the OP, but affirmatively state things like "we all eventually went on to more rewarding processes and games that enable them." I am happy that you found more rewarding play and processes! But hey- some people truly enjoy other play and processes. If you aren't curious about the topic of the OP and the relevance to 5e, and only want to say, "Hey, I didn't like that way of playing, and don't want to see it today," then it's not really fruitful to the topic. IMO. I was hoping to see people engage with the idea of how (if at all) SP as a modality of play was relevant to answering these questions in 5e.
3. Finally, it would be really, really nice if a thread that was started to discuss the continued use of SP concepts that arose in early D&D, and appears to be relevant to some extent in 5e, and ... use it to actually discuss those topics in the context of 5e, instead of turning everything into a referendum on story now, or agendas, or non-D&D games like Dungeon World.
Hey, people can discuss what they want to. But this is no longer a thread I am interested in, and I truly regret starting it.