Says hardburn:

Note that Dominus grapples with this same question in Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name' (Part 1).

I agree that I was grappling with the same isue. However, I think your characterization of my example is inaccurate. You said:

He knows that symbolic refs are bad, so when a question comes up about them, should he say so and have people jump on him (just answer the question!), or should he just go on and give the answer and have a completely seperate group of people jump on him (you know this is bad, so why didn't you say so?!!)?

and I think if you will take the time to reread my article, you wil find that my actual concern was rather different from what you said.

At least, I hope you are able to see the difference.