[vintagedave]

I don’t mind pressing Enter twice instead of once.

I know that’s a glib answer. And I agree an extra line break should, to a human which reads indents, be unnecessary. But given the ambiguities of Markdown, something that is both human-readable and computer-readable is a huge advantage.

Also,

> Users don't care how hard or easy something is to parse

I don’t read it as about parsing. I read it as about writing. You can write one way and know exactly how it will be interpreted.