[strogonoff]

Consistency reduces the mental cost of acquiring and maintaining an understanding of a system. In a real sense, moving from one approach to two different approaches, even if one of them is slightly better than the original one, can be a downgrade.

[YZF]

Like many other things it's a judgement call. The break down occurs when people replace judgement with rules or "religion". This tends to happen when they don't have the experience of seeing the long term impact of decisions in various contexts.

[strogonoff]

In a way, simplifying the judgement call to the black-and-white approach “either you change all instances or none” without considering nuance is also a way of managing the mental overhead. Making a simple call lets you spend all your nuance energy in areas where it might matter more.

I agree that it’s also a way of accumulating technical debt, it’s all a bit of a tradeoff.