You've missed your calling, LMcKensie: diplomacy is your forte.
And I concede your points.

In reading over the whole thread, one gets the feeling that the issue is more technology's dogmatic presence in art... where actually, technology is an assist to art. And that was really the point I was trying to make.

Quite frankly, there are enormous grey areas for ME in-so-far implementation of GC is concerned. For diffuse(), yet, no problem. Diffuse() and a bit of Blinn(), sure, I can even add the Conservation of Energy stuff to make that work. So far, my images make the Poser render machine happy (AFAIK).

But what about Reflection()? Refraction()? Transparency()? Note I spell these as functions (open-close parentheses)... and this is how I see making shaders: you make functions.

But overall, making shaders isn't art. All that stuff that goes on in the material room isn't art at all... and beautiful art has been created with Poser where the material room door wasn't even cracked once. Perhaps it wasn't correct but it was still lovely and inspirational.

Is being correct important? Dunno - now that I know about GC, can I still throw sRGB images at the renderer? Probably not... but I'm obsessive (after all, I'm a nurse - when you're a patient, you want obsessive). YMMV...

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks