I mean that -- but that does not mean I have to agree with them on some terms. For this one, as Wilf said,
Human Terrain is a meaningless phrase, or should be. There is terrain and their is the population. They are very different things. The population has social, political and religious beliefs - call it.. er culture?
To my mind, the Human Terrain phrase is demeaning to people (either friends, foes or neutrals), is terribly imprecise (and words can be important) and it can send a bad message in several respects not least that people can or should be mapped or cataloged (they can but you better be real careful how you do that and have a lot of people working on updates). IOW, I think it is not a good selection for a title of an effort required in COIN and similar ops. That said:
...disabusing one Of such silly notions as attributing supposed knowledge of the human condition as being on par with awareness of the balance of power in the weapons and physical terrain.
I don't think I said anything nearly like that. I just said humans weren't terrain. I did not say in any way that one did not absolutely have to know the people in ones AO and what their effect on the mission will be. OTOH, in that post you quoted, I did say this:

""Thus to try to equate people and the ground is to delude one self that a cursory recon will allow a great route to be chosen...""

That means that if you try to simplify people into a 'terrain' or general recon and use item; you're going to screw up. My gripe with 'human terrain' is that it can lead the ill informed to underplay the importance of the human dimension. It's a silly misleading phrase.
In other words just because I know where the weapons caches, airfields, command and control facilities, ports, etc are doesn't mean that I might not need to be aware of how I talk or interact with "X" human. Or that ignoring that may not cost me a whole lot more than I want to pay.
I agree. Please tell me how that interaction or talking equates to terrain in any way.

And remind me what the first 'T' and that 'C' in METT-TC represent, perhaps explaining in the process why they are two separate items...