Actually, I don't agree with that 100%. That thread did indeed definitively answer the question of, "does Tradition opener help you get to the Liberty finisher faster?" The answer is no. But that's not the only question to be answered.
When I go for science victories, my goal is to open rationalism as quickly as possible (well, that's one goal). However, often my culture will exceed my science output and I am forced to take a filler policy after completing Tradition or Liberty and before opening Rationalism. That filler policy is usually Patronage or Commerce, but what if it were Tradition (taken at the start instead of as 7th policy of course)? Yes, putting 1 point in Tradition will delay the Liberty completion slightly. But, it speeds up the process to Rationalism!
Of course, there are tradeoffs: You're forgoing either 25% gold in your capital or 25% slower influence decay with city states, and you're getting Liberty complete a few turns later. But you get Rationalism a few turns earlier - assume you open Tradition at turn 15, and open Rationalism at turn 110 (I strive for 100, but if I weren't behind on science, I wouldn't need a 7th policy before Rationalism and this would be a moot argument). So that's 95 turns x 3 culture = 285 culture. Around turn 110 I'm typically making 40-60 culture a turn, so 285 extra culture means you get to Rationalism about 5-6 turns quicker than if you choose to open Commerce or Patronage.
In some cases isn't that worth it? I'm not necessarily advocating this approach, but isn't this at least worth thinking about?