The motivation behind Cobras call to edit/obfuscate the original satoshi white paper seems clear as water from where I sit:
When you have changed Bitcoin and your views about its terminology so drastically as to actually be contrary to the white paper
you either humble yourself and revert to that original vision, or you scrub that history, literally or practically, from the collective memory.
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
While the title of this OP is not literally true, it is arguably an accurate depiction of the motivations involved.
Cobra - Only seems to pop up to aid the dominance of the Core repo. Scrubbing Coinbase from bitcoin.org, for deviation from the party line, is the last appearance I remember.
David Harding - Bitcoin Core contributor and public supporter I started re-reading the paper a few minutes ago in order to inform this reply, and the main thing that seems changed so far is terminology---we have different names for many things than those Nakamoto used and we've decoupled some things that started out coupled (like mining and validation).
Luke-Jr - Blockstream Contractor and major Core contributor. Sounds reasonable as long as it's clear it isn't the original paper. Maybe an updated HTML version, with a clear link to the original at the top?
Theymos - The strongest force in the online community curation that reinforces Core dominance over the protocol, and an indispensable tool for making the Blockstream vision of Bitcoins future, a reality. Interesting suggestion. The paper is definitely outdated, and I do often see people saying "just read the whitepaper!" as if the paper is still a good way to learn about Bitcoin.
Thankfully, hours later, many voices of reason began to flood in, and put a damper on this extreme hubris.