I don't think generics are a good example, as from what I understand their stance was "We haven't find a good way to put them in Go, but we understand that you might want them. We'll try some things and see which fits with Go the best.". That got warped to "you don't need generics anyways" by some overly zealous people. Maybe a better example would be the type system, with Rob Pike saying something about taxonomy being boring?