Read the conclusion.. He says: "without relying on trust" == trustless
It feels like a buzzword to me in this context and I don't think this exact term has to be used to be useful. I'd agree that it would be helpful to talk about the distinctive goal of trustlessness/letting people who don't trust each other reach consensus/not having to rely on a central arbiter/reaching consensus under conditions of not knowing who the other participants are/etc.
I think ii is imperative to note that adversarial environments are what blockchains are useful for. They're not particularly efficient as a means of storing data, so if you can trust and/or rely on suing your counterparties, you don't want to conduct your business on a blockchain. Yet the blockchain hype seems to be much about banks setting up their own chains etc, which is complete nonsense as that would be little different from a regular database.
Totally agreed.
I'd say 'trustless' applies more to the users and community than the technology itself.
Why? "trustless" is the whole point of the endeavor. Why avoid the term?