The result of this thinking is when I press the back button, I have to refresh the page manually because the data is stale.

Okay. C-r is quick and easy to type. But if Back automatically destroys the old version of the page, then there is no way to restore that old page.

My daily use case for this is Github Issues. Simple repro: Click an issue, make a change, press back.

Now the list view is out of date and doesn't show my changes. So I have to refresh.

How is that different from one tab with the list of issues, and one tab with a specific issue? In the tab instance, GitHub has added JavaScript to the issue list page to refresh on changes; in the Back button instance, it should work identically: the list view is 'rehydrated,' the JavaScript does its thing and the list view is updated.

Reloading the page is completely, totally wrong.