I think the article touches of a more general problem that I have been thinking recently about. That is: In the absence of understanding (which costs time and e

I think the article touches of a more general problem that I have been thinking recently about. That is: In the absence of understanding (which costs time and effort), how do you decide that some expert opinion on the matter is good or useful or not? (This problem crops up everywhere in human societies, often in politics.) It seems that people use many different heuristics: - We have an expert, surely his advice is good. - We have an expert, surely he is bullshitting us for his own benefit. - The subject matter is complicated, surely it must be useful, because the problem is complex. - The subject matter is complicated, surely it's because people working on it over-engineered the solution. - The thing is old, surely it has proven it's practical use. - The thing is old, surely it uses obsolete technology. - There are lot of features, surely the thing will solve my problem. - There are lot of features, surely it's not all needed. As above examples show, in absence of information, decision making will be subjective. And that's where the article falls flat, IMHO, because it wants to give an advice, but it can't, because there is probably no rational advice to be given, aside from, have somebody else (who you trust) understand the original system as much as possible and then tell you. The article reminds me of a similar situation I have at work. I work on a large legacy application (but I am not a DM, I am not really invested in it yet), which should be slowly replaced by company, because we have a costly dependency on some vendor. Unfortunately, the new team doesn't want to consult our team!