>If you are playing chess and Gary Kasparov comes along and tells you what your next move should be, you can disagree with him, and you might even be right, but

>If you are playing chess and Gary Kasparov comes along and tells you what your next move should be, you can disagree with him, and you might even be right, but given his expertise in chess, his move is most likely going to be better than yours and it's worth considering If you already had a plan to win the game, but have no idea how to continue Kasparov’s line, then it doesn’t matter how strong his move is, you’re just going to be shooting yourself in the foot by making it. In technology though, things are different. You can precisely quantify the strength of a chess move, you usually can’t even imprecisely quantify the strength of most advice about technology. In my experience, experts tend to be no better or worse at separating their own personal opinions from more objective truths. In any case, the appeal to authority shouldn’t be necessary. If an expert is right about something, they should be able to explain to a non-expert why they’re right.