I once had an otherwise brilliant colleague (PhD, highly respected compiler guru) who believed all this autophile nonsense and would shell out for ridiculously

I once had an otherwise brilliant colleague (PhD, highly respected compiler guru) who believed all this autophile nonsense and would shell out for ridiculously expensive cables and ludicrously over-engineered stuff that didn't matter, and the people he followed discouraged blind testing, evidently things should better if you just know about your golden solder and cables.