I don't disagree. If you actually asked me for informational purposes, I'd have started with the Yellow Pages and then go look for a trade association or something.
On the other hand, that's not always practical. Sometimes the facts aren't readily to hand or you have to make some decision that's time sensitive. For example, working in film production it's not so unusual to have to eyeball something and estimate your needs for time or material - you try to anticipate as much of that as possible in advance, but say you come to the set one day and the lead actor has fallen ill, so now you have to rearrange your shooting schedule on the fly...in which case it's not uncommon for a few key crew members to huddle, deliberate, and then split the difference rather than obsess over further optimization.
This isn't to say one should rely heavily on gut decisions, since that's likely to be self-defeating; on the other hand, you don't use a slide rule and protractor to drive.
On the other hand, that's not always practical. Sometimes the facts aren't readily to hand or you have to make some decision that's time sensitive. For example, working in film production it's not so unusual to have to eyeball something and estimate your needs for time or material - you try to anticipate as much of that as possible in advance, but say you come to the set one day and the lead actor has fallen ill, so now you have to rearrange your shooting schedule on the fly...in which case it's not uncommon for a few key crew members to huddle, deliberate, and then split the difference rather than obsess over further optimization.
This isn't to say one should rely heavily on gut decisions, since that's likely to be self-defeating; on the other hand, you don't use a slide rule and protractor to drive.