Great post. The point of my post is that I don't think there are two specific categories of judgement, where in one you appeal, and in the other, you don't. Reversing a rejection to 1 or 2 or 3 extra colleges, since you already paid the application fee, could be worth it. That's just one example. I'm not disagreeing with Paul' overall message, I just think the examples are very bad. I think sending a letter of appeal could be worth it in a lot of cases if the trade-off or risk-reward is worth it.
I see. I understood the original article's two categories maps to the case whether those "random factors" exists or not; I'm not familiar with school admission process in US, so I don't know if that particular example is good or bad.
Your mentioning about hidden bias is somewhat true, except that it's not really hidden, but just implicit---in most of the judgement there are always some implicit criteria the choosers have, and good players know that. Assuming otherwise is too naive.
About appealing: As far as you're not in the few of the obvious top group or in the obvious fall-behind groups in terms of the primary factors, any arbitrary secondary factors can put you in either side. Those factors are so random and it's waste of time to appeal---sure, you may have some chance of the judgements reversed, but it is much wiser to spend that time to make yourself excel in the primary factors, so that next time such randomness will affect less to the outcome, because if you like to live a life taking challenges, you will be constantly judged, and you won't have time to deal with those randomness.