In this life, you must find someone to believe in. Dismissing this as a "silly appeal to authority" is even sillier.

I have plenty of people I believe in. In the sense that almost whatever they say, I'd think really really hard before disagreeing. Even then, if I find them unconvincing, I'll eventually disagree.

I personally don't hold Rob to be such a figure. I believe he's quite ignorant when it comes to many important topics in computer science (e.g: he made some comments that make it clear he does not understand parametric polymorphism). I find his work on Go to be a minor variant of Algol69 (and not necessarily an improvement, at that!), throwing away 40 years of real improvements in PLT.

I'm not a fan of Go, its syntax, or Rob Pike in the slightest but aren't go-routines as first-class/ default at least an improvement over most Algol-derived languages' support for concurrent execution models?

In the final analysis, this is hardly enough to convince me to use the language (as I've never found concurrency difficult in any other language to begin with and there are better ways than go-routines to make it 'easy'); however, I'm probably not in the target audience.

My impression is that Pike is endeavoring to create for his new corporate overlords a language that fungible enterprise developers can be at home in. And, it probably is better than Java.

Maybe you need someone to believe in. Stronger minds decide for themselves (interestingly enough which is the advice given by Rob in the intro of this article).

A strong mind listens to others who may be smarter than themselves and have more experience and doesn't worry about who the stronger mind is.

I think you've merely re-stated my point. A strong, independent mind makes determinations on ideas objectively without respect to the sources of those ideas.

And, I find Rob Pike completely unimpressive. I would suggest that you find other folks smarter than yourself (and preferably smarter than Rob as well) to blindly follow (if that is your thing).

And now you've just proven my point.

I think you're confused. What is your point exactly? This whole discussion has been about how your original post was a baseless appeal to authority (which you still seem intent to make). My point is merely: if that is your sort of thing, then you can find someone better than Rob Pike to fill the role. How is this in any way the same point that you yourself are making?