That's not to say Go's decisions to toss some established practices are "wise" or "sagely", just that broad acceptance is not a criteria they seemed concerned with. Which is fine.
>they think they know better.
It's safe to say Rob Pike is not clueless or without experience in unix tooling. You should listen to some of his experiences and thoughts with designing Go [0]. I don't always agree with him, [but it's very baseless to suggest he makes decisions on the grounds that they were his, not they have merrit.]
Edit to clarify: [He makes decisions on merrit over authority]