[bkirwi]

Of course, there really is something special about 0, 1, and Inf -- they're the kind of numbers that tend to arise from theory, not just from tuning. Tuning is hugely important for real systems, so an allergy to 'arbitrary' numbers is not useful; on the other hand, this rule is often a nice heuristic to keep in mind when you're picking which numbers to expose in your config files.

[cheatsheet]

Also, people do use this stuff to think about their computer systems, so I'm a little confused at the author's point of instinct and intuition. Most engineers are trained in analysis of the infinite (calculus), which also includes rigorous analysis of 0 and 1.