And I just can't agree with a man who tells me to think less before I make a decision, and that decision will magically end up being better than the one I'd come to after 30 minutes' thought.

While I agree with the gist of your post -the 10k rule is indeed insulting, and I think less of Gladwell because of it- I disagree on the last half of this part. Not all knowledge is the same, and using your strong sense of intuition isn't necessarily 'thinking less'.

If you hadn't noticed already, I find it difficult to summarize the argument in the book without it losing some strength. So I'll let my textbook explain:

It is important to emphasize that when Dreyfus and Dreyfus use the word ‘‘intuition’’ they do not mean some kind of guesswork. For Dreyfus and Dreyfus intuition is a property which each individual uses in everyday life. [...] Take something as mundane as riding a bicycle. Someone able to ride a bike has not formulated a set of rules, which, if followed, can teach somebody else to ride a bicycle. How could we, for example, ‘‘teach’’ the difference between nearly falling and the need to lean over in order to turn a corner? How do we explain the best response to being off balance? Bicyclists can bicycle because they have the necessary know-how, achieved via practical experiences, invariably accompanied by a few childhood scrapes and bruises. Experience cannot necessarily be verbalized, intellectualized, and made into rules.

[Using intuition] does not mean that experts never think consciously, nor that they always do the right thing. When there is time, and when much is at stake, experts will also deliberate before they act. Their deliberation, however, is not based on calculated problem solving but on critical reflection over the intuition, which the expert applies.

Experiences are the building blocks of intuition. The experiences themselves aren't what makes an expert an expert, it's what you do with it that matters.