CSM for Dummies

This quote from NVidia's GPU Programming Guide amused me:

There are many techniques available. However, the general recommendation is
that unless you know what you are doing you should just implement simple
multi-tap cascaded shadow maps.

Or put another way:

If you have no idea what the hell you're doing, try cascaded shadow maps -- what could go wrong?

Oh wait, X-Plane 10 uses CSM. Well, I guess that's for the best...

(The guide also suggests that "3 levels are sufficient to provide good shadow detail for any scene." Have they seen our scene graph?)