It really depends on how you define site authority.
As the article you cited states:
“I am just labeling that unknown multiplier effect as a trust factor, that’s all.
That’s a realistic definition of Site Authority, as a catch-all for all the quality signals that Google uses in it’s core algorithm.”
At least in the early 2000s having a page on a high authority(however you define it) domain automatically guaranteed higher rankings.
So even today, it is pretty much impossible to outrank wikipedia on some mundane(non SEO worthy) topic even when wikipedia article is more basic, has less inbound links and even cites the more substantial article which is based on some random "low quality" domain. Obviously citation needed here...