I suspect that for most of human history it would have been a good bias!
In long term periods without lots of social change, any existing society was a complex homeostatic system that no one understood. In any such system, most changes will break something in some fundamental way, even if you don’t see that break until generations later. …
I suspect that for most of human history it would have been a good bias!
In long term periods without lots of social change, any existing society was a complex homeostatic system that no one understood. In any such system, most changes will break something in some fundamental way, even if you don’t see that break until generations later. So it’s best for people not to do new things unless they are absolutely sure that it will be an improvement.
This of course doesn’t apply any more once changes have started happening so quickly that established systems are likely to have problems dealing with them (or in the face of acute crises like disasters).
I suspect that for most of human history it would have been a good bias!
In long term periods without lots of social change, any existing society was a complex homeostatic system that no one understood. In any such system, most changes will break something in some fundamental way, even if you don’t see that break until generations later. So it’s best for people not to do new things unless they are absolutely sure that it will be an improvement.
This of course doesn’t apply any more once changes have started happening so quickly that established systems are likely to have problems dealing with them (or in the face of acute crises like disasters).