<story><title>Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we often hate new stuff</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/07/21/humans-once-opposed-coffee-and-refrigeration-heres-why-we-often-hate-new-stuff/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hueving</author><text>&amp;gt;That such technological innovation also created wealth was poor consolation for the workers getting the short end of the stick&lt;p&gt;That falls flat when you consider that lower middle class people have access to much greater things than upper middle class people and rich people did 50 years ago.</text></item><item><author>manachar</author><text>That would be helpful. It&amp;#x27;s not always easy to know which innovation is actually a net benefit.&lt;p&gt;Leaded gasoline was a superior fuel in many respects but was clearly a fraudulent mistake (it was sold with false assurances of safety).&lt;p&gt;Even the original Luddites were not wrong in their original critiques - the technological innovations of machined industrialization did indeed replace workers and enrich employers. (That such technological innovation also created wealth was poor consolation for the workers getting the short end of the stick).&lt;p&gt;Chemical warfare was horrible enough to have military strategists more than willing to agree to ban its usage.&lt;p&gt;New is not universally a good. In fact, every change has benefits and detriments that will be unequally distributed. History has also shown a tendency for the detriments to be mostly felt by the poor and disenfranchised.&lt;p&gt;It seems fair to be cautious about the new.</text></item><item><author>crusso</author><text>&lt;i&gt;In hindsight, opposition to innovations such as mechanical farm equipment or recorded music may seem ludicrous.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;How about if the article talked about the problems with the people who rapidly embraced once &amp;quot;nifty and new&amp;quot; ideas like taking x-rays of feet at shoe stores, using Fen-Phen for weight loss, getting on airplanes in the early days of flying, etc.?&lt;p&gt;What the article ignores completely is the notion of idea survival bias.  The article goes through pains to cast reluctance to adopt new ideas as being a defective mode of thinking by not talking about the risk model for the adoption of new ideas.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mindcrime</author><text>&lt;i&gt;That falls flat when you consider that lower middle class people have access to much greater things than upper middle class people and rich people did 50 years ago.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;To be fair, if you&amp;#x27;re the guy losing your job &lt;i&gt;today&lt;/i&gt;, you probably don&amp;#x27;t care much about the idea that you might be better off twenty years down the road, or that society in general might be richer in 20 or 50 years.  You care about putting food on the table &lt;i&gt;now&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Even if you look at things like re-skilling and the creation of new jobs that results from technology, you&amp;#x27;re still looking at a potential gap in employment and income where you might starve to death, when you look at this at the individual level.  In that regard, it&amp;#x27;s hard to say that people are &lt;i&gt;wrong&lt;/i&gt; to oppose certain kinds of changes.</text></comment>
<story><title>Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we often hate new stuff</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/07/21/humans-once-opposed-coffee-and-refrigeration-heres-why-we-often-hate-new-stuff/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hueving</author><text>&amp;gt;That such technological innovation also created wealth was poor consolation for the workers getting the short end of the stick&lt;p&gt;That falls flat when you consider that lower middle class people have access to much greater things than upper middle class people and rich people did 50 years ago.</text></item><item><author>manachar</author><text>That would be helpful. It&amp;#x27;s not always easy to know which innovation is actually a net benefit.&lt;p&gt;Leaded gasoline was a superior fuel in many respects but was clearly a fraudulent mistake (it was sold with false assurances of safety).&lt;p&gt;Even the original Luddites were not wrong in their original critiques - the technological innovations of machined industrialization did indeed replace workers and enrich employers. (That such technological innovation also created wealth was poor consolation for the workers getting the short end of the stick).&lt;p&gt;Chemical warfare was horrible enough to have military strategists more than willing to agree to ban its usage.&lt;p&gt;New is not universally a good. In fact, every change has benefits and detriments that will be unequally distributed. History has also shown a tendency for the detriments to be mostly felt by the poor and disenfranchised.&lt;p&gt;It seems fair to be cautious about the new.</text></item><item><author>crusso</author><text>&lt;i&gt;In hindsight, opposition to innovations such as mechanical farm equipment or recorded music may seem ludicrous.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;How about if the article talked about the problems with the people who rapidly embraced once &amp;quot;nifty and new&amp;quot; ideas like taking x-rays of feet at shoe stores, using Fen-Phen for weight loss, getting on airplanes in the early days of flying, etc.?&lt;p&gt;What the article ignores completely is the notion of idea survival bias.  The article goes through pains to cast reluctance to adopt new ideas as being a defective mode of thinking by not talking about the risk model for the adoption of new ideas.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dota_fanatic</author><text>Exactly! Poor people have access to clean plentiful water, cheap, nutritious, and tasty food, very affordable housing to own near numerous options for fulfilling income, plentiful education options, medical safety nets, lots of PTO, ethical insurance programs, brain dead simple non-volatile long-term savings programs, and traffic congestion is all but extinct; I mean the list just goes on and on with how much nicer poor people have it these days compared to rich people of 50 years ago.</text></comment>