<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>manachar</author><text>It doesn&amp;#x27;t fall flat, it just (potentially) shows a net benefit for most. You&amp;#x27;ve also narrowed the debate to a purely materialistic benefit (.i.e. more things cheaper) while taking a broader view of the whole class of people at a time.&lt;p&gt;An individual does not have the luxury of evaluating the &amp;quot;good of the many&amp;quot; when they are unemployed by innovation. Equally horrid from the individual&amp;#x27;s perspective is discovering the skills they&amp;#x27;ve spent a life time accruing are suddenly worthless and make them unhireable.&lt;p&gt;White-collar workers have only just started feeling this pressure of good jobs disappearing only leaving more menial and lower-paid jobs.&lt;p&gt;To ignore that some people are harmed by innovation is as silly as pretending that all innovation is a positive.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also important to note that you can&amp;#x27;t just credit changes in living standard to technological innovation. Soft innovations in things like politics and philosophy are AT LEAST as important as technological innovation.</text></comment>