Here's a hand-wavy analogy from the ML world. When searching for "better" under uncertainty, one has to decide how quickly to "learn", which is basically updating one's learned information (parameters) in a way that one hopes will ultimately lead to better results.
A "conservative" strategy updates that information more slowly, while a "progressive" strategy updates faster. The tradeoff is that if one updates too slowly, one loses the possibility to improve more quickly and perhaps to adapt more quickly to changing circumstance. If one updates too quickly, one can actually "forget" hard-learned lessons, leading to poor outcomes.
Looked at that way, a conservative is someone who is more wary of change, for fear of losing important societal knowledge.
A "conservative" strategy updates that information more slowly, while a "progressive" strategy updates faster. The tradeoff is that if one updates too slowly, one loses the possibility to improve more quickly and perhaps to adapt more quickly to changing circumstance. If one updates too quickly, one can actually "forget" hard-learned lessons, leading to poor outcomes.
Looked at that way, a conservative is someone who is more wary of change, for fear of losing important societal knowledge.