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Rule number one: Expect people making the same mistakes as they did in any past. Why? Because men are stupid, ignorant, shortsighted, greedy, arrogant, etc.. etc.. In all our vanity we love to think and dream about ourselves of being capable to change our human nature and the course of humanity, but in reality only very few can because it is unimaginable hard. Almost all religions point to this.

[mistermann]

Many things were unimaginably hard in the past, until we figured out how to do them. Is it impossible that this may also be the case, to some noteworthy degree, with the human shortcomings you have accurately identified?

Some people think that the abstract idea of the ego (or more generally, the illusory nature of human consciousness) plays a very big role in the pattern of follies that mankind seems to repeat across generations and cultures. Consider an idea: if you are engaged in an undertaking (say, designing a somewhat sophisticated machine) where decisions are based on measurements, and your measurements often happen to be incorrect (sometimes incredibly incorrect, to the point of being the opposite of what is true), should one be surprised when the outcome is often other than predicted? And if for some reason the idea never occurs to you that such a flaw exists in the system, or you realize there is a flaw but incorrectly consider it to be unimportant, should one be surprised that problems persists over time?