| There were reports of the dangers of asbestos back in the 1900s, and the first medical report was in 1924. It took until the '60s before people took it seriously. Many cases of mesothelioma could have been prevented if we had listened to people who thought it was dangerous. You can't conclude from asbestos that we should shut down new ideas on the first warnings, nor can you conclude from the history of aviation that we should disregard those warnings. You asked: > How can we work towards a better world when people just shoot down any idea that they don't agree with instead of trying to expand their perspective? Going back to the original comment: > Perhaps we need a new "test", like the "Turing Test", but this time for when humans can no longer tell the difference between new technology and old technology. "Mighty", for example, is just a "dumb terminal" - technology we had in the 1970s. You want progress. We gain technological progress through a ratcheting action. A ratchet must close over the progress it has already made in order to ensure the mechanism only moves forward. Likewise, we only progress if the new thing is genuinely better than the old. That requires that you understand the old thing. Do you think the metric system is better than US standard measurements? Riddle me this: why is a mile 5280 feet? What's special about that number? There is a reason for that number. There's also a reason it probably doesn't matter in modern usage, but unless we understand why we don't need that special property, we can't be sure that the metric system is actually progressing over the older systems and not regressing. That's why you get this comment and others pointing out that this is simply tech from the '70s. If it's 50 years old tech, there's no progress going on. They are not failing to expand their perspectives, they are recognizing that this stuff is something they're already familiar with. |