[didericis]

Being stuck due to arrogance is bad. Changing arbitrarily is also bad. Being open to new things does not mean all new things are automatically good. Being like old things does also make things automatically good. What is "good" is very very tricky to define, and context dependent.

[DrewADesign]

What is inherently bad about arbitrary change? Sure it's bad in user interfaces and stable systems, but in the grand scheme of things those are edge cases. Why does it matter if some æsthetic preference changes arbitrarily?

[didericis]

The fact that you consider stable systems edge cases speaks to the issue.

Wealth is built up over generations via systems that are extensible and reusable by those that come after. If we changed the standard size of screws because we thought it looked better aesthetically, we'd instantly make massive swaths of previous work unusable.

Exploratory change is needed to figure out where improvements can be found, and I generally enjoy building and working with novel technology much more than trying to interface with older systems, but there should be some sort of purpose for the change. Older systems also need a certain amount of pruning and destruction to remove accumulated cruft, so it's not like it's always best to use what's been accumulated.

The correct balance is hard. Achieving that balance requires intentional effort, not arbitrary change or arbitrary preservation, if only in some sort of testing/evaluation phase (sometimes it does make sense to just arbitrarily tweak stuff and see if it ends up working better, but you need to actually do some sort of intentional verification to see if it's worth keeping).

[DrewADesign]

Change controlled systems are an edge case in the world at large. I agree that arbitrary change is bad in systems but that's not what you said.