Some people have pointed out that this article makes case for "traditionally" conservative issues and I agree. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm greatly influenced by Taleb way of summarizing knowledge in his books and how he deals with this issues, so I'll give it my take: - if something existed through out cultures, it was probably tested and it exists for a reason(1,3,4) - word used today in English might not have completely (etymological) different meaning (3) - question of progress is not a yes/no question but "at what speed" (4,6) - high value signals have "value" if there is skin in the game(1) - you don't experiment on complex systems(2) - the idiot-yet-intellectual (5) - it's the outcome that matters (6)