This is a case of overgeneralizing. Evolution favors the organism most responsive to change; thus, one must recognize conditions how they are, instead of operating from a mental model of how they were, to increase one's chances.
It's always relative; a combination of idea and environment. The mistake is, when something doesn't work out, that we are tempted to say that the idea must be a bad idea. The correct inference is that the combination of the idea and that particular environment did not work.
The corresponding mistake is to assign blame to the environment and say the environment is just bad for everything. Note that hardly anyone makes that mistake -- instead, they say, "the environment isn't ready for this idea yet", noting that change is inevitable.
Another way of stating this is that the author failed to investigate why something was problematic. Instead, it's as if he was operating blindly; "I got burned by X, so in the future I will avoid X, because X burns." That's somewhat like a child bumping into a kitchen table and getting mad at the table. "Tables are a problem -- let's get rid of them."
It's always relative; a combination of idea and environment. The mistake is, when something doesn't work out, that we are tempted to say that the idea must be a bad idea. The correct inference is that the combination of the idea and that particular environment did not work.
The corresponding mistake is to assign blame to the environment and say the environment is just bad for everything. Note that hardly anyone makes that mistake -- instead, they say, "the environment isn't ready for this idea yet", noting that change is inevitable.
Another way of stating this is that the author failed to investigate why something was problematic. Instead, it's as if he was operating blindly; "I got burned by X, so in the future I will avoid X, because X burns." That's somewhat like a child bumping into a kitchen table and getting mad at the table. "Tables are a problem -- let's get rid of them."