Technology changes methods, not judgment

The familiar claim that people repeat the past is only partly right. Later generations rarely reproduce an old mistake exactly. They face comparable problems with new tools and mistake technical capability for superior judgment. New equipment may change methods, but it does not remove the basic work needed to win a war, improve an economy, or educate a population. This watch point offers a way to test claims that one innovation has dissolved a strategic or institutional constraint. Historical study checks that confidence without treating past and present as exact analogues.