One typical computing example of social fixation is the adoption of one programming language by an installation. Once the language has been adopted, … - Gerald M. Weinberg

What you don't know may not hurt you, but what you don't remember always does.

Overconfidence by the programmer could be attacked by a system that introduced random errors into the program under test. The location and nature of these errors would be recorded inside the system but concealed from the programmer. The rate at which he found and removed these known errors could be used to estimate the rate at which he is removing unknown errors. A similar technique is used routinely by surveillance systems in which an operator is expected to spend eight hours at a stretch looking at a radar screen for very rare events — such as the passing of an unidentified aircraft. Tests of performance showed that it was necessary to introduce some nonzero rate of occurrence of artificial events in order to keep the operator in a satisfactory state of arousal. Moreover, since these events were under control of the system, it was able to estimate the current and overall performance of each operator.

the more adapted an organism was to present conditions, the less adaptable it tended to be to unknown future conditions.