"When there's a mysterious box that does some vague thing that you don't care about, it's safe to hate it. It's not helping you in any observable way, so opposing its existence is a safe, easy decision"
This sounds like the justification of stupidity. If you don't know what it does it ignoring may or may not be safe.
If you can't observe a benefit to you (I assume you mean obvious and causual observation) doesn't mean it doesn't benefit you.
It's like you've codified ignorance to make it sound reasonable. This is the same level of thought my cat uses to interact with the world.
It doesn't seem like because he's describing it directly and offering no criticism.
He also says " so we ignore the vague costs against the concrete benefits."
Which implies him and people like him or around him. Normally if someone wanted to indicate that they would say "some people think.." or "in their world/mind"
I didn't read it as justifying the stupidity, but explaining why people feel OK engaging in it. It came across as a good explanation of why so many people are so happily thoughtless.
“Thinking is hard work. That may be the reason so few engage in it.”—Henry Ford
" so we ignore the vague costs against the concrete benefits."
At the end of the first paragraph. He could mean "we" as in people though. He also didn't qualify the statement with something like "Some people.." "Many think..". Finally he offers no criticism of why it may be bad to think like this.
However, you're right and reading it now after the comments people made makes that seem more of a possibility than when I first read it.
Human minds navigate the world through heuristics; applying logic is an exhausting method that - for most people - must be reserved so it's available for high-leverage situations.
This sounds like the justification of stupidity. If you don't know what it does it ignoring may or may not be safe. If you can't observe a benefit to you (I assume you mean obvious and causual observation) doesn't mean it doesn't benefit you.
It's like you've codified ignorance to make it sound reasonable. This is the same level of thought my cat uses to interact with the world.