You can call it laziness sure. But it’s closer to thermodynamics. A system is finding its lowest free energy configuration.
It’s not laziness to think of new things - like doing a simulation instead of a physical model takes a ton of work up front. It’s only worth it IF it works as a better solution, and it may not. This type of “activation energy” then leading to lower energy configurations is common in nature.
Laziness in this case would be to just keep building physical models because that is easier than thinking of the maths, validation, etc of working on a simulation.
I guess I just disagree with Bill entirely on this one.
This is why everything you hear from pop-evolution theories in sociology is likely bs.
“Women like shopping because they used to be gatherers” or other such garbage.
It’s all trying to simplify human behaviour based on half-baked knowledge of the past, and to pass it off as scientific insight. It’s not much different than the pseudoscience used to fuel racism 100 years ago.
Human behaviour is complex. And even though our societies are more complex now than 10000 years ago, it doesn’t mean people back then were simple.