> To summarize that essay, they are simply victims of an incredibly strong psychological force (that exist to some degree in all of us) that makes the person attempt to explain away something new as being bad or useless, just in order to avoid the hard work of having to learn it.

In this case, the learning work isn't that hard; what is at play is the cognitive dissonance from having invested a lot of time and effort into the less effective alternatives. Like if you switch to this Lisp stuff, what happens to your expertise in C++ template metaprogramming (or whatever). People are threatened by anything which conflicts with their rationalization of their past choices.