Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50 
To serve man ... that is the purpose of the machine.
But "to serve man" (...and the sci-fi lovers on here will know how hard I'm fighting the urge to yell "It's a cookbook!") and "doing it the way we've always done it" is not the same thing.
Please don't serve up a straw man, dozy, since we are not cooking scarecrow stew.
Serving man is NOT the same as "doing as we've always done," and you will NOT find me foolishly equating the two.
My takeaway from aquadalte's concise point is that adding features can frequently be counterproductive. Cockpit functions intended to serve those flying, with their flesh on the butcher's block, have to account for a holistic approach to a pilot, as do the wetware policies in how to apply those features.
If your features (and policies, which are RULES just as a computer rule is a rule) erode proficiency and currency, then a malfunction has ample opportunity to turn into something worse.
AF 447 isn't the only example of that.