It isn't that scary once you take into account the fact that our brains are just as finite as any other resource available to us. It's a virtue not to make more mental effort than what is strictly necessary to complete the task at hand.

I agree with "It's a virtue not to make more mental effort than what is strictly necessary." but to have an environment with only "programmers who don't want to think" is not appealing at all to me. I personally want to be surrounding by thinkers.

Only scary if you are locked into the past and/or closed-minded. (disclaimer: I'm not a mongo fan).

I was mainly referring to "And for employers, because it means they can make do with programmers who don't want to think."

Sorry, but I don't want to work in an environment where programmers don't want to think or don't have to think. That is a scary thought. Has nothing to do with being locked into the past or being closed-minded. Just the opposite actually.

How else do you think we arrived at webpages that need hundreds of MB of RAM?