Sure - passive cooling for homes. Architecture used to vary dramatically by climate. In the last 50 years or so new homes are generally only designed for electric cooling.
It's so easy to literally build a square box and stick a cooler/heater in it that everyone (including me) chooses to do it.
Does that mean it's the right way for us to be handling heating/cooling for our homes? Sure seemed like it 50 years ago. Sure seems less like it today with climate change, but we've already picked, and now general cultural preferences make it hard to undo (not even mentioning sunk costs on buildings that are hard to modify)
Basically - the point they're making is that as we homogenize, we put all the eggs in one basket. And we have a long history of making decisions that seem GREAT! today, but actually have some downsides at scale (like electric AC contributing to climate change, requiring more electric AC, making climate change worse, etc)
Depends on the problem. If the problem is complex enough, say nutrition, then you see constantly changing narratives and theories and even competing ones in the present. There's no Best Solution™ way to nourish ourselves yet so people experiment and the top competing theories are being actively discussed and debated. Sure there are keto / vegan / paleo nuts out there but they're just test subjects really. Same argument can be said about software dev, there's no best language or best framework; or about ways to earn money, employment vs entrepreneurship is not a settled debate.
Can you name some problem that you feel has stagnated in the modern world?