It's no axiom that applications of conservatism hinder progress. For instance, being conservative towards something that presents an existential threat to humanity could be enabling of progress. I say this as someone who's predominantly 'liberal'

There are times when changing things up is an improvement as well as times when it's not.

Yeah, the oldest school of conservatives, the ones who saw industrialists as upstarts and who said, "don't chop down primeval forests to build factories do seem a little less absurd given where the biospbere is headed. Even if they mostly felt that way because industry threatened their power structure.