What about "fear"? The most pernicious thing about technical debt, in my opinion, is that it creates fear in the sense of "I don't want to touch that module".

What about "fear"? The most pernicious thing about technical debt, in my opinion, is that it creates fear in the sense of "I don't want to touch that module". Even if you try to be objective and use hard facts to overcome the fear, it doesn't matter, because fear destroys creativity, so you've already lost.