That's like saying world wars are beneficial to humanity because a bunch of shit gets invented to fight wars. No. Wars and so far space travel has done nothing for humanity. If you would have instead focused on inventing the inventions that came with fighting wars instead of fighting wars we still would have the inventions but would have been much more efficient.
But he did find out since you told him. That's the whole reason you don't need to read news because if something in the news is actually important you will find out from people talking about it.
Except the article contained non-functional concepts in it also. But hey at least you got to announce the fact you use/like functional programming languages.
A much better eli5: https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/10/10/what-even-is-a-container/