The updates from Windows 7 are optional i.e you can turn them off or read them and decide for yourself… to be blunt, if people want to click "ok" to something on their computer without bothering to make an effort at understanding what they just said ok to then Microsoft is perfectly justified in taking the decision out of their hands.
p.s. Backup = Recommended;
Any user can run an Image backup software, be it Acronis like me or one of the many free options, that way when their computer does something unexpected just roll back to a time before you said ok sure… go ahead and download whatever that patch was.