this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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Is where it comes from, in a book describing why he's a Catholic.
But the reality of the world, especially social institutions is not like this. There is a cunning sleight of hand here, a fence only gets built because someone has a reason to build a fence. Many things in life are not built: they arise spontaneously or emerge from chaos through more complex forms of interaction.
If we switch the argument to being about diverting a watercourse, or regrading land, it suddenly falls apart because it becomes clear that these things do not exist for intelligent reasons.
I don't think it's a bad idea to try and understand the world or to mitigate risks when making changes. I think chesterton's fence is a shite argument because it implies that everything which exists has a planned purpose and favours the status quo which may be intolerable.
This is not a compelling analogy. Many things in nature may not exist for an intelligent reason, but their presence matters in ways that may not be obvious. Diverting a waterway may cause tremendous damage to the ecosystem and other downstream (pun intended) things. That is an excellent example of why you should understand the current system before attempting to change it.
I don't think the implied plan purpose is necessary for the argument to make sense. The point of the story is it's not always clear what things are load bearing, nor what loads they bear.
If the chesteron origin is distracting to you, let's discard it. I think we agree that changing a complex system without attempting to understand it first is foolish.
No, I am trying to make a point here. Everyone knows decisions can have consequences and that change should be managed. Chesterton's fence is not "try not to fuck up in ignorance" it is a specific argument made by GK Chesterton and pushed by cryptofascists in the tech industry via the "rationalist" movement to try and equivocate:
and Chesterton's argument
Fine. Consider your point made. I'll use some other metaphor or allusion to express "don't willy-nilly change systems you don't understand". Many people just do that, out of ignorance, stupidity, or hubris. I've seen a lot of software people delete "useless" code that caused problems later.