jtrek

I think that part of our problems come from people being too polite. Someone will say something completely stupid, and people don't want to make a fuss so they let it slide. Peer pressure is like the only thing that changes minds.

The most reasonable interpretation is that you cannot use the standards of apples on oranges, nor the other way around.

You wouldn't fault an apple because it doesn't have a thick skin that needs peeling.

Microsoft will continue on inertia for years. but it's basically a walking corpse full of parasites at this point.

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.

Humans are social creatures. Facts don't matter. Emotions and social belonging matter. So people who are just immersed in trump-stuff are going to think it's all normal and good, and reject contrary facts from the out group.

This is part of why right wing media is so dangerous. It feeds the in-group solidarity

I assumed it was a counter to the implicit idea that Israel is eternal and timeless and just a fact of life, rather than something that started in living memory

I'm reminded of that meme of the cartoon girl going "this sign won't stop me because I can't read"

I've had coworkers that changed some code, then just deleted the tests that started failing. Then they get annoyed their PR is blocked by more attentive coworkers.

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.

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 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 intoler

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.

It's not a bad argument to try to understand an existing system before changing it.

I've seen a lot of "why is this like this? I'm changing it" blow up in software. The clearest memory was not realizing that user names could be null, even though that looked impossible by tracing the registration route. Turns out there was another, stupider, way of registering.

It's especially a good argument when the person evaluating the system has no domain knowledge or expertise.

I remain surprised no Italian plumbers have visited high ranking Republicans. They're the worst people.

One should keep Chesterton's Fence in mind.

Idiots like Musk will see a system they don't understand and tear it down, and then people die.

I think one of the reasons some of the little kids in my life like me is I try to give them honest explanations. They don't always fully understand, but I think they appreciate getting answers. And probably appreciate the occasional "I don't know, actually. Let's look it up"