Douglas_Knight comments on Open thread for December 17-23, 2013 - Less Wrong
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This is turning the argument on its head.
The point isn't that knowing a purpose for something is a reason to keep the thing. If we know the reason for it and judge it good, of course we shall keep it. Banal. If we know a reason for a thing, and judge it bad, then the argument isn't an encouragement to keep it either. No Chesterton's Fence is the argument that us not knowing the reason behind something is a reason to keep it. Applying it to things, for which we easily learn why they are there, is pretty much redundant as far as heuristics go.
Let me quite directly, from his novel The Thing (1929). In the chapter entitled, “The Drift from Domesticity” he writes:
What you say here is reasonable, but it is completely unrelated to your comment that started this thread. If, as in your original comment, people are mistaken about the age of their traditions, they are ignorant of the origins, and thus Chesterton advice to learn the origin applies.
This isn't directly related to that argument no, like I said I would need an essay to explain that (and I've started writing one), I was correcting a misreading of the classical Cheston's fence.