I've seen Chesterton's quote used or misused in ways that assume that an extant fence must have some use that is both ① still existent, and ② beneficial; and that it can only be cleared away if that use is overbalanced by some greater purpose.
Right, this is indeed a misuse. The intended meaning is obviously that you ought to figure out the original reason for the fence and whether it is still valid before making changes. It's a balance between reckless slash-and-burn and lost purposes. This is basic hygiene in, say, software development, where old undocumented code is everywhere.
This is basic hygiene in, say, software development, where old undocumented code is everywhere.
Yep. On the other hand, in well-tested software you can make a branch, delete a source file you think might be unused, and see if all the binaries still build and the tests still pass. If they do, you don't need to know the original reason for that source file existing; you've shown that nothing in the current build depends on it.
This is a bit of a Chinese Room example, though — even though you don't know that the deleted file no longer served any purpose, the tests know it.
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: