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Viliam comments on [Stub] The problem with Chesterton's Fence - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 05 January 2016 05:10PM

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Comment author: TheMajor 05 January 2016 06:40:44PM 13 points [-]

How very deep. But if I'm not mistaken the original argument around Chesterton's fence is that somebody had gone through great efforts to put a fence somewhere, and presumably would not have wasted that time if it would be useless anyway. In your example, "the common practice of taking down Chesterton fences", this is not the case. The general principle is to not undo that which others have worked hard for to create, unless you are certain that it is useless/counterproductive. Nobody worked hard on making sure people could remove fences without understanding them (or at the very least I'm willing to claim that this is counterproductive), so this principle is not protected.

Comment author: Viliam 07 January 2016 03:55:17PM 0 points [-]

somebody had gone through great efforts to put a fence somewhere ... In your example, "the common practice of taking down Chesterton fences", this is not the case.

You mean that no one has gone through great efforts to remove the existing Chesterton fences? Seems false.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 08 January 2016 02:56:50PM 0 points [-]

Nobody has gone through great effort to create a Chesteron-fence-demolishing-machine.

Comment author: Lumifer 08 January 2016 03:33:41PM 3 points [-]

a Chesteron-fence-demolishing-machine

Those are usually called "revolutions".