Whoever built the fence should have put a sign on it saying why.

Oh, and integration tests to check that the problem doesn't recur when the fence is replaced.

ndr 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Context is that which is scarce.

It's hard to predict what parts of shared understanding we have today is going to be scarce tomorrow. And one can't serialize _all_ of that current shared understanding in documents and integration tests.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/12/co...

▲

tshaddox 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Advocates of Chesterton’s Fence tend to miss that they’re applying selective pressure to favor systems that fail to document (or outright obscure) their purpose.

Of course, the much more obvious flaw of Chesterton’s Fence is that it trivially reduces to status quo bias.

▲

jmcqk6 4 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think you've understood the lesson here. Chesterton's fence is not about keeping systems in place. It is about how you approach changing the system.

	▲	tshaddox 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I understand it. Just like the precautionary principle, it’s bad epistemology and bad advice. It doesn’t provide any guidance on how much research is necessary before removing any specific fence. The most charitable interpretation is “don’t remove a fence until you do a sufficient amount of research into why the fence was built,” which is tautological and useless.