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Comment by tempguy9999 | Hacker News Reader

That was a very, very stupid thing to do.

https://latterdaysaintmag.com/the-parable-of-chestertons-fen...

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yep, sorry, but at the very least destroying your employer's property... I mean, do I have to spell it out.

I do agree to an extent: he probably should have just hidden the printer away somewhere where it would have probably not been found. Then, if it caused a big scandal, the printer could have mysteriously "reappeared", otherwise if no one complained, it could just stay there for years on end.

Chesterton's Fence works when the people in authority are willing and able to change things with adequate understanding and justification. Sometimes no one knows why the thing is there and the options are remove it and see what happens or keep devoting resources and accommodations to it while it reduces quality of life.

I'm usually critical of SV style creative destruction, but sometimes asking for forgiveness instead of permission really is the only way to get things done. As long as it's a strategy, not the strategy.

Asking someone why the printer does that would have been good. It would have been an opportunity to show initiative to superiors either way. One way you get to remove something everyone hates. Another way you get to find a less intrusive system to solve whatever problem the printouts solve.

It may not have been a problem as they suggest, but not hearing anything is not the same as not causing a problem. I've had people just do things thinking I was making up the issue with what they wanted to do. Of course, it caused the problem, and I didn't know the source until they mockingly said "I did it and you never complained!"

>Asking someone why the printer does that would have been good. It would have been an opportunity to show initiative to superiors either way. One way you get to remove something everyone hates. Another way you get to find a less intrusive system to solve whatever problem the printouts solve.

There's a big downside here. If he had asked the purpose of the printer, that would have identified him as the one who disliked it, and the most likely perpetrator if something happened to it.

Also remember the old saying, "it's always better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission". It's true usually. If he had asked to do something about the printer, the likely answer would have been "no", because the superiors didn't want to expend any energy on it and it wasn't bothering them.

This is one of these interesting issues that you can use to tell conservatives from progressive types. In some cases, there might indeed be some valid reason behind some old rule that currently seems elusive, but in many cases it's just superstition, and in any case you often can't find it out unless you challenge the rule.

Agreed! - so walk down the corridor and find out why.

Think: someone must have been feeding the printer paper or it would have run out years ago. It's there for a reason. See possibly why in my other comment.

The logical conclusion to this is that we should not take any action in the face of incomplete information or uncertainty. This is typical of the dogmatic approach to reasoning that you find in many religious texts. The action of taking down the fence may not be based on ignorance, so much as curiosity. This could be viewed as subversive, and we can’t have that now can we?

> The action of taking down the fence may not be based on ignorance, so much as curiosity

While I sort of agree, it's not about a fence but getting as much info as reasonably possible before acting. Next time you change something you don't understand because of curiosity, there may be injuries or deaths.

> This is typical of the dogmatic approach to reasoning that you find in many religious texts

That's pretty much what you've done here; taken the extreme view of what I'm trying to say.

Back on the subject: the dot matrix printer was not the guy's property and it may have been streaming a hardcopy of some server's intrusion log. That would explain why it was there but nobody looked. It's there in case someone ever needed to.

(edit: it's printed door movements, not server stuff. If the doors are opened by badges, it's still movement detection, at least of the most basic, people-y, sort)

That isn't at all the logical conclusion. You're projecting your dislike of religion and ironically being just as dogmatic in your dismissal. They were responding to the TLC poster saying they threw away a piece of machinery just because it was loud and they didn't see anyone using it. Given that characterization, would you say they were acting out of curiosity? Curiosity would be asking people what it was for before throwing it away - which is what the parable implores.

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