Chesterson's fence is about understanding: tradition may be smarter than you, maybe not, but it would serve well to understand the reasons why it's a tradition before disposing with it.
It reminds me one of my daughter's science shows. In an experiment, they hire an actor to repeat a nonsensical ritual in a waiting room. When new people come in, without being asked, they copy the ritual. The ritual continues indefinitely well after the actor leaves the room.
In another experiment (I think referenced by Sapolsky), an animal (primate) watches a human perform a ritual that produces a reward (treat). When the animal is given the same challenge, they dispose of all of the ritualistic steps and only do the relevant steps. But, when a young Human watches, they will repeat the entire ritual.
I wonder if the act of closely following a ritual even if we do not know its purpose is a form of human meta-ritual? That makes it easier to learn from previous generations without having to understand the potentially harsh lessons that lead to the creation of the ritual in the first place?
This I suspect is very much a part of it. Humans have more complex things to learn, learning to do a bit extra may be better than learning to do to little. I.e. erring on the side of caution.
As an example of a ritual, you have the train conductors in Japan that point at stuff and say it out loud. [1] This is a ritual which on the surface level has no use. But this ritual does have a purpose. It's really hard to get things right every time, especially with routine inspections. It was found that by pointing and calling the thing you inspect, even with routine, fewer errors happen.
The rituals may be a way to deal with complexity.
I was initially sceptical of this but some googling led me to [0]. Quite fascinating. For a more general survey of how primates learn by observation have a look at [1]
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-004-0239-6
in software, I would rather tear it down and find out what it was there for. most developers I've worked with in the past couple decades operate in an atmosphere of constant fear and would never consider doing that. even if the cost of putting it back is zero. better to climb over it every day than risk introducing some unknown inconsistency.
maybe we'd be better engineers if we actually learned about the systems we're using.
if you don't have regression testing there's a chance you don't find out until something disastrous happens
You take out the fence, then watch closely for the disaster. Likely the fence was unnecessary because most fences are built to accomodate for somebody's personal tastes and aesthetics
"What do you mean add in logging and watch it over several months?!?!?! I'll have to climb the fence for several more months, that's not acceptable!".
ok...
Without knowing the purpose of something, we cannot know the cost of removing it.
A few weeks someone commented to me on how they thought that some chain link fencing along a railing should be removed because it was unsightly, until they saw a toddler playing near the railing and realized that the toddler could easily squeeze through if the chain link fencing wasn't there. If they never saw the toddler, they would have thought the fencing pointless. If the people they asked failed to think of the size or behaviour of toddlers, their conclusion would remain unchanged. Yet, had that chain link fencing been removed, the results have been tragic. Because of the nature of my work, I can think of many other circumstances where safety measures have been put into place where only a few people would understand their purpose. In most cases the reason is less obvious than that bit of fencing. Unfortunately, few of them have the element where someone realizes the purpose out of chance before the damage was done.
Much the same can be said of software. It may seem like it is fine to pull out a piece of code, test it outside of a production environment, and give it the okay when everything works. Yet it may not be fine. That code may have been inserted to deal with a problem that client X was having to deal with one of their requirements or to deal with a peculiarity of their production environment. Because it is particular to a particular client, the development team may not know of it (e.g. the developer who did the work is long gone) or it may have simply been forgotten. Just because the purpose is unknown in the present doesn't mean that removing it is devoid of consequence. Those consequences may range from impacting their procedures, to financial loss, to safety.
At the end of the day, you need to understand why something exists to determine if it is still relevant. It should be removed only once you know that it is no longer relevant.
The problem was, while these minimalist-component TVs seemed to work OK in the lab, or in most customers' homes, they didn't work very well in edge cases (like people in locations with poorer signal strength).
Why is something the way it is? There's always a reason, both justifiable and unjustifiable.
Change for the sake of change, that is changing something without understanding why it's like that in the first place, is the epitome of stupidity.
To use a cliche or overly simple examples, if no one can understand the importance of governance and economic coupling, then why not just try to make a Soviet union and see what happens?
I'm not making a farce, I think that just removing things to see what happens can potentially be more negative than it is positive.
We should be looking to tweak and change some traditions slowly but surely to make sure that whatever spinning plates happening at a super meta level - is still spinning at the end of it.
We don't know what we would be throwing out.
The illogical reasons are the ones which reduce to "It's bad because it's new" and "It's good because it's old" with no further content, just rhetorical smoke bombs and hand-waving.
But yes, I agree with you that saying "it's good because it's old, bad because it's new" is illogical.
I don't think many people are saying that though. If people are convinced that a new thing is good, the change happens. I think people are much more likely to suggest that change is good simply because it is new, which is also dangerously illogical.
People were convinced that the new USSR was good, so it happened. Dictators will undoubtedly happen again, and they don't get there by keeping things the same.
I think it's very much the reason why God/tradition "appoints the king/queen". - The age old tradition is larger than any individual's life, and theoretically keeps the "dictator" in line (as long as we all respect that tradition).
If there is a new period of change with a new leader then anything is possible, subject to human motivations.
"We need change to have silly hat day and every one needs to scream at noon., if you don't understand the need for this change, maybe try to understand it first before trying to tear it down." - you can't understand it because I made it up, just then, nonsensically. It is a valid change that me and my supporters are pushing for.
The difference with tradition is that there is a time bound element to it. Tradition is made up over time by rituals and force.
Your parents make you wash your hands before dinner and it becomes a ritual. By the time you're 18 years and become sufficiently atheistic to question everything to do with rituals and mysticism, you forgo washing your hands without fully understanding why that ritual was there to begin with.
Sure, now that we have understanding about germs and diseases, we know why this tradition is a good thing.
But we don't know everything about the mind and about humans evolution, we've got hundreds of thousands of years to catch up on with our new scientific method, so to throw everything out without understanding it would be naive.
That are you trying to say? I'm not being facetious I'm just trying to get at what you responding to unless you are just responding to the clickbait title.
We do have the saying of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" for a reason. Change isn't inherently good. But obviously if something is broken it needs to be fixed which is a process of change.