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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

You're probably part of the problem; folks like yourself are nearly universally ignorant of many Chesterton's fences.

Unless they radically edited what they said after you replied, I’d say the approach they favor necessarily includes understanding the fence. It’s a bit rude to just lump them in with “folks like themselves” as an ad hom.

Even as a left lib who thinks the primary purpose of a government should be to pool money into public good, I doubt all the fences that are up are there for good reasons anymore. Questioning them in a careful and rational manner is healthy, and I wish it were done more. Wanton destruction like we’re seeing now isn’t.

I think that’s in line with what your parent comment was saying too. They might be more surprised than I would be as to how many fences are justified, but it sounds like they believe it’s important to check.

I've worked in government and large institutions, and frequently deal with people who think like this.

Let's just say I'm perfectly comfortable with the ad hominem.

Literally 100% of the people I've encountered with this attitude either soften it once they're actually in, or they come in and break things.

Any time someone comes in with a "clean house" attitude," I know I have to get ready because they nearly universally have no clue of what they're talking about.

Pardon my French. - You need to be sharing a fuck ton of examples.

People make sense of things in many ways. One of the most fundamental are stories.

Share every example or story you can, or your friends can. This is one of the things conspicuously absent on HN, which is surprising since there should be many people with personal experience dealing with governments or complex systems.

It may seem simple, but they matter.

Right, I mean the fundamental problem here is that the sort of person who actually does this sort of real work -- much more than I do -- doesn't have time to screw around on here. :)

This is a weird realization, but everyone has their bit to play. Sometime that bit is because you happen to be the one at the table or the scene, and others are not.

I respect your experience, but your message added literally nothing to the conversation besides “you probably suck because people like you generally do.” It was nothing but a personal attack.

That’s considerably harder to respect, and it put me in the position of feeling like I needed to defend the parent of your comment.

Being more direct, since you seem to value that: consider keeping that sort of thing to yourself unless it has an actual constructive point beyond insulting the person to whom you’re responding. However true it might be per your subjective experience, posting it here only makes you look bad.

If nothing else, choosing a straw man of not understanding Chesterton’s Fence, when that was already directly contradicted by the parent comment, comes off as you being the ignorant one.

You may be comfortable with the ad hom, but maybe you shouldn’t be so comfortable with that.

Nah. This place is a bit of an echo chamber; as I said above -- it is unfortunate but the people who do (much more than I) this good real work of keeping stupid overdoers like this away don't have time to, e.g. post in places like this.

Identifying what the collateral damage would be, planning to minimize harm done, and identifying replacements for the functionality prior to replacement reads to me like an exact application of the principles recommended by Chesterton's fence rather than apparent ignorance of the concepts https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/:

> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

If you still see it so differently I'd like to better understand some more of the reasoning why.

All of your theory sounds good.

I've NEVER ever ever seen anyone who comes in with this attitude do it effectively in practice. They always either soften greatly or screw things up.

I can't take any credit for theory as the above is just what Chesterton's Fence story is advising with nothing added.

I'm not particularly a DOGE fan myself but I've seen many folks like the above able to do great amounts of "cleanup" in organizations of 100k+ employees without much broken glass. Plenty who don't as well and create a mess of course... but those are not usually the ones who introduce themselves by way of being concerned about the effects and rate of change. People absolutely certain they know how something will go without doubt before even getting involved are usually the biggest problems, though they aren't wrong 100% of the time either.

Just as not every person who is hesitant to remove things is just a curmudgeon, freeloader, fake worker, lazy, or whatever else people like to characterize them as it's also true not every person who wants to remove cruft is ignorant, clueless, wreckless, royally screws things up, and so on. In both cases success is more tied with those focusing on the details, review, and planning of the execution rather than feelings on first thought.

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