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Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking

167 points by imartin2k 7y ago

hinkley 7y ago
Someone was asking the other day what other readers use git history for over the long term. We use it for differentiating Chesterton's Fence from cargo culting and arbitrary decisions. You go back and find out from context that code was there to fix a bug or implement a requirement that no longer exists, you remove the code. You find out the person just liked to write code this way, you remove the code. You find out that it was to solve a problem on FreeBSD or old Docker versions or for your biggest customer, you leave the code, or reimplement the fix. Nobody will remember why they did something, but you can often figure it out from the shape of the commit and its siblings.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  It's worth mentioning that cargo culting and arbitrary decision-making aren't necessarily bad from the perspective of the Chesteron's Fence thought experiment. It may not matter if people who left the fence alone even knew why they were doing it. What matters is whether the fence serves an important purpose. Of course, there is wisdom in finding out exact reasons, but sometimes the reasons aren't consciously chosen. There are such things as emergent and unintended benefits.
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  Cargo-culting can sometimes be okay. I normally have to work on large legacy code bases and sometimes it is simply better to try to copy something similar in the codebase in terms of functionality and try to follow the structure of what went before. Without documentation it is sometimes the only way to udnerstand the codebase. Especially when people have (ab)used reflection or dependency injection.
jxramos 7y ago
is the notion of second order thinking a formal term in philosophy or logic or something? https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/ https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  I have always associated second order thinking as part of the role of a systems analyst. Systems analysis is a discipline that deals in systems and their response to changes in input or environment. The notion of second order effects are essentially the recursion of the system outputs perturbing its own inputs leading to "second order" outputs. I have always read Chesterton's Fence is an allegory for making one self aware of these effects prior to changing a system.
  - jbay808 7y ago
    I always thought of it in the sense of a Taylor expansion. First-order thinking suggests that every system reacts linearly according to whatever the dominant factor is (the way you would basically expect). For example, increase prices and your sales will decrease. Second order thinking suggests including the next-more-complicated effect in your model; effects that are negligible for small perturbations have to be taken into account. Increase prices and your product gets perceived as more exclusive and higher quality, and despite the valid decrease that the first-order effect predicts, sales go up.
    - ChuckMcM 7y ago
      I agree, that is a perfectly valid example. You've perturbed the system (raised prices) and there is the "expected" input and the "input that arises from the perturbation."
- 609venezia 7y ago
  In mathematical logic, yes--loosely speaking, higher order logic lets us use more layers of quantifiers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_logic) Here, the blog is referencing Mark's book on investing (link is in the blog, but direct link here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231162847/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?imprToken=i7NVfS-V4yPV0p2dKFQUTQ&slotNum=0&ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0231162847&linkCode=w61&tag=farnamstreet-20&linkId=IVJWRTJOAYFYASKD https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231162847/ref=as_li_qf_sp...) The Amazon preview includes enough of the first chapter (Marks calls it "second level thinking") to get a sense of Marks's meaning
nixarian 7y ago
and what are the second-order and third-order consequences of abolishing gender roles? do we think every civlization set them up because they were all simultaneously bumbling and monstrous? was it a conicidence that they all succeeded, while others didn't, and in fact any civilization that gave women more freedom quickly fell into chaos? Rome, near the fall, was said to have been 'ruled by women', and as the Arab Empire began to allow women to be teachers and preachers and clerks, they quickly descended into disorder. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. It was just a conspiracy, on a grand scale, no doubt. Patriarchy is oppression, after all, like the hierarchy mentioned in the article.
wwarner 7y ago
And the gate shall remain, and henceforth it shall be called "technical debt."
charlieflowers 7y ago
Am I the only one that finds it irritating that the article starts out saying the same thing over and over? First as a parable, then a restatement, then a bold restatement? Why not repeat it again, but underline it this time? I feel like an 8th grader did it for homework and tried to stretch it to the maximum amount of words.
- charlieflowers 7y ago
  Just to clarify ... it is the start of the article that I’m criticizing. Once it gets going it makes some decent points.
  - andrewflnr 7y ago
    Interesting. It was actually the back half where I thought it was getting repetitive.
- sandoooo 7y ago
  Legibility is a bell curve. The author could have stopped earlier, sure, but at the cost of reaching a smaller fraction of the audience. Words are cheap. No trees were harmed. No need to be stingy.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    However, a number of readers were irritated and left unconvinced. Chesterton's Fence sounds like Pascal's Wager - it's perfectly convincing and rational until you realise it's misleading and oversimplified. Of course you shouldn't get rid of things just because you want to change them. But unless a fence-builder left an explicit record explaining why the fence is there, your belated estimate of their reasons is at least as likely to be wrong as your desire to remove the fence. And that doesn't matter, because the original reasons are irrelevant. The fence may have been built for a good reason, and the reason may no longer apply. It may not have been built for a good reason, but a good reason now exists. Skip straight to the problem, ask stakeholders (fenceholders?) if you can find them, run predictive modelling, maybe some A/B testing if it's Schrodinger's Fence, make a backup just in case, and then do what you need to do. The original fence builder is likely long gone and may not want to talk to you anyway. (Although if it all goes horribly wrong, maybe try looking on LinkedIn?)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alan-crowe 7y ago
It troubles me that Chesterton charges the man who would tear down the fence with a duty: "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." I see the charm of Chesterton's favourite rhetorical judo. But we have learned many hard lessons about the cost of losing the documentation. We should charge the man with the duty of looking up the purpose of the fence in the archive, and finding the date that the purpose ceased to hold. We should go further and invent the conservatism of the archive. When we contemplate changing the rules of society, the archive needs to contain more than just the justification of the new rules, analogous to the purpose of the fence. The defeated opposition must also have their place in the records. Write down your rules. Write down why you have chosen them. Write down what your critics say will go wrong. Write down what your critics say we should do instead. Keep it all safe in the archive for 100 years. When things don't go according to plan, dig through the archive. Did you stick to your rules? Really? In a way that is faithful to the reasons why they were supposed to work? What about the critics? Did things go wrong in the way that they predicted, or in some other way? If the critics predicted the exact way that things would go wrong, they win. Dig out their suggestions and give them a try. If the critics predicted different screw-ups than actually happened, cry. Nobody knows anything. But at least you have an archive. What it was like. What people thought. How it actually turned out. That is a basis for working out what to do next.
- j88439h84 7y ago
  That sounds like a lot of work. I don't have a model of when it would be (more) useful to go through all that (than to not).
- andrewflnr 7y ago
  I agree with everything you've said except the part where you imply Chesterton was wrong to charge the demolition-proposer with a duty to do research. That duty absolutely still also exists. In the situation described, even if people putting up fences have a duty to record why, the time for that to happen is long past and there's no utility in complaining about it. It's natural not to bring it up, especially if you assume that the records do exist in some dusty church or town hall attic.
- 7y ago
sandoooo 7y ago
The thing about second-order thinking is that once you recognize it, you start seeing the lack of it everywhere. And, congratulations, you're now struck by the urge to fix it somehow. This sucks, by the way. You'd probably be happier and have more friends if you didn't notice. Once the screaming stops, somebody has to tip the pee out of the shoe. And that's you now, peeman.
clairity 7y ago
> "Take the case of supposedly hierarchy-free companies...." > > "Someone needs to make decisions and be held responsible for their consequences. During times of stress or disorganization, people naturally tend to look to leaders for direction." it's ironic that the author misses the first-order purpose of hierarchies, which is to solve the coordination problem, not simply to have a leader barking orders. we've also (re-)learned a lot about the second-order effects of allowing power to centralize in organizations as a result. yes, hierarchies can be useful, and yes, hierarchies are highly problematic. so yes, we should be looking at better models of coordination. seems like they didn't think through any order of effects before making control hierarchies one of their central examples.
fultonfaknem42 7y ago
I can't help but thinking about the 5 monkeys and a ladder. https://www.wisdompills.com/the-famous-social-experiment-5-monkeys-a-ladder/ https://www.wisdompills.com/the-famous-social-experiment-5-m... (Even if it is bullshit)
jameshart 7y ago
Does the author really think that the creators of what he calls 'supposedly hierarchy-free companies' don't meet Chesterton's bar? That they swept away hierarchy without having first thought about why hierarchy exists in the first place? Or does he perhaps suspect that they haven't thought about it enough? After all, they can't have truly understood why hierarchies were first instituted, because they have failed to see the benefits he so obviously believes hierarchical organization has. See, this is the problem with Chesterton's fence. You tell the reformer to go away and think about why the fence is there, and then she comes back and tells you the fence was put there to keep her out. And you say 'ah, poor child, you still don't really understand why the fence is there.' Sometimes the burden of proof needs to be the other way round. We're ripping out that fence. And if someone wants to keep it, they need to go away and think and, if they can tell us why that fence needs to continue to exist, only then can they stop us.
- xamuel 7y ago
  Whoops. You just removed the fence which was put in place thousands of years ago to contain radioactive waste with a million-year half-life. You couldn't read the warning signs since they were written in an ancient long-forgotten script. So you assumed it must be unimportant.
  - jameshart 7y ago
    All the more reason to tear it down and let the people trapped behind it leave. Oh, you assumed we were on the same side of this fence?
  - Firadeoclus 7y ago
    Luckily, material with a million-year half-life would be barely radioactive. And what's the alternative? To assume that every barrier in existence we can't explain is important and must therefore be maintained forever?
    - xamuel 7y ago
      One alternative would be for you to follow the prescription, "find out why the fence was put there, then I may allow you to remove it". Investigate what's on the other side of the fence, without tearing it down (this might involve experimentally re-discovering the theory of radiation, depending on the current state of mankind's knowledge). Then go back to the authority and report that the fence seems to be there to contain radioactive waste with a million-year half-life. Armed with this information, the authority will be in a better position to determine whether or not to allow you to tear down the fence.
raz32dust 7y ago
Is that really what second order thinking is? I wanted to see some examples of successfully thinking through consequences of consequences, but the examples seem to be only going one level deep. For example in the CFO in a startup example, I would think that old employees jumping ship when snacks are made paid is a first-order impact - just that the CFO did not think through all possible connotations. I would think second order thinking would be thinking about what is the impact of the savings itself, and realizing that it might not be worth it.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  From the CFO’s perspective, the cost-savings is the first-order impact. Then unhappiness and possible attrition is a second-order impact. Side story: Was at a place a long time ago where free soft drinks were made no longer available. First day of the new policy, email to all staff announcing the change. An hour later, one of the stronger engineers sends an email to all local staff announcing he’s thirsty and going to the supermarket to buy some soft drinks. Invites all engineers along in case anyone else is thirsty. Several respond (on thread) that they are also thirsty. About 90 minutes later, emailed status report of the successful 5-person mission to the supermarket is sent and proposing a rotating schedule of supermarket trips. The next day, email announcing the return of free soft drinks is read by all. :)
athenot 7y ago
This applies to programming too. To remove a piece of code (or even to improve it), one must first understand what it does.
- swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
  What it does: Makes my life harder. This is a second order effect.
danschumann 7y ago
As suicide and depression are on the rise, I think we've removed many fences without even knowing it. Social customs replaced by technology. Lessons not passed on but ill-got through tv. Assuming we know better than all of the customs of human history. Jamming everyone, whether round or square, into the same hexogonal hole. Proverbs 22:28 "Do not move an ancient boundary stone which your fathers have set."
- brain5ide 7y ago
  That's a valid concern. Although, I'm more inclined to think that it's rather linked to our leveling up in the Maslow hierarchy. Caring for next meal is replaced by caring for some other concerns that are less controllable. Also, regarding the social customs, the point is that groups of people are an organism that has to adapt to the environment and that environment has changed. Social customs hold a small town together, but it's absolutely unreasonable to depend on them in a city, where you're living next to strangers that change all the time.
  - danschumann 7y ago
    Why live in a place where you don't know your neighbors, then? Isn't that depressing in and of itself? In an ideal world, your friends would become your neighbors and people would move closer to the people they love, to make "love your neighbor" easier.
    - brain5ide 7y ago
      Scarcity and anisotropic distribution of resources? Dynamism of your lifetime requirements? Also, some age old sentiment that is encoded in the "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" adage? That would be my 3 guesses for most signifigant contributors.
      - danschumann 7y ago
        There is something greater than the age. The new dynamism is one of taking the lessons learned in the cities back to the homelands and distributing the gold ( like slaying a dragon ). Sure, I went to the city when I was cutting my teeth, but now I bring business back to my hometown. In a remote world ( and in a corona virus world ), this makes more sense.
dwheeler 7y ago
It's a fun essay, but because of the way it's written, a reader could easily confuse "second order thinking" with "understand why a decision was made before planning on changing it." I think the author distinguishes them, but the reader might not notice the distinction because of how it's written. Here's how I would distinguish these two ideas (hopefully the author would agree, but no guarantees): * Second-order thinking is the ability to understand the impacts of the impacts of a change. If you're playing a chess game, looking only 1 move ahead (just looking at the impacts) means you'll lose against even a mediocre player. The better you can foresee later impacts, the better the decisions are likely to be. In the real world, there aren't a limited number of moves and no one knows all state, so you can't really look ahead multiple stages for all possibilities. Nevertheless, trying is really important. The close says: "The first step before modifying an aspect of a system is to understand it. Observe it in full. Note how it interconnects with other aspects, including ones that might not be linked to you personally. Learn how it works, and then propose your change." * "Chesterton's Fence" is a useful rule-of-thumb to get at least a sliver of second-order thinking. Basically, if someone else did something, make sure you understand why they bothered to do it before you undo it. That exercise will help give you a bigger picture & may reveal something important that you hadn't considered. At least, I think those are some of the points the author is trying to get across. If I've totally misunderstood things, I'm sure someone here will correct me :-).
- leephillips 7y ago
  This is exactly what I was thinking. I was intrigued by this idea of second order thinking, but after finishing the article I didn't think that I had seen an example of it.
verganileonardo 7y ago
After I learned the concept of First order thinking, I have noticed how most mediocre managers incur in problems of it. They save money on saving, without realizing it is going to make every waste more time. They make a decision that only makes sense if no competitors react. They solve problems that end up causing others. It is impressive how this simple ability is a great predictor of performance.
api 7y ago
This is usually put forward as a conservative parable. I'm not sure it necessarily takes a position there. It does not assert that the fence should not be removed, just that one should make the effort of attempting to understand its context prior to doing so.
- jameshart 7y ago
  It privileges status-quo-bias over novelty-bias. Both biases are bad (neither is a substitute for reason), but Chesterton's fence presumes that status-quo-bias is less harmful. Which is fine if you like the status quo. Fundamentally, conservatism says 'things are generally fine, change will probably make things worse'. Progressivism says 'things could be better, change is necessary to make things improve.' Chesterton's fence is preserved by default because Chesterton assumes it's not doing any harm.
  - voiper1 7y ago
    I don't believe this is a true understanding of Chesterton. He doesn't believe either that the status quo is good or that progress will probably make things worse. The issue is being ignorant of why things are the way they are. One aspect the author put is that people are lazy, so there must have been a good reason. More subtly, human emotions and ideals could have evolved to this current situation. If you don't know the reason for the current situation, then your new "solution" is lacking knowledge and you should have realized that.
    - jameshart 7y ago
      How deep do you want to go on 'the reason' for the current situation? What kinds of 'causes' do you admit as constituting a valid understanding of the situation? Why is the question we're interested in only 'Why was the fence built?' What about: 'Why is the fence still there?' or 'Why do we keep maintaining this fence?' or 'Why wasn't a wall built?' or 'Why are you so invested in the continued existence of this fence?'
      - 7y ago
qubex 7y ago
There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding what “second order thinking” is (awareness or consideration of the consequences of consequences) and an instance of it (removing a fence without understanding why it had been erected in the first place). The latter is an instance of the former (or rather, absence thereof) but the former has far greater ramifications and applications than those that are (currently) being discussed in these comments, which seem to be concentrating either on software engineering aspects (abstractions, to name one) or on the idea of banishing hierarchy from firms. That’s all fine and well, but it hardly begins to scratch the surface of what the author presumably thought this principle encompasses (and with whom I agree). Anybody interested in second-order-thinking and decision-making could do far worse than obtain a copy of Dietrich Dorner’s excellent The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations (1997) wherein the author explores “patterns of thought that, while appropriate in an older, simpler world, prove disastrous for the complex world we live in now”. One important aspect of those errant heuristics is the failure to consider consequences of consequences. I highly recommend it.
- khafra 7y ago
  > what “second order thinking” is (awareness or consideration of the consequences of consequences) This is a valid interpretation of the term. Another, more specific interpretation is "including other minds in your mental model," e.g., when you're imagining the results of your actions, you don't just include actions and reactions of a mechanical nature. You also consider other agents, their values, and their resources.
warbaker 7y ago
I hate Chesterton's Fence. We keep knocking down fences and it keeps being great, the most recent being the millenia-long prohibition on gay marriage. People put up fences for all sorts of dumb reasons. If you see a fence that seems to cause more harm than good, knock it down. In the rare situation where this leads to surprising problems, put the fence back up. In software, most WTFs are just bad engineering. You should figure out what the code does and how you can do it better, not take a step back and contemplate the mind of its author.
- nebulous1 7y ago
  > In software, most WTFs are just bad engineering. You should figure out what the code does and how you can do it better This is exactly what Chesterton's Fence suggests
  - warbaker 7y ago
    No, Chesterton's Fence says for you to leave and think about why someone put it up originally, and figure out what was good about the fence. What you should instead do is look at the fence and the dangers on the other side and see if it seems worth it. A lot of 'fences' in engineering are there for no good reason at all, so blocking until you can come up with some good reason for the fence is a waste of time. Chesterton would have you believe that the ancients had great wisdom, and that you should try to find that wisdom before you make changes to anything. The reality is, the ancients knew even less than you do, reasoned worse about problems, and used inferior systems for generating solutions. Progress! It's real! To remind what Chesterton said: "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."
    - nebulous1 7y ago
      > No, Chesterton's Fence says for you to leave and think about why someone put it up originally, and figure out what was good about the fence I don't see as much difference between that and "figure out what the code does" as you do. I agree they have some differences, but ultimately a code's functionality and the reasons why its functionality exists in its current location are strongly related. The "go away first" part is a parable, I don't think you have to actually go away. Overall I'm somewhere between you and the article's author. I think your ignorant ancients argument has some merit, but only in certain cases. For instance, I don't see why the author is assuming people who promote flat hierarchy companies never actually considered what the function of the hierarchy was. This seems pretty ironic given that his whole point is not to assume that builders haven't engaged their brains. Also, as with ignorant ancients, it's possible that these hierarchies evolved, which could mean they're functional but not optimal, and may in fact no longer be required. On the technical side, I think we've all sat down to rewrite some code that looks too complex, only to have the reasons for the complexity become apparent as we research the subject. This might just be a case for better documentation.
enaaem 7y ago
One interesting book I have read is Prisoners of Geography, and it really made me think differently on geopolitics. Natural resources, trade routes and defensive barriers have a huge impact on a countries geopolitical strategy. It made me go from “Why the hell are they doing that!?” to “reality is probably more complex”.

167 points by imartin2k 7y ago

Someone was asking the other day what other readers use git history for over the long term. We use it for differentiating Chesterton's Fence from cargo culting and arbitrary decisions. You go back and find out from context that code was there to fix a bug or implement a requirement that no longer exists, you remove the code. You find out the person just liked to write code this way, you remove the code. You find out that it was to solve a problem on FreeBSD or old Docker versions or for your biggest customer, you leave the code, or reimplement the fix. Nobody will remember why they did something, but you can often figure it out from the shape of the commit and its siblings.

humanrebar 7y ago
It's worth mentioning that cargo culting and arbitrary decision-making aren't necessarily bad from the perspective of the Chesteron's Fence thought experiment. It may not matter if people who left the fence alone even knew why they were doing it. What matters is whether the fence serves an important purpose. Of course, there is wisdom in finding out exact reasons, but sometimes the reasons aren't consciously chosen. There are such things as emergent and unintended benefits.
uk_programmer 7y ago
Cargo-culting can sometimes be okay. I normally have to work on large legacy code bases and sometimes it is simply better to try to copy something similar in the codebase in terms of functionality and try to follow the structure of what went before. Without documentation it is sometimes the only way to udnerstand the codebase. Especially when people have (ab)used reflection or dependency injection.

jxramos 7y ago

is the notion of second order thinking a formal term in philosophy or logic or something? https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/ https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/

ChuckMcM 7y ago
I have always associated second order thinking as part of the role of a systems analyst. Systems analysis is a discipline that deals in systems and their response to changes in input or environment. The notion of second order effects are essentially the recursion of the system outputs perturbing its own inputs leading to "second order" outputs. I have always read Chesterton's Fence is an allegory for making one self aware of these effects prior to changing a system.
- jbay808 7y ago
  I always thought of it in the sense of a Taylor expansion. First-order thinking suggests that every system reacts linearly according to whatever the dominant factor is (the way you would basically expect). For example, increase prices and your sales will decrease. Second order thinking suggests including the next-more-complicated effect in your model; effects that are negligible for small perturbations have to be taken into account. Increase prices and your product gets perceived as more exclusive and higher quality, and despite the valid decrease that the first-order effect predicts, sales go up.
  - ChuckMcM 7y ago
    I agree, that is a perfectly valid example. You've perturbed the system (raised prices) and there is the "expected" input and the "input that arises from the perturbation."
609venezia 7y ago
In mathematical logic, yes--loosely speaking, higher order logic lets us use more layers of quantifiers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_logic) Here, the blog is referencing Mark's book on investing (link is in the blog, but direct link here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231162847/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?imprToken=i7NVfS-V4yPV0p2dKFQUTQ&slotNum=0&ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0231162847&linkCode=w61&tag=farnamstreet-20&linkId=IVJWRTJOAYFYASKD https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231162847/ref=as_li_qf_sp...) The Amazon preview includes enough of the first chapter (Marks calls it "second level thinking") to get a sense of Marks's meaning

nixarian 7y ago

and what are the second-order and third-order consequences of abolishing gender roles? do we think every civlization set them up because they were all simultaneously bumbling and monstrous? was it a conicidence that they all succeeded, while others didn't, and in fact any civilization that gave women more freedom quickly fell into chaos? Rome, near the fall, was said to have been 'ruled by women', and as the Arab Empire began to allow women to be teachers and preachers and clerks, they quickly descended into disorder. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. It was just a conspiracy, on a grand scale, no doubt. Patriarchy is oppression, after all, like the hierarchy mentioned in the article.

wwarner 7y ago

And the gate shall remain, and henceforth it shall be called "technical debt."

charlieflowers 7y ago

Am I the only one that finds it irritating that the article starts out saying the same thing over and over? First as a parable, then a restatement, then a bold restatement? Why not repeat it again, but underline it this time? I feel like an 8th grader did it for homework and tried to stretch it to the maximum amount of words.

charlieflowers 7y ago
Just to clarify ... it is the start of the article that I’m criticizing. Once it gets going it makes some decent points.
- andrewflnr 7y ago
  Interesting. It was actually the back half where I thought it was getting repetitive.
sandoooo 7y ago
Legibility is a bell curve. The author could have stopped earlier, sure, but at the cost of reaching a smaller fraction of the audience. Words are cheap. No trees were harmed. No need to be stingy.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  However, a number of readers were irritated and left unconvinced. Chesterton's Fence sounds like Pascal's Wager - it's perfectly convincing and rational until you realise it's misleading and oversimplified. Of course you shouldn't get rid of things just because you want to change them. But unless a fence-builder left an explicit record explaining why the fence is there, your belated estimate of their reasons is at least as likely to be wrong as your desire to remove the fence. And that doesn't matter, because the original reasons are irrelevant. The fence may have been built for a good reason, and the reason may no longer apply. It may not have been built for a good reason, but a good reason now exists. Skip straight to the problem, ask stakeholders (fenceholders?) if you can find them, run predictive modelling, maybe some A/B testing if it's Schrodinger's Fence, make a backup just in case, and then do what you need to do. The original fence builder is likely long gone and may not want to talk to you anyway. (Although if it all goes horribly wrong, maybe try looking on LinkedIn?)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

alan-crowe 7y ago

It troubles me that Chesterton charges the man who would tear down the fence with a duty: "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." I see the charm of Chesterton's favourite rhetorical judo. But we have learned many hard lessons about the cost of losing the documentation. We should charge the man with the duty of looking up the purpose of the fence in the archive, and finding the date that the purpose ceased to hold. We should go further and invent the conservatism of the archive. When we contemplate changing the rules of society, the archive needs to contain more than just the justification of the new rules, analogous to the purpose of the fence. The defeated opposition must also have their place in the records. Write down your rules. Write down why you have chosen them. Write down what your critics say will go wrong. Write down what your critics say we should do instead. Keep it all safe in the archive for 100 years. When things don't go according to plan, dig through the archive. Did you stick to your rules? Really? In a way that is faithful to the reasons why they were supposed to work? What about the critics? Did things go wrong in the way that they predicted, or in some other way? If the critics predicted the exact way that things would go wrong, they win. Dig out their suggestions and give them a try. If the critics predicted different screw-ups than actually happened, cry. Nobody knows anything. But at least you have an archive. What it was like. What people thought. How it actually turned out. That is a basis for working out what to do next.

j88439h84 7y ago
That sounds like a lot of work. I don't have a model of when it would be (more) useful to go through all that (than to not).
andrewflnr 7y ago
I agree with everything you've said except the part where you imply Chesterton was wrong to charge the demolition-proposer with a duty to do research. That duty absolutely still also exists. In the situation described, even if people putting up fences have a duty to record why, the time for that to happen is long past and there's no utility in complaining about it. It's natural not to bring it up, especially if you assume that the records do exist in some dusty church or town hall attic.
7y ago

sandoooo 7y ago

The thing about second-order thinking is that once you recognize it, you start seeing the lack of it everywhere. And, congratulations, you're now struck by the urge to fix it somehow. This sucks, by the way. You'd probably be happier and have more friends if you didn't notice. Once the screaming stops, somebody has to tip the pee out of the shoe. And that's you now, peeman.

clairity 7y ago

> "Take the case of supposedly hierarchy-free companies...." > > "Someone needs to make decisions and be held responsible for their consequences. During times of stress or disorganization, people naturally tend to look to leaders for direction." it's ironic that the author misses the first-order purpose of hierarchies, which is to solve the coordination problem, not simply to have a leader barking orders. we've also (re-)learned a lot about the second-order effects of allowing power to centralize in organizations as a result. yes, hierarchies can be useful, and yes, hierarchies are highly problematic. so yes, we should be looking at better models of coordination. seems like they didn't think through any order of effects before making control hierarchies one of their central examples.

fultonfaknem42 7y ago

I can't help but thinking about the 5 monkeys and a ladder. https://www.wisdompills.com/the-famous-social-experiment-5-monkeys-a-ladder/ https://www.wisdompills.com/the-famous-social-experiment-5-m... (Even if it is bullshit)

jameshart 7y ago

Does the author really think that the creators of what he calls 'supposedly hierarchy-free companies' don't meet Chesterton's bar? That they swept away hierarchy without having first thought about why hierarchy exists in the first place? Or does he perhaps suspect that they haven't thought about it enough? After all, they can't have truly understood why hierarchies were first instituted, because they have failed to see the benefits he so obviously believes hierarchical organization has. See, this is the problem with Chesterton's fence. You tell the reformer to go away and think about why the fence is there, and then she comes back and tells you the fence was put there to keep her out. And you say 'ah, poor child, you still don't really understand why the fence is there.' Sometimes the burden of proof needs to be the other way round. We're ripping out that fence. And if someone wants to keep it, they need to go away and think and, if they can tell us why that fence needs to continue to exist, only then can they stop us.

xamuel 7y ago
Whoops. You just removed the fence which was put in place thousands of years ago to contain radioactive waste with a million-year half-life. You couldn't read the warning signs since they were written in an ancient long-forgotten script. So you assumed it must be unimportant.
- jameshart 7y ago
  All the more reason to tear it down and let the people trapped behind it leave. Oh, you assumed we were on the same side of this fence?
- Firadeoclus 7y ago
  Luckily, material with a million-year half-life would be barely radioactive. And what's the alternative? To assume that every barrier in existence we can't explain is important and must therefore be maintained forever?
  - xamuel 7y ago
    One alternative would be for you to follow the prescription, "find out why the fence was put there, then I may allow you to remove it". Investigate what's on the other side of the fence, without tearing it down (this might involve experimentally re-discovering the theory of radiation, depending on the current state of mankind's knowledge). Then go back to the authority and report that the fence seems to be there to contain radioactive waste with a million-year half-life. Armed with this information, the authority will be in a better position to determine whether or not to allow you to tear down the fence.

raz32dust 7y ago

Is that really what second order thinking is? I wanted to see some examples of successfully thinking through consequences of consequences, but the examples seem to be only going one level deep. For example in the CFO in a startup example, I would think that old employees jumping ship when snacks are made paid is a first-order impact - just that the CFO did not think through all possible connotations. I would think second order thinking would be thinking about what is the impact of the savings itself, and realizing that it might not be worth it.

sokoloff 7y ago
From the CFO’s perspective, the cost-savings is the first-order impact. Then unhappiness and possible attrition is a second-order impact. Side story: Was at a place a long time ago where free soft drinks were made no longer available. First day of the new policy, email to all staff announcing the change. An hour later, one of the stronger engineers sends an email to all local staff announcing he’s thirsty and going to the supermarket to buy some soft drinks. Invites all engineers along in case anyone else is thirsty. Several respond (on thread) that they are also thirsty. About 90 minutes later, emailed status report of the successful 5-person mission to the supermarket is sent and proposing a rotating schedule of supermarket trips. The next day, email announcing the return of free soft drinks is read by all. :)

athenot 7y ago

This applies to programming too. To remove a piece of code (or even to improve it), one must first understand what it does.

swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
What it does: Makes my life harder. This is a second order effect.

danschumann 7y ago

As suicide and depression are on the rise, I think we've removed many fences without even knowing it. Social customs replaced by technology. Lessons not passed on but ill-got through tv. Assuming we know better than all of the customs of human history. Jamming everyone, whether round or square, into the same hexogonal hole. Proverbs 22:28 "Do not move an ancient boundary stone which your fathers have set."

brain5ide 7y ago
That's a valid concern. Although, I'm more inclined to think that it's rather linked to our leveling up in the Maslow hierarchy. Caring for next meal is replaced by caring for some other concerns that are less controllable. Also, regarding the social customs, the point is that groups of people are an organism that has to adapt to the environment and that environment has changed. Social customs hold a small town together, but it's absolutely unreasonable to depend on them in a city, where you're living next to strangers that change all the time.
- danschumann 7y ago
  Why live in a place where you don't know your neighbors, then? Isn't that depressing in and of itself? In an ideal world, your friends would become your neighbors and people would move closer to the people they love, to make "love your neighbor" easier.
  - brain5ide 7y ago
    Scarcity and anisotropic distribution of resources? Dynamism of your lifetime requirements? Also, some age old sentiment that is encoded in the "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" adage? That would be my 3 guesses for most signifigant contributors.
    - danschumann 7y ago
      There is something greater than the age. The new dynamism is one of taking the lessons learned in the cities back to the homelands and distributing the gold ( like slaying a dragon ). Sure, I went to the city when I was cutting my teeth, but now I bring business back to my hometown. In a remote world ( and in a corona virus world ), this makes more sense.

dwheeler 7y ago

It's a fun essay, but because of the way it's written, a reader could easily confuse "second order thinking" with "understand why a decision was made before planning on changing it." I think the author distinguishes them, but the reader might not notice the distinction because of how it's written. Here's how I would distinguish these two ideas (hopefully the author would agree, but no guarantees): * Second-order thinking is the ability to understand the impacts of the impacts of a change. If you're playing a chess game, looking only 1 move ahead (just looking at the impacts) means you'll lose against even a mediocre player. The better you can foresee later impacts, the better the decisions are likely to be. In the real world, there aren't a limited number of moves and no one knows all state, so you can't really look ahead multiple stages for all possibilities. Nevertheless, trying is really important. The close says: "The first step before modifying an aspect of a system is to understand it. Observe it in full. Note how it interconnects with other aspects, including ones that might not be linked to you personally. Learn how it works, and then propose your change." * "Chesterton's Fence" is a useful rule-of-thumb to get at least a sliver of second-order thinking. Basically, if someone else did something, make sure you understand why they bothered to do it before you undo it. That exercise will help give you a bigger picture & may reveal something important that you hadn't considered. At least, I think those are some of the points the author is trying to get across. If I've totally misunderstood things, I'm sure someone here will correct me :-).

leephillips 7y ago
This is exactly what I was thinking. I was intrigued by this idea of second order thinking, but after finishing the article I didn't think that I had seen an example of it.

verganileonardo 7y ago

After I learned the concept of First order thinking, I have noticed how most mediocre managers incur in problems of it. They save money on saving, without realizing it is going to make every waste more time. They make a decision that only makes sense if no competitors react. They solve problems that end up causing others. It is impressive how this simple ability is a great predictor of performance.

api 7y ago

This is usually put forward as a conservative parable. I'm not sure it necessarily takes a position there. It does not assert that the fence should not be removed, just that one should make the effort of attempting to understand its context prior to doing so.

jameshart 7y ago
It privileges status-quo-bias over novelty-bias. Both biases are bad (neither is a substitute for reason), but Chesterton's fence presumes that status-quo-bias is less harmful. Which is fine if you like the status quo. Fundamentally, conservatism says 'things are generally fine, change will probably make things worse'. Progressivism says 'things could be better, change is necessary to make things improve.' Chesterton's fence is preserved by default because Chesterton assumes it's not doing any harm.
- voiper1 7y ago
  I don't believe this is a true understanding of Chesterton. He doesn't believe either that the status quo is good or that progress will probably make things worse. The issue is being ignorant of why things are the way they are. One aspect the author put is that people are lazy, so there must have been a good reason. More subtly, human emotions and ideals could have evolved to this current situation. If you don't know the reason for the current situation, then your new "solution" is lacking knowledge and you should have realized that.
  - jameshart 7y ago
    How deep do you want to go on 'the reason' for the current situation? What kinds of 'causes' do you admit as constituting a valid understanding of the situation? Why is the question we're interested in only 'Why was the fence built?' What about: 'Why is the fence still there?' or 'Why do we keep maintaining this fence?' or 'Why wasn't a wall built?' or 'Why are you so invested in the continued existence of this fence?'
    - 7y ago

qubex 7y ago

There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding what “second order thinking” is (awareness or consideration of the consequences of consequences) and an instance of it (removing a fence without understanding why it had been erected in the first place). The latter is an instance of the former (or rather, absence thereof) but the former has far greater ramifications and applications than those that are (currently) being discussed in these comments, which seem to be concentrating either on software engineering aspects (abstractions, to name one) or on the idea of banishing hierarchy from firms. That’s all fine and well, but it hardly begins to scratch the surface of what the author presumably thought this principle encompasses (and with whom I agree). Anybody interested in second-order-thinking and decision-making could do far worse than obtain a copy of Dietrich Dorner’s excellent The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations (1997) wherein the author explores “patterns of thought that, while appropriate in an older, simpler world, prove disastrous for the complex world we live in now”. One important aspect of those errant heuristics is the failure to consider consequences of consequences. I highly recommend it.

khafra 7y ago
> what “second order thinking” is (awareness or consideration of the consequences of consequences) This is a valid interpretation of the term. Another, more specific interpretation is "including other minds in your mental model," e.g., when you're imagining the results of your actions, you don't just include actions and reactions of a mechanical nature. You also consider other agents, their values, and their resources.

warbaker 7y ago

I hate Chesterton's Fence. We keep knocking down fences and it keeps being great, the most recent being the millenia-long prohibition on gay marriage. People put up fences for all sorts of dumb reasons. If you see a fence that seems to cause more harm than good, knock it down. In the rare situation where this leads to surprising problems, put the fence back up. In software, most WTFs are just bad engineering. You should figure out what the code does and how you can do it better, not take a step back and contemplate the mind of its author.

nebulous1 7y ago
> In software, most WTFs are just bad engineering. You should figure out what the code does and how you can do it better This is exactly what Chesterton's Fence suggests
- warbaker 7y ago
  No, Chesterton's Fence says for you to leave and think about why someone put it up originally, and figure out what was good about the fence. What you should instead do is look at the fence and the dangers on the other side and see if it seems worth it. A lot of 'fences' in engineering are there for no good reason at all, so blocking until you can come up with some good reason for the fence is a waste of time. Chesterton would have you believe that the ancients had great wisdom, and that you should try to find that wisdom before you make changes to anything. The reality is, the ancients knew even less than you do, reasoned worse about problems, and used inferior systems for generating solutions. Progress! It's real! To remind what Chesterton said: "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."
  - nebulous1 7y ago
    > No, Chesterton's Fence says for you to leave and think about why someone put it up originally, and figure out what was good about the fence I don't see as much difference between that and "figure out what the code does" as you do. I agree they have some differences, but ultimately a code's functionality and the reasons why its functionality exists in its current location are strongly related. The "go away first" part is a parable, I don't think you have to actually go away. Overall I'm somewhere between you and the article's author. I think your ignorant ancients argument has some merit, but only in certain cases. For instance, I don't see why the author is assuming people who promote flat hierarchy companies never actually considered what the function of the hierarchy was. This seems pretty ironic given that his whole point is not to assume that builders haven't engaged their brains. Also, as with ignorant ancients, it's possible that these hierarchies evolved, which could mean they're functional but not optimal, and may in fact no longer be required. On the technical side, I think we've all sat down to rewrite some code that looks too complex, only to have the reasons for the complexity become apparent as we research the subject. This might just be a case for better documentation.

enaaem 7y ago

One interesting book I have read is Prisoners of Geography, and it really made me think differently on geopolitics. Natural resources, trade routes and defensive barriers have a huge impact on a countries geopolitical strategy. It made me go from “Why the hell are they doing that!?” to “reality is probably more complex”.