8 ms·

I'd argue that incremental change strikes the balance between tearing something down and being paralysed by potential consequences. Also, you can only learn so

by femto 5y ago

I'd argue that incremental change strikes the balance between tearing something down and being paralysed by potential consequences. Also, you can only learn so much by passive observation. Eventually you have to apply a small stimulus (incremental change) and observe the response. If the response is bad reverse the increment. Caveat is that if you reach a local maxima a more drastic change may be required, but the journey to the local maxima has probably taught you enough about the system that you can safely make the bigger jump.

carlmr 5y ago
>Eventually you have to apply a small stimulus (incremental change) and observe the response. In any sufficiently complex system this is probably true. Often there's a reason for some thing being there, and that reason is often enough a workaround for an issue in an external library. Then the library gets updated, but the workaround remains. I've observed this often enough. I try to add a comment whenever I do this linking to the issue on the external repo if possible, so that later on you can check if it's still needed. But this is not fool proof and not everyone will leave breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs might also be eaten in the meantime by some merges and refactorings. In the end you're often left with a useless workaround, the person that made it is not in the company anymore, and there's nothing to observe for why it's necessary. If you don't want your system to eventually collapse under its own weight, sometimes you have to go for a risky refactoring. Doing it incrementally mitigates the risk.
dccoolgai 5y ago
Chesterton's Fence doesn't tell us _not to change things_ or even prescribe some level of _incrementalism_ it just asks us to make a good-faith effort to _know_ why the thing we want to change is the way it is before we change it. To follow the metaphor, maybe the reason the fence is there is because the county water supply is behind the fence and they put it there to stop cows and livestock from fouling the water.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Often enough there is just no reason at all for the fence, or the reason is completely lost. So knowing why it's there is impossible, and if you condition taking down the fence on that, you are effectively prohibiting taking the fence down. That's why every time somebody argues against it. It's because at some point you have to abandon that rule, and all the interesting discussion is about when to abandon it, not on how to follow it.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    Right, which is why like the comment you're replying to said, you make a good faith effort (i.e. not just as a formality), and then dismantle that fence if reasons why are lost in the mists of time and bureaucracy.
  - dccoolgai 5y ago
    Think about what "good-faith effort" means. This is another thing the Fence metaphor helps us understand when we think about it a little bit more.
  - miniatureape 5y ago
    I think the point of the fence is to move the impulse from yourself (If I can't see the reason there must not be one) to the greater context (Someone had a reason for this at some point, let me see if I can try to understand). Related to Chesterton's fence is Levi's Onion: https://www.joeydevilla.com/2001/12/03/4419/ https://www.joeydevilla.com/2001/12/03/4419/ Which is sort of a Chesterton's fence situation where someone took those required steps.
    - dccoolgai 5y ago
      Thank you! I collect these kind of metaphors and I didn't have Levi's Onion. I just added it to my list. I had a similar one called "chicken chopping" that I heard from an Australian once, but I like this one better.
      - mistermann 5y ago
- dccoolgai 5y ago
  If there's one "prescriptive" thing I find useful about the allegory that applies to software, it's thinking about how to write good documentation. A lot of engineers would write something like "this fence is made of silver oak planks cut to a length of 3 feet and fastened together aluminum wire" and while that may be useful if you have to fix the fence, for the people in the allegory it would be much more helpful to have a sign that says "this fence is here to keep cows from fouling the water in the lake behind it because 5 houses nearby use it for drinking water". If either the 5 houses or the cows are no longer there, it makes the whole system much less resistant to change.
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    At one time I had the thought that, in coding, one should note assumptions in a searchable and documentable way. Then, others later could audit for assumptions which no longer applied, without needing to go deep into the code.
- prometheus76 5y ago
  Another lesson from the story is that you might not be able to figure out the reason for the fence currently, but in springtime when the creek overflows, it might become obvious.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    See the problems of historical warnings, markers, and legends, for example. Japanese seaside communities frequently have markers showing the height or inland range of previous tsunamis. Proscriptions against specific materials, sites, foods, or practices may be based on previous lessons for which available archival mechanisms were insufficient to detail though lore and monuments might serve as warning. Jared Diamond observes that in New Guinea, natives refuse to sleep beneath certain types of tree, despite what seems a small risk of limb-fall. The occasional recreational camper might get away with spending a few nights out of a lifetime under such a tree or camping on low ground. Small risks repeated sufficiently many times become large, and those living such a lifestyle take precautions. Similarly: many safety regulations, standards, and precautions are written in blood. Oderised gas is the scented memorial to the 300 souls of the New London School. Long-term, latent, non-manifest risks are a chief form of technical debt.
boringg 5y ago
I'd counter argue that the need to make executive quick consequential decisions actually does a lot of damage. I understand that is what we value and how we consider our executives to be high functioning strong leaders but I don't believe that gets to the best long term outcomes for the organization. Obviously paralysis is a different matter - but taking time and consideration to get to the appropriate decision actually is highly productive in the long run - though if you are an executive it might not signal that you are going to be around for a long time due to organization thinking you aren't up to task. N.B - taking the time to access a decision is always a trade-off.
satyrnein 5y ago
Agreed; under uncertainly, you should shrink the size of your bet. For example, I think open borders might be good for the world (maybe outside of pandemics, say), with less than 100% confidence. However, debating completely open borders is sort of pointless. The actual lever we have is how much legal immigration we allow (and possibly how much enforcement we do against illegal immigration). So in practice, the road to open borders would be steady increases in the number of visas we grant (unless things start to go badly), not just tearing down the "fence" all at once.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  There is also a different point here: Even with 100% knowledge¹ that Open Borders is the right policy, implementing it overnight can be a disaster, since institutions, culture, public opinion etc need time to adjust to the new reality. ¹ For the sake of argument. Let's not debate immigration policy.
dredmorbius 5y ago
There are also often (though not always) alternatives to incremental change. These include pilot projects, modelling, stratified or distributed deployments (different regulations in different districts, rolling out changes to subsets of a userbase, etc.). There are times when an entire system needs to be modified as a whole. Those are not all instances however.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> Eventually you have to apply a small stimulus (incremental change) and observe the response I wonder whether if that observation is transferable so that the second-order thinking need not be original if there exists a directory of common decisions & outcomes? I've been trying to validate[1] whether if we could create a standardization for common decisions and outcomes; Then people could share their recipes of decisions & outcomes to a central directory which can be used to make Second-Order decisions without actually having to make one our self. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/263-plan-second-order-third-order-consequences-mentalmodel-cognitivescience https://needgap.com/problems/263-plan-second-order-third-ord...

by femto 5y ago

carlmr 5y ago

>Eventually you have to apply a small stimulus (incremental change) and observe the response. In any sufficiently complex system this is probably true. Often there's a reason for some thing being there, and that reason is often enough a workaround for an issue in an external library. Then the library gets updated, but the workaround remains. I've observed this often enough. I try to add a comment whenever I do this linking to the issue on the external repo if possible, so that later on you can check if it's still needed. But this is not fool proof and not everyone will leave breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs might also be eaten in the meantime by some merges and refactorings. In the end you're often left with a useless workaround, the person that made it is not in the company anymore, and there's nothing to observe for why it's necessary. If you don't want your system to eventually collapse under its own weight, sometimes you have to go for a risky refactoring. Doing it incrementally mitigates the risk.

dccoolgai 5y ago

Chesterton's Fence doesn't tell us _not to change things_ or even prescribe some level of _incrementalism_ it just asks us to make a good-faith effort to _know_ why the thing we want to change is the way it is before we change it. To follow the metaphor, maybe the reason the fence is there is because the county water supply is behind the fence and they put it there to stop cows and livestock from fouling the water.

marcosdumay 5y ago
Often enough there is just no reason at all for the fence, or the reason is completely lost. So knowing why it's there is impossible, and if you condition taking down the fence on that, you are effectively prohibiting taking the fence down. That's why every time somebody argues against it. It's because at some point you have to abandon that rule, and all the interesting discussion is about when to abandon it, not on how to follow it.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Right, which is why like the comment you're replying to said, you make a good faith effort (i.e. not just as a formality), and then dismantle that fence if reasons why are lost in the mists of time and bureaucracy.
- dccoolgai 5y ago
  Think about what "good-faith effort" means. This is another thing the Fence metaphor helps us understand when we think about it a little bit more.
- miniatureape 5y ago
  I think the point of the fence is to move the impulse from yourself (If I can't see the reason there must not be one) to the greater context (Someone had a reason for this at some point, let me see if I can try to understand). Related to Chesterton's fence is Levi's Onion: https://www.joeydevilla.com/2001/12/03/4419/ https://www.joeydevilla.com/2001/12/03/4419/ Which is sort of a Chesterton's fence situation where someone took those required steps.
  - dccoolgai 5y ago
    Thank you! I collect these kind of metaphors and I didn't have Levi's Onion. I just added it to my list. I had a similar one called "chicken chopping" that I heard from an Australian once, but I like this one better.
    - mistermann 5y ago
dccoolgai 5y ago
If there's one "prescriptive" thing I find useful about the allegory that applies to software, it's thinking about how to write good documentation. A lot of engineers would write something like "this fence is made of silver oak planks cut to a length of 3 feet and fastened together aluminum wire" and while that may be useful if you have to fix the fence, for the people in the allegory it would be much more helpful to have a sign that says "this fence is here to keep cows from fouling the water in the lake behind it because 5 houses nearby use it for drinking water". If either the 5 houses or the cows are no longer there, it makes the whole system much less resistant to change.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  At one time I had the thought that, in coding, one should note assumptions in a searchable and documentable way. Then, others later could audit for assumptions which no longer applied, without needing to go deep into the code.
prometheus76 5y ago
Another lesson from the story is that you might not be able to figure out the reason for the fence currently, but in springtime when the creek overflows, it might become obvious.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  See the problems of historical warnings, markers, and legends, for example. Japanese seaside communities frequently have markers showing the height or inland range of previous tsunamis. Proscriptions against specific materials, sites, foods, or practices may be based on previous lessons for which available archival mechanisms were insufficient to detail though lore and monuments might serve as warning. Jared Diamond observes that in New Guinea, natives refuse to sleep beneath certain types of tree, despite what seems a small risk of limb-fall. The occasional recreational camper might get away with spending a few nights out of a lifetime under such a tree or camping on low ground. Small risks repeated sufficiently many times become large, and those living such a lifestyle take precautions. Similarly: many safety regulations, standards, and precautions are written in blood. Oderised gas is the scented memorial to the 300 souls of the New London School. Long-term, latent, non-manifest risks are a chief form of technical debt.

boringg 5y ago

I'd counter argue that the need to make executive quick consequential decisions actually does a lot of damage. I understand that is what we value and how we consider our executives to be high functioning strong leaders but I don't believe that gets to the best long term outcomes for the organization. Obviously paralysis is a different matter - but taking time and consideration to get to the appropriate decision actually is highly productive in the long run - though if you are an executive it might not signal that you are going to be around for a long time due to organization thinking you aren't up to task. N.B - taking the time to access a decision is always a trade-off.

satyrnein 5y ago

Agreed; under uncertainly, you should shrink the size of your bet. For example, I think open borders might be good for the world (maybe outside of pandemics, say), with less than 100% confidence. However, debating completely open borders is sort of pointless. The actual lever we have is how much legal immigration we allow (and possibly how much enforcement we do against illegal immigration). So in practice, the road to open borders would be steady increases in the number of visas we grant (unless things start to go badly), not just tearing down the "fence" all at once.

BurningFrog 5y ago
There is also a different point here: Even with 100% knowledge¹ that Open Borders is the right policy, implementing it overnight can be a disaster, since institutions, culture, public opinion etc need time to adjust to the new reality. ¹ For the sake of argument. Let's not debate immigration policy.

dredmorbius 5y ago

There are also often (though not always) alternatives to incremental change. These include pilot projects, modelling, stratified or distributed deployments (different regulations in different districts, rolling out changes to subsets of a userbase, etc.). There are times when an entire system needs to be modified as a whole. Those are not all instances however.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

> Eventually you have to apply a small stimulus (incremental change) and observe the response I wonder whether if that observation is transferable so that the second-order thinking need not be original if there exists a directory of common decisions & outcomes? I've been trying to validate[1] whether if we could create a standardization for common decisions and outcomes; Then people could share their recipes of decisions & outcomes to a central directory which can be used to make Second-Order decisions without actually having to make one our self. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/263-plan-second-order-third-order-consequences-mentalmodel-cognitivescience https://needgap.com/problems/263-plan-second-order-third-ord...