4 ms·

Well, let's go back to worshipping the sun, then. Who knows, if we don't, it might not rise tomorrow... Or, just maybe, progress itself is a tradition that de

by klyrs 4y ago

Well, let's go back to worshipping the sun, then. Who knows, if we don't, it might not rise tomorrow... Or, just maybe, progress itself is a tradition that deserves its own reverence. Sometimes, Chesterson's fence was erected by a shepherd who no longer uses the field that you'd rather play soccer on. It was useful in its day, but no longer.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Sometimes tradition is smarter than you are. Sometimes tradition is brain-dead. But we are very prone to assume that tradition is always brain-dead. That's a very dangerous assumption...
PsySecGroup 4y ago
Judgmentality 4y ago
I feel like this comment points out the tradition of being contrarian on HN, and it would be foolish of me to question it.
- klyrs 4y ago
  To the contrary, it would be foolish of you to not question me. Question Everything, Even This (but not too much because that's overthinking).
- topaz0 4y ago
  Only if you don't know its purpose, which is self-aggrandizement.
cratermoon 4y ago
Progress itself is a tradition, but a relatively recent one, and not one deserving reverence. At least, not any more.
- api 4y ago
  … says someone who if they are posting on HN has very likely never known actual hunger or true poverty and has all humanity’s history and knowledge at their fingertips instantly. The problem with progress is that it makes people so comfortable and privileged that they dream up inane fantasy ideologies that question progress and harken back to the imaginary golden ages from which their ancestors painfully crawled.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    No one is fetishizing the past. It's simply a fact that progress is not a inevitable, not a law of nature. We live in a time when one generation is objectively less well off than their parents. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/14/economics-viewpoint-baby-boomers-generation-x-generation-rent-gig-economy https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/14/economics-v...
- klyrs 4y ago
  How recent is relatively recent in your mind?
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    No earlier than the Age of Enlightenment and at least by the Industrial Revolution.
- stirfish 4y ago
  Don't tear down progress until you can say why we make progress in the first place.
codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
Maybe you should be worshipping the sun. Morning sunlight exposure is associated with all kinds of health benefits, not least of which producing Vitamin D, an essential vitamin that, among other things, provides vital protection against certain circulating diseases... Maybe you should also live everyday as though the possibility of the sun never rising again were real, then maybe you might get busy doing those important things in your life. Again, tradition is smarter than you.
- criley2 4y ago
  You can develop a days worth of vitamin D in 15 minutes (or simply supplement it for the same benefits), meanwhile excessive sun exposure is correlated with all manner of health problems, not the least of which is cancer. People who spend more time outdoors tend to die younger. Again, progress trumps tradition.
  - codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
    Imagining a life of merely 15 minutes outside sounds miserable. It's also about the psychological benefits of sunlight exposure.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - throwaway202022 4y ago
    > People who spend more time outdoors tend to die younger. Source for this? Searching for the claim only turned up results saying more time outdoors is associated with better long-term health outcomes. Also: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heres-something-unexpected-sunbathers-live-longer-201606069738 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heres-something-unexpect...
    - uoaei 4y ago
      People who spend all their time indoors (in front of screens) will seek to justify their lifestyles, just as those who spend their time outdoors will seek to justify theirs. There is nothing rational about pre-supposing that your personal habits represent some sort of optimium: it is only through careful study that benefits and costs may be determined.
karaterobot 4y ago
> Sometimes, Chesterson's fence was erected by a shepherd who no longer uses the field that you'd rather play soccer on. It was useful in its day, but no longer. I mean, that's the point of the metaphor: before knocking down the fence, figure out what purpose it served in the first place. It's not a question of "don't ever knock down a fence" or "always knock down fences".
- klyrs 4y ago
  > It's not a question of "don't ever knock down a fence" or "always knock down fences". Exactly my point. "Tradition is smarter than you" implies that I won't be able to out-think it. When, in fact, tradition is overturned quite regularly and quite often with extremely good reasoning. Always doing the same thing is dumb -- be that holding or throwing out tradition. Mindless adherence to tradition is just as stupid as mindlessly discarding tradition. Tradition is not smarter than me, tradition is mindless. Critical thinking wins.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    Your upstream comment made me think you were interpreting the linked article as saying "if something is traditional, it must be wise, thus we should follow it." But it is not saying that, by my reading. It is saying: because the pace of generational change is increasing, applying the Chesterton's Fence rule to traditions is increasingly difficult, thus many people abandon it and try to work from first principles."
PainfullyNormal 4y ago
> let's go back to worshipping the sun Did we ever stop? Praise the sun! solaire pose
1123581321 4y ago
You most likely did not descend from people who worshipped the sun, just people who used the sun in art and recognized its benefits to them. There were deities associated with the sun. Sol Invictus is the most commonly known, but was a relatively late addition to the Roman pantheon, intentionally appropriated from traditions from Syria and elevated by the empire for what they perceived to be civic benefit. Hardly traditional, but perhaps an early example of bureaucrats recognizing the value of a tradition they did not personally respect.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  The idea of Sol as a Syrian god has been challenged recently: It was long thought that Sol Invictus was a Syrian sun-god, and that Aurelian imported his cult into Rome after he had vanquished Zenobia and captured Palmyra. This sun-god, it was postulated, differed fundamentally from the old Roman sungod Sol Indiges, whose cult had long since disappeared from Rome. Scholars thus tended to postulate a hiatus in the first centuries of imperial rule during which there was little or no cult of the sun in Rome. Recent studies, however, have shown that Aurelian’s Sol Invictus was neither new nor foreign, and that the cult of the sun was maintained in Rome without interruption from the city’s earliest history until the demise of Roman religion(s). This continuity of the Roman cult of Sol sheds a new light on the evidence for priests and temples of Sol in Rome. http://romanrepublic.org/roma/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Temples%20of%20Sol%20in%20Rome.pdf http://romanrepublic.org/roma/wp-content/uploads/attachments...
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    Interesting! Thank you.
- klyrs 4y ago
  > You most likely did not descend from people who worshipped the sun, just people who used the sun in art and recognized its benefits to them. a. You don't know my parents, don't be so sure. b. You're right, I should have gone with "washing hands before surgery" to avoid these low-effort rebuttals.
celsopitta 4y ago
The soccer player knows why he can do it, the fence is no longer useful. That was exactly Chesterton's point.
- 8note 4y ago
  If you don't know why the fence was there, how do you know that it's not still useful for that original purpose, outside of you playing soccer. The point is to never tear down fences, because you can never quite know why it was put up. You can know that a fence isn't useful to what you want to do, but Chesterton's fence just doesn't apply
LAC-Tech 4y ago
Well, let's go back to worshipping the sun, then. Who knows, if we don't, it might not rise tomorrow... I think we'd be much better off being un-ironic sun-worshipers than hollowed-out atomised atheists. And I see that as someone who is sadly in the latter category.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  > I think we'd be much better off being un-ironic sun-worshipers... Better off worshipping unintelligent and non-existent beings, and all the foolish memes that inevitably accrete with magical thinking? > hollowed-out atomised atheists. Hollowed of what? Mostly harmful traditions many of which were designed to entrench unearned power and influence?
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    Yeah, exactly! Imagine of instead of typing all that negative conspiracy theory rubbish on HN, you were outside intermingling at your local sun temple.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      Atheism is a conspiracy theory? Or is there something in my comment history that strikes you as 'rubbish'?
  - uoaei 4y ago
    Hollowed of mystical modes of reasoning that provide unreasonably useful answers to our most pressing questions in a quasi-random fashion. You don't have to dig deep to find examples where this path outperforms "rationalist" approaches.

by klyrs 4y ago

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

Sometimes tradition is smarter than you are. Sometimes tradition is brain-dead. But we are very prone to assume that tradition is always brain-dead. That's a very dangerous assumption...

PsySecGroup 4y ago

Judgmentality 4y ago

I feel like this comment points out the tradition of being contrarian on HN, and it would be foolish of me to question it.

klyrs 4y ago
To the contrary, it would be foolish of you to not question me. Question Everything, Even This (but not too much because that's overthinking).
topaz0 4y ago
Only if you don't know its purpose, which is self-aggrandizement.

cratermoon 4y ago

Progress itself is a tradition, but a relatively recent one, and not one deserving reverence. At least, not any more.

api 4y ago
… says someone who if they are posting on HN has very likely never known actual hunger or true poverty and has all humanity’s history and knowledge at their fingertips instantly. The problem with progress is that it makes people so comfortable and privileged that they dream up inane fantasy ideologies that question progress and harken back to the imaginary golden ages from which their ancestors painfully crawled.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  No one is fetishizing the past. It's simply a fact that progress is not a inevitable, not a law of nature. We live in a time when one generation is objectively less well off than their parents. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/14/economics-viewpoint-baby-boomers-generation-x-generation-rent-gig-economy https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/14/economics-v...
klyrs 4y ago
How recent is relatively recent in your mind?
- cratermoon 4y ago
  No earlier than the Age of Enlightenment and at least by the Industrial Revolution.
stirfish 4y ago
Don't tear down progress until you can say why we make progress in the first place.

codemonkey-zeta 4y ago

Maybe you should be worshipping the sun. Morning sunlight exposure is associated with all kinds of health benefits, not least of which producing Vitamin D, an essential vitamin that, among other things, provides vital protection against certain circulating diseases... Maybe you should also live everyday as though the possibility of the sun never rising again were real, then maybe you might get busy doing those important things in your life. Again, tradition is smarter than you.

criley2 4y ago
You can develop a days worth of vitamin D in 15 minutes (or simply supplement it for the same benefits), meanwhile excessive sun exposure is correlated with all manner of health problems, not the least of which is cancer. People who spend more time outdoors tend to die younger. Again, progress trumps tradition.
- codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
  Imagining a life of merely 15 minutes outside sounds miserable. It's also about the psychological benefits of sunlight exposure.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway202022 4y ago
  > People who spend more time outdoors tend to die younger. Source for this? Searching for the claim only turned up results saying more time outdoors is associated with better long-term health outcomes. Also: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heres-something-unexpected-sunbathers-live-longer-201606069738 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heres-something-unexpect...
  - uoaei 4y ago
    People who spend all their time indoors (in front of screens) will seek to justify their lifestyles, just as those who spend their time outdoors will seek to justify theirs. There is nothing rational about pre-supposing that your personal habits represent some sort of optimium: it is only through careful study that benefits and costs may be determined.

karaterobot 4y ago

> Sometimes, Chesterson's fence was erected by a shepherd who no longer uses the field that you'd rather play soccer on. It was useful in its day, but no longer. I mean, that's the point of the metaphor: before knocking down the fence, figure out what purpose it served in the first place. It's not a question of "don't ever knock down a fence" or "always knock down fences".

klyrs 4y ago
> It's not a question of "don't ever knock down a fence" or "always knock down fences". Exactly my point. "Tradition is smarter than you" implies that I won't be able to out-think it. When, in fact, tradition is overturned quite regularly and quite often with extremely good reasoning. Always doing the same thing is dumb -- be that holding or throwing out tradition. Mindless adherence to tradition is just as stupid as mindlessly discarding tradition. Tradition is not smarter than me, tradition is mindless. Critical thinking wins.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  Your upstream comment made me think you were interpreting the linked article as saying "if something is traditional, it must be wise, thus we should follow it." But it is not saying that, by my reading. It is saying: because the pace of generational change is increasing, applying the Chesterton's Fence rule to traditions is increasingly difficult, thus many people abandon it and try to work from first principles."

PainfullyNormal 4y ago

> let's go back to worshipping the sun Did we ever stop? Praise the sun! solaire pose

1123581321 4y ago

You most likely did not descend from people who worshipped the sun, just people who used the sun in art and recognized its benefits to them. There were deities associated with the sun. Sol Invictus is the most commonly known, but was a relatively late addition to the Roman pantheon, intentionally appropriated from traditions from Syria and elevated by the empire for what they perceived to be civic benefit. Hardly traditional, but perhaps an early example of bureaucrats recognizing the value of a tradition they did not personally respect.

LAC-Tech 4y ago
The idea of Sol as a Syrian god has been challenged recently: It was long thought that Sol Invictus was a Syrian sun-god, and that Aurelian imported his cult into Rome after he had vanquished Zenobia and captured Palmyra. This sun-god, it was postulated, differed fundamentally from the old Roman sungod Sol Indiges, whose cult had long since disappeared from Rome. Scholars thus tended to postulate a hiatus in the first centuries of imperial rule during which there was little or no cult of the sun in Rome. Recent studies, however, have shown that Aurelian’s Sol Invictus was neither new nor foreign, and that the cult of the sun was maintained in Rome without interruption from the city’s earliest history until the demise of Roman religion(s). This continuity of the Roman cult of Sol sheds a new light on the evidence for priests and temples of Sol in Rome. http://romanrepublic.org/roma/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Temples%20of%20Sol%20in%20Rome.pdf http://romanrepublic.org/roma/wp-content/uploads/attachments...
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Interesting! Thank you.
klyrs 4y ago
> You most likely did not descend from people who worshipped the sun, just people who used the sun in art and recognized its benefits to them. a. You don't know my parents, don't be so sure. b. You're right, I should have gone with "washing hands before surgery" to avoid these low-effort rebuttals.

celsopitta 4y ago

The soccer player knows why he can do it, the fence is no longer useful. That was exactly Chesterton's point.

8note 4y ago
If you don't know why the fence was there, how do you know that it's not still useful for that original purpose, outside of you playing soccer. The point is to never tear down fences, because you can never quite know why it was put up. You can know that a fence isn't useful to what you want to do, but Chesterton's fence just doesn't apply

LAC-Tech 4y ago

Well, let's go back to worshipping the sun, then. Who knows, if we don't, it might not rise tomorrow... I think we'd be much better off being un-ironic sun-worshipers than hollowed-out atomised atheists. And I see that as someone who is sadly in the latter category.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
> I think we'd be much better off being un-ironic sun-worshipers... Better off worshipping unintelligent and non-existent beings, and all the foolish memes that inevitably accrete with magical thinking? > hollowed-out atomised atheists. Hollowed of what? Mostly harmful traditions many of which were designed to entrench unearned power and influence?
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  Yeah, exactly! Imagine of instead of typing all that negative conspiracy theory rubbish on HN, you were outside intermingling at your local sun temple.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Atheism is a conspiracy theory? Or is there something in my comment history that strikes you as 'rubbish'?
- uoaei 4y ago
  Hollowed of mystical modes of reasoning that provide unreasonably useful answers to our most pressing questions in a quasi-random fashion. You don't have to dig deep to find examples where this path outperforms "rationalist" approaches.