There was a big thread a while ago where one subset of posters were like “you clearly CAN compare them this is stupid” and another subset was saying “but the point of the idiom is doing so is fruitless”. Not sure what’s so hard to grasp about using an inappropriate metric to judge something.

But then again maybe most people use the idiom in senseless ways.

What do you call the action of putting their grades together like this, without the sentences you put after it? (this is the most important question of this comment).

Why are you stuck on “cannot” when the point of the idiom is about the (repeat pun) fruitlessness of comparing things by inappropriate standards?

You clearly can come up with a way to score a math test by the standards of an art class, but that is not typically a useful endeavor.

I’ve never heard that expression before, but that’s pretty good.

Are you confusing “can’t” and “can, but is fruitless” (pun intended)?

Like, if someone says to you “you can’t put nails in with a screwdriver”, are you going to say “You totally can. Just whack the nail with the handle. I don’t see the problem”.

Or, like, “You can’t eat crayons” do you respond “sure you can. chew it up and eat it. i don’t see the problem. it’s just like a cookie”

“This orange sucks. I can’t just bite into it and enjoy it like an apple.” That’s not a sensible assessment of the orange. That’s applying the desired attributes of an apple to an orange.

The most reasonable interpretation is that you cannot use the standards of apples on oranges, nor the other way around.

You wouldn’t fault an apple because it doesn’t have a thick skin that needs peeling.

Fine. Consider your point made. I’ll use some other metaphor or allusion to express “don’t willy-nilly change systems you don’t understand”. Many people just do that, out of ignorance, stupidity, or hubris. I’ve seen a lot of software people delete “useless” code that caused problems later.

I assumed it was a counter to the implicit idea that Israel is eternal and timeless and just a fact of life, rather than something that started in living memory

I’m reminded of that meme of the cartoon girl going “this sign won’t stop me because I can’t read”

I’ve had coworkers that changed some code, then just deleted the tests that started failing. Then they get annoyed their PR is blocked by more attentive coworkers.

If we switch the argument to being about diverting a watercourse, or regrading land, it suddenly falls apart because it becomes clear that these things do not exist for intelligent reasons.

This is not a compelling analogy. Many things in nature may not exist for an intelligent reason, but their presence matters in ways that may not be obvious. Diverting a waterway may cause tremendous damage to the ecosystem and other downstream (pun intended) things. That is an excellent example of why you should understand the current system before attempting to change it.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to try and understand the world or to mitigate risks when making changes. I think chesterton’s fence is a shite argument because it implies that everything which exists has a planned purpose and favours the status quo which may be intoler

I don’t think the implied plan purpose is necessary for the argument to make sense. The point of the story is it’s not always clear what things are load bearing, nor what loads they bear.

If the chesteron origin is distracting to you, let’s discard it. I think we agree that changing a complex system without attempting to understand it first is foolish.

It’s not a bad argument to try to understand an existing system before changing it.

I’ve seen a lot of “why is this like this? I’m changing it” blow up in software. The clearest memory was not realizing that user names could be null, even though that looked impossible by tracing the registration route. Turns out there was another, stupider, way of registering.

It’s especially a good argument when the person evaluating the system has no domain knowledge or expertise.

One should keep Chesterton’s Fence in mind.

Idiots like Musk will see a system they don’t understand and tear it down, and then people die.

I think one of the reasons some of the little kids in my life like me is I try to give them honest explanations. They don’t always fully understand, but I think they appreciate getting answers. And probably appreciate the occasional “I don’t know, actually. Let’s look it up”

What is an example of a safety rule who’s conditions no longer exist which would not have the conditions almost immediately return if the rule was removed?

My job is populated by dinosaurs that only recently adopted git for version control. They had some rules and procedures that made a kind of sense when deployment meant “I’ll scp the files to the prod server”, but don’t add value anymore.

Some people had a rule where after “deploy” they would SSH into prod and check the md5 hash of the files and compare them to their local copy. You don’t have to do that.

They also wanted to only allow one person to work on a file at the same time because “you can overwrite their changes”. Git handles that fine (unless you really fuck up the merge conflict, admittedly)

Sometimes the real reason is uncomfortable and they don’t want to say it out loud. Like, “the CEO is an idiot, and wants it this way for stupid reasons”

Though maybe “the CEO doesn’t understand how Google calendar works, so he thinks putting our time off in a shared spreadsheet is easier” would satisfy?

At my job a lot of stupid things come out of “someone high ranking doesn’t understand computers” or “they don’t benefit from fixing this, so it’s easier for them to leave it stupid”

Also include horrific externalized costs from cars.

They have poor media literacy and reasoning skills. If they were smart and empathetic, they probably wouldn’t be hateful.

I really would like people to think more about that.

If you produce more valuable stuff and get paid the same, you’re getting a bad deal. It’s delusional to think the owners are going to pass those profits on to the workers in any meaningful way.

I don’t disagree with you but it’s comforting to me to hold onto the fantasy that the something else would be better, like exchanging a quality good for money in a one time deal.

But yes, capitalism is a common source of many problems. (Though I guess a worker owned collective could produce loot boxes, too. )

Sometimes I get really depressed when I think about problems that could be solved if people would just behave slightly differently.

If people would just stop buying lootbox slop, it wouldn’t be a problem. it’s not asking a lot. It’s not asking you to change your diet, or ride a bike twenty miles in the snow. Just stop buying that shit. I just want to smack impulse buyers on the nose with a newspaper, or squirt them with a spray bottle. Stop it!

But that’s not how people work. We barely function at all.