Don't remove a fence until you know why it was put up. Not seeing a rule's purpose is a sign of your ignorance, not its uselessness — so understand it first, then decide.
Chesterton's fence: don't tear down a fence until you know why it was put up. If you can't see the reason for a rule, that's a sign to go learn it — not to remove it.
G.K. Chesterton imagined a fence across a road. A reformer says, 'I don't see the use of this — let's clear it away.' The wiser reply: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go and find out the use of it, and then come back and tell me — and then you may destroy it.'
The point is that rules, traditions, and old processes usually exist for a reason, even when the reason isn't visible to you. Your inability to see why something is there is evidence of your own ignorance, not the thing's uselessness. Removing it blind is how 'obvious improvements' cause disasters — the regulation that seemed pointless was preventing a fraud; the awkward step in the process was catching an error nobody remembers anymore.
Crucially, this is not 'never change anything.' Chesterton fully allows tearing the fence down — once you understand it. It's a sequence: first understand why it exists, then decide. Applied to a codebase, a company policy, a habit, or a law, it forces you to earn the right to remove something by first being able to explain why it was there.
Most confident 'this is obviously useless, remove it' calls are really 'I don't understand this yet' — and acting on that ignorance is how avoidable disasters happen.
It's misread as a blanket 'respect all tradition, never reform.' Chesterton's actual point is the opposite of paralysis — he says go ahead and destroy the fence, just AFTER you've learned why it's there. It's an argument against ignorant change, not against change itself.
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