I think the point is more that you should take care to consider why it was put there because it might be something that is not immediately obvious.
You should identify how a structure interacts with it’s current environment.
OK, but what if it was put there to stop something that only happens once every 10 years? Without taking the time to learn this, you might tear it down and then after a few years you’re scrambling to solve a problem that was already solved.
I’m very hostile to excuses for conservatism because they’re often positions to apologize for power structures that have a secondary gain. The point I’m making is you should never approach something that previously existed as if it was beneficial by default. It’s often not and that’s a fallacy as much as automatically believing it’s useless. That’s what this guy was doing with his Catholic apologia.
You should consider history to develop predictive theories(like what you’re describing). But those are always subordinate to observable reality and bothering with trying to justify them too much is generally worthless. Sometimes you just need to act.
In essence, it’s a bad argument because it both presupposes you don’t interrogate why things exist(you do, that’s the entire point of the argument in the first place) and argues that an unknown reason might exist you might have to defer to. No shit. There might also be an unknown reason that it’s incredibly destructive. Neither of those themselves are an argument, but one is certainly an appeal to tradition masked by an analogy.
I think the point is more that you should take care to consider why it was put there because it might be something that is not immediately obvious.
OK, but what if it was put there to stop something that only happens once every 10 years? Without taking the time to learn this, you might tear it down and then after a few years you’re scrambling to solve a problem that was already solved.
I’m very hostile to excuses for conservatism because they’re often positions to apologize for power structures that have a secondary gain. The point I’m making is you should never approach something that previously existed as if it was beneficial by default. It’s often not and that’s a fallacy as much as automatically believing it’s useless. That’s what this guy was doing with his Catholic apologia.
You should consider history to develop predictive theories(like what you’re describing). But those are always subordinate to observable reality and bothering with trying to justify them too much is generally worthless. Sometimes you just need to act.
In essence, it’s a bad argument because it both presupposes you don’t interrogate why things exist(you do, that’s the entire point of the argument in the first place) and argues that an unknown reason might exist you might have to defer to. No shit. There might also be an unknown reason that it’s incredibly destructive. Neither of those themselves are an argument, but one is certainly an appeal to tradition masked by an analogy.