If Chesterton's fence is intangible and invisible, then it's appropriate to remove it entirely. If it doesn't have a working latch, it doesn't serve as a hard barrier, but it may still serve as a soft barrier, and that may be good enough.

Or, conversely, important things may have been relying on access via the latch-free fence gate: fixing the latch without providing a more appropriate solution to those issues could cause more harm than the benefit you get from "now the fence actually functions as a barrier". (Sure, the latch keeps the wolves out, and stops them picking off the sheep – but it also keeps the sheep away from their only freshwater source, without which most of the sheep are going to die.)

This doesn't really make sense, especially to the Chesterton's Fence parable. If it doesn't have a latch and you don't know why it doesn't have a latch...

We know for a fact (like actual empirical fact) that FDA prevents vast numbers of unsafe and ineffective drugs from reaching the market. This is absolutely indisputable.

So uhhh, maybe we think in reality instead of offloading to metaphor.

The whole “let’s paint a general principle with a broad brush over this highly nuanced thing I know nothing about” is a huge problem with discourse in our society.

> We know for a fact (like actual empirical fact) that FDA prevents vast numbers of unsafe and ineffective drugs from reaching the market. This is absolutely indisputable.

we also know for a fact that the FDA lets unsafe and ineffective drugs into the market, especially from overseas, slapped with a label that its safe according to the FDA. if its a crapshoot, what's the point really?

The point is that it's nowhere close to a crapshoot.

99.99999% of drugs ever created are unsafe or ineffective.

99%+ of the drugs you will ever encounter in your life are both safe and effective.

That is not a crapshoot. Obviously.

if you are in doubt, propublica has done a huge expose in the major, deliberate lapses of FDA regulation for foreign manufactured drugs

https://www.propublica.org/article/fda-drug-loophole-sun-pha...

How is that relevant to my point?

Despite its failures (however many you want to point out), our regulatory regime converts a pipeline of almost universally ineffective and/or dangerous compounds into a marketplace of almost universally safe and/or effective compounds. This is a fact.

Unless you think no one is trying to, would try to, or would deceive themselves into accidentally releasing a dangerous or ineffective compound to consumers?

Or fix the latch? Or was this a sarcastic comment?

I know what Chesterton's fence is, my question was specifically about why one would throw it away if the latch doesn't work.