[HN Gopher] The case for and against analogies
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The case for and against analogies
Author : ggoo
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-02-04 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| teddyh wrote:
| I randomly found this a while back, and I think it's slightly
| simpler and more helpful: _How Analogies Work_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/embed/n45D_zi3O5g?start=853&end=1450
| scrubs wrote:
| There are limitations to analogies. And a big boundary line is
| experience. I can give you lots of analogies for some complicated
| math etc but if you want to move beyond the limitations of
| analogies there's nothing left but doing homework.
|
| Not in the realm of science but still my fav attributed I believe
| attributable to fritz pearls: you can read it the menu, hold the
| menu, lick the menu, or eat the menu. But you didn't eat the meal
|
| No model or analogy is a bijection on the real deal. I
| periodically have to remind paper pushers around the office that
| a complete Jira ticket doesn't mean anything. Organizing
| paperwork doesn't mean the problem is or can get solved
| aksss wrote:
| It's a lot like the case for and against similes.
| fareesh wrote:
| Good at explaining concepts bad at convincing people who believe
| otherwise
| ghaff wrote:
| I would say they can be good at conveying a general concept but
| not at conveying a lot of nuance and, as you say, if people
| disagree they'll respond by picking apart the analogy.
| mikece wrote:
| The case against analogies is like trying to teach something to
| someone without any kind of frame of reference. A well-crafted
| analogy is frequently one of the best tools a teacher (or
| lecturer on technical subjects) has to make an abstract concept
| relatable to the student/listener. To the article's point,
| however, a really good analogy is one where likeness of the
| things being related are readily apparent, or at least easy to
| explain. The example of Karen (or was it Beth?) conflating X::Y
| to A::B is a lack of apprehension on her part. This is more an
| issue of communication and lack of precise understanding; once
| that's cleared up Karen will get it rather quickly.
| lelandfe wrote:
| > The case against analogies is like trying to teach something
| to someone without any kind of frame of reference
|
| If this was intentional... nice.
| willis936 wrote:
| A bad analogy is like a bad analogy.
| jlrubin wrote:
| like them or not, analogies are one of the pillars of the
| American legal system. Being able to reason about them and create
| them (usually with motivated reasoning) is a highly valuable
| skill.
|
| For those unaware, in a legal case where there is no precedant
| (something us technologists encounter often), you make the case
| that what you are doing is just like what X had done, and should
| be treated in kind.
| b450 wrote:
| I'm a fan of Douglas Hofstadter's (of Godel Escher Bach fame)
| view that "analogy is the core of cognition"+
|
| On this view, I guess the question of whether to utilize analogy
| or not is reduced to the question of which analogy would be most
| useful, since all categorization (and thus, much of thought in
| general) is essentially analogical thinking.
|
| + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8m7lFQ3njk
| mk12 wrote:
| See also his book on this subject (with Emmanuel Sander),
| _Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of
| Thinking_. I 'm currently reading it and enjoying it. A lot of
| reviews complain about how padded with examples it is, but this
| is really the substance of the book and I appreciate it.
| peacefulhat wrote:
| Analogies and idioms are heavily leaned on when you've
| substituted actual expertise for rhetoric.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That can be useful; when explaining something complex to
| someone lacking the same actual expertise, an analogy they can
| understand without it is potentially helpful.
| yohannesk wrote:
| "He was as tall as a 6'3" tree." sounds like something an ML
| model would throw out if trained on analogies
| 58x14 wrote:
| > Maybe you could take your existing machines and distill them
| into their essential features so that you can talk about them
| without referring to the original contexts at all. But then
| you'll see analogies between those abstractions and try to
| extract their features and suddenly you'll wake up and find that
| you've invented category theory after which you won't be able to
| communicate with normal people at all except to tell them how
| great category theory is and how important it is that they learn
| category theory. Not recommended.
|
| My favorite line. I'm a huge fan of category theory.
| aero142 wrote:
| "He is using an analogy like a drunk uses a lamp-post, for
| support instead of illumination."
| gweinberg wrote:
| Analogies are great for suggesting ideas but useless for reaching
| firm conclusions.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| So a good analogy is like not finding the perfect partner life,
| but eventually settling with someone because they tick most of
| the boxes.
|
| :)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| marcodiego wrote:
| Analogies are a good thing to convince people. When equations
| match, it is even good to introduce new concepts for people who
| already know other areas. Other than that, analogies are very
| rarely useful to explain anything.
| [deleted]
| eth0up wrote:
| Consider the phenomena of the most formidable linguistic
| infestation of any language in the history of noises beyond
| clicks, grunts and twitching - the word: L I K E.
|
| It's the omni analogy, used to equivocate everything conceivable,
| from punctuation, confusion, concrete or abstract meaning,
| nothing, something, to anything deemed unworthy of minimal effort
| or patience. Adverbs be damned and banished to hell!
|
| We've entered a paradigm where everything is a similarity of
| itself and nothing is what it is. "How do you feel?" , one might
| inquire. Only to be informed that the feeling bears similarity (l
| i k e) to something else. "I feel l i k e shit", one may say.
| Certainly not shitty, but approximate to shit, with no defining
| parameters.
|
| It is an age come where nothing can be what it is, but only a
| reference to another thing or its similar self. A linguistically
| programmed virtual reality, where no one need speak precisely if
| the smoke of ambiguity and mirrors of distortion can substitute.
|
| Now we can have our thing that resembles a cake and do something
| similar to ingesting it too.
|
| Horray.
| [deleted]
| yob22 wrote:
| tpoacher wrote:
| From a formal logic point of view, an analogy can be two types of
| argument. One is a valid form of argument, the other is not (i.e.
| it's fallacious).
|
| The valid form is effectively an "argument to generalization",
| presented via an easier to understand "specialisation", but only
| keeping within the attributes of the general case.
|
| E.g. if arguing X, and both X and Y are special cases of Z, an
| analogy is an argument on Z, presented through Y.
|
| The fallacious variety is then any argument via a specialization
| Y, which makes use of attributes not present in the general case
| Z.
|
| Given the above, the problem with using an analogy as an argument
| is as follows:
|
| 1. People tend to use the fallacious version, neglecting it does
| not apply to the general case. The response to such an analogy as
| a form of argument is simply to point out this fact.
| Unfortunately, people usually tend to focus on why the special
| attributes of Y are a bad argument in themselves, when in fact
| they should be ignored.
|
| 2. Even when people use the valid version, opponents will latch
| onto attributes, and make a motte-and-bailey attack. The correct
| defense to that is to reaffirm the validity of the "appeal to
| generalization" argument, and dismiss any attributes argued by
| the opponent which do not stem from the generalisation, thus
| invalidating the attack.
|
| This of course is only useful in "discussions", where unlike a
| debate the aim is not to "win", but to refine arguments in search
| of better conclusions.
|
| In a debate, one can therefore expect an analogy, even a
| logically valid one, to be a very weak debate strategy given the
| ease with which it can be attacked by a fallacy and the
| tediousness of the defense required to refute it, because this
| leaves the analogist in a position of constant, dry defense
| against a bombardment of vivid, emotionally charged motte-and-
| bailey arguments by their opponent, giving them ample opportunity
| to derail the debate to areas where they will have the higher
| ground.
|
| So, I agree with another poster here. Analogies, particularly
| valid ones, are good for discussions ("sympathetic audiences"),
| but bad for debates ("antagonistic audiences").
| michaelfeathers wrote:
| > In a good analogy, both sides should have significant shared
| structure. The more that's shared, and the deeper the structure,
| the better.
|
| The alternative to analogies is to name the shared structures.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Analogies are not persuasive. If the audience isn't already on
| board with the argument at hand, then they're unlikely to be
| receptive to the analogy.
| fargle wrote:
| analogies are like shortcuts: a good one gets everyone there
| quicker, everybody is happy, and you might even been thought
| clever. But a bad one gets you nowhere, or back where you started
| if you are lucky, tired and grouchy for the waste of time.
| diego wrote:
| An analogy is shorthand for: here is something relatively
| complicated. We can look at it with the same model that we have
| agreed upon for this other thing.
|
| If the two things are similar enough in the ways that the model
| applies, then it's good. Otherwise, it's not.
| munificent wrote:
| My basic rule is that analogies are great for a sympathetic
| audience and bad for an antagonistic one. If you're trying to
| illuminate something to someone who wants to understand your
| point, an analogy is a great shortcut to building a tangible
| architecture in their mind. But if the other person has an
| opposing viewpoint and you're trying to dismantle that and
| replace it with yours, analogies usually end up just moving the
| goalposts in the argument.
| vmception wrote:
| thats a good observation, yes, an antagonistic audience is
| likely to derail your point by focusing on the ways in which
| the things compared are dissimilar, even though analogies only
| compare the ways they are similar and requires the listener to
| figure out which ways those are, while ignoring the
| dissimilarities.
|
| I often just mention that definition. I actually get really far
| by avoiding certain polarizing words and just saying the
| definition of the word. Flies right under the radar.
| jmckib wrote:
| Yep, "false equivalence" is the response I always get from an
| antagonistic audience when I try to use an analogy. Of course
| an analogy is not an equivalence, but that gets conveniently
| ignored. These days I just make the most direct argument
| possible and avoid analogies altogether, or else we end up in
| an argument about what an analogy actually is. Analogies work
| a lot better during a disagreement if the person you're
| disagreeing with is operating in good faith, which
| unfortunately most humans aren't able to do when their views
| are being challenged.
| svat wrote:
| _(I started posting the below as a top-level comment, but in
| the end it arrived at the same point as yours, so leaving it as
| a reply...)_
|
| In Indian/Sanskrit literary theory (poetics), in the discussion
| of figures of speech (rhetoric, etc), similes are called
| _upama_ ( "her face is like the moon", etc). The discussion of
| it in the literature is extensive and would fill several
| volumes (and I hardly know anything), but one thing recognized
| early is that in a simile/analogy, there needs to be a
| _sadharana-dharma_ , a shared property: the point is that
| there's something in common ("her face is _beautiful_ , like
| the moon") while of course there is going to be a lot that is
| not (the intended meaning is _not_ "like the moon, her face is
| pockmarked, full of craters", etc). In any given instance, this
| intended shared property may either be stated explicitly, in
| which case the simile is called "complete", or left implicit,
| in which case it's called "partial". Both can be highly
| effective.
|
| In the context of this post, it seems that when making an
| argument, it may help for the analogy to be "complete":
| actually spell out what you intend by the analogy. Also, to
| echo the comment by @munificent, it is worth remembering that
| figures of speech are very effective as poetry, but poetry
| requires a sensitive and sympathetic reader ( _sahrdaya_ ). The
| same rhetoric can fail when used in argument with an
| unsympathetic audience.
| alecbz wrote:
| Big +1. I think this is a really good distinction to keep in
| mind in general. Teaching and debating look very different.
|
| E.g., it's going to come off as condescending if you try to
| "educate" someone on something where they already have a formed
| opinion and don't see you as an authority.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| > analogies usually end up just moving the goalposts in the
| argument.
|
| I appreciate the self referential nature of using an analogy to
| describe analogies.
| jl6 wrote:
| The other thing to remember about analogies is that some people
| can be good at them, and some people can be bad at them.
|
| They appear on IQ tests. Some are easier than others.
|
| When making an analogy, you should try to work out if it's an
| easy one or a hard one, to judge how much work you're making
| your audience do.
| overgrownzygote wrote:
| This is brilliant.
|
| I'd never thought about it such explicit terms, but of course
| using analogies with an unsympathetic interlocutor is basically
| building them a all-too-convenient strawman
| Gracana wrote:
| That's a good rule. People on this site often make arguments
| using analogies, and those threads always devolve into
| arguments about the specifics of the analogy. I have an amazing
| screenshot I saved where the discussion turns into something
| about companies hiring clowns to yell at patrons. It's
| unintentionally comical. The participants are intelligent
| adults, talking about a domain that they all share some
| understanding of, yet the crux of their debate is the behavior
| of some obnoxious clowns.
| iechoz6H wrote:
| Ultimately every debate boils down to the behaviour of some
| obnoxious clowns; it is analogous to, say, entropy.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > People on this site often make arguments using analogies,
| and those threads always devolve into arguments about the
| specifics of the analogy.
|
| That is because analogies are only useful for illustration,
| not as a chain of reasoning to prove something.
|
| Conversations almost universally become low quality once
| analogies are brought in. They should be used sparingly, and
| explicitly only for the purpose of illustrating an idea.
| jobe_br wrote:
| Software development is like building a house ...
| TillE wrote:
| It's so common to see people _arguing with an analogy_ ,
| which should be obviously pointless. Proposing an alternate
| analogy is slightly better, but really you should just
| discuss the actual issue in front of you, it's much clearer.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I think analogy is useful in an argument for a few reasons:
|
| 1. It can reduce the problem space to the factors which the
| parties see as important.
|
| 2. It can uncover differences of opinion as to _which_
| factors are deemed important to the problem space. ie:
| "yeah, but your analogy discounts x!".
|
| Of course, analogies can be used in bad faith as rhetorical
| tools to win an argument on grounds other than it's merits,
| and that is the real problem with them.
| anderspitman wrote:
| In my experience the good/bad-ness of analogies is often more
| about where you're trying to use them.
|
| When used in education/teaching to simplify complicated concepts,
| analogies are invaluable.
|
| When used in debates where you're trying to convince someone of
| something, analogies are often abused to subtly (or not so
| subtly) shift the thing that is being talked about, so as to make
| your argument sound more convincing.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I guess I'd agree with that, but worry that teaching can also
| function as indoctrination, that is to say when teaching you're
| also trying to convince someone of something, someone who
| probably doesn't have the mental resources to take your analogy
| apart. Get that analogy ground in there and it can be difficult
| to remove later.
| feanaro wrote:
| Okay, but this sounds like it's only applicable to teaching
| about contentious topics, like history or politics, but it
| doesn't sound very applicable to teaching math or computer
| science.
|
| There you're definitely not trying to indoctrinate or sell a
| story, you're very obviously just trying to explain a
| concept. This is the setting where analogies work perfectly
| well if used skillfully.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Take the analogy between worrying about artificial general
| intelligence (AGI) and worrying about traffic on Mars. This could
| be restated as "Worrying about the rise of AGI is silly because
| AGI isn't going to happen for a long time, and any effort put
| into solving it is wasted." Is that correct? Maybe, I don't know!
| But what does the analogy add over a direct argument?_
|
| It makes the remoteness and silliness of the concern more
| apparent.
|
| Note that this doesn't mean that the actual "rise of AGI" must
| actually be a silly notion or remote in time, for the analogy to
| be good.
|
| The analogy is used to communicate what the person making it
| thinks is the case. If they want to communicate effectively that
| the "rise of AGI" is a silly concern for the far future, then
| it's a good analogy.
|
| Whether in reality the "rise of AGI" is a serious and pressing
| concern, is orthogonal to how good the analogy is.
| toqy wrote:
| I don't know why the author seems to think that this analogy
| would be presented without further argument. It would be more
| like "Worrying about the rise of AGI is silly because AGI isn't
| going to happen for a long time, and any effort put into
| solving it is wasted. Are you also worried about traffic on
| Mars?"
|
| Maybe they are just someone that was really bad at the "X is to
| Y as A is to B" type SAT questions
| SilasX wrote:
| It's not good [use of] analogy because it doesn't add anything.
| Everyone already understands the concept of problems being less
| urgent as their arrival is farther away in the future. They
| don't need an analogy to understand that. Most often, you'd be
| responding to a strawman by acting like the core dispute
| involves your opponent not understanding that.
|
| Yes, _if_ you already accept that AGI dangers won't be relevant
| until far into the future _then_ that justifies a low
| priority.[1] But that's exactly what's under dispute, and the
| analogy doesn't help resolve disagreement over how far it is!
|
| [1] If the AGI alarmist accepts that it's far off, the the
| dispute would be about something else, like the time-discounted
| danger. But in that case, the analogy still doesn't work
| because the purported harm of AGI is much worse than that of
| traffic, and if you disagree about that, then, as before, the
| analogy doesn't help resolve it.
| mkl95 wrote:
| My case against analogies in tech is that they are abused at
| places where people want to avoid giving an actual explanation of
| how things really work. Some analogy + "read the code" is usually
| orders of magnitude less efficient than some wiki page with a
| couple of diagrams. If you want new team members to translate
| into dollars quickly, write things down.
| Meai wrote:
| In my opinion analogies should almost always be avoided. It is
| much more work to understand the analogy and map it back to the
| argument and if you are proposing the analogy you're asking the
| other debate partner to do all that work for you for free. Also
| you're asking him to be very gracious with your argument because
| of course the analogy is never a perfect fit. All while he's
| trying to win the same debate you are trying to win. So this is a
| recipe for anger and resentment. In 99.999% of cases, you should
| be able to explain something directly without the indirect
| approach via an analogy. Analogies may help in a teacher-subject
| system where both people know their role and the teacher is
| explaining very vast subjects very superficially.
| awb wrote:
| My personal pet peeve is analogies that have no basis in
| reality: "It's like sleeping on a cloud". You're trying to
| relate your experience to something that no one has ever
| experienced.
| dgellow wrote:
| I agree. I almost always feel that analogies make sense to the
| person saying them, but not to the person receiving. You often
| need to already know the topic at hand to understand why the
| analogy is relevant, but if you're new to the subject it feels
| just confusing.
| willhinsa wrote:
| > So this is a recipe for anger and resentment.
|
| I know this is a common idiom and makes complete sense in
| context, but I must point out that it's also an analogy. I just
| thought it was genuinely funny given the first sentence of your
| comment. Analogies are hard to escape! :)
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