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Stop believing metaphors and analogies are persuasive. There's no reason to think that company performance is linear, or fits any basic function at all. Realit

Stop believing metaphors and analogies are persuasive. There's no reason to think that company performance is linear, or fits any basic function at all. Reality is far more complex than this. A metaphor or analogy greatly oversimplifies reality and will lead you to make terrible decisions. Please, please stop believing things just because the person who is making the claim sounds confident. I'm begging us, as a culture.

shredprez 5y ago
> A metaphor or analogy greatly oversimplifies reality and will lead you to make terrible decisions. I think I disagree with this. Metaphors and analogies provide interesting ways to illustrate principles, and good decisions are often rooted in good principles. Attempting to model human behavior as a one dimensional line? Yeah, not good. But remembering a person is more than the moment you meet them in? Great advice.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  I think the vast majority of metaphors are pointless and end up in most of the discussion being about how the metaphor doesn't make sense or how the magnitude doesn't make sense. They are very frequently used on topics which are quite simple to understand and need no metaphor at all. The place where I find they make most sense is explaining certain incentive structures. Take for example the Prisoner's Dilemma, you could use this as a metaphor to explain a multitude of situations where people or companies are acting in a way that seems illogical from your perspective but when you simplify it down you can see how each actor has particular incentives.
Peritract 5y ago
I don't think the problem is metaphor or analogy - both of these can be persuasive, and both of these can be used to illustrate complex things. The problem is this particular kind of tech-messiah metaphor, assuming that mathematics is the only useful lense, over-simplifying everything and not even understanding what is lost [1]. Metaphors aren't the issue; metaphors crafted by people who don't really understand them are. [1] https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/

shredprez 5y ago

> A metaphor or analogy greatly oversimplifies reality and will lead you to make terrible decisions. I think I disagree with this. Metaphors and analogies provide interesting ways to illustrate principles, and good decisions are often rooted in good principles. Attempting to model human behavior as a one dimensional line? Yeah, not good. But remembering a person is more than the moment you meet them in? Great advice.

SilverRed 5y ago
I think the vast majority of metaphors are pointless and end up in most of the discussion being about how the metaphor doesn't make sense or how the magnitude doesn't make sense. They are very frequently used on topics which are quite simple to understand and need no metaphor at all. The place where I find they make most sense is explaining certain incentive structures. Take for example the Prisoner's Dilemma, you could use this as a metaphor to explain a multitude of situations where people or companies are acting in a way that seems illogical from your perspective but when you simplify it down you can see how each actor has particular incentives.

Peritract 5y ago

I don't think the problem is metaphor or analogy - both of these can be persuasive, and both of these can be used to illustrate complex things. The problem is this particular kind of tech-messiah metaphor, assuming that mathematics is the only useful lense, over-simplifying everything and not even understanding what is lost [1]. Metaphors aren't the issue; metaphors crafted by people who don't really understand them are. [1] https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/