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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 co
by anderspitman 5y ago
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 5y agoI 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 5y agoOkay, 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.