It's not a theory, it's just an observation that seems obvious, to be a little blunt. Why would saying "X is like Y" mean anything on its own? Analogies in the

It's not a theory, it's just an observation that seems obvious, to be a little blunt. Why would saying "X is like Y" mean anything on its own? Analogies in the service of rhetoric are unconvincing by default. You have to establish why X and Y are equivalent, not just say that it's true. Without that, it's basically just designed to make people who already agree with you nod their heads, and people who don't agree with you shake their heads. There's nothing there. Yeah, LLMs are "just a tool", like a hammer. Like a nuclear bomb. Like a dictionary. Like government. Like a can opener. It doesn't mean anything. The reason we reach for analogies is because they are easy and satisfying, not because they are effective. Once we make an analogy, the conversation essentially just becomes about litigating all the differences between X and Y, rather than actually talking about the original topic.