Analogies are very powerful because they are a device that enables the listener to connect to the thought process of the speaker efficiently (all you need is an apt analogy and the entire context is transferred implicitly). In a way, since an analogy carried with it the shared (cultural, literary, etc.) context, you can convey a lot of information with a short phrase.

However, in my view, analogies are dangerous. Rarely do people use them correctly. And, when used incorrectly, analogies set people down the path of mismatched context. And because that context is implicit, there’s nobody to question it or call it out so it’s likely that the speaker and the listeners get very out of sync.

From information theory point of view, there is no such thing as a free lunch. You can take advantage of the massive information compression that an analogy provides, but this compression is valid in a small set of circumstances — in a vast majority of slightly different circumstances you convey misinformation. So be careful!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 23:56 and is filed under The Daily Badness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.