Sublime analogies

We often use analogies to explain what we're saying. The currency of language allows us to buy metaphorical commodities -- the birds and the bees trapped between the rocks and the places too hard for pure thought to reach -- and use these commodities to barter our thoughts in that marketplace of ideas that is human society.

However, analogies can also destroy a good run of thought. Like a bad trade, they can as easily lead us to ruin as they can clinch us the deal. The trick, as in the real marketplace, is to be able to tell a good trade from a bad one.

One of the things I have found useful while analogizing is to try to stay away from contemporary analogies. This is indeed difficult for anyone reasonably connected with the surrounding world. It is almost natural to use the latest political strife in the news as a metaphor for our own struggles in the workplace or at home. It is enticing to use a particular sports team's incredible winning (or losing) streak to bolster one's point. However such analogies can easily backfire.

Earlier this year, I remember reading many blog entries from software practitioners of various ilks using the incredibly successful run of the New England Patriots (an American football team from the Boston area) as a favorable analogy. The Patriots swept the regular season -- they won all 16 games -- an unprecedented feat. Almost predictably, passionate advocates of different, even conflicting, opinions hitched not only their analogies but sometimes the very essence of their ideas to the Patriots' success.

It all came tumbling down when the Patriots unexpectedly lost the Superbowl (final game of the season) to a team from New York that they had beaten earlier. The immediate recession from the rampant, speculative analogizing created an almost palpable vacuum for a few weeks (until the baseball season started, perhaps).

When we use an analogy, we're drawing parallel lines from a difficult-to-explain but important situation to a simpler-to-explain but trivial (and trivially obvious) situation. Our hope is that most people will see the "good" and the "bad" clearly in the analogy, without explanation, and then follow our parallel lines to their corresponding analogs in the real, difficult-to-explain situation. The ways in which an analogy can break down are, thus, manifold:

1. People may not agree with us that the analogy is appropriate. They may not find the two situations -- the real and the trivial ones -- as homologous.

2. People may accept our analogous situation, but not our parallel lines. In fact, they may insist on drawing their own lines -- mutually parallel but crudely intersecting with ours -- thereby turning our analogy against us.

3. People may accept our analogy and our parallel lines, but still not concede the conclusion. In this case, the fault is really not in the analogy: it has neither helped nor hurt, except perhaps as a needless distraction from addressing the matter at hand.

I have found that analogizing less frequently is a goal worthy of my aspirations. When I do (as in this article, for reflexive effect), I try to adhere to these unproven utilitarian maxims:

1. Use analogies from the ancient world: Achilles' heal, Zeno's paradox, Sisyphean challenge. They're less likely to offend and are widely known.

2. Avoid, as much as possible, analogies directly tied to individual human or animal suffering. There is something sobering about world hunger and watching it exacerbate. It's a mighty challenge worthy of all our collective efforts. Perhaps it shouldn't be mined for analogies to fit our own smaller problems in business and commerce.

3. Use analogies that are closer to the domain you're in. In many cases, simply eliminating the unnecessary cruft (linguistic or situational) from around the problem description will create a simpler scenario that won't need any analogizing. Before resorting to analogies, try to see if there's a simpler definition of the situation that is as self-evident as the analogy. In fact, it would be worthwhile to forgo the analogy even if the simplified definition was still a bit more nuanced than the raw analogy; for the analogy comes at a cost all its own.

I hope that in the marketplace of ideas, your trades are fruitful.