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Comment by braveo | Hacker News Reader

What's shocking is how badly people understand the purpose of an analogy.

It's to communicate an idea to another person in a way that can also convey subtleties, and not just the literal words being conveyed.

In this case, he was trying to convey the idea that the risk is so small and so remote that it really isn't worth spending a lot of time on.

You understood the point, I understood the point, and everyone else understood the point. Which means the analogy was successful.

So please, stop trying to pull the conversation on some tangent so you expound on why smart people should spend more time on the perfect analogy that you approve of.

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> What's shocking is how badly people understand the purpose of an analogy.

The purpose of an analogy is to simplify something that's too hard to understand for the person you try to convey your idea to. Sometimes analogies are appropriate, e.g. when you teach something. When you want to convince somebody whose opinion is very different from yours, analogies aren't appropriate. They sound condescending: "because you are not smart enough to understand the real rationale behind my opinion, here is an oversimplified argument based on analogies I made just for you". The question is, did Torvalds have any real argument back then? Maybe he fell back to using analogies for the lack of any real argument.

> In this case, he was trying to convey the idea that the risk is so small and so remote that it really isn't worth spending a lot of time on.

To convey the idea that the risk is very small, one needs to have a proof. Real proofs shouldn't involve analogies. They should use facts and logic.

Sometimes facts and logic can be extremely verbose - I feel many analogies are in place not to be condescending, but because the author has faith in the reader that they can make the connection between the analogy and the problem.

And to be quite honest abstracting ideas is core to problem solving, and I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that anyone misunderstood what Linus was getting at there.

> abstracting ideas is core to problem solving

Sure. But don't confuse abstractions with analogies.

Here is a good proof about both the integers and rational numbers. Every integer and rational is a real number (abstraction). When you add any 2 real numbers, you get the same result regardless of their order (fact). So it must be true that, when you add any 2 integers, you get the same result regardless of their order (correct conclusion #1). It also must be true that, when you add any 2 rationals, you get the same result too (correct conclusion #2).

Here is a bad proof about the integers and rational numbers. Both the integers and rationals are very similar: you can add them, subtract them and so on (analogy). Between every 2 rational numbers there is another rational number (fact). So it must be true that between every 2 integers there is another integer (wrong conclusion).

Yet other times, people use analogies to gloss over important facts, to sort of hide them from listener. The logical conclusion taken from analogy will be different then what would be reasonable if all facts would be taken into account. Great when your arguments are weaker, but you still wanna convince.

Other times, people introduce seemingly impertinent colour into an analogy in order to engage the target audience's imagination and reasoning better. They may even tailor the duration of their analogy in order to match that of other analogies which have previously hit home with the intended target. And the target may trust this, and potentially end up believing a great many falsehoods, because of a lack of critical reasoning in the contextualisation and import of the analogy.

If an analogy were perfect it would cease to be an analogy and would instead be the thing being discussed.

That's just the nature of an analogy, but that doesn't make it useless or fair to attack the speaker for using an analogy.

I'd like to remind everyone that this thread started with angry funny quotes from Linus.

And now we're debating on what does and doesn't qualify as an analogy.

We're talking about a conversation amongst kernel/software developers about a very technical software issue.

Anyone who doesn't understand why the risk was so small doesn't belong in the conversation.

Can you even imagine where our medical field would be if we expected surgeons to talk amongst themselves as if they were speaking to the general public?

It is absolutely acceptable for the speaker to make assumptions about the listeners knowledge, and that doesn't reflect poorly on the speaker.

> The purpose of an analogy is to simplify something that's too hard to understand for the person you try to convey your idea to.

It's to convey an idea. That's it, anything you add to that is your own bias at work.

Linus was trying to get across the scale of just how small the risk was.

Technically, he was emphasizing how low the probability was, not the risk. Since the impact is pretty high in both cases (accepting a malicious object/mid-air collision), the risk (as a combination of probability & impact) is significant.

Hi downvoters, without some post setting me straight I will be wrong forever, where can I learn more about risk analysis and mitigation?

I think you're getting downvoted because while you may not necessarily be wrong, you're also not really disagreeing with what I said, just making a distinction that isn't all that important (in the context of this conversation).

> Can you even imagine where our medical field would be if we expected surgeons to talk amongst themselves as if they were speaking to the general public?

The Git devs are not heart surgeons, software development is not a medical field. Again, you are using an analogy to "prove" your point. Can you, please, use a real argument?

>> The purpose of an analogy is to simplify something that's too hard to understand for the person you try to convey your idea to.

> It's to convey an idea. That's it, anything you add to that is your own bias at work.

Do you disagree that using an analogy is oversimplification? If you don't, then that part about "to simplify a complex idea" in my statement should absolutely stay. If you do disagree, then please show why and how an analogy doesn't oversimplify a complex idea.

An analogy isn't a proof.

When someone uses an analogy they're not trying to prove anything, they're trying to get you to see things from a specific perspective, or they're trying to communicate an idea.

You can still walk away from the analogy and disagree with them, but you should have a better understanding of their perspective or their argument.

> Do you disagree that using an analogy is oversimplification?

I think your entire approach to analogies is unnecessarily combative. You view an analogy as someone trying to prove something rather than trying to communicate their position better (or just an idea in general).

And your approach is to point out that the analogy isn't perfect, and therefore you've "disproved" the analogy.

Only analogies are, by their very nature, imperfect. When an analogy is perfect it ceases to be an analogy and becomes the thing being discussed.

It should automatically be understood that there are the analogy isn't perfect and anyone can find flaws in it. That doesn't mean it isn't an effective way to communicate.

>The purpose of an analogy is to simplify something that's too hard to understand for the person you try to convey your idea to

An analogy applies a principle to a common setting without loss of specificity. Specifically the dedicated adversary is lost in this abstraction, so it's a bad analogy.

> Which means the analogy was successful.

Sure, if he's saying he is powerless against higher powers. But if he's trying to make a quantitative assertion, a qualitative analogy is not the right tool.

Well you said it... it's not a misunderstanding, it's a podium.

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