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Comment by fallous | Hacker News Reader

I jarred a bit at her use of the word "metaphor" to describe understanding, and upon reflect I think I understand why I reacted that way. Metaphors lack the requisite understanding of an analogy in that they apply at best partially to artifacts of the intended reference. An analogy has to match, or at least rhyme, with the logic of a system in order to apply.

There is a reason that analog computing mattered, and why no one seriously focuses on metaphoric computing (except, you know, as a metaphor for something that isn't computing). I suspect that metaphors are the tools of cargo cults while analogies are the tools used by those that actually understand a system in order to convey it to those that do not.

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> I suspect that metaphors are the tools of cargo cults

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but are you using some much more restrictive definition of 'metaphor'?

For example, as far as I can see, one can't escape metaphor because they're deeply embedded in the very language you're using right now.

The most basic metaphors are ones that refer to the body or the physical world. Jar [1] originally refers to a 'screeching sound'. Understand probably from the literal sense to 'stand between' [2]. Compute derives from 'com' (together) + 'putare' (reckon, settle an account) [3]; the latter root originally comes from Indo-European 'to prune'. Almost all vocabulary is in fact a form of extended metaphor; in fact, it cannot be any other way, because to describe a new thing requires one to compare and contrast it to existing things.

You yourself are making a metaphor when you say that an analogy has to 'at least rhyme' — a metaphor for poetic sound similarity to stand for a sort of logical similarity.

The distinction between an analogy, where one explicitly calls out the comparison ('like', 'as'), and a metaphor, where the relationship is taken implicitly, is much blurrier than it seems. All our language and thinking is saturated with metaphors at every single level, to the point where they seem to be taken for granted and disappear.

IMO, the problem is not metaphors themselves, which are unavoidable; it's picking wrong metaphors (which is really using the wrong language) that lead us astray.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/jar

[2] https://www.etymonline.com/word/understand

[3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/compute

"at least to rhyme" is very specifically a metaphor in that it does not require systemic logical matching... I don't literally require rhyming or a logical system that is comparable. It's also utterly useless for _system thinking_, which is the author's subject matter, precisely because it is at best loosely related.

An analogy, or analog, is a much deeper match in that means to transfer the understanding and knowledge of an existing system to a new target system that closely parallels that understanding and knowledge. Analog computing was literally "creating a model of the problem" that closely matched the real problem.

Agreed that metaphors are not inherently bad, but the dependence on metaphors rather than analogies is symptomatic of a lack of depth in understanding when attempting to convey knowledge.

To get a better understanding of her use of the word "metaphor" I recommend the book Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff. It makes the argument that the language (specifically the concepts we build using the language) we use is metaphorical. It goes on to show how wholesome the bind between metaphors and concepts is.

From reading the book, if someone says that "In a complex world we perceive, think, understand and communicate metaphorically.", I get what they mean. It occurs to me that her use of the word "metaphor" follows from such a comprehension.

>I suspect that metaphors are the tools of cargo cults while analogies are the tools used by those that actually understand a system in order to convey it to those that do not.

Are the metaphors actual tools, or more like metaphorical tools?

Crappy tools are still tools.

It's a metaphor, metaphors aren't literally physical work implements.

And tools are not limited to physical implements.

They aren't, we can easily extend the concept by using it as metaphor.

Metaphor isn't necessarily vague. You can have extended metaphors, which can have surprising and informing depth. It can even be an isomorphism.

e.g. the desktop metaphor

The "desktop metaphor" is a conceit, in the literary sense, that provides a general structure to a presentation but it isn't truly useful as a means of conveying the logic or expectations of a system in the way that an analogy provides.

An aspect that does is the position of a mouse on a desktop with the position of a cursor on the screen.

Except that the "desktop metaphor" stops being a "desktop" with the introduction of a cursor and mouse. Actual desktops are manipulated directly by users... and desktops don't allow you to move your hand all the way to the right and magically move to a new clean desk (in the case of virtual windows). There's nothing about a desktop that infers the behaviors described which is why it's crappy for conveying the actual behaviors of current UI... hence the limited nature of metaphor.

Given an appropriate physical implementation of a desk, more aspects the desktop metaphor could certainly be implemented. Typically metaphors allude to the platonic ideal of something and not any one concrete instance of a given subject.

I'm not sure that metaphors allude to Platonic ideals but rather (to stick with Plato) are closer to the shadows on the cave wall.

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