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As Scott Adams says, "Analogies are for fighting." If you try to counter a statement with an analogy you almost always simply get a fight.


Quoting absolutes expressed by highly opinionated people is also for fighting. Not saying you shouldn’t, but maybe there’s some nuance missing. Not even saying the particular analogy was devoid of conflict, it has plenty of room for disagreement. But it didn’t feel to me like it was inviting any which wasn’t already present.


I would classify Scott Adam's statement as a trueism -- true for most people, under most circumstances, for most times. Unfortunately, couching a trueism in its most precise linguistic form with associated probabilities and error margins is a path to simply being ignored. Once a thread switches to rhetoric, dialectic responses are like pissing in the wind, forgive the analogy :-)


Well I’ll give you this: quoting Scott Adams then correctly using and understanding the word dialectic is definitely not on my HN comment threads bingo card.


Surely it's the countering bit that shows you want to get in to a fight more than the analogy. Analogies are just a way of illustrating a point.


I do wish that people would engage in dialectic conversation when they encounter an analogy, rather than rhetoric. Unfortunately, I find Scott Adam's words ring true.


Never thought about that, where do you get this from? But it kinda rings true for me in life.


I heard it from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. In addition to writing that comic he is a very interesting thinker. He is also a trained hypnotist.




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