There is an idea I have in my head, an arrangement of thoughts, and these thoughts are about things, and I want to share it with you. But this thing I want to give you is, for me, an irreducible union of experiences, points of view, and analogies, within the grand context of my specific life. There is no way for me to send all this from my brain to yours. It would be like trying to send you a house through the post office. That kind of stuff just doesn’t fit in an envelope. The idea is ‘here’ and yet you are ‘over there.’ So what I have to do instead, to try to share this thing with you, is use words. I can send you detailed instructions through the mail to try to get you to reconstruct a replica of this thing I have here– over there.
There is a lot of room for mistakes here. I have to specify the kinds of materials, the order of construction, the precise measurements of cuts and arrangements, the specific things to avoid doing… I have to specify in excruciatingly tedious detail all the elements of this thing. To complicate things a step further, my words are subject to misinterpretation, you might use words differently, or you might misread the emphasis in an ambiguous sentence which throws off the whole meaning of my words [I sometimes fall into a mode of despair where all sentences seem ambiguous]. Words are not ideal.
Isn’t it strange that words are even capable of stimulating thoughts in your head that mirror the thoughts in mine? By what kind of black magic has this even been made possible? And how can I get really good at this wizardry of words? My answer has to do with analogies.
First off, what do I mean when I say ‘analogy’? Very specifically: something which takes two things which are different, and finds a way in which they are the same. An analogy helps you understand one thing by comparing it to another thing which is different, but which you already understand. Your understanding of the one helps you understand the other which you have not yet understood. The last 50 words are one thing, and the word ‘analogy’ is another thing, and I am telling you that those two different things are the same in a way. [I just gave you an analogy about the word ‘analogy.’]
A few moments ago, I was trying to make a specific point. I had some ‘understanding’ that I wanted to get across in words. I used an analogy to try to do it cleanly. I said, “It would be like trying to send a house through the post office.” You are familiar with the fact that a house is a relatively large object and is built on a piece of land that doesn’t move, you are familiar with the kinds of things that can be sent through the post office, and all the other intricacies of how these objects work. The words I used are attached to certain structures that already exist in your head. The specific point I was making had to do with the nature of consciousness and knowledge and other tedious ideas that would’ve required the use of weird words to say directly. But there was no need to use those weird words. The shape of the idea could be created in more familiar terms by simply arranging the words ‘house’ and ‘post-office’ and taking advantage of the structures you have already built into them. So I was able to quickly give you an idea about consciousness and knowledge by using words which were much simpler. Analogies are the secret sauce that make this possible.
Every single word or phrase is an analogy, and these analogies can be stacked up to build bigger analogies and so on. I am assuming that you already know many of these words, just like I assumed that you knew all that stuff about houses and post offices. That is the only way we can communicate. I assume you have understandings about some things, and I try to take advantage of those existing understandings so that you might arrange them and relate them in new ways and by the end of this message you will have constructed for yourself the same understanding that I have constructed over here.
There are many things I find interesting about this. First of all, I think there is a deep truth to uncover in the fact that this communication is only possible by your cooperation, your experiences being arranged by you. It is necessary– for me to deliver this house through the mail– for you to read these instructions and build the house yourself out of your own materials. So, at the end of this whole journey in constructing an understanding, the thing built is 100% your own creation. Second of all, the idea that an analogy operates on the difference and similarity of two things seems paradoxical. How is it not a contradiction to say that two things are similar and yet not-similar, how do we make sense of this paradox? Third of all, it is interesting to think about how there is any agreement at all about words and things– how language is any effectiveness in the first place. How were so many words agreed upon and maintained coherently throughout the ages, and how is language so flexible and yet also capable of logical rigor? I will explore the first two of these in the upcoming sections. The third one, maybe another time.
INDEPENDENT CREATION OF TRUTH
If I were to thoroughly read Einstein’s paper on special relativity, and feel that I understood it, it would not really be Einstein’s idea in my brain, but truly it would be my very personal discovery of an idea which has become mine. I have used my own experiences with moving trains, observers, light, etc. In reconstructing Einstein’s idea, I have used materials which were exclusively gathered from my own experience. I have not experimentally verified the scientific facts, but I have used my reason to simulate a thought experiment of observers on a platform and a moving train, and this thought experiment used my own experiences as thought-matter. Einstein’s success is not a result of his unique and unreachable genius. He succeeded because his idea was replicable in the minds of others. He provided instructions that allowed others to ‘rebuild the house’ that was in his mind.
I find this to be a source of self-confidence, because there is no honest alternative. I cannot honestly rely on the judgment and ideas of others, because those are structures that are ‘over there’ in their heads. That leaves me with nothing more than the structures I can build for myself ‘here.’ The words and analogies I take from these other people as instructions are only ever defined through bits of my own experience. I can ask other people “did I build this right?” to see if I have understood things right, but then we run into the problem again that my idea is ‘here’ in my head and they are ‘over there’ in their head. Ultimately, the words and analogies I use are defined by my own interpretations, the structures I build with them are mine. So it is up to me to be both the builder and the building inspector, stamping off with my own seal of approval.
To believe that what is true in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
ANALOGIES
A productive analogy demands that its two terms be similar in some ways and distinct in some ways. Even though this is approaching a contradiction, it is necessary to preserve both the sameness and the difference between its terms.
KNOWN vs UNKNOWN
When we use analogies purposefully, we assume the existence of an unknown thing. As I mentioned near the start of this essay, analogies help you explain an unknown thing by comparing it to a known thing. The two terms must be distinct if one of the terms is to be known and the other unknown. Simultaneously, the two terms must be similar if we are to achieve anything. It is on the basis of the similarity to a known thing that we develop a new understanding about the unknown thing.1 The known and the unknown are alike.
But there is a danger if you assume there is only similarity. You might be reading this and thinking that you already knew all this. That my thoughts are completely similar to yours. There would be very little reason to re-read the instructions for the house you’ve already built. But the truth is that you can never be so sure that we have the same understanding. So it is necessary to assume, in order for learning to be possible, that there might be something in these words that is different from what you know– a limit to the similarity. Alternatively, if you read these words and think I am talking total nonsense2– that my ideas are totally different from yours– there will be no common ground on which we can reach each other and learning will again appear impossible. So you must also assume that I am talking about things you’re familiar with. The whole purpose of communication and analogies relies on this implicit tension. You know things, but you also don’t.
Allow me to note that this fascinates me. That you can arrange a bunch of known things in a particular way, and out pops a new, previously unknown thing. Math works like this. You have a bunch of axioms and theorems, and just by experimenting with different ways of using them, you can get brand new theorems! There is something really mysterious about the nature of truth that it allows itself to be discovered in this way, that new things can be made out of old things. People worry about their lack of originality often, they tell themselves that we are nothing but a product of influences. I am of course influenced by a variety of books, teachers, and other kinds of leaders I’ve come across in my life, and probably everything I say and think has some origin in these influences. But I am also a specific and particular combination of all these influences, my ideas and this whole essay is a particular intersection of many known things that already existed in the minds of others. It is this particular way of arranging and using known things that genuinely has a potential to bring about a new and original understanding about the world. Similarly, it is my own particular way of collecting non-original influences that might magically bring about an originality to my character. I have no idea how that works, but it seems to be how things work. Analogies take us from the known towards the unknown.
An interesting question: if our new knowledge is just derived from old knowledge, where does that original knowledge come from? How is it that we have any known things in common from which we can share analogies about? How is it that you and I have the same definitions for words? Though our minds are separate and different, we nonetheless observe the same world. It is the same things which we set our minds on. The world, Being, the raw matter of existence which we all experience is the source of our similarity, even though we experience it differently. This is what leads me to believe that you might be able to build a house similar to the one I am describing here.
The world is the source from which we derive all known things. It is valuable, then, to gather a wide array of experiences and observations of it. Watch the world around you intently, notice the ways that things happen. These are the fertile grounds from which we build out analogies and extend our understanding of the world. There is no observation which is too simple. There might be a day where you are trying to explain something convoluted and suddenly an analogy appears, “It is like the way a tree grows” and all of a sudden a complicated idea becomes so familiar! Words are always about things. This intimate familiarity with things can not be given to you by another person.3 It is necessary to ground yourself in the world, to be present and observe the world so that you might extract as much experience as possible out of it. You will maximize your ability to make and understand analogies, because you will have more known things to make new things out of.
THE GLUE THAT MAKES SENSE
Up to now I’ve mostly been framing analogies as the thing that allows us to communicate ideas between each other through language (which is itself a system built out of analogies known as ‘words’). But analogies are much more than tools for communication. They are the glue that holds together your individual understanding of the world.
We draw analogies between our different experiences, we recognize similarities between them and this gives us a richer understanding of them. Let me emphasize how extremely literally I mean this: Imagine you've met up with your 'best friend' named ‘Joe’ at a restaurant. In a sense, you never meet the same person twice. Each time it is a new experience for you. The person speaks and you have never heard this voice before. Very literally, this is different from anything you've ever experienced. Yet, you quickly grasp that this person's name is Joe, that he is your best friend, and you embed a whole historical context into this moment that helps you understand the jokes and stories he speaks about. This is because you are drawing an analogy from all the other experiences you have, which are different, yet similar to this one. There are shapes which your different experiences have in common. Your understanding of a city, the people in your life, your self identity, all your concepts are glued together by analogies that recognize the shapes stringing together different experiences.
If we were to build a house out of wood, we should try to understand what kinds of things wood is good for, and what kinds of limitations there are to wood. “Hey, my house is made out of wood. I should avoid having pet termites, or doing indoor bonfires.” If your worldview is built out of analogies– which is what I am claiming– we should also try to investigate the capacities and limitations of analogies. The key to this investigation lies precisely in the recognition that, between the two terms of any analogy, we must preserve both their distinctness and their similarity.
You and Joe have been best friends for 15 years. You meet him at the restaurant, and it’s been a few months since you’ve seen each other. You have an understanding of Joe, so much so that you develop an expectation of how he will greet you, of the kinds of topics you will talk about together, you have an expectation he will show interest in your recent life and ask questions to give you a platform to talk about yourself. This is how you and Joe always get along. You assume, this is how Joe will always be. You have finished understanding Joe. In other words: there is no longer any difference between the Joe-you-know, and the person in front of you. You have stopped preserving the distinctness in the analogy you used to understand that this new experience is similar to your past experiences. Joe ends up acting much different, pretentiously talking about himself for hours and showing no interest in you. It turns out he recently was promoted to a high-paying and prestigious role in his company. You made the mistake of thinking the past and the present were exactly similar.
Your understanding of the world is weakened by an improper use of the construction materials. You used an analogy to construct your understanding of the person in front of you, yet by failing to preserve the different-ness that analogies are based on, you have undermined the foundation of what you just built. Your understanding of the present is dependent on its similarity to past experiences which are by definition different. It is important to recognize the separation between the two, and see things with fresh eyes at the same time as you take advantage of your past. Once we recognize that analogies are the molecular bonds that tie together different atoms of experience to form useful concepts, we can see why concepts must be living and growing things, necessarily stretching themselves to new experiences. Analogies are useful only because they get applied to different, new and unknown experiences, so our concepts must be capable of stretching themselves to those kinds of different experiences or else they have no use.
Analogies do not only glue together the most basic structures of your understanding, they also are a powerful tool for understanding the most complicated things in the world.
I once met a man at a tea house. We sat together, he put some shriveled up leaves in a cup, and poured hot water over the leaves. Over the course of the session, from that same handful of leaves, he brewed us each about ten cups of tea. In the meantime, we were talking about life. I have read many dense and cryptic philosophy books, and I’ve strained myself trying to turn all those words into real structures in my head. As we talked, it seemed like he had all these structures too, he understood the world similarly to me. He gave me the impression of a very wise man. I asked him, where did you learn all this? Was there some school you’ve gone to? All he said was “The tea taught me.” With each new cup of tea, the tea leaves would expand, the flavor and color of the tea would change. Somehow this man had learned so much about life and the human condition from spending time working with and observing tea.
The man’s wisdom was rooted in his ability to create analogies from his experience with tea towards some of the more convoluted experiences of being alive in a confusing world. By noticing the similarities between two different things, where one is simple and the other is complicated, you can take advantage of the simplicity of one to cut through the complexity of the other. This is the real magic behind analogies. They let you translate a complicated situation into a different and simpler situation.
In the early days of the stock market, people felt that stock prices were something that could not be understood. To say that something cannot be understood is to say that no analogy can be made to a known thing. It is totally different from all known things. Well, it turns out that someone noticed stock prices move in ways similar to the way heat spreads through a cold room.4 And this process had already been understood extensively by mathematicians and physicists. So some people applied the known mathematical models to the ‘unknowable’ stock prices and ended up making a ton of money because they understood things better than everyone else. The key was that they felt that this thing might not be completely different, that it might have some similarity to known things. They made an analogy in order to understand something new.
There’s something to be said about the kind of attitude that enables us to notice these similarities between things that make the world easier to understand. You can’t do it if you compartmentalize every experience into separate and fully-defined categories. Your attitude towards observations needs to carry a sense of indeterminacy, looking at things without rushing to a judgment about them. Avoid putting strict boundaries around your concepts, allowing them to be fuzzy and stretchy around the edges. The ability to see things with squinted eyes, in order to understand the general shape of a thing, is what allows us to create new analogies.
This is a very challenging skill to hold on to, let me explain why. The entire effort of understanding things is an effort to categorize. It is an attempt to draw the line between what things are, and what they are not. At the point where you have ‘succeeded’ too much at understanding something–by which I mean you have clearly defined the boundaries of what the thing is– you have killed your ability to make new analogies and learn. That is because analogies work amongst the blurry lines between things, saying “these things are the same, but they are also different.” The attempt to understand something too much is counterproductive to itself. If you try to understand the stock market too well, you might end up saying “the stock market is nothing like thermodynamics! [the heat spreading through a cold room idea] Where are the CEO’s and quarterly earnings reports in your thermodynamics example?” But if you just step away from the thing, squint your eyes, the edges blur out and you see how the two things share a similar shape. Bam! Learning.
CONCLUSION
I have written these instructions for the idea in my head. The idea is about analogies, the way they work and the things they allow us to accomplish. Standing on top of this fascinating structure of thought, I find new ways of understanding the value of humility (there are things I do not know), self-confidence (there are things I do know), the importance of being present with experience and taking in the world around me (I need material to make analogies out of!). By taking a closer look at the mechanisms of an analogy, I can see clearly why we should not put others or ourselves in boxes. I can also see the superhuman potential I have to understand the world, leveraging my simple ideas to tackle the most complex ideas. Every thing is similar to every other thing, in a way. It takes some creativity and patience to find that way in which things are similar, to extract the shape that different things have in common. And then, nothing is ever really complicated once you’ve found the right analogy. I’m not entirely certain that last sentence is true, but I think it is a useful attitude to adopt, and it is probably more true than you’d expect. Lastly, there is also an incredible value in analogies when it comes to language, and the community of mankind. Great analogies make complex ideas available to all. I sometimes think the greatest honor there can be in a man’s life is to have found an analogy that becomes global, to have constructed an analogical bridge that the whole world can cross, expanding the limits of everyone’s understanding just by seeing the elegant simplicity in things. If you can find the right words to make a confusing and complicated feeling or system seem simple, you have given everyone the gift of understanding.
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The analogy permutes on the existing set of knowns and extracts a brand new known.
"its Greek to me..."
However, a person can prompt you to gather a specific experience, by pointing a direction for you to look towards.
i.e. diffusion in thermodynamics