The Death of High Culture, Part 1

Google killed the analogy.

I was conversing with some friends of mine about a week ago, and some rather obscure connections were made during the conversation. I let it go at first, but since it was a serious conversation, I decided to step up and say something about staying on topic. Their reply? They thought that what they were saying was related to our conversation. The conversation then turned to analogies, and I found that their concept of an analogy was very general and broad.

Then they name dropped Google.

Google, a search engine, has become just as much of a literary authority, it seems, as Wikipedia has with miscellaneous information (this is an analogy). Say I search "black" on Google, and I come up with a picture of an actor, a dog, and a can of paint. Does that mean that they are related? Yes, but only loosely due to rather general external factors. Consequently, I do not see why people think that connections made through Google hold any weight, especially as analogies.

I thought about it a good deal, and I realized that most people probably learned what an "analogy" was just for college entrance exams. Additionally, the world that I live in is dominated by science. Cold, hard science. There is not much interest in the true beauty of words and how the interact with each other. As a result, I decided that I would try to explain analogies through some extended analogies one can find in mathematics and science.

Linear graphs show the strength. Say that there is a scatter plot of some data that has been collected, and you find that the correlation of the data is close to one. What does this say about the graph? It means that the data elements are very well related. I could give an entire tutorial on this, but that is not the point of the blog. Basically, all the points of the data plot are all very close to the linear graph that they generate if the correlation is "good" or "strong". If the correlation is "weak," the points are very loose about the line, and tend to be more scattered and random than like a line. A strong analogy is like a data plot with a strong correlation: the elements of the analogy are very closely related to each other, not scattered and random. Analogous thoughts are very close in what they share in common, not distant. They will have some separate elements, but what they hold in common, they hold very closely.

Everyone has also heard the expression "off on a tangent." For the lay people, a tangent is a line that shares one point with a circle and is completely separate everywhere else. According to my friend's logic, the tangent is closely related to the circle because it shares one point. Those who know math know that they are not. They do not have the same shape or slope. The formulas for both are different. However, if lines were parallel, they would have the same slope and shape. Their formulas would be exactly the same except for the x and y intercepts. The same thing goes for shapes. You can have shapes that are similar, or you can have shapes that are congruent. The definition of congruent is "coinciding at all points when superimposed." Few analogies are quite that strong, but they are very close to this. Most analogies are like similar shapes: a square is a square is not a circle. A circle is not similar to a square just because they are both shapes. Saying a square is a circle is a horrible connection to draw and a defective analogy. Similarly, a line is not a circle because it shares a point.

Consider that the circle is a conversation. It is enclosed, and centers around some central topic. Consider a point in the circle to be a thought. Now, consider that the tangent is another conversational topic that has one thought or element in common with original conversation. If you pursue this thought, then you are leaving the conversation. That only makes sense.

If the second conversation that is produced is more like a concentric circle than a tangent, then people usually do not notice, whether it smaller and more focused or broader. It has the same central topic, and people do not see expanding the topic or being more specific as changing the conversation.

Another example of an analogy is a conversion factor. One foot is to one inch as twelve is to one. Fractions are analogies. Equations are analogies. An engineer would not be able to work well without strong analogies. If one foot was to an inch as about ten is to a little more than zero, the world would be chaotic. I feel the same way with analogies. People need to keep their connections tight and orderly. "Random" has become a praised character trait. Not "orderly" or "creative" or "innovative." Just random. Random is not as good as people think it is, but I shall perhaps speak more on that another day.

Using Google is more or less like trying to fish in the Maelstrom. Chaos will get the better of you. I should not have to explain. Chaos does not make good analogies. Clean, precise, even scientific connections make good analogies.

-V