All Analogies are wrong, but some are useful in certain contexts

All models are wrong but some are useful. That is what I learned from my statistics class. Models are only imitations of real things that we are interested in. So no matter how good is a model, it is still not the reality. But models are useful. It is also said that people who use a model make better decisions and people with many models make even better decisions.

Analogy is also a model. It tries to gain insights from a simpler situation with a hope of drawing some parallels and applying those insights. As it is an imitation, analogy is wrong. It can never be able to capture all sides of reality as it is not real. But they can be useful if applied correctly.

That is the difficult part. Often we are inspired by an analogy that we want to use that analogy even for a situation that may not be an appropriate.

Let’s take an example. There is a popular analogy of carrot, egg, and coffee when they are boiled. Carrot changes from hard to soft on its outside, egg changes from soft to hard on its inside, while coffee influences the surrounding water to become fragrant.

It somehow implies that all of us need to become a coffee. This may not be appropriate to use in all contexts. Because when there are people with different background, are we trying to say that all people should become uniform? What is wrong with being carrot? What is wrong with being egg?

Carrot, egg, coffee can become blessings for people. So it is fine to become carrot. It is okay to become egg. Each of us has different purpose of life but all can become blessings for others.

At the same time, that analogy can be useful given a certain context. For example, we human has the ability to learn from each other. So even if we are born by nature to be carrot, we can learn from egg so that we can still become strong from the outside when needed. An egg can learn from carrot that it is okay to become soft, it is okay to cry and to show our weaknesses as we are not robots. A coffee can also learn from egg and carrot so as not to easily dissolved by the surroundings.

Another good insight from the analogy is that there is no one size fits all approach. We have differences. Also, we may be conditioned by society to become one thing while we are not. We are not necessarily carrots even if we are born in carrots-family. Remember Einstein’s analogy, if monkey is demanded to swim and fish is expected to jump, they will think that they are stupid for the rest of their life.

So we need to be careful in using analogy to ensure that it suits the context. Also, if we can go without analogy, it’s better to deal with the issue of interest directly. Like I got a good feedback from colleagues that too much analogy is also not good as we shift our attention from the real things.