Comment by threethirtytwo
1 month ago
Why does HN love analogies? You can pick any animal or thing and it can fit in some way. Horse is a docile safe analogy it’s also the most obvious analogy. Like yes the world gets it LLMs have limitations thanks for sharing, we know it’s not as good as a programmer.
We should use analogies to point out the obvious thing everyone is avoiding:
Guys 3 years ago, AI wasn’t even a horse. It was a rock. The key is that it transformed into horse…. what will it be in the next 10 years?
AI is a terminator. A couple years back someone turned off read only mode. That’s the better analogy.
Pick an analogy that follows the trendline of continual change into the unknown future rather then an obvious analogy that keeps your ego and programming skills safe.
> Why does HN love analogies?
I suppose because they resemble the abstractions that make complex language possible. Another world full of aggressive posturing at tweet-length analogistic musings might have stifled some useful English parlance early.
But I reckon that we shouldn't have called it phishing because emails don't always smell.
> I suppose because they resemble the abstractions that make complex language possible
As in models: All analogies are "wrong", some analogies are useful.
If you ever heard a sermon by a priest it’s loaded with analogies. Everyone loves analogies but analogies are not a form of reason and can often be used to mislead. A lot of these sermons are driven by reasoning via analogy.
My question is more why does HN love analogies when the above is true.
> Why does HN love analogies?
Because HN is like a child and analogies are like images
I see what you did there.
How about "AI is a chainsaw" ?
Pretty good for specific tasks.
Probably worth the input energy, when used in moderation.
Wear the right safety gear, but even this might not help with a kickback.
It's quite obvious to everyone nearby when you're using one.
If an analogy is an "obvious" analogy that makes it definitionally a good analogy, right? Either way: don't see why you gotta be so prescriptive about it one way or the other! You can just say you disagree.
Well no there are plenty of bad analogies that are obvious.
A boy is like a girl.
A skinny human is like a human that is not skinny.
A car is like a wagon.
All obvious, all pointless.
I don't know if any of those would be obvious to me as analogies...
2 replies →
AI is an analogy to something that people feel the technology is similar to but that it is obviously not.
Language is more of less a series of analogies. Comparing one thing to another is how humans are able to make sense of the world.
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