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It's like that Star Trek episode...
where Piccard encounters a race that communicates
by analogy, whereas he, a rational logical starfleet
officer relies on logic and precise rationale.
The analogists whip the Enterprise's butt. They
understoodd and communicated very complex concepts
in very short bursts of acquired symbols and over
time, that had enabled them to be precise among
themselves, and vague to anyone talking to them.
It had also enabled them to develop very powerful
technology quickly past the phase of sharing their
myths.
On the surface dealing with an invisible
monster, the analogical captain has to
sacrifice himself so that Piccard can
finally understand the danger. Had they
spent more time communicating, they may have
acquired a name for the monster, but they
didn't. That is the risk of analogical
communication. Note that this is how
communities build cultures.
Until we share names beyond "I know what
I know if you know what I mean", analogy
is one way to proceed. Consider that the
semantic web will spend a lot of time in
negotiation. Logic will enable them to
say "this is this" not "this is that"
reliably. Names won't do outside a
system that refuses or cannot share
those names. Analogies aren't efficient
inside a system that does.
"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the
right, here I am, stuck in the middle
with you." Stealers Wheel
len
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@xegesis.org]
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 3:31 PM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: [xml-dev] Analogy (was RE: [xml-dev] quarantining namespaces)
8/12/2002 4:19:32 PM, "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com> wrote:
>Nah. Leave it as it is as an exemplar of
>why programmers can't reason by analogy,
>thus failing to communicate with 80% of their
>customers while satisfying 20% of their
>customer's requirements.
I recently had to give a presentation at the annual sales meeting
of a partner company. During the coffee period preceding my
talk (supported by the usual PPT slides) I learned to my dismay
that a hot-shot sales trainer had been in the day before and told
them that one should NEVER put bullet points in a presentations, but
rather to rely on images and analogies.
So, analogy may be slipperier than logic (quoth Heinlein???) but it
seems to be the rhetorical tool of choice for communicating with
the non-nerds of the world.
I'm not sure if I'm agreeing or disagreeing with Len :~)
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