Apply Analogies Meaningfully

Analogies are awesome tools. They are a means to explain concepts with established knowledge. For example, if I am explaining statistics to somebody, I might use dice. A standard six-sided die should land on all of its sides equally. If we threw it 60 times, each number should come up about 10 times. And the more we throw it, the more those results would smooth out.

But the world isn't perfect. You might do the test and find that the number three shows up noticeably more than all the other numbers. This is a sign that something funny is going on. Most likely, the die is not evenly weighted, which makes one side more likely to land than others. This is called a loaded die.

Once we understand about loaded dice, then they, too can be used as analogies. They are ways to understand fairness. The world is a random place, like rolling dice. No matter what your experiences are or what your predictions are, you can never be entirely certain what you are going to get. But the nice thing about randomness is that it tends to balance out. Bad things happen, but good things happen, too. However, if bad things happen noticeably more than good things, then it is like the dice that represent life are loaded.

The downside to using analogies is that sometimes the similarity between two things only goes so far. Suppose somebody says that the dice of life are loaded against her. If you wanted to be positive you could say something like, "If the dice keep giving you the same result, you just need to play a different game where that's a good result." It's a lovely thought if you are literally dealing with loaded dice. The problem is, how the heck does that apply to real life?  There might be a feasible answer depending on the context, but more likely than not, the analogy has broken down and the advice just doesn't make sense.

Beware of bad analogies. They can be a great tool, or they can be the bane of your arguments. Make sure that you are checking every step of the way that your analogy still parallels your actual subject.