Frankenstein's Monster is loose, and it ate Mitt Romney in SC.

[JoePhilly]

13. NP ... induldge away!! ... all analogies, and all classification systems for that matter ...

are by definition imprecise.

Ironically, I was talking to my son about this recently. What I was telling him is that a thing is what it is. A classification system attempts to describe a bunch of things, such that most of the "things" in the classification share their most critical characteristics. An Analogy is similar, but it tends to compare similarities between 2 things which would generally never be classified together. In other words, an analogy picks some characteristics, and then connect 2 or more disparate things. A classification system takes N number of things, and tries to extract the critical commonalities.

In classification systems, you end up with some odd situations. For instance, penguins, ostriches, and turkeys can't fly, but they are classified as birds.

In a sense, all analogies fail in a similar manner. They describe something that is "like" the original thing, but that are not the actual thing.

Anyway ... I like to discuss analogies in part because they are flawed. They can be used to draw certain aspects forward, and also lead to a discussion of how they don't fit ... which broadens the discussion of "the thing".

So ... again be "pedantic" ... call out where you think an analogy doesn't fit. It expands the discussion.