I don't know why people take the Icarus story at face value instead of seeing it as a colorful metaphor. I'm not sure how the Greeks considered their own stories but it seems doubtful they would believe them in as literal a sense as the monotheists who succeeded them.

As an abstraction it does not demonstrate hubris being bad. You can say it's discouraged in a culture with slaves etc. But, again that does not mean it's actually bad just not a norm for a very different culture. You can find plenty of stories that use it as a plot device, but the world does not work on narrative causality making that rather meaningless.

So, if you look at it as a metaphor then bringing it up is just saying: Hubris is bad, because hubris is bad. Which adds nothing to someones argument.

I see what you mean. I interpreted a little differently, as another poster here mentioned in the sense of "avoiding extremes" or overconfidence in general. So all in all a rather basic notion that people are familiar with from culture, historical events or their own life experience but dressed up in a way that ticks a lot of satisfying mental boxes. But if you interpret it in the way you mentioned then I agree that it's not very useful.

>Except such stories are meaningless because they are random in nature. Unlike in the Icarus story, air gets colder with altitude so does that suddenly reverse the meaning of the story?

Obviously not, because the meaning of story lies in how things work in the context of the story.

Only if the general point (devoid of storytelling flourishes) was invalid it would invalidate the story as a cautionary tale.

But the general point still holds as general advice: "Avoid extremes" [1].

[1] https://thetaoofwealth.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/lessons-for-...