When used well, analogies aren't meant to prove a point, they're to illustrate a point. It is actually useful for two people to offer different analogies that they think are appropriate, because it helps to show their point of view. What is useless is treating an analogy as though it had the force of argument.

Yes, all the time. I don't know why people do this, it's as if they lose track of the conversation and think they're debating the analogy itself, rather than the thing the analogy is meant to illustrate.

It's very frustrating when they make a counterpoint to the analogy that doesn't actually correspond back to the original point.

> I'm starting to think analogies never help prove a point.

HN is particularly bad for chains of increasingly surreal analogies, each of which the poster seems to think is a silver bullet. the analogies are some of the least useful content on the site, next to sarcasm.

This is a point which Scott Adams makes: Analogies can never convince people, only explain a subject which people do not yet understand.

When I searched to verify, I see that, by sheer coincidence, Scott Adams today apparently posted a video covering this very subject: https://www.youtube.com/embed/n45D_zi3O5g?start=853&end=1450

they can but they shouldn't

Absolutely. My post is really making a meta point about the analogies I see here. You can make an analogy that makes any point you want if you stretch it enough.

Fight bad analogies with bad analogies. Show off how useless a tool they are.

> someone will pull some comparison out of the analogy and use that to detract

> to great popular success

This is an HN audience issue, not an analogy one.

Only insofar as the HN audience consists of people. It’s a people “problem”.

The HN audience is not perfectly reflective of wider society. One obvious example is that people on this site tend to be more technically aware than the wider population, but that's not the only relevant characteristic.

The userbase here tends to be technical, tends towards (or is at least dominated by) particular political positions, and seems to be much more literally-minded than other online communities.