Annoyance comments on On Juvenile Fiction - Less Wrong

24 Post author: MBlume 17 March 2009 08:53AM

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Comment author: Annoyance 17 March 2009 07:27:49PM 11 points [-]

It's being used as a teaching device to signal that there might be something wrong with that cognitive process.

If a child insists that leaping to conclusions is wrong because of The Phantom Tollbooth, then I'd agree that something is wrong. But it's a metaphor for the reality (it's harder to get out of a conclusion than to reach it, and jumping to it tends to retard your progress and keep you from your goals).

Metaphors are dangerous but incredibly valuable.

Comment author: PrometheanFaun 18 August 2013 06:33:59AM 1 point [-]

Metaphors are [...] incredibly valuable.

Prove it. I really doubt that. I think they're a highly ineffective teaching device relative to clean demonstrative thought-experiment parables. Analogies might be useful as scaffolding or a spec for learners to build to, but metaphors take it to a level of obfuscation that makes successful integration of the underlying principles of any given metaphorical package unlikely to ever occur.

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