How and why politicians, journalists, and scientists use analogy
May 26, 2009 by admin
Filed under Journalism
Kevin Dunbar asked:
Analogy in Politics and Science: Like all tools, handle with care!
Kevin Niall Dunbar, University of Toronto
How Analogy is used to persuade the electorate to vote a particular way, propose new theories and make complex issues understandable has been of intrigue to writers, scientists, politicians and speechwriters for decades. Catchy analogies can move a whole nation as when the elder George Bush said that “Saddam Hussein is Hitler” and helped sway the US congress to vote for troops to enter Kuwait and drive Iraqi forces away. Powerful analogies like these are part and parcel of all elections and are used by politicians and journalists to influence public opinion away from the opponent and towards their position. Usually,politicians and journalists, particularly op-ed writers achieve this goal by by projecting a positive emotion for their own side and a negative emotion for the opponent’s side. Isabelle Blanchette and I found that in the final few days of a referendum on whether Quebec should leave the country of Canada hundreds of analogies were used in the newspapers using this strategy.
What happens when analogies are used is that components of something that is well known, like Hockey in Canada, are mapped over onto the political debate, like separating from Canada. What is really amazing or insidious, depending on your point of view, is that the journalist or politician doesn’t have to draw a conclusion for the public to understand the analogy; our brains do it automatically. Just open a newspaper and you will see analogies: In the economic meltdown of 2008-2009 the New York Times helped the public make sense of the heretofore unknown mega companies at the heart of the meltdown (in this case AIG) by saying that it was similar to people “not knowing about the appendix until they feel the pain.” Analogy not only helps make sense of confusing situations such as the first few hours after 9/11 where over a dozen analogies were made by media outlets to prior events like Pearl Harbor, the Oklahoma Bombings, IRA attacks in London etc, but analogy allows us to fill in gaps in our knowledge and make predictions. Scientists also use analogy this way. When NASA scientists found that there is water on the planet Mars, they then predicted that there will be life there. Of course, analogies don’t always lead to the correct predictions and we have been waiting for many years to see if there is life on Mars, or on Jupiter’s’ satellite Europa, (which has been likened to a pristine underwater lake in Antarctica called Lake Vostok) that may harbor ancient life forms. Because of this analogy NASA is piloting a mission to Lake Vostok, which is a mile underneath the Antarctic ice to see if NASA can retrieve ancient life forms without contaminating the lake with everyday bacteria or viruses. If this works, then NASA plans to conduct the same type of mission on Europa. Here we can see that an analogy can motivate a multi-million dollar mission to outer space.
So what is analogy? Is it seeing two things as being similar? Yes and no! What is really interesting about analogy is that it is much more than seeing two things as similar. It is seeing the relations between two things as similar. Seeing a computer virus and a human virus as similar has been a very powerful analogy: Both types of viruses cause damage, both infiltrate a host, and both often hijack the hosts’ machinery to cause damage. These are relations between the virus and the host. People can easily map from the relations of the biological virus to the computational virus. The real power of analogy is when something about a familiar situation can be mapped onto a new situation resulting in a new solution to a problem. Continuing with our virus analogy, biological viruses can be immunized against, by mapping from the biological virus to the computer virus, computer programmers have devised ways of immunizing computers against future viruses, often using the same types of mechanisms as the biological viruses.
One final property of analogies is that they are often emotional, particularly in politics and advertising. When politicians want you to choose them rather than their rival, they often use a positive analogy such as a happy family for their side and a divorced family for the opponents’ side. Sports analogies are particularly popular with politicians as most people are familiar with sports and the familiarity combined with emotions and excitement make sports analogies almost irresistible for journalists to use. When Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama were debating in March 2008 the journalist Stephen J Silver used this analogy to add drama to the debate: ”Obama leads Hillary 21 to 10 in a game of football. Hillary is driving with 2 seconds left on the clock. Hillary throws a Hail Mary pass and Obama is called for pass interference. Because the game cannot end on a penalty, Hillary gets one last snap with no time left on the clock. Even if Hillary scores the touchdown and converts a two-point conversion, she cannot win the game. The only way for her to win is if Obama runs on the field and kills one of the referees, forfeiting the game.” This turned a somewhat dry debate into a cliff hanging game of epic proportions. Yet analogies can be overdone as noted in the New York Times in March 2009 about the new chairman of the Republican party: “Most chairmen wave the party flag; Mr. Steele smiles and shreds it. A man of constantly colliding analogies, he compares Republicans to drunks in need of a 12-step program and to the mentally ill. He has insulted Rush Limbaugh and moderate Republican senators alike, and he has promised a “hip-hop makeover” that would attract even “one-armed midgets” to his party”
Analogy in Politics and Science: Like all tools, handle with care!
Kevin Niall Dunbar, University of Toronto
How Analogy is used to persuade the electorate to vote a particular way, propose new theories and make complex issues understandable has been of intrigue to writers, scientists, politicians and speechwriters for decades. Catchy analogies can move a whole nation as when the elder George Bush said that “Saddam Hussein is Hitler” and helped sway the US congress to vote for troops to enter Kuwait and drive Iraqi forces away. Powerful analogies like these are part and parcel of all elections and are used by politicians and journalists to influence public opinion away from the opponent and towards their position. Usually,politicians and journalists, particularly op-ed writers achieve this goal by by projecting a positive emotion for their own side and a negative emotion for the opponent’s side. Isabelle Blanchette and I found that in the final few days of a referendum on whether Quebec should leave the country of Canada hundreds of analogies were used in the newspapers using this strategy.
What happens when analogies are used is that components of something that is well known, like Hockey in Canada, are mapped over onto the political debate, like separating from Canada. What is really amazing or insidious, depending on your point of view, is that the journalist or politician doesn’t have to draw a conclusion for the public to understand the analogy; our brains do it automatically. Just open a newspaper and you will see analogies: In the economic meltdown of 2008-2009 the New York Times helped the public make sense of the heretofore unknown mega companies at the heart of the meltdown (in this case AIG) by saying that it was similar to people “not knowing about the appendix until they feel the pain.” Analogy not only helps make sense of confusing situations such as the first few hours after 9/11 where over a dozen analogies were made by media outlets to prior events like Pearl Harbor, the Oklahoma Bombings, IRA attacks in London etc, but analogy allows us to fill in gaps in our knowledge and make predictions. Scientists also use analogy this way. When NASA scientists found that there is water on the planet Mars, they then predicted that there will be life there. Of course, analogies don’t always lead to the correct predictions and we have been waiting for many years to see if there is life on Mars, or on Jupiter’s’ satellite Europa, (which has been likened to a pristine underwater lake in Antarctica called Lake Vostok) that may harbor ancient life forms. Because of this analogy NASA is piloting a mission to Lake Vostok, which is a mile underneath the Antarctic ice to see if NASA can retrieve ancient life forms without contaminating the lake with everyday bacteria or viruses. If this works, then NASA plans to conduct the same type of mission on Europa. Here we can see that an analogy can motivate a multi-million dollar mission to outer space.
So what is analogy? Is it seeing two things as being similar? Yes and no! What is really interesting about analogy is that it is much more than seeing two things as similar. It is seeing the relations between two things as similar. Seeing a computer virus and a human virus as similar has been a very powerful analogy: Both types of viruses cause damage, both infiltrate a host, and both often hijack the hosts’ machinery to cause damage. These are relations between the virus and the host. People can easily map from the relations of the biological virus to the computational virus. The real power of analogy is when something about a familiar situation can be mapped onto a new situation resulting in a new solution to a problem. Continuing with our virus analogy, biological viruses can be immunized against, by mapping from the biological virus to the computer virus, computer programmers have devised ways of immunizing computers against future viruses, often using the same types of mechanisms as the biological viruses.
One final property of analogies is that they are often emotional, particularly in politics and advertising. When politicians want you to choose them rather than their rival, they often use a positive analogy such as a happy family for their side and a divorced family for the opponents’ side. Sports analogies are particularly popular with politicians as most people are familiar with sports and the familiarity combined with emotions and excitement make sports analogies almost irresistible for journalists to use. When Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama were debating in March 2008 the journalist Stephen J Silver used this analogy to add drama to the debate: ”Obama leads Hillary 21 to 10 in a game of football. Hillary is driving with 2 seconds left on the clock. Hillary throws a Hail Mary pass and Obama is called for pass interference. Because the game cannot end on a penalty, Hillary gets one last snap with no time left on the clock. Even if Hillary scores the touchdown and converts a two-point conversion, she cannot win the game. The only way for her to win is if Obama runs on the field and kills one of the referees, forfeiting the game.” This turned a somewhat dry debate into a cliff hanging game of epic proportions. Yet analogies can be overdone as noted in the New York Times in March 2009 about the new chairman of the Republican party: “Most chairmen wave the party flag; Mr. Steele smiles and shreds it. A man of constantly colliding analogies, he compares Republicans to drunks in need of a 12-step program and to the mentally ill. He has insulted Rush Limbaugh and moderate Republican senators alike, and he has promised a “hip-hop makeover” that would attract even “one-armed midgets” to his party”
The story with the single lender rule
Amelie Mag asked:
What is the single lender rule and why is there so much talk about it in the press nowadays? Is the US congress a single lender congress or is it concerned with the best interests of the disadvantaged students, as it claims to be? The following single lender update will try to settle some of these questions and place the debate on the single lender rule in the larger context of its impact on the financial well-being of American students and also in the even larger framework of the direction of American education. Will it become more people-oriented or more-business oriented?
First of all, what does the single lender rule mean? When we talk about student loans and student loan consolidation, the single lender rule immediately comes to mind as a limitation placed on the benefits that the students and their families can derive from consolidation. Under the single lender rule, the students do not have the freedom to choose among different schemes of loan consolidation provided by different financial agents. With the single lender rule in effect, the students can only consolidate if they have contracted all their loans from the same company or governmental agency. The existence of the single lender rule actually affects the decisions about which companies to contact college loans from in the first place. If a student has contracted a loan with “X” for example, knowing that the single lender rule is in place will make him or her contract any additional loans from the same company, so as to keep open the option of loan consolidation.
In fact, this scenario is quite common because a young college student is very likely to take up their first college loan from a large corporation. These companies control the market for student loans, they invest considerably in advertising their financial packages and they keep close ties to the colleges where they often make presentations of their offers. A young college student does not usually have the capacity to understand all the implications of contracting a first loan with a specific company. He or she may not even be aware of the existence of the single lender rule in the first place. Or, even if he is aware of it, he will not be able to understand all the implications of the single lender rule. Moreover, the student is likely to get most of his information on student loans precisely from the presentations organized by a large company. Thus, while the student will be told about the existence of the single lender rule, he will probably not be explained all its implications.
Single lender updates, such as this, are meant to bring to the fore both sides of the debate on the single lender rule. In this single lender update, we also raise the question of whether the US congress proved to be a single lender congress, as it was expected, given the domination of the Republicans and of the strong lobby coming from the financial corporations which have business in education. A single lender congress would not have changed the original text of the bill on the issue of the single lender rule. The original text of the bill would have left this rule in place, but the congress accepted an amendment proposed by a Democrat which argues for the cancellation of the rule. It was not only that the Democrats fought so hard for the cancellation of the rule that they won over the Republicans in the congressional debate. This would not have been possible in the first place, given that the distribution of the seats in both houses favors the Republicans. It is just that both parties managed to agree the cancellation of the single lender rule is unavoidable.
While the US congress cannot be called a single lender congress, it is the conclusion of this single lender update that the congress can be considered to be sensitive to the interests of the corporations. On the one hand, while the cancellation of the rule does affect the interests of the big financial institutions, on many other aspects of the bill (such as flexibility of interest rates or charges for contracting a student loan), the corporations have made important gains. In addition, regarding the cancellation of the single lender rule, the congress decided that it will come into effect only after a specific grace period. In this period, the companies can give a big last push to sell as many consolidation packages as possible. This final push is likely to be extremely profitable as students are being encouraged to consolidate from all sides now, given the low interest rates for student loans.
What is the single lender rule and why is there so much talk about it in the press nowadays? Is the US congress a single lender congress or is it concerned with the best interests of the disadvantaged students, as it claims to be? The following single lender update will try to settle some of these questions and place the debate on the single lender rule in the larger context of its impact on the financial well-being of American students and also in the even larger framework of the direction of American education. Will it become more people-oriented or more-business oriented?
First of all, what does the single lender rule mean? When we talk about student loans and student loan consolidation, the single lender rule immediately comes to mind as a limitation placed on the benefits that the students and their families can derive from consolidation. Under the single lender rule, the students do not have the freedom to choose among different schemes of loan consolidation provided by different financial agents. With the single lender rule in effect, the students can only consolidate if they have contracted all their loans from the same company or governmental agency. The existence of the single lender rule actually affects the decisions about which companies to contact college loans from in the first place. If a student has contracted a loan with “X” for example, knowing that the single lender rule is in place will make him or her contract any additional loans from the same company, so as to keep open the option of loan consolidation.
In fact, this scenario is quite common because a young college student is very likely to take up their first college loan from a large corporation. These companies control the market for student loans, they invest considerably in advertising their financial packages and they keep close ties to the colleges where they often make presentations of their offers. A young college student does not usually have the capacity to understand all the implications of contracting a first loan with a specific company. He or she may not even be aware of the existence of the single lender rule in the first place. Or, even if he is aware of it, he will not be able to understand all the implications of the single lender rule. Moreover, the student is likely to get most of his information on student loans precisely from the presentations organized by a large company. Thus, while the student will be told about the existence of the single lender rule, he will probably not be explained all its implications.
Single lender updates, such as this, are meant to bring to the fore both sides of the debate on the single lender rule. In this single lender update, we also raise the question of whether the US congress proved to be a single lender congress, as it was expected, given the domination of the Republicans and of the strong lobby coming from the financial corporations which have business in education. A single lender congress would not have changed the original text of the bill on the issue of the single lender rule. The original text of the bill would have left this rule in place, but the congress accepted an amendment proposed by a Democrat which argues for the cancellation of the rule. It was not only that the Democrats fought so hard for the cancellation of the rule that they won over the Republicans in the congressional debate. This would not have been possible in the first place, given that the distribution of the seats in both houses favors the Republicans. It is just that both parties managed to agree the cancellation of the single lender rule is unavoidable.
While the US congress cannot be called a single lender congress, it is the conclusion of this single lender update that the congress can be considered to be sensitive to the interests of the corporations. On the one hand, while the cancellation of the rule does affect the interests of the big financial institutions, on many other aspects of the bill (such as flexibility of interest rates or charges for contracting a student loan), the corporations have made important gains. In addition, regarding the cancellation of the single lender rule, the congress decided that it will come into effect only after a specific grace period. In this period, the companies can give a big last push to sell as many consolidation packages as possible. This final push is likely to be extremely profitable as students are being encouraged to consolidate from all sides now, given the low interest rates for student loans.
