Learning & thinking · a life skill
Advanced Analogy Building
far away, works the same
The analogy that comes to mind first is the one that looks alike: a vaccine is like a vitamin shot, they're both jabs. Memory finds matches by their looks, and looks are the weakest guide. The match worth having shares how the thing works, and it often looks nothing like it. So write down how the thing works, gather candidates from far afield, score each on both counts, and keep the ones that are far away but work the same.
- Challenging to start
- Life-Changing impact
- Learn it in 30 days
- Twenty minutes a search
The vitamin shot is the first thing that comes to mind and shares none of the links. The wanted poster looks nothing like a vaccine and shares all three.
The next thing you can't get your head round
Try it now.
Pick something you need to understand or explain, and that the obvious comparison hasn't helped with. Give it twenty minutes and a sheet of paper.
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Write how the target works
Two or three links, each "this makes that happen." Not what it looks like: what causes what.
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Gather five candidates
Anything else that does the same job. Push at least two far away: another trade, a sport, a kitchen, nature.
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Score each one twice
Which of your links it shares, and how much it looks like the target. Two separate questions; keep them apart.
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Keep the far, deep ones
Many links, few looks: those are your finds. A look-alike that shares no links is a trap, and it's usually the first one you thought of.
A vitamin shot is a jab too. It shares none of the links. -
Check the find, then write the rule
List how it's alike and where it breaks. Then write the rule the target and the finds all obey, in words that fit any of them.
Explaining it to someone else? Use the find, then say where it breaks. "It's like a wanted poster, except the body prints its own."
Sort your candidates
Score them on both counts.
Write how your target works, then add candidates and score each: which links it shares, and how much it looks like the target. The map sorts them as you go, and the finds open a ledger below.
How it works, in links
Each one "this makes that happen." Two at least.Candidates
Check your finds
Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere. Copy it into your notes before you close the page.
Why write the rule
The better the rule they wrote, the more often it came to mind.
Mary Gick and Keith Holyoak gave 98 people two short stories to read. In each, a problem gets solved by sending many small forces from different directions at once. Some read two stories from one setting, some read one from each, and a third group read one useful story and one irrelevant one. Everyone then wrote down how the two stories were alike.
Then came a medical puzzle: destroy a tumour with rays strong enough to kill healthy tissue on the way in. The answer is the same move, several weak rays from different sides meeting at the tumour. Those who'd read two useful stories found it without a hint 45% of the time, against 21% for those who'd read one. Two stories from different settings did no worse than two from the same one.
What mattered most was what people had written. Those who named the principle almost all solved the puzzle unprompted. Most people, 59% of them, wrote something like "a problem was solved using logical means," and they did little better than people with one story.
The honest limit: these groups chose themselves. Good problem solvers may simply write good summaries and use analogies well, which the authors say plainly. The groups are small, and later experiments in the same paper go some way to showing that writing the rule helps.
When people solved the tumour puzzle, by what they'd written about the two stories
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Named the principle · 11 people
many small forces applied together to add up to one large force
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Named half of it · 10 people
In both cases many small forces were used.
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Named nothing usable · 30 people
In both stories a problem was solved using logical means.
The idea
Why it works.
Memory reaches for matches by their looks, so the first analogy is usually the nearest one. Near analogies feel right and teach little: they share the parts you can already see. A far analogy that shares the links shows you the working underneath, because nothing else about the two things matches.
Scoring looks and links separately stops the one from passing for the other. And writing the rule turns two matched cases into something you can carry: the next problem won't look like either of them, but it may obey the rule.
Keep it sharp
Habits that help.
- Distrust the first match. Write it down, then look for three more before you choose.
- Raid other fields on purpose. Ask how a cook, a coach, a gardener and an engineer would handle it.
- Always say where it breaks. Every analogy does. Naming the break keeps you from trusting it too far.
- Keep the rule, not just the find. The rule is what you'll recognise next time.
Keep this going in the app.
HourLife turns these ideas into a daily system — goals, habits, focus, and reflection in one private place.
