You're not a stupid person so you being not stupid knows that I and pretty much everyone on the face of this earth knows that we all are aware that no one understands ALL of learning. So if you're not stupid, and you already know this, why did you take the time to point out some pointless flaw in my wording?
I'll tell you why. Because you liked this analogy. You thought it was profound to compare learning to DFS and BFS and fractals and you were sort of offended when someone like me didn't find it profound. Not only do I not find it profound, I find it obvious and trivial. Comparing learning to fractals is like some offhand thought I can have for like 5 seconds than forget about because it's so trivial.
Too each his own man. If this article blew your mind great. It didn't do anything for me.
Here's another analogy for you.
Learning is like traveling down a path and encountering a several forks in the road. You can BFS the paths or you can DFS the paths
Replace Learning with "Life" and remove BFS. In life you can only choose one path every time you encounter a fork and the decision is permanent. No popping the stack like in BFS to try the other paths. It's just DFS all the way to the last final leaf node. You have one life so live it right.
Did that analogy blow your mind? Because I made it up 3 seconds ago. That's how trivial these analogies are.
I was impressed by the article and when I read your comments, I felt like this random person is right, it does sound profound but doesn't add anything substantial to the topic of learning.
It's nice to have another aspect or perspective on learning but it is certainly not a "new learning strategy". I agree.
And yet there is a merit in analogies, they can help you understand the underlying principles of something, in this case learning. I'm not sure people (including me) always get the full picture of something and an article can help with that showing learning from another angle.
In general I agree with you and yet the article adds something for some to their understanding of what learning is.
Careful. Analogies are a common form of deception. Used often in religious speeches, political speeches, blog posts and more.
The speaker offers zero substantial information yet manipulates the audience into feeling the speech was "good" through the use of analogies. There is sort of a catharsis when the person listening to the speech connects the dots between two unrelated concepts, and this subtle emotion is used as a form of manipulation often deliberately when the speaker is incredibly intelligent and often accidentally as is what I believe is the case here.
It's easiest to see the deliberate case in religious speeches or sermons if you're not religious yourself. Often you will find that religious principles or sayings have no proof and you will often find that the analogy is deceptively used in place of evidence or proof where no proof exists.
I sometimes find tremendous insight in a piece of literature that is analogous to real life difficulties. Provided that, that piece of writing, also offers some sort of a solution to the "problem".
Those problems I'm referring to are for example confidence, psyche (esp. C.G.Jung), getting over traumas etc.
Obviously, my formentioned cases are not extensive and everyone finds something else that they struggle with where a piece of literature might help.
2. Thank you for your insights. If your answer to question 1. is no, I'd like to know what kind of analogies you think are valuable and why?
A better phrase is "Learning isn't coming up with new analogies for concepts you already more or less understand over and over again."
Happy? does that satisfy your overly pedantic mind?