[Applause]
let me tell you a story when I was 34 I
got the chance of a lifetime a job
interview at the White House to become a
presidential speechwriter unfortunately
as I sat there watching the chief
speechwriter read through my resume
he started frowning and he looks up and
he says you had a lot of other projects
going on what’s this about building a
cork boat and I told him the truth that
since the age of seven I had been saving
corks from wine bottles to build a
Viking ship and that my plan was
eventually when I had enough got the
boat built to take it on an epic voyage
to the canals of French wine country and
he just looked at me like who is this
nut job and I could feel the entire
interview and my my shot at the White
House slipping away I didn’t know what
to say and then all of a sudden this
analogy pops into my head and I said sir
building a cork boat and writing a good
speech are a lot alike in both cases you
take a jumble of small things corks or
words that don’t do much on their own
but if you put them into just the right
order they’ll take you on an amazing
voyage he got the analogy and I got the
job
and that’s the thing about a good
analogy at the right moment because it
helps people see things from an entirely
fresh perspective and tonight I’m going
to talk about the impact that analogies
can make on on the world and how each of
us can strengthen our own analogical
instinct first some of you might be
wondering what exactly is an analogy
after all they come in a lot of
different disguises metaphors cliches
parables proverbs legal arguments here’s
a useful definition at its core an
analogy is a comparison that asserts
similarities between two different
things and whether we realize it or not
we make analogical comparisons all the
time for example when we use our phones
to navigate and get from A to B we
follow the blue dot on the screen and
we’re looking up and comparing that to
the real world around us that map is a
two-dimensional analog of the
three-dimensional world and intuitively
we just filter out everything that’s
different about the two and almost
everything is to zero in on the relevant
similarities that get us where we want
to go and that capacity to filter and
compare is our analogical instinct hard
at work now as we navigate the world of
ideas the a good analogy as a creative
catalyst can take us places we never
even imagined for example what do pigs
and cars have in common most of us would
say nothing but in 1913 a Detroit
mechanic named Bill clan took a trip to
Chicago where he went on a tour of this
if meatpacking plant and Swift have this
an incredibly efficient system for
dismembering and processing millions of
pigs and sheep and cattle every year and
and it was simple they hung the
carcasses on an overhead track from a
hook and assigned butchers to make a
designated cut they’d slide the the meat
on down to the next butcher for the next
cut and so on in clan who worked for the
Ford Motor Company drew an analogy and
he asked himself well if they can use a
moving track to disassemble pigs why
couldn’t we just reverse the process to
assemble cars and so he took this idea
for moving assembly back to Detroit
where his bosses including Henry Ford
thought it was a stupid idea but he
insisted no this is going to change the
world this is revolutionary give it a
try and they put in a line actually when
Henry Ford was out of town on business
and lo and behold it made a dramatic and
immediate impact before the line went in
it took a team of workers about twelve
and a half hours to make a Model T with
the line ninety minutes per car and that
let Ford made it a lot more cars at a
lot lower cost double wages and create
the first mass market for automobiles in
America and even more importantly it
completely revolutionized manufacturing
in every other industry unlocking
trillions in economic potential and
changing the course of history and
that’s the great thing about a great
analogy it can show us entirely new ways
of getting a job done of better ways of
getting a job done but be careful
because if we choose the wrong analogy
it can have terrible consequences and
lead us astray
ask yourself why does the United States
incarcerate 2.3 million people that’s a
quarter of the world’s entire prison
population
well one major contributing factor is a
very seductive yet flawed analogy and
here’s how it happened
in 1994 a father whose daughter had been
murdered by in a botched robbery by a
pair of convicted felons led a ballot
initiative in California to require
mandatory sentences of 25 years to life
for a third felony conviction and he
called it three strikes and you’re out
and three strikes was an easy sell
after all baseball is fair everybody
plays by the same rules and everybody is
held accountable for their errors and
California voters passed it in a
landslide and about half the other
states followed suit with their own
version of three strikes laws now did
this take violent felons off the street
absolutely
unfortunately it caught a lot of other
people as well because judges who had
previously had some discretion in
sentencing were now required by law to
sentence all third strikes to long
sentences whether that third strike was
a shoplifting a video or stealing loose
change from a parked car or passing a
bad check and what did this do it filled
up our prisons at a cost of now 75
billion dollars billion dollars a year
and thousands and thousands of ruined
lives now
the problem so we have to revisit the
the analogy and ask why should baseball
be the model for sentencing policy and
the problem is not that three strikes
and you’re out it oversimplifies things
because all analogies simplify that’s
that’s what they’re supposed to do it’s
that the emotional appeal baseball is
fair distracted millions and millions of
voters from more relevant disqualifying
differences between the game of baseball
and criminal justice but before we
dismiss emotional emotionally appealing
analogies we need to recognize that
those emotional appeals can be
extraordinarily empowering as well a few
minutes ago I talked about using our
phones to navigate well when I was
growing up in here in Ann Arbor
you couldn’t just slip a computer in
your pocket it took up the mainframe
here at U of M took up the entire floor
of a building right next door that
buildings gone and so is the mainframe
but the other thing was that that you
had to be a techie or a scientist to use
it and computers were something that
most people were alien and unfriendly
Steve Jobs changed all that with a
friendly and explicitly friendly analogy
the desktop along with the intuitive
digital icons of tools that people
already knew how to use folders
documents scissors a trash can and he
reasoned that if people felt comfortable
using those tools on a regular physical
desk they ought to be just as
comfortable using them in a digital
equivalent now of course it wasn’t his
idea
originally the the
concept was first developed at Xerox but
management there didn’t recognize its
potential jobs did and put it to work
designing and launching the Mac in 1984
and almost overnight millions of people
could suddenly use a computer but more
importantly they wanted to use a
computer and that democratized computing
power yet reshaped our relationship with
information and it revolutionized the
way that millions and millions of people
work and communicate today now you might
say oh the desktop that’s obvious or the
moving assembly line duh anybody could
have thought of that but they didn’t
because those those underlying analogies
were we’re not obvious or else other
people would have exploited them and
similarly you might say that three
strikes and you’re out was it obviously
a dumb analogy but yet millions of
people rushed to embrace it so my point
is not that analogies are good or bad
per se but that we as citizens need to
think very critically about those we
encounter because they shape how we
respond to challenges and opportunities
someone asked Thomas Edison once what
qualities do you look for in an inventor
and he said three things first
imagination
second persistence and third was a
logical mind that sees analogies and
that’s because we can only explain or
invent something new by recombining or
reconfiguring or reimagining what we
already
have or no the world today has a lot of
problems climate change rising sea
levels pandemics mass extinction and
we’re unlikely to solve these problems
with yesterday’s thinking because it was
yesterday’s thinking that got us into
this mess
we need new solutions new ideas new
breakthroughs and these are inevitably
going to flow from the creative
wellspring of analogy
fortunately our analogical instinct it’s
like a muscle the more we exercise it
the stronger it gets so for those of you
who want to sharpen your thinking boost
your creative metabolism and improve
your problem-solving skills here are
three guidelines first practice spotting
all the analogies you encounter in your
daily life once you start paying close
attention you’ll see and hear them
everywhere second once you spot an
analogy challenge the argument that it’s
making what about that analogy isn’t
true and how relevant are its strengths
and weaknesses and finally when you are
trying to solve a problem consider
multiple analogies because usually
different analogies will shed useful
light on different aspects of the
problem in the end we have to remember
analogies are just models that help us
interpret and understand the world and
no analogy is ever going to be perfect
as the great statistician EP box once
said all models are wrong but some are
useful I would add some can even change
the world so I wish you well in all your
endeavors and may your best analogies
ring true thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
let me tell you a story when I was 34 I
got the chance of a lifetime a job
interview at the White House to become a
presidential speechwriter unfortunately
as I sat there watching the chief
speechwriter read through my resume
he started frowning and he looks up and
he says you had a lot of other projects
going on what’s this about building a
cork boat and I told him the truth that
since the age of seven I had been saving
corks from wine bottles to build a
Viking ship and that my plan was
eventually when I had enough got the
boat built to take it on an epic voyage
to the canals of French wine country and
he just looked at me like who is this
nut job and I could feel the entire
interview and my my shot at the White
House slipping away I didn’t know what
to say and then all of a sudden this
analogy pops into my head and I said sir
building a cork boat and writing a good
speech are a lot alike in both cases you
take a jumble of small things corks or
words that don’t do much on their own
but if you put them into just the right
order they’ll take you on an amazing
voyage he got the analogy and I got the
job
and that’s the thing about a good
analogy at the right moment because it
helps people see things from an entirely
fresh perspective and tonight I’m going
to talk about the impact that analogies
can make on on the world and how each of
us can strengthen our own analogical
instinct first some of you might be
wondering what exactly is an analogy
after all they come in a lot of
different disguises metaphors cliches
parables proverbs legal arguments here’s
a useful definition at its core an
analogy is a comparison that asserts
similarities between two different
things and whether we realize it or not
we make analogical comparisons all the
time for example when we use our phones
to navigate and get from A to B we
follow the blue dot on the screen and
we’re looking up and comparing that to
the real world around us that map is a
two-dimensional analog of the
three-dimensional world and intuitively
we just filter out everything that’s
different about the two and almost
everything is to zero in on the relevant
similarities that get us where we want
to go and that capacity to filter and
compare is our analogical instinct hard
at work now as we navigate the world of
ideas the a good analogy as a creative
catalyst can take us places we never
even imagined for example what do pigs
and cars have in common most of us would
say nothing but in 1913 a Detroit
mechanic named Bill clan took a trip to
Chicago where he went on a tour of this
if meatpacking plant and Swift have this
an incredibly efficient system for
dismembering and processing millions of
pigs and sheep and cattle every year and
and it was simple they hung the
carcasses on an overhead track from a
hook and assigned butchers to make a
designated cut they’d slide the the meat
on down to the next butcher for the next
cut and so on in clan who worked for the
Ford Motor Company drew an analogy and
he asked himself well if they can use a
moving track to disassemble pigs why
couldn’t we just reverse the process to
assemble cars and so he took this idea
for moving assembly back to Detroit
where his bosses including Henry Ford
thought it was a stupid idea but he
insisted no this is going to change the
world this is revolutionary give it a
try and they put in a line actually when
Henry Ford was out of town on business
and lo and behold it made a dramatic and
immediate impact before the line went in
it took a team of workers about twelve
and a half hours to make a Model T with
the line ninety minutes per car and that
let Ford made it a lot more cars at a
lot lower cost double wages and create
the first mass market for automobiles in
America and even more importantly it
completely revolutionized manufacturing
in every other industry unlocking
trillions in economic potential and
changing the course of history and
that’s the great thing about a great
analogy it can show us entirely new ways
of getting a job done of better ways of
getting a job done but be careful
because if we choose the wrong analogy
it can have terrible consequences and
lead us astray
ask yourself why does the United States
incarcerate 2.3 million people that’s a
quarter of the world’s entire prison
population
well one major contributing factor is a
very seductive yet flawed analogy and
here’s how it happened
in 1994 a father whose daughter had been
murdered by in a botched robbery by a
pair of convicted felons led a ballot
initiative in California to require
mandatory sentences of 25 years to life
for a third felony conviction and he
called it three strikes and you’re out
and three strikes was an easy sell
after all baseball is fair everybody
plays by the same rules and everybody is
held accountable for their errors and
California voters passed it in a
landslide and about half the other
states followed suit with their own
version of three strikes laws now did
this take violent felons off the street
absolutely
unfortunately it caught a lot of other
people as well because judges who had
previously had some discretion in
sentencing were now required by law to
sentence all third strikes to long
sentences whether that third strike was
a shoplifting a video or stealing loose
change from a parked car or passing a
bad check and what did this do it filled
up our prisons at a cost of now 75
billion dollars billion dollars a year
and thousands and thousands of ruined
lives now
the problem so we have to revisit the
the analogy and ask why should baseball
be the model for sentencing policy and
the problem is not that three strikes
and you’re out it oversimplifies things
because all analogies simplify that’s
that’s what they’re supposed to do it’s
that the emotional appeal baseball is
fair distracted millions and millions of
voters from more relevant disqualifying
differences between the game of baseball
and criminal justice but before we
dismiss emotional emotionally appealing
analogies we need to recognize that
those emotional appeals can be
extraordinarily empowering as well a few
minutes ago I talked about using our
phones to navigate well when I was
growing up in here in Ann Arbor
you couldn’t just slip a computer in
your pocket it took up the mainframe
here at U of M took up the entire floor
of a building right next door that
buildings gone and so is the mainframe
but the other thing was that that you
had to be a techie or a scientist to use
it and computers were something that
most people were alien and unfriendly
Steve Jobs changed all that with a
friendly and explicitly friendly analogy
the desktop along with the intuitive
digital icons of tools that people
already knew how to use folders
documents scissors a trash can and he
reasoned that if people felt comfortable
using those tools on a regular physical
desk they ought to be just as
comfortable using them in a digital
equivalent now of course it wasn’t his
idea
originally the the
concept was first developed at Xerox but
management there didn’t recognize its
potential jobs did and put it to work
designing and launching the Mac in 1984
and almost overnight millions of people
could suddenly use a computer but more
importantly they wanted to use a
computer and that democratized computing
power yet reshaped our relationship with
information and it revolutionized the
way that millions and millions of people
work and communicate today now you might
say oh the desktop that’s obvious or the
moving assembly line duh anybody could
have thought of that but they didn’t
because those those underlying analogies
were we’re not obvious or else other
people would have exploited them and
similarly you might say that three
strikes and you’re out was it obviously
a dumb analogy but yet millions of
people rushed to embrace it so my point
is not that analogies are good or bad
per se but that we as citizens need to
think very critically about those we
encounter because they shape how we
respond to challenges and opportunities
someone asked Thomas Edison once what
qualities do you look for in an inventor
and he said three things first
imagination
second persistence and third was a
logical mind that sees analogies and
that’s because we can only explain or
invent something new by recombining or
reconfiguring or reimagining what we
already
have or no the world today has a lot of
problems climate change rising sea
levels pandemics mass extinction and
we’re unlikely to solve these problems
with yesterday’s thinking because it was
yesterday’s thinking that got us into
this mess
we need new solutions new ideas new
breakthroughs and these are inevitably
going to flow from the creative
wellspring of analogy
fortunately our analogical instinct it’s
like a muscle the more we exercise it
the stronger it gets so for those of you
who want to sharpen your thinking boost
your creative metabolism and improve
your problem-solving skills here are
three guidelines first practice spotting
all the analogies you encounter in your
daily life once you start paying close
attention you’ll see and hear them
everywhere second once you spot an
analogy challenge the argument that it’s
making what about that analogy isn’t
true and how relevant are its strengths
and weaknesses and finally when you are
trying to solve a problem consider
multiple analogies because usually
different analogies will shed useful
light on different aspects of the
problem in the end we have to remember
analogies are just models that help us
interpret and understand the world and
no analogy is ever going to be perfect
as the great statistician EP box once
said all models are wrong but some are
useful I would add some can even change
the world so I wish you well in all your
endeavors and may your best analogies
ring true thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
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