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It's kind of like saying learning to jump really high is the first step to getting to the moon.


This is an example of why analogies and metaphors make clear thinking difficult. They're easy to think up - anyone can find some abstract similarity between X and absurd thing Y - but there is no substance there since the two things being compared are actually very different beyond that abstraction.


Certainly. It would help to understand gravity, which is absolutely crucial to flying to the Moon.


Also helps with an immediate understanding of ballistics and escape velocity


Or like saying "look, the monkey can sometimes make small words appear when it bangs on the keys of this typewriter. This tells us something about the origins of novels."


Learning how writing was invented is certainly a step towards understanding the origin of novels.


studying the behaviour of a monkey when introduced to a typewriter doesn't. Studying the formation of a few molecules in a controlled environment hardly explains how living forms came to exist.


If you never learn where a few molecules came from, how could you possibly make progress on the problem?


we made substantial progress in biology before we understood molecules. this is because it's not necessary to be entirely reductive to understand larger systems.


Yes, but we're talking origin of life.


A better analogy, but it still can be steered toward, "...without a Writer. This is why there is a Writer." Capital intentional.




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