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5 "Plato's Allegory of the Cave"

This phrase usually sets off all the alarms that you are talking to someone who (1) has just discovered philosophy and (2) doesn't think anyone else has. Ninety-nine percent of the time when someone brings up the Allegory of the Cave, they are using it as a metaphor to talk about people living in a world where they only have a limited perception of reality, like the Matrix, and how some people get a chance to get outside of that and see all of reality, like Neo going outside the Matrix.



It is a good analogy, because learning about the real world is a lot like waking up in your own pee/food solution.

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First of all, there is a lot more to the Allegory of the Cave than that simple overview, stuff that is mostly interesting to people who are really interested in philosophy, which doesn't include me. It also doesn't include most of the people who bring up the allegory. Secondly, given the wide popularity of The Matrix, that movie is a much simpler analogy to use for anyone who wants to talk about limited versions of reality.

I guess it depends on whether the priority is on getting your listeners to quickly understand your arguments so you can move on to make your point without having to retell and explain a story about caves and fires and shadows that some of them probably won't be familiar with, or whether the priority is to let people know that you read Plato once.