As the author mentions at the bottom of the article, the title is a reference to the book "Metaphors We Live By" [0], which essentially lays out the idea that a very significant portion of modern language is really just metaphors, even when we don't realize it. Super interesting book, for anybody interested in those kinds of things!

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/02...

Douglas Hofstader's work in cognitive science is based on the same premise. Humans high level thinking fundamentally base on analogies.

His book "Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought" (1995) is the culmination of his thinking.

Regarding the fish comic in the article: it's how David Foster Wallace starts a 2005 college commencement speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

That was an amazing listen. Most people have so many beliefs they don't question at all - me included (and I add this not just to seem like I haven't missed the point of what Wallace was saying), and the metaphor of the atheist and the religious guy arguing exemplifies that very well, specifically in these beliefs we deem non-religious, from our political ideologies (even centrists have very strong, usually classically liberal ideology - when was the last time you heard someone discuss not merely certain rights but the whole idea of rights, not just a political candidate but the whole idea of the democratic establishment, not just rich and poor but the nature of capital and value itself etc.?) to our metaphysical assumptions that ground popular (and expert) conceptions of science.

Most people simply have no idea that there are alternatives (ask a random person if they're a materialist in the metaphysical sense, which they likely are, and you'll either get a confused look or a "yes" once you explain it; you won't here a critique of idealism; similarly, ask if they support representative democracy and a "healthy economy" and you won't be met with a critique of capital or the illusion of the economic[0]; ask if they are a moral realist or anti-realist and they probably wouldn't be able back up either opinion, if I had a penny for the number of times someone threw out a "morality is relative" as if a settled fact in philosophy when discussing an issue I'd be rich) and as Wallace mentioned, we build prisons so strong we don't even realize they are prisons.

[0] I've borrowed this term from Patrick Murray's essays on the value-form in his contribution to critiques of marginalist economics.

Absolutely captivating read. Great big-picture thinking (the biggest).