Apples and Oranges

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Am I the only person who's never going to get this?

Everyone says, "Its like comparing apples to oranges."

To me they are both fruits. And since they are of the same family, called fruit. Its easy to compare them.

Its like if someone said its like comparing brother and sister.

If they are from the same family it doesn't matter if one is blond and the other is brown.

Shouldn't there be I don't know, one that makes more sense?

Like comparing onions and tomatos.

Cause one is a fruit and the other is a vegetable, it makes more sense. They aren't from the same family and they are different.

IDK I jsut never understood this one.

Since nothing rhymes with "orange", it is always a stand-alone.

Here's a way to interpret it.

Suppose you are at a store where apples cost $1.50 and oranges cost $2.50.

Someone comes up to you and tells you, "I bought $19 worth of apples and oranges. How many of each did I buy?"

This is an analog of the Packing Problem, an NP-Complete problem. As such, it is in a different complexity class than if they asked you "I bought $16.5 worth of apples. How many did I buy?" It is inherently more difficult to solve (as in, no algorithm has been found, or is likely to be found, which can solve both problems in the same time (roughly)). In a real, mathematical sense, it is harder to compare apples and oranges than apples and apples.

Can anyone beat me with a more useless interpretation?

You're analyzing the expression past the point that most people take it.

Yes, they are both fruit. But they are different kinds of fruit.

If you said, "It's like comparing a car to a mouse" a person may get caught up in how vastly different those two objects are rather than on the point someone is trying to make.

By keeping the objects of comparison in the same family, the visual is reduced to two objects that relate but are very different in color, texture and taste.

Similiar but different.

That's my take.

To be serious, what helped me was to start writing down translations of such idioms.

Nowadays, just create a humans.txt file and stuff it full of your own translations whenever you come across a good explanation. Very quickly you'll have your own dictionary of colloquialisms, and after a while you will no longer need to consult it often.

E.g.

"You can't compare apples and oranges" -> "You should not try to compare these two things"

"Can't complain" -> "It is now your turn to say something"

"hooked up" -> "had meaningless sex with"

"WHAT?!" -> "Think about what you just said or did and try to identify the rule which you violated. Note it for future reference."

"Would you like to come up for coffee?" -> "Let's have sex."

"if you get what I'm saying" -> "I just said something which may be interpreted sexually. The joke is that I will not explicitly say this interpretation, because I assume you will have come to the same conclusion."

"[syllable]f*cking[syllable]" -> "I am emphasizing what I am saying, for extra emphasis."

"I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." -> The most terrible insult imaginable in the Vl’hurg tongue. Don't worry about it unless you do not own a small dog.

"How are you?" -> "Hello"

"How's it hanging?" -> "Hello"

"You see, five years ago my neighbor Marge, who has that cute little dog who was run over by some drunk driver (praise the lord, nothing like that has ever happened to me) said that her friend who's friends with the uncle of the nephew of the mayor of the town next to the place where we spent that afternoon riding llamas (I still have the picture after all these years, you looked adorable when the llama spat on you) said that he might have the best cheesecake recipe ever" -> "Hello"

^^^ Seinfeld does not lie about social awkwardness.

Woody Allen once referred to its variant, "would you like to come up and see my prints?"

In game theory, this is actually a well-studied condition. You see, for NT's both parties know that the question really is "would you like to have sex?" But by being indirect about it, a "no" answer is not seen as a being a rejection.

This is also seen in how people ask each other to go on dates. Compare:

A: Are you busy on Friday?"
B: Yes, I have classes all day.

to

A: Would you like to go on a date with me on Friday?
B: No

The former allows both parties to carefully mitigate the chance of being seen as blunt and/or uninterested. By being indirect (knowing B knows the real question), A saves faces by not coming right out and saying "I want to have sex with you." This same indirectness also allows B to say "no" without coming right out and saying "not in a million years."

Both parties benefit from this indirectness when being explicit would mean embarrassment for one or the other party.

Also note that this is how to successfully bribe someone. By being indirect ("Is there any way you I can get a table for 8:00?" as you flash a $20 bill) you allow the other person to accept the bribe without explicitly telling him "you are corrupt."

Here is a very good read for this:

http://harvard.academia.edu/StevenPinke ... ect_speech

It is a saying used to express that two things have intrinsic similarities but are different in very relevant ways.

That is all.