It's fairly pointless to analyze metaphors in isolation. They're used in a cumulative way as part of real or imagined conversations. That meshes with a newish way of understanding the brain: as largely a prediction engine. If that's true, what would it mean for metaphorical names in code?

Sources
* Lisa Feldman Barrett, "The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization," Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017. (I also read her How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017) but found the lack of detail frustrating.)
* Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, 1997.

Credits
Image of a glider under tow from zenithair.net.

E49: Metaphors and the predictive brain