The Map Is Not the Territory (2015)
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* Borges's 'On Exactitude in Science' [0] about a map that is as large and as precise as the territory, which renders it useless;
* the wonderful Eschaton scene in Infinite Jest [1], with Pemulis screaming: "It’s snowing on the goddamn map, not the territory, you dick!
This point gets made enough over time that one suspects it's an enduring trait of our cognition to mistake the two. It certainly comes up when people present and talk about epidemiology models.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJpfK7l404I -- I think this Decembrists music video does Eschaton wonderfully.
I read an assertion recently that of all the "markets" in human civilization/culture, the financial one is the only one where we have truly have brought maximum resource and human capital to bear. With that in mind, no one is ever surprised when the next fat tail undoes hundreds of millions in mere moments, even when the capital was managed by ostensibly "smart" individuals.
The map is certainly not the territory there, but for the average individual they're going to have a hard time understanding the map, the territory, the map legend, anecdotes about the map etc...
It's true in many fields of engineering and scientific research, including geography and map-making. Just see how complex Geographic Information Systems [0] (basically computerized maps) have became.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system
The financial markets may be the biggest intelligent entity that ever existed.
The only way to second guess them is to figure out a tru theory, and NOT PUBLISH IT. I expect there are many such theories producing a lot of wealth to people who don't talk about it.
Are you thinking of this book?
If I had to name the single epistemic feat at which modern human civilization is most adequate, the peak of all human power of estimation, I would unhesitatingly reply, “Short-term relative pricing of liquid financial assets, like the price of S&P 500 stocks relative to other S&P 500 stocks over the next three months.” This is something into which human civilization puts an actual effort.
I think the part that really shook me, and made a lasting impact, was this:
But in the early days when Omegaven was just plain illegal to sell across state lines, some parents would drive for hours, every month, to buy Omegaven from the Boston Children’s Hospital to take back to their home state. I, for one, would call that an extraordinary effort. Those parents went far outside their routine, beyond what the System would demand of them, beyond what the world was set up to support them doing by default. Most people won’t make an effort that far outside their usual habits even if their own personal lives are at stake.
It made me think hard about what trying hard to really fix something looks like, and what options I fail to entertain. And since reading that I've become more willing to actually do what's necessary to solve problems, even at risk of inconveniencing myself or worse, looking weird. Sometimes I meet people who prioritize not looking weird over the lives of themselves and their loved ones (like in the early days of the pandemic, when non-Asian people were still too embarrassed to wear masks in public). And when I find myself thinking that way, I think back to this book and think, let's make an extraordinary effort today.
I think the book would be better without Simplicio though, who is a pretty annoying strawman character.
"When the map and the terrain disagree; believe the terrain."
It features in this screed I wrote: https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/concrete-galoshes-a5798a5...
(Scroll down to "Story Time." It's in that section.)
I also enjoyed learning about Farnam Street. I've bookmarked it.
http://theskinner.blogspot.com/2020/06/destination-universe-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Null-A#Publicatio...
1. We have many maps, models, or concepts - different ways of viewing the same situation. How we choose which map is often more important than the overall accuracy of our maps. Changing perspective often beats getting more accurate data.
2. There is no reason to have any emotional or sentimental attachment to one’s knowledge. Think of “your knowledge” the same way you would think of “your map collection”. Edit (or discard) them with extreme prejudice!
> The second also means that the way we experience the world depends on the kind of creatures we are, and not the way the world is.
Would it be fair to say we all look at both the map and territory wearing different sunglasses?
That seems to capture both sentiments, I feel there's something I'm not getting here.
The author argues instead not to be confused with the map because of potential deviation from the reality of the territory. But the map is about the categorical truths of reality which the territory is conforming to.
It’s what guarantees mathematics’ “unreasonable effectiveness”. Mathematical or scientific maps are discussing necessary properties of all human experience—-a type of knowledge called the a priori synthetic.
So while I get your point, I wonder how much people miss the map due to obscure knowledge requirements and think it doesn't exist.
MAXIM 2: A sergeant in motion outranks a lieutenant who doesn't know what's going on.
MAXIM 3: An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.
Such well-specific label territories are often artificial. Your Facebook social graph is a poor proxy for your actual IRL social network (or whose opinions you interact with the most, etc)
Big bureaucratic organizations (or other less responsive intelligences) often try to force the territory to conform to the map, for convenience of steering, but it seems like there is a significant map/territory mismatch in the generally interesting/important cases.
how to use maps in business