
The map is not the territory (2015) - galfarragem
https://fs.blog/2015/11/map-and-territory/
======
JorgeGT
As a researcher, I've always loved this 1946 one-paragraph short story by
Borges about the blind obsession some people develops for models:

 _. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that
the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of
the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no
longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire
whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with
it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of
Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless,
and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the
Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today,
there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all
the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography._

~~~
dangban
What are your thoughts on what he meant by _" in all the Land there are no
other relics..."_?

~~~
JorgeGT
I interpret that after reaching peak absurdity, the reputation of the whole
discipline was tarnished and its practice abandoned, even if (applied
reasonably) it was really an useful discipline. I think there are many current
examples of this.

~~~
dangban
Good interpretation. Upvoted.

------
dood
"The map is not the territory" is so widely known as to be almost a truism,
but the post's conclusion is an excellent, pithy summary of the _practical
implications_ of this idea:

> you do not understand a model, map, or reduction unless you understand and
> respect its limitations

This simple but powerful corollary is easily and widely overlooked, perhaps
because the mind's use of maps and models as stand-ins for reality runs so
deep that the full import of this statement about the profound unknowability
of the world around us is too terrifying to permit contemplation.

------
andrewla
One point the post makes is the failure of the restructuring of J.C. Penney. I
don't agree that it was a total failure, I just think the board lacked the
courage to get through the hard times that had been predicted by Johnson from
the beginning. Yes, it scares away the coupon clippers, but re-establishing
trust in a brand takes some time. Everyone is tired of the idea of these one-
day sales that happen at random times, and they make stores less appealing
because it always feels like you're missing out on some deal if you just
waited, which usually means that you just go to Amazon instead. The customers
you lose (the coupon-clippers and budget shoppers) are the worst possible
customers, and in the long run you'll be better off without them.

I caught wind of the changes too late; by the time I got around to visiting
one of their stores, they had reverted to the insane random discount model, so
I couldn't make any headway because every sticker read like an essay; with
some insanely high price "marked down" to a slightly more reasonable price,
and my faith that either price was real was practically zero. I guess we'll
never know unless another store tries to give it a go; the model of "buy a
bunch of stuff online and return all the stuff that doesn't work" feels
wasteful and limiting, and physically browsing is just a better experience
except for the convenience, so anything to make the brick-and-mortar
experience more predictable is welcome.

------
andrewla
The map/territory insight is a very impressive one, and can often cut to the
center of a debate, decomposing it into an argument about semantics.

My two favorite examples are the idea of defining "species" and the idea of
defining "life". In both cases we have rough criteria, but both are things
that are kind of "we know it when we see it" but with the understanding that
at the edges we have cases that don't quite work because the definitions are
convenience (and descriptive), not fundamental (and prescriptive).

So people debating whether horses and donkeys are the same species because
they can interbreed are trying to make the territory fit the map.

And people debating whether a virus is "alive" are also trying to make the
territory fit the map.

Both "being alive" and "belonging to the same species" are useful concepts on
a gross level -- distinguishing plants and rocks, and horses and monkeys, but
they break down at the micro level, which is totally okay, because we don't
need a perfect model for it to be useful, so long as we constrain ourselves to
the domain where it is useful.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yup.

For some reason, to this day I remember how Paul Graham has put it in his
criticism of philosophy[0]:

> _The real lesson here is that the concepts we use in everyday life are
> fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard. (...) Outside of math there 's a
> limit to how far you can push words; in fact, it would not be a bad
> definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings.
> Everyday words are inherently imprecise. They work well enough in everyday
> life that you don't notice. Words seem to work, just as Newtonian physics
> seems to. But you can always make them break if you push them far enough._

Scott Alexander has an excellent essay on this too[1].

\--

[0] -
[http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)

[1] - [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-
ma...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-
not-man-for-the-categories/)

~~~
fokinsean
Reminds me of how Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance talks a lot about
defining what "Quality" is. It breaks down really fast.

------
Bucephalus355
I like Farnam Street.

However this one article title is probably the best example I’ve seen of how
the ENTIRE self-industry is really just recycling insight that was developed
in the early 1970’s ad infinitum.

It’s not that self-help is bad, in fact is was incredibly useful for Americans
looking for guidance which depended on inner connections when this stuff
started to emerge after Vietnam.

However...now...it’s just so passé.

~~~
sametmax
Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

------
drev
Or, has described by Umberto Eco "On The Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the
Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1"

------
curtis
A different but related point:

 _Having a map is not the same thing as knowing the way._

This is one reason why documentation isn't nearly as useful in software
development as people think it should be.

