This tangentially reminds me of a very interesting idea I think I encountered in a Borges story - for a map to be useful, it must be inaccurate. That is to say

This tangentially reminds me of a very interesting idea I think I encountered in a Borges story - for a map to be useful, it must be inaccurate. That is to say, a perfectly accurate map would just be a replica of the the terrain it is mapping - anything less would technically be inaccurate. Only by leaving things out and "summarizing" an area does a map become a useful representation of the terrain.