3 ms·
The map is not the terrain. Any map, coarse grained or fine grained has its place, they maybe be useful. But neither are actually the terrain. Even software
by verisimi 3y ago
The map is not the terrain. Any map, coarse grained or fine grained has its place, they maybe be useful. But neither are actually the terrain. Even software models aren't the real thing.
- coxmi 3y agoThis is a great hacker news meme, but a map is still obviously useful. To analyse the map, its author and its purpose, is just as useful as getting into the weeds and understanding the terrain. What use would knowing the terrain be if you can’t share your mental model of it with someone else?
- kybernetikos 3y agoI'd go further. If you think you understand the terrain in itself, all you've really done is make a more detailed map. You can ask the terrain questions, but you can never understand it or predict it or do anything useful with it except by making a map. "The map is not the terrain" is useful if you're in danger of throwing away evidence that challenges your favourite model, in all other cases it distracts attention from the fact that building models is essential and important.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoYeah, but then it's like «All models are wrong, some are useful.» that already presupposes that you are aware of that models are unavoidable ?
- taeric 3y agoThis runs the danger of mistaking a map for a mental model. Which, for some of us, I bet that is the case. For others? I don't know. Note that this is emphatically not saying to abandon maps. I'm pushing more for having things in addition. And if you really want to build a shared mental model, you almost certainly have to share an experience. You can use narratives to help build a shared experience, but often you have to practice/rehearse anything that you want to have a truly shared model of.
- darkerside 3y agoParadoxically, this oversimplification summarizes the spirit of the article very well, and also completely sidesteps the parent's incredibly valid counterpoint.
- dizhn 3y agoThe original quote is about war and combat where it does make perfect sense.
- darkerside 3y agoI'm not saying it doesn't make sense. I'm saying it sidesteps the valid point that it was responding to.
- RandomLensman 3y agoAnd sometimes you actually have to deal with terrain as such, not any map.
- kybernetikos 3y agoSometimes the map is the terrain (or to be more precise but less pithy, sometimes maps are encoded in the terrain and are therefore part of the terrain). The brain evolved precisely because operating at a higher level of abstraction is valuable. If you understand the brain in terms only of neural firings and not in terms of the concepts they encode, you will never properly understand what the brain is doing. If the subject under discussion is something symbolic, or symbol using (e.g. a map) then trying to understand it in terms of its physical instantiation (atoms of paper and ink) is likely going to lead you astray.
- Amorymeltzer 3y agoPut another way, "All models are wrong, but some are useful."[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
- ethanbond 3y agoThe terrain isn't even the terrain! That's still just a map of lower level terrain.