[HN Gopher] The map is not the territory (2015)
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The map is not the territory (2015)
Author : amoghs
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-09-09 15:22 UTC (1 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (fs.blog)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I had a teacher, at a seminar I took, that kept saying "We need
| to know what 'Done' looks like."
|
| He also was the first person that told me the old Swiss Army
| maxim:
|
| _" If the map and the terrain disagree, believe the terrain."_
|
| Words to live by, as a delivery-oriented software developer.
| colinsane wrote:
| > If a map were to represent the territory with perfect fidelity,
| it would no longer be a reduction and thus would no longer be
| useful to us.
|
| if a map perfectly represented the territory it _would_ be _very_
| useful to everyone mentioned in this article. with a perfect
| representation of the territory, you can just simulate different
| strategies and deploy the best one. no need for risk management:
| your perfect map allows you to eliminate all risk.
|
| a perfect map might not be possible if you're an embedded actor,
| but that doesn't mean one shouldn't pursue the best _possible_
| map. the rest of the article is about recognizing flaws in your
| map. and guess what: when you identify a shortcoming in your map
| -- which the author does and recommends others do -- that's
| identical in an information sense to just building a more
| detailed map.
|
| > improbable and consequential events seem to happen far more
| often than they should based on naive statistics.
|
| the author has quantified some thing ("consequential events") and
| then stated that this thing occurs within some data set more
| frequently than would be consistent with that very dataset. i get
| what he's _trying_ to say, but when he phrases it this way it's
| just a simple contradiction with an easy way out: build better
| maps.
|
| so, yes: the map is not the territory. if you build a map without
| complete knowledge of the territory (which is the majority of
| maps), then it has unknowable error bars. but maps are
| unavoidable: you can either explicitly follow a map, or
| implicitly follow one. Warren Buffet uses a map when making sense
| of the world. is it good, or bad, that the map he follows is
| accessible to only a single mind and has not been digitized and
| shared more widely? the biggest case to be made for ditching
| digitized/formalized maps is because this allows you to retain
| more hidden information, which is the basis for gaining an edge
| in financial markets. but the author didn't really argue the
| futility of maps based on embedded actors -- it was mostly an
| argument that too many people are engaged in map-making without
| first understanding the boundaries of the territory. and that's
| no argument that informal maps are intrinsically superior to
| explicit maps.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> with a perfect representation of the territory, you can just
| simulate different strategies and deploy the best one. no need
| for risk management: your perfect map allows you to eliminate
| all risk_
|
| Such a perfect map is impossible because it would need to have
| infinite accuracy, and its consequences would not be
| computable.
|
| _> if you build a map without complete knowledge of the
| territory (which is the majority of maps)_
|
| Which is _all_ maps. _Complete_ knowledge of the territory is
| impossible.
| rocmcd wrote:
| I highly recommend the book The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry
| Muller for an in-depth look at these kinds of issues (in addition
| to Taleb's work). Mistaking the map for the terrain (or any
| similar metaphor) whereby you think you know how things work
| solely through the lens of easily quantifiable (and gamed)
| metrics seems to be the mistake of this era. The book really
| opened my eyes to this problem everywhere (including software),
| and it only seems to be getting worse.
| 8note wrote:
| "Seeing like a state" also fits that bill
| ghaff wrote:
| >(Another thing holding the company back was simply its base
| odds: Can you name a retailer of great significance that has lost
| its position in the world and come back?)
|
| This seems significant. If you look at what's happened to most
| anchor department store retail at malls in the time since, it
| isn't pretty. You can look at the individual stores (Sears,
| Macy's, etc.) and find individual culprits to blame. But there's
| a reasonable point to be made that _no one_ was in a position to
| turn JC Penney around even if they could have eeked out a bit
| more money for shareholders and debt holders.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Wasn't toys r us bankrupt but is now coming back?
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Map Is Not the Territory (2015)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23487242 - June 2020 (35
| comments)
|
| _The map is not the territory (2015)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084102 - Feb 2019 (14
| comments)
| jt2190 wrote:
| An interesting, related thing I've noticed is in many learn to
| program tutorials and exercises there's a failure to be explicit
| about when we are creating a model, and that modeling is a skill,
| and that skilled model-builders first and foremost create a model
| to _solve a problem_. I've seen too many cases where students are
| left on their own to flounder about deciding if cars should be
| composed of four wheels and an engine, and what about the doors?
| etc.
|
| Another flavor that traps experts in endless, pointless debate
| are taxonomies. Edit: See "The narcissism of small differences",
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differen...
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I think this is an important idea, not new but probably not
| widespread or well understood enough.
|
| One specific map that I think can lead to some reasoning errors
| is the way we abstract numbers.
|
| Our most common and widely used abstraction of numbers has
| infinite at both ends, and this is a perfectly valid, practical
| and coherent way to represent real numbers, as long as we stay in
| the realm of the abstraction.
|
| But real things like particles or planets might not be perfectly
| abstracted by this model.
|
| Reasoning about real things with this model in mind (especially
| infinity) can lead to weird conclusions, like the 100% likelihood
| that we live in a simulation.
| barathr wrote:
| I like Chapman's piece on the subject -- "Maps, the territory,
| and meta-rationality" -- which is a deeper examination of what
| this classic saying really means:
|
| https://metarationality.com/maps-and-territory
| kebman wrote:
| Territory? The map is not the land. Or the map is not the real
| world. Just as any model is just that; a model and not the real
| thing. And as the saying is, all models are wrong, but some are
| useful. And maps are certainly useful!
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Are you responding to the article or just the title? The
| article makes these same points toward the beginning.
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| You could paraphrase this submission as, "The title is not
| the article"
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Financial markets have no biological reality to tie them down_
|
| After years of reading various things trying to use past
| financial data to predict the next depression, I read a thing
| where a guy said that people get lazy and self indulgent during
| good times and then work harder during bad times and that
| explained the ups and downs. I'm sure it's more complicated than
| that, but I stopped trying to find a model that used past
| financial ups and downs to predict the future. It's nonsense.
|
| There can be real world bits that are useful, like the Peak Oil
| model which is based on something real and has a real world
| proven track record. But lots of financial models are in the
| territory of a con game.
|
| I have a certificate in GIS, which involves literally studying
| maps. Maps have huge inherent issues if only because land is 3D
| and part of an imperfect globe and maps are 2D -- a flat drawing
| trying to unfold the surface of a ball and say something useful
| about it.
|
| Making good literal maps can be quite hard. I have a longstanding
| interest in award-winning graphics of various sorts because
| graphics are information dense and when they get it right, it's
| incredible. But maps often say more about the mind that created
| it than the physical landscape per se and it's a huge mistake to
| fail to recognize this fact.
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