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The map is not the territory (2015)

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Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#21

Post by BLKNSLVR »

jt2190 wrote: post #9

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 e…

The best introduction to taxonomies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevo...

Jorge Borges also has written something directly related to 'the map is not the terrain'

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#23

Post by colinsane »

pdonis wrote: post #15
colinsane wrote: post #14

> 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 y…

> 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…

all maps of a physical territory, yes. that’s a consequence of ħ, at the very least. but once you’ve encoded this best of all possible maps, the uncertainties in the map are quantified (like probabilities). you no longer have “unknown unknowns” so you can just carry through all the PDFs and create a true risk assessment. and it’s these unknown unknowns which were, AFAICT, the heart of this article.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#24

Post by pdonis »

colinsane wrote: post #23
pdonis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

all maps of a physical territory, yes. that’s a consequence of ħ, at the very least. but once you’ve encoded this best of all possible maps, the uncertainties in the map are quantified (like probabilities). you no longer have “unknown unknowns” so you can just carry through all the PDFs and create a true risk assessment. and it’s these unknown unknowns which were, AFAICT, the heart of this article.

> all maps of a physical territory, yes. that’s a consequence of ħ, at the very least.

Not really. If it's a consequence of anything, it's a consequence of relativity and the finite speed of light: you literally cannot know all of the information you would need to construct the "perfect map" you describe, because you only have access to information from a limited portion of the universe.

Quantum uncertainty just makes it worse, since even in the finite portion of the universe you have access to, you cannot know the exact state.

> once you’ve encoded this best of all possible maps

There is no such thing. Even leaving aside the relativity issue I raised above, non-commuting quantum observables are incompatible, so there is no single "best possible map" taking quantum uncertainty into account.

> you no longer have “unknown unknowns”

This is impossible. First, information outside your past light cone is always "unknown unknowns". Second, even if we limit attention to the data in our past light cone, someone can always measure a quantum observable that doesn't commute with the ones you have data on and invalidate your current model.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#25

Post by redler »

ghaff wrote: post #6

>(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…

If you squint, perhaps Apple fits the bill.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#27

Post by cykros »

redler wrote: post #25
ghaff wrote: post #6

>(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…

If you squint, perhaps Apple fits the bill.

I definitely remember a time when you could refer to Apple computers as Fischer-Price machines and most people would find it an apt comparison.

That time seems behind us, except for the particularly salty FSF warriors.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#28

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

8note wrote: post #7
rocmcd wrote: post #5

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…

"Seeing like a state" also fits that bill

As does "Capability does not equal intent."

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#29

Post by stephc_int13 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #20
stephc_int13 wrote: post #16

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 rea…

The extension of 'the map is not the terrain' is 'the simulation is not the universe'. I'm not sure if that's an exact example of what you're saying, but, for me, if any conclusion is that we're living in a simulation, then it's simulations all the way down. Or, we're living in a simulation because we understand and process the universe and our experiences through the filter of our brains, and our brains are, to some…

No, we are not living in a simulation.

And what I am saying is that the simulation hypothesis is a logical conclusion given our abstract way of representing numbers and infinity.

Basic things like real numbers are also an abstract model.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#30

Post by astrange »

ghaff wrote: post #6

>(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…

Since you can sell a retailer brand to an entirely new company, it should be possible for anything to come back as long as you don’t count it actually being a different thing.

Target, Kmart, Woolworths are all totally different and healthy companies in Australia.

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